Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
The last days of SF? Not a subject I'll debate.
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- Setting is just a storytelling element. It doesn't define the story, much less the genre or the field.
- SF is all around us; just because the marketers don't trumpet it doesn't mean it isn't blooming.
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Mostly agreed. I think I'd love to see a chart of Hugo & Nebula winners and the year-setting of each book compared to the year it was written, but it's a minor point.
Setting doesn't define the story, but it does say something about the culture in which it was written. Fifty years ago, we were happy to write stories set 15,000 years in the future... now, not so much; we're aware that tech and cultural changes make any of our guesses implausible.
I like SF that doesn't claim to be SF: Atwood, Auel (when Ben Bova writes telepathic neanderthals, it's SF; when a romance author writes them, it's literature?), Starhawk.