What era are we in?
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
book from and pass it off as a new book today?
Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's never
going to be any question that it's of another era.
But take a book from 1985.. Probably the characterizations are going to be
as good as the current average, and the language hasn't really changed
that much since then. In general you're going to have women working as
equals, and a more "diverse" cast. So is it going to be able
to pass as current? Well, no. These characters in the future are probably
going to have less efficient comms gear than our cellphones, and forget
google & wikipedia. There are going to be a host of assumptions we have
about the future that they don't.
1995? I was proud to have put some "cutting edge" Internet stuff in a
book I wrote about then, and I'm still talking about "home pages".
I got a bit about digital music in, but nothing about it coming from the
network or being pirated..
2006? Could you pass off a 6 year old book as current? Maybe, but I
think that's about the limit. I suspect our SF era is actually closer to
2008.
Different dates? Those rare Books that came from before your date
but could "pass"?
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
synthi...@yahoo.com
in the era of "Stupid". Perhaps you meant sub genres of Sci-Fi as
opposed to the US as a whole.
Nils
Robert Carnegie
The prescience of "A Logic Named Joe" is remarkable, perhaps for not
being imitated more, but it isn't present-day. It's the sort of story
that someone will write a modern tribute to.
Some stories don't have any of those giveaway clues.
I find it interesting to look at what assumptions about a topic apply
and what don't. I think that short stories "The Fun They Had" and
(yikes) "I Always Do What Teddy Says" are still valid as information
for a discussion of what the consumer electronics industry can do for
education, although the instruction material in the stories is
presented on tape (or is it wire?) or on video film, whose speed
apparently can be adjusted for slower learners, and there's no online
or student cooperation provision. And they /are/ short, whereas
asking someone to read _The Diamond Age_ is asking a lot.
David DeLaney
>Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
>book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>Different dates? Those rare Books that came from before your date
>but could "pass"?
Books that don't have Earth or humans in them at all are one group that might
well have fewer problems. But yeah, even there, the AUTHOR'S background
assumptions may bleed through into the alien society and be pickable out
from it as a dating/zeerust method.
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>
> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
> characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's never
> going to be any question that it's of another era.
Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
instance.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>On 7/13/11 3:06 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
>> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>>
>> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
>> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
>> characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's never
>> going to be any question that it's of another era.
>
> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
>could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
>under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
>things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
>instance.
>
Weren't there several times Telzy could have gotten out of jeopardy if she
had a cellphone?
(I enjoyed the heck out of the Schmitz re-issues!)
Lynn McGuire
> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>
> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
> characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's never
> going to be any question that it's of another era.
>
> But take a book from 1985.. Probably the characterizations are going to be
> as good as the current average, and the language hasn't really changed
> that much since then. In general you're going to have women working as
> equals, and a more "diverse" cast. So is it going to be able
> to pass as current? Well, no. These characters in the future are probably
> going to have less efficient comms gear than our cellphones, and forget
> about the future that they don't.
>
> 1995? I was proud to have put some "cutting edge" Internet stuff in a
> book I wrote about then, and I'm still talking about "home pages".
> I got a bit about digital music in, but nothing about it coming from the
> network or being pirated..
>
> 2006? Could you pass off a 6 year old book as current? Maybe, but I
> think that's about the limit. I suspect our SF era is actually closer to
> 2008.
>
> Different dates? Those rare Books that came from before your date
> but could "pass"?
>
>
> Ted
We are in Heinlein's crazy years:
http://burningtaper.blogspot.com/2006/12/crazy-years.html
You will not like the end of this era in 2020 or 2030
as we transition to a religious theocracy government.
If it goes until 2044 then the end will really suck:
http://www.amazon.com/Distraction-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0553576399/
"It's 2044 A.D. and America has gone to the dogs. The federal
government is broke and, with 16 political parties fighting
for power, things aren't likely to improve soon. The Air Force,
short on funding, is setting up roadblocks to shake down
citizens and disguising its tactics as a bake sale. The
governor of Louisiana, Green Huey, is engaging in illegal
genetic research and has set up his own private biker army.
The newly elected president of the U.S., Leonard Two Feathers,
is considering a declaration of war against the Netherlands, a
country that finds itself half under water due to global
warming."
Lynn
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Not exactly what I'm looking for. I don't care (for this post!) where
society is actually headed, but rather what is the furthest back a book
about it could appear to have been written today.
Howard Brazee
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
>could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
>under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
>things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
>instance.
How about the guns in _The Witches of Karres_, with an interface that
required the captain to touch them to move them off target so the
other ship could leave safely? Nobody would write that today from
our current understanding of automation. (Not to say that our
current understanding is significantly closer to one with a galactic
civilization than his was).
--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
- James Madison
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Technological issues, as I said. That's true of anything written
before, say, the mid-1990s and possibly 2000. Cell phones are a PITA. In
my rewrite of Digital Knight I have to figure out the last possible date
in which it would be reasonable for a professional like Jason to NOT
have a cell phone because that determines when the novel is set. (it was
WRITTEN starting back in the mid-late 80s, not published until 2003).
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:13:43 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
>> could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
>> under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
>> things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
>> instance.
>
> How about the guns in _The Witches of Karres_, with an interface that
> required the captain to touch them to move them off target so the
> other ship could leave safely? Nobody would write that today from
> our current understanding of automation.
I would, and I WORK in automation. Hand-activated safety, and the guns
are movement-triggered; you sight it on something and give the command
"anything in the sight moves, shoot it". Deflect it so the ships aren't
in the sight, you allow your target to leave.
WoK is a space opera and one in which there's clear intent to make it a
rough, tough, individuals-do-stuff universe. Star-Warsy, in the general
sense, though much better than SW is, IMCGO. That kind of stuff works in
any era.
The way he had to look for the CHARTS, now, THAT would give it away
REAL quick.
Howard Brazee
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> Technological issues, as I said. That's true of anything written
>before, say, the mid-1990s and possibly 2000. Cell phones are a PITA. In
>my rewrite of Digital Knight I have to figure out the last possible date
>in which it would be reasonable for a professional like Jason to NOT
>have a cell phone because that determines when the novel is set. (it was
>WRITTEN starting back in the mid-late 80s, not published until 2003).
I never looked at the publication date - I assumed it was a mid 80s
book when I read it. I suppose with its title, it is important for
you now to set the date clearly.
I'm curious - besides actually *telling* us the date, what are you
thinking of changing/adding to give us the historical flavor?
lal_truckee
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Distraction-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0553576399/
> "It's 2044 A.D. and America has gone to the dogs.
_Soft Apocalypse_ is the SF source material for your argument...
Lynn McGuire
Lynn McGuire
My point was that Heinlein predicted many of the items
that we are now going through in several of his books
that he entitled the "crazy years". While science and
technology may have rendered his stories obsolete, the
underlying story is still sound. I am talking about his
1970s books like _I_Will_Fear_no_Evil_.
And _Distraction_ holds up extremely well for being a
1999 book.
Lynn
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Yes, I'm not saying a book doesn't hold up. It may hold up well, and be
an extremely satisfying read yet still not be able to pass for a "current"
book. I'm looking for the date that "pass for current" starts..
Ted
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:51:13 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>> Technological issues, as I said. That's true of anything written
>> before, say, the mid-1990s and possibly 2000. Cell phones are a PITA. In
>> my rewrite of Digital Knight I have to figure out the last possible date
>> in which it would be reasonable for a professional like Jason to NOT
>> have a cell phone because that determines when the novel is set. (it was
>> WRITTEN starting back in the mid-late 80s, not published until 2003).
>
> I never looked at the publication date - I assumed it was a mid 80s
> book when I read it. I suppose with its title, it is important for
> you now to set the date clearly.
>
> I'm curious - besides actually *telling* us the date, what are you
> thinking of changing/adding to give us the historical flavor?
>
Oh, I'm not TELLING the date, I'm just determining it to make sure all
the pieces of all the stories of all the series I have designed hang
together (rather than hang separately). The early stories have some
elements that depend on people NOT having cell phones (and I don't want
to constantly be finding reasons his cell doesn't work/isn't
charged/etc.), so I have to set it at roughly the right time period.
The major changes will be to add in better foreshadowing of elements
that, to be honest, I didn't KNOW when I started writing in 1986-87
would be a major part of the universe. For instance, the intersection
that Jason has with the Spirit Warriors trilogy happens roughly at the
start of DK, and then resumes somewhere around Shadow of Fear. I'll also
be integrating the stories better and making the writing all about on
the same level (there's clear areas in there where it's just not as well
written as my most recent stuff), and adding in two more stories
("Shadow of Fear" and "Trial Run").
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>> Technological issues, as I said. That's true of anything written
>> before, say, the mid-1990s and possibly 2000. Cell phones are a PITA. In
>> my rewrite of Digital Knight I have to figure out the last possible date
>> in which it would be reasonable for a professional like Jason to NOT
>> have a cell phone because that determines when the novel is set. (it was
>> WRITTEN starting back in the mid-late 80s, not published until 2003).
>
> I never looked at the publication date - I assumed it was a mid 80s
> book when I read it. I suppose with its title, it is important for
> you now to set the date clearly.
Addendum: Well, the re-issue title will be "Paradigms Lost", so that's
not a problem.
erilar
t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
> I'm not saying a book doesn't hold up. It may hold up well, and be
> an extremely satisfying read yet still not be able to pass for a "current"
> book. I'm looking for the date that "pass for current" starts..
Books set far in the future are more likely to pass for current, since
they don't refer to the present at all 8-)
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist
erilar
Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net> wrote:
> How about the guns in _The Witches of Karres_, with an interface that
> required the captain to touch them to move them off target so the
> other ship could leave safely? Nobody would write that today from
> our current understanding of automation. (Not to say that our
> current understanding is significantly closer to one with a galactic
> civilization than his was).
Why not? Unless they're controlled mentally or you want to trust
automation totally.
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist
Robert Carnegie
> In article <9863l4F9i...@mid.individual.net>,
> t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
>
> > I'm not saying a book doesn't hold up. It may hold up well, and be
> > an extremely satisfying read yet still not be able to pass for a "current"
> > book. I'm looking for the date that "pass for current" starts..
>
> Books set far in the future are more likely to pass for current, since
> they don't refer to the present at all 8-)
...except when the future people don't have stuff that we do.
For instance, in James White's "Sector General" universe, hyperspace
radio suffers interference from cosmic catastrophes that can only be
addressed by playing a message over and over and merging the
recordings. With redundant digital encoding, you can do a lot better
than that. They don't have keyhole surgery. They don't have surgical
robots...
Derek Lyons
>In article <ivkg7p$6ao$1...@dont-email.me>,
>Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
>>could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
>>under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
>>things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
>>instance.
>>
>
>Weren't there several times Telzy could have gotten out of jeopardy if she
>had a cellphone?
Which means you end up like the writers of ST:TOS - endlessly finding
ways to take the transporter and communicators out of the character's
hands.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Derek Lyons
>On 7/13/11 12:46 PM, Howard Brazee wrote:
>> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:13:43 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
>> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
>>> could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
>>> under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
>>> things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
>>> instance.
>>
>> How about the guns in _The Witches of Karres_, with an interface that
>> required the captain to touch them to move them off target so the
>> other ship could leave safely? Nobody would write that today from
>> our current understanding of automation.
>
> I would, and I WORK in automation. Hand-activated safety, and the guns
>are movement-triggered; you sight it on something and give the command
>"anything in the sight moves, shoot it". Deflect it so the ships aren't
>in the sight, you allow your target to leave.
I wouldn't, and I worked with military ordinance. Ordinace is
different. There, the ground rule is "hard to make unsafe and ready,
easy to make safe and unready".
Doing it your way is dumb and unsafe - the preferred method since
about the begining of automated* ordinance is to require positive
steps to ready the system accompanied by a positive command to fire.
Even then, it's pretty much to have a separate "safe/ready" switch
such that even if you try and generate a positive firing command, the
system will not react.
For example, with the torpedo system I worked with, even if the tube
was open and the weapon powered up - there were four different ways to
lock the system and prevent the weapon from being launched.
*Meaning ordinance that is automatically and/or remotely controlled,
not automatic in the same sense as an automatic handheld weapon.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>> On 7/13/11 12:46 PM, Howard Brazee wrote:
>>> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:13:43 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
>>> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
>>>> could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
>>>> under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
>>>> things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
>>>> instance.
>>>
>>> How about the guns in _The Witches of Karres_, with an interface that
>>> required the captain to touch them to move them off target so the
>>> other ship could leave safely? Nobody would write that today from
>>> our current understanding of automation.
>>
>> I would, and I WORK in automation. Hand-activated safety, and the guns
>> are movement-triggered; you sight it on something and give the command
>> "anything in the sight moves, shoot it". Deflect it so the ships aren't
>> in the sight, you allow your target to leave.
>
> I wouldn't, and I worked with military ordinance. Ordinace is
> different. There, the ground rule is "hard to make unsafe and ready,
> easy to make safe and unready".
>
> Doing it your way is dumb and unsafe - the preferred method since
> about the begining of automated* ordinance is to require positive
> steps to ready the system accompanied by a positive command to fire.
Which is fine, for real life. Dramatically that only works for military
portrayals of a certain type; in stories, many people would much rather
not have to see multiple safety interlocks and so on; the idea of a
weapon that you set on a target that you say "don't move" to, and then
when it moves the weapon shoots, makes perfect sense, and is damn easy
to automate and easy to understand.
Lynn McGuire
OK, I am starting to understand your question. While we
are in the 100 years of "the crazy years", we are also in
the era of extreme communication, otherwise known as the
rise of the internet. This era started in the middle
1990s and is rapidly changing. Google is now 11 ?
Lynn
Derek Lyons
>
>We are in Heinlein's crazy years:
> http://burningtaper.blogspot.com/2006/12/crazy-years.html
The author of that piece has some very well honed and ground axes, a
*very* rosy view of the past, and only a loose grasp of reality.
trag
I doubt that people are any stupider on average. I suspect we simply
live in an era where it would especially helpful if people were
smarter than they are.
Des
> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>
> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
> characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's never
> going to be any question that it's of another era.
>
> But take a book from 1985.. Probably the characterizations are going to be
> as good as the current average, and the language hasn't really changed
> that much since then. In general you're going to have women working as
> equals, and a more "diverse" cast. So is it going to be able
> to pass as current? Well, no. These characters in the future are probably
> going to have less efficient comms gear than our cellphones, and forget
> about the future that they don't.
>
> 1995? I was proud to have put some "cutting edge" Internet stuff in a
> book I wrote about then, and I'm still talking about "home pages".
> I got a bit about digital music in, but nothing about it coming from the
> network or being pirated..
>
> 2006? Could you pass off a 6 year old book as current? Maybe, but I
> think that's about the limit. I suspect our SF era is actually closer to
> 2008.
>
> Different dates? Those rare Books that came from before your date
> but could "pass"?
>
> Ted
Did you take a recent course in Political Correctness?
Nothing you wrote has anything to do with SF.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>
>I doubt that people are any stupider on average. I suspect we simply
>live in an era where it would especially helpful if people were
>smarter than they are.
It could be. But there are some very smart people who would use
their intelligence to make things much worse. (We would have been
better off if bin Laden was an idiot).
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>>Weren't there several times Telzy could have gotten out of jeopardy if she
>>had a cellphone?
>
>Which means you end up like the writers of ST:TOS - endlessly finding
>ways to take the transporter and communicators out of the character's
>hands.
Or time travel or super fast movement or cloaking devices or half of
the previous solutions.
Howard Brazee
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>> How about the guns in _The Witches of Karres_, with an interface that
>> required the captain to touch them to move them off target so the
>> other ship could leave safely? Nobody would write that today from
>> our current understanding of automation.
>
> I would, and I WORK in automation. Hand-activated safety, and the guns
>are movement-triggered; you sight it on something and give the command
>"anything in the sight moves, shoot it". Deflect it so the ships aren't
>in the sight, you allow your target to leave.
You'd have him sight it by hand, turn on the automation, and then turn
off the automation by having him aim elsewhere by moving the gun?
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Yes and no. If your future has a "Great Collapse" and the survivors are
rebuilding a-la _Canticle_ or _Star Man's Son_ that's one thing, and
probably a telling of that tale from 1985 could pass for current, but if
you have a star spanning FTL civilization that has characters who can't
get in touch with each other when they are out of the house, that 1985
book shows it wasn't written today..
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Yes, that's probably the main thing. But 1990s is way too early to pass
as current.
David Johnston
<tednolan>) wrote:
>Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
>book from and pass it off as a new book today?
Santiago could be passed off as a new book today. Sure, there are no
computers, but that's just it. There are no computers. Thus, there's
no opportunity to describe a computer in an out of date way.
David Johnston
<tednolan>) wrote:
>In article <ivkg7p$6ao$1...@dont-email.me>,
>Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>On 7/13/11 3:06 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>>> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
>>> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>>>
>>> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
>>> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
>>> characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's never
>>> going to be any question that it's of another era.
>>
>> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
>>could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
>>under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
>>things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
>>instance.
>>
>
>Weren't there several times Telzy could have gotten out of jeopardy if she
>had a cellphone?
>
Um...no? Any time Telzy could have gotten out of jeopardy if she had
a cellphone she could have mentally called just as far.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Um, did you read what I wrote? The whole post is asking questions about
science fiction books.
As for political correctness, I don't have much use for it, but it's
simply a fact that an (average) SF book written in 1930 will have much
different attitudes about race and women than an average SF book written
today.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Hmm. It's been a while, but wasn't it the case in _The Lion Game_ that
she was trapped in some sort of hotel whose teleportation-connected rooms
might be planets apart? I'm thinking some sort of repeater in the
"building" might be more likely than being within mindreach of someone
useful.
Wayne Throop
So... fifteen years, give or take 5, is way too long ago.
I wonder if that same 15-ish years would apply in, say, 1960
instead of 2011? That is, is it trending as "future shock"
and/or Vinge might expect?
David DeLaney
>I wouldn't, and I worked with military ordinance. Ordinace is
>different. There, the ground rule is "hard to make unsafe and ready,
>easy to make safe and unready".
Psst: "ordnance". Though the rule you quote could well apply to ordinances
as well.
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
David DeLaney
>Yes and no. If your future has a "Great Collapse" and the survivors are
>rebuilding a-la _Canticle_ or _Star Man's Son_ that's one thing, and
>probably a telling of that tale from 1985 could pass for current, but if
>you have a star spanning FTL civilization that has characters who can't
>get in touch with each other when they are out of the house, that 1985
>book shows it wasn't written today..
This is one reason, I think, why some writers like writing post-apocalyptic
stuff; you can have as much knowledge about Stuff and Science removed as you
want in the cataclysm, along with all the systems that made the Stuff actually
work, and then give things a century to get the remaining remembrances moved
as far away from where the characters are working as you need...
trag
<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> Technological issues, as I said. That's true of anything written
> before, say, the mid-1990s and possibly 2000. Cell phones are a PITA. In
> my rewrite of Digital Knight I have to figure out the last possible date
> in which it would be reasonable for a professional like Jason to NOT
> have a cell phone because that determines when the novel is set. (it was
> WRITTEN starting back in the mid-late 80s, not published until 2003).
I don't know what kind of professional Jason is, but I don't have a
cell phone and never have, and I'm a test and manufacturing engineer
for a small chip company (small company, big chip). So it may be
possible to stretch things a bit and let him not have a cell phone for
personal eccentricity reasons.
Suzanne Blom
Of course, if it's set after a technological collapse, then you can mix
and match technology.
Suzanne Blom
>
> Different dates? Those rare Books that came from before your date
> but could "pass"?
>
Stops" that still worked amazingly well, but they didn't have _good_ VR,
among other things.
Curses, when I started this, I thought I would say it would work.
_The Epic of Gilgamesh_? Abort program, restart, retry.
Robert Carnegie
Well, that's versus 1945: in the interim they had real space rockets.
And McCarthy.
Antibiotics were new in 1945. Going by Wikipedia, a contraceptive
pill was scientifically foreseeable but not being pursued; in 1960 it
arrived (in the U.S.) By 1960 there was serious agitation in the
cause of Negro rights. In 1945 only Hitler was against smoking...
There's an episode late in the novel _Silas Marner_ where IIRC he goes
back to the neighbourhood where he once lived and worked and it's been
wiped out and a big factory built, but that's more than your 15 years
- he's raised a child to adulthood, that he acquired a long ti me
after he'd lived in the old place. Which was around the year 1800.
Howard Brazee
<tednolan>) wrote:
>>Um...no? Any time Telzy could have gotten out of jeopardy if she had
>>a cellphone she could have mentally called just as far.
>
>Hmm. It's been a while, but wasn't it the case in _The Lion Game_ that
>she was trapped in some sort of hotel whose teleportation-connected rooms
>might be planets apart? I'm thinking some sort of repeater in the
>"building" might be more likely than being within mindreach of someone
>useful.
Is that the one where the crazy old man controlled technology so that
nobody could use anything he didn't want to use?
Moriarty
He's a PI type. And while it makes sense for Harry Dresden not to
have a cellphone, it makes zero sense for Jason not to have one,
particularly as he's a technophile.
-Moriarty
Derek Lyons
>On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:18:55 -0700 (PDT), trag <tr...@prismnet.com>
>wrote:
>>
>>I doubt that people are any stupider on average. I suspect we simply
>>live in an era where it would especially helpful if people were
>>smarter than they are.
>
>It could be. But there are some very smart people who would use
>their intelligence to make things much worse. (We would have been
>better off if bin Laden was an idiot).
And that's different from the remainder of human history - how
exactly?
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:54:42 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>>> How about the guns in _The Witches of Karres_, with an interface that
>>> required the captain to touch them to move them off target so the
>>> other ship could leave safely? Nobody would write that today from
>>> our current understanding of automation.
>>
>> I would, and I WORK in automation. Hand-activated safety, and the guns
>> are movement-triggered; you sight it on something and give the command
>> "anything in the sight moves, shoot it". Deflect it so the ships aren't
>> in the sight, you allow your target to leave.
>
> You'd have him sight it by hand, turn on the automation, and then turn
> off the automation by having him aim elsewhere by moving the gun?
>
Grasping the controls shuts off the firing trigger -- deadman switch.
It's also a matter of dramatics. The approach described by another
poster following my first post there is the correct one for a
nuts-and-bolts military that you're depicting accurately. However, for a
space opera universe like Karres, you'd be making a design that's more
complex than the audience needs to see.
That is, the statement " Nobody would write that today from our current
understanding of automation" assumes that the writer who understands
automation would feel that he had to use realistic automation in any
story that had it, regardless of subgenre.
The real world sometimes isn't realistic, so to speak, from the point
of view of a given fictional world.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Jul 13, 11:51 am, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
> <seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>> Technological issues, as I said. That's true of anything written
>> before, say, the mid-1990s and possibly 2000. Cell phones are a PITA. In
>> my rewrite of Digital Knight I have to figure out the last possible date
>> in which it would be reasonable for a professional like Jason to NOT
>> have a cell phone because that determines when the novel is set. (it was
>> WRITTEN starting back in the mid-late 80s, not published until 2003).
>
> I don't know what kind of professional Jason is,
IT -- information science, researcher, with special skills in things
useful for PI and police work -- image forensics and enhancement, data
recovery and integrity assurance, large-scale research, pattern
matching, and so on. He's a private consultant who does a fair amount of
work for his local police and others.
I can excuse it for a BIT, but not long; he's not a technophobe and he
has generally good reason to want to be accessible at many hours when he
may be out and about.
Dan Goodman
> In article <9863l4...@mid.individual.net>,
> t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
>
> > I'm not saying a book doesn't hold up. It may hold up well, and be
> > an extremely satisfying read yet still not be able to pass for a
> > "current" book. I'm looking for the date that "pass for current"
> > starts..
>
> Books set far in the future are more likely to pass for current,
> since they don't refer to the present at all 8-)
Unfortunately, many of them do. If only indirectly; for example, by
having had the Soviet Union still around a few centuries from now (but
in the story's past.)
--
Dan Goodman
dsgood on DreamWidth, LiveJournal, InsaneJournal, Twitter, Gratlingo
Dan Goodman on Facebook Daniel S. Goodman on Google+
Dan Goodman
Sometimes, a few months is enough to make a story oldfashioned.
Dan Goodman
> On 7/13/2011 2:06 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> >
> > Different dates? Those rare Books that came from before your date
> > but could "pass"?
> >
> There is a story from around 1903 called perhaps "When the Machine
> Stops" that still worked amazingly well, but they didn't have good
> VR, among other things. Curses, when I started this, I thought I
> would say it would work.
E. M. Forster, "The Machine Stops." 1909, if I recall correctly.
Drak Bibliophile
news:4e1e4517$0$74951$8046...@auth.newsreader.iphouse.com...
Jack Chalker's Well World series had that problem show up. IIRC in _The
Return Of Nathan Brazil_ it was mentioned that Nathan Brazil had been a
Cosmonaut on a Soviet Union landing on Mars.
Mind you, it turns out that was in a prior universe. [Wink]
--
*
Paul Howard (Alias Drak Bibliophile)
*
Sometimes The Dragon Wins!
*
--------
*
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>>>I doubt that people are any stupider on average. I suspect we simply
>>>live in an era where it would especially helpful if people were
>>>smarter than they are.
>>
>>It could be. But there are some very smart people who would use
>>their intelligence to make things much worse. (We would have been
>>better off if bin Laden was an idiot).
>
>And that's different from the remainder of human history - how
>exactly?
Is it? My point is that smarter people don't always translate into
better results.
Howard Brazee
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>> I don't know what kind of professional Jason is,
>
> IT -- information science, researcher, with special skills in things
>useful for PI and police work -- image forensics and enhancement, data
>recovery and integrity assurance, large-scale research, pattern
>matching, and so on. He's a private consultant who does a fair amount of
>work for his local police and others.
>
> I can excuse it for a BIT, but not long; he's not a technophobe and he
>has generally good reason to want to be accessible at many hours when he
>may be out and about.
At least not without coming up with a good backstory. But that
really wouldn't add to the story lines.
Bill Snyder
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>On 7/13/11 3:06 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
>> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>>
>> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
>> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
>> characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's never
>> going to be any question that it's of another era.
>
> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
>could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
>under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
>things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
>instance.
Yes. Arthur C. Clarke was generally amazingly good at finessing
technological change, but there were odd little ventures into
over-specificity that tripped him up. Almost all of "Against the
Fall of Night"/_The City and the Stars_ will pass, but IIRC
there's one place where he has a computer using punched cards, or
maybe tape. "Rescue Party" would get by, if he'd just said that
technology had by and by put an end to Man's need for cities,
rather than mentioning that it was the helicopter that dunnit.
Oh! -- How about Campbell's, "Forgetfulness," from <pause for
ISFDB> 1937?
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Wayne Throop
: Well, that's versus 1945: in the interim they had real space rockets.
: And McCarthy.
But space rockets, and even space rockets much like those NASA
eventually used (at least in some regards) were written about
much earlier, into the early 40s, maybe some even earlier.
And of course Verner Von Braun had suborbital rockets in 1945,
so the general paradigm was real-life even then.
Now I agree that anybody into the 70s that doesn't assume the first
moon landing had already occured, or had occured with variant details,
would be quickly dated... but what in ordinary day-to-day life, that
characters just walking around, changed drastically enough to in that
time span.
Hm. TV is the main thing I can think of. So, if you have folks
gathering around to listen to the radio, it'd be pretty peculiar
for something written in the '60s. Mind you... in the '60s *our*
family still listened to some radio, but usually not dramas; those
had mostly gone to TV by then.
Hm. Commercial airlines, especially using jets?
Still, I'd say for 2011, the primary tell is cellphones. For 1960,
it's TV. But seems to me that *more* things date the recent past in
2011 than in 1960. but it's difficult to be objective about it.
Also, things that are quite likely to give it away, as opposed to
*could* give it away. For example
: And McCarthy.
How many science fiction books mention Mccarthy, even after it was
absorbed into pop culture? I mean... clearly more than before it was,
but it's not all *that* unlikely.
: Antibiotics were new in 1945. Going by Wikipedia, a contraceptive
: pill was scientifically foreseeable but not being pursued; in 1960 it
: arrived (in the U.S.) By 1960 there was serious agitation in the cause
: of Negro rights.
All of which aren't highly likely tells. Possible, but not highly likely.
: In 1945 only Hitler was against smoking...
Ah. Yes, I suppose if you have everybody going around smoking,
and wearing hats, and loose baggy pants with high waistlines...
Indeed... wasn't one of Erik Flint's tweaks to a Schmitz story?
But ... it was from the 60s anyways, wasn't it? Hrm.
Well. It's all quite muddled. But still, do such things show up
in '40s SF enough to really be a likely tell? I'm just not sure.
I don't think it did in what I remember, but my memory is quite...
unreliable.
Are my dreams to be all I can do?
Lay o lay above, lay o lay below
And he said Annie will show them a new way
Me kouman me fora y bame
Kele, filla, saba, nani, norou...
--- Metisse
tphile2
> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>
> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
> characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's never
> going to be any question that it's of another era.
>
> as good as the current average, and the language hasn't really changed
> that much since then. In general you're going to have women working as
> equals, and a more "diverse" cast. So is it going to be able
> to pass as current? Well, no. These characters in the future are probably
> going to have less efficient comms gear than our cellphones, and forget
> google & wikipedia. There are going to be a host of assumptions we have
> about the future that they don't.
>
> 1995? I was proud to have put some "cutting edge" Internet stuff in a
> book I wrote about then, and I'm still talking about "home pages".
> I got a bit about digital music in, but nothing about it coming from the
> network or being pirated..
>
> 2006? Could you pass off a 6 year old book as current? Maybe, but I
> think that's about the limit. I suspect our SF era is actually closer to
> 2008.
>
> but could "pass"?
>
I think the Modesty Blaise novels and comic strips serve as excellent
examples of timeless stories. Its not only a great series to read but
does have enough SF tropes (ESP) to be on topic here.
For the most part (with some famous exceptions) the writer avoids
contemporary references that would date it. It is a 1960 era series
that is just as relevant today or could be set in the now.
Her adventures usually take her to jungle, desert or third world
settings that are unlikely to change over the years.
Tools and supplies are usually lost so they end up having to improvise
or do without. Their gadgets are usually home made and basic.
Vehicles are classics that are as likely to be driven yesterday, today
and the foreseeable future. That includes hobbies like scuba diving,
parachuting, hang gliding, ballooning.
Entertainment is mostly classical or jazz music, theatre, opera,
gambling, horseback riding and not the latest rap or pop
Villians are still villians no matter what era they are in
Yes there have been some exceptions In Bad Suki we get scenes of
hippies and flower children of the sixties. But most read like they
have just been written. Though I personally prefer her back in the
sixties and the Bond era. and I think she is the only or first female
00 agent(freelance of course). Like the one we got a glimpse of in
the movie Thunderball.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
IIRC in "The Lion of Comarre" Clarke predicted that the telephone dial
would become the universal interface for entering numbers..
>
>Oh! -- How about Campbell's, "Forgetfulness," from <pause for
>ISFDB> 1937?
Hmm. Been a long time since I read that, but I suspect the space-farers
who come across the forgetful ones have tech that's inconsistent. I'm not
sure about attitudes and cultural assumptions..
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
I think there's a lot of truth to that, and its helped by Modesty living
in a "globalized" setting from the get-go, but -- of course IRL cellphones
*have* transformed the third world.
Dan Goodman
And Nathan Brazil pushed the reset button after that universe crashed.
Robert A. Woodward
> On 13 Jul 2011 16:29:05 GMT, t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan
> <tednolan>) wrote:
>
> >In article <ivkg7p$6ao$1...@dont-email.me>,
> >Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> >>On 7/13/11 3:06 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> >>> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
> >>> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
> >>>
> >>> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
> >>> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
> >>> characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's
> >>> never
> >>> going to be any question that it's of another era.
> >>
> >> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
> >>could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
> >>under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
> >>things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
> >>instance.
> >>
> >
> >Weren't there several times Telzy could have gotten out of jeopardy if she
> >had a cellphone?
> >
>
> Um...no? Any time Telzy could have gotten out of jeopardy if she had
> a cellphone she could have mentally called just as far.
And, I suspect that the cellphone could had been used to track her
down (and not in a friendly way).
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
tphile2
wrote:
> In article <ed689464-b6c3-40a1-bc5f-5037a5a29...@fv14g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,
>
> - Show quoted text -
yes, cellphones, internet, laptops, dvds, cable tv. all of which is
handy for narrative purposes like in tv shows but sometimes too much
hi tech spoils the fun. Retro has its benefits. The Shadow for
example had Burbank, radio station, pneumatic tube messages, chase to
the rescue and other cool stuff that would have been spoiled by
cellphones. Star Wars would have been a much shorter movie if they
had just wikileaked the Death Star plans.
Besides, Modesty and Willie were Ham radio users including mobile Ham
radios in their cars. and Hams are a dedicated fanatical bunch even in
the internet and cellphone age. ;-)
tech has transformed the third world to some degree but much is still
the same. Old, crumbling congested buildings, crowded streets and
markets. poverty, stuff thats been there for decades or even
centuries, just with sat dishes on the roofs.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Larry
> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
Do I get to pick the book?
The defining gadget of modern times is the cell phone. Nobody is out of
touch, and it satisfyingly destroyed the "radio in the head" ESP stories, to
which good riddance.
Most fantasy reads very well. Lord Dunsany would have no trouble getting
published today. Some science fiction ages equally well. Most of Bradbury,
except for _The Martian Chronicles_. Zenna Henderson. Cordwainer Smith. C. J.
Cherryh. (_Pride of Chanur_ is 30 years old.)
Robert Carnegie
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:13:43 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
>
> >On 7/13/11 3:06 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> >> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
> >> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>
> >> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
> >> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
> >> characters, lack of non-white characters, flooded Venus etc. There's never
> >> going to be any question that it's of another era.
>
> > Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
> >could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
> >under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
> >things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
> >instance.
>
> Yes. Arthur C. Clarke was generally amazingly good at finessing
> technological change, but there were odd little ventures into
> over-specificity that tripped him up. Almost all of "Against the
> Fall of Night"/_The City and the Stars_ will pass, but IIRC
> there's one place where he has a computer using punched cards, or
> maybe tape. "Rescue Party" would get by, if he'd just said that
> technology had by and by put an end to Man's need for cities,
> rather than mentioning that it was the helicopter that dunnit.
Was he already presuming that common appliances such as that would be
powered by atomic fission? It changes the economics...
On the other hand, what about the difficulty of getting broadband
connection anywhere that isn't in a large town?
I guess they had wireless...
Robert Carnegie
> Most fantasy reads very well [doesn't date]. Lord Dunsany would
> have no trouble getting published today.
Although we always see the past, or other worlds, through the lens of
the present where our writer is standing.
In which context I found this interesting, but I'm not sure of the
date:
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Valley-Creation-Science-Fantasy-Classic-ebook/
dp/B000FC1VYC>
"In _The Valley of Creation_, where Eric Nelson is one of a desperate
band of soldiers-of-fortune who have fought on the loosing side in a
war and eagerly take on a mysterious assignment deep in the
borderlands of Tibet. There, in a legendary valley, Shan Kar, the man
who has hired them, tells Nelson and the other mercenaries that their
weapons are humankind's last ditch defense against the valley's
intelligent animals, who plan to take over the world. If they are
successful, the mercenaries' reward is to be a fabulous treasure in
platinum not far from the city of the animals."
A modern reader is liable to feel that the hero could be on the wrong
side of the fight.
And it turns out that he is, if you read past my carefully chosen
false cutoff point in the paragraph above.
And then some fantasy, particularly comic fantasy, is liable to
include a careful duplication of a present-day phenomenon that dates
it drastically afterwards. A genie of a lamp in Terry Pratchett's
_Sourcery_ who carries on like a demented real estate agent and
property speculator of the 1980s comes to mind.
On the other hand, it's better for such horrors from the recent past
to be presented to us, than that we should forget them and repeat
them; for instance, what if there was a property speculation driven
economic bubble in the 21st century that led to... oh. :-(
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Larry <lar...@peaksky.com> wrote:
>In article <984ug4...@mid.individual.net>, t...@loft.tnolan.com says...
>
>> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
>> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>
>Do I get to pick the book?
Sure!
>
>The defining gadget of modern times is the cell phone. Nobody is out of
>touch, and it satisfyingly destroyed the "radio in the head" ESP stories, to
>which good riddance.
>
>Most fantasy reads very well. Lord Dunsany would have no trouble getting
>published today. Some science fiction ages equally well. Most of Bradbury,
>except for _The Martian Chronicles_. Zenna Henderson. Cordwainer Smith. C. J.
>Cherryh. (_Pride of Chanur_ is 30 years old.)
Again not exactly the question I'm asking. REH's Conan stories don't have
tech problems, being set in an alternate past, and they do get published
today. But I don't think an adult picking them up for hte first time
would get the feeling they could have just been written. And Bradbury..
maybe some. A lot of others have a very different cultural feel to them.
Smith, you might be onto something. His world was so weird and oddly
non-connected to ours (except when it was) that you don't feel the same
rules apply. Can't speak to Henderson or Dunsany. Cherryh, well, a lot
of her stuff is taking an Earth-guy and pulling him totally out of his milieu
(and keeping him paniced and not letting him sleep..), so maybe, but wasn't
something like _Cyteen_ pretty much a slice of life with tech worse than ours
in many cases? (Been a long time..)
Dan Goodman
> like Cyteen pretty much a slice of life with tech worse than ours in
> many cases? (Been a long time..)
The term "tape learning" certainly feels old-fashioned to me.
trag
> On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:12:47 GMT, fairwa...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons)
> wrote:
>
> >>>I doubt that people are any stupider on average. I suspect we simply
> >>>live in an era where it would especially helpful if people were
> >>>smarter than they are.
>
> >>It could be. But there are some very smart people who would use
> >>their intelligence to make things much worse. (We would have been
> >>better off if bin Laden was an idiot).
>
> >And that's different from the remainder of human history - how
> >exactly?
>
> Is it? My point is that smarter people don't always translate into
> better results.
One must simply be careful with one's definition of "smarter". :-)
Of course, that can cause one to skate perilously close to the "No
True Scotsman" fallacy.
trag
> Still, I'd say for 2011, the primary tell is cellphones. For 1960,
> it's TV. But seems to me that *more* things date the recent past in
> 2011 than in 1960. but it's difficult to be objective about it.
Viable Mom and Pop shops for staple items. There mostly shouldn't be
any in stories of the future. Communications infrastructure and
database inventory control has completely changed the nature of the
distribution chain.
The only place where'd you have small shops (other than for specialty/
extreme-luxury items) would be in a place where the communications and
data processing infrastructure was primitive for some reason.
William December Starr
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> said:
> Which is fine, for real life. Dramatically that only works for
> military portrayals of a certain type; in stories, many people
> would much rather not have to see multiple safety interlocks and
> so on; the idea of a weapon that you set on a target that you say
> "don't move" to, and then when it moves the weapon shoots, makes
> perfect sense, and is damn easy to automate and easy to
> understand.
Is it any harder on the readers to also have the he-man hero have
to manually set a few safety interlocks to 'off' in order to get
the weapon to its "if target moves, immediately shoot" mode?
-- wds
Wayne Throop
: The only place where'd you have small shops (other than for specialty/
: extreme-luxury items) would be in a place where the communications and
: data processing infrastructure was primitive for some reason.
So, the corn/strawberry/avocado/apples/peaches/tomatoes
produce stands that operate seasonally (but sometimes have semi-permanent
buildings, and ma-n-pa management)... are they "specialty"
or "extreme luxury"?
How about (plant) nursery, or garden supply shops?
There are chains, but ther eare also locally owned versions.
And do you count franchises, where the management is entirely local?
How do you count things like a cheese factory with attached
retail outlet in Amish country? (arguably specialty/luxury,
but hey, I mean, it's just cheeze... )
How about off-brand 7/11 style kwikee-marts?
Some of those are almost entirely local. Often combined
with a gas station, and often that gas is off-brand also.
Granted however... it's rare-ish, and the situation is quite
different than when I were a lad, where the small town grocery
was where you went for most everything. Along with the small town
hardware, and small town feedstore. Nowdays, you go to costco
and Target and Ace and ... hrm... hey, feedstores don't seem to
be chains yet. That's where I get birdseed...
William December Starr
Lynn McGuire <l...@winsim.com> said:
> http://www.amazon.com/Distraction-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0553576399/
>
> "It's 2044 A.D. and America has gone to the dogs. The federal
> government is broke and, with 16 political parties fighting
> for power, things aren't likely to improve soon. The Air Force,
> short on funding, is setting up roadblocks to shake down
> citizens and disguising its tactics as a bake sale.
That's where I thought about saying: "Stopped reading right there."
> The governor of Louisiana, Green Huey, is
And that's where it actually happened.
-- wds
William December Starr
Des <desmond...@gmail.com> said:
> t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
>
>> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could
>> take an SF book from and pass it off as a new book today?
[...]
> Did you take a recent course in Political Correctness?
>
> Nothing you wrote has anything to do with SF.
????? Did you accidentally reply to the wrong article?
-- wds
Robert Bannister
I would have expected the big super stores to have disappeared rather
than small, convenience shops. If you buy most of your stuff online,
then the only shop you need is a small shop for emergency cartons of
milk or whatever.
--
Robert Bannister
Robert Bannister
> Her adventures usually take her to jungle, desert or third world
> settings that are unlikely to change over the years.
But many of them have changed immensely. When I see film of the Amazon
basin or of Papua New Guinea or of Congo, I am shocked at the lack of
jungle. When I see desert, I see high-rise building higher than in any
western city.
--
Robert Bannister
Brian M. Scott
<fair...@gmail.com> wrote in
<news:4e1ff11e...@news.supernews.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>On 7/13/11 12:46 PM, Howard Brazee wrote:
[...]
>>> How about the guns in _The Witches of Karres_, with an
>>> interface that required the captain to touch them to
>>> move them off target so the other ship could leave
>>> safely? Nobody would write that today from our
>>> current understanding of automation.
>> I would, and I WORK in automation. Hand-activated safety,
>> and the guns are movement-triggered; you sight it on
>> something and give the command "anything in the sight
>> moves, shoot it". Deflect it so the ships aren't in the
>> sight, you allow your target to leave.
> I wouldn't, and I worked with military ordinance.
(You presumably worked with ordnance; ordinance sounds more
like JAG's bailiwick.) The devices in WoK aren't really
military ordnance, and the setting is isn't one that
requires (or even really wants) that kind of systemic
realism.
[...]
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<tph...@cableone.net> wrote in
<news:ed689464-b6c3-40a1...@fv14g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:
[...]
> I think the Modesty Blaise novels and comic strips serve
> as excellent examples of timeless stories. [...]
I largely agree about the stories, but the clothing in some
of the strips is another matter. I can think of one (though
not at the moment by name) that is clearly set visually in
the late 1960s or 1970s, for instance.
Brian
Walter Bushell
<698fa2d5-c3a0-4ffa...@r9g2000yql.googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> And then some fantasy, particularly comic fantasy, is liable to
> include a careful duplication of a present-day phenomenon that dates
> it drastically afterwards. A genie of a lamp in Terry Pratchett's
> _Sourcery_ who carries on like a demented real estate agent and
> property speculator of the 1980s comes to mind.
>
> On the other hand, it's better for such horrors from the recent past
> to be presented to us, than that we should forget them and repeat
> them; for instance, what if there was a property speculation driven
> economic bubble in the 21st century that led to... oh. :-(
It's been frequently noted that real estate happens in about 20 year
cycles, like Argentine debt. I think I've been through 3 cycles. The
market always crashes, just like the stock market. One should have
learned in high school American History that the economy has crashes.
And every time just before the crash the experts are saying "This time
for sure!"
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
Walter Bushell
<698fa2d5-c3a0-4ffa...@r9g2000yql.googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> If they are
> successful, the mercenaries' reward is to be a fabulous treasure in
> platinum not far from the city of the animals."
Why would anyone want to become platinum? Even if it does amount to a
fabulous treasure?
Michael A. Terrell
Robert Bannister wrote:
>
> I would have expected the big super stores to have disappeared rather
> than small, convenience shops. If you buy most of your stuff online,
> then the only shop you need is a small shop for emergency cartons of
> milk or whatever.
If you like paying three times what it's worth, and being out of
date. Big stores have enough business to have a good turnover, and to
buy at better prices. I knew one small store that the owner made two
trips a week to large supermarkets to buy soft drinks and other items
that retailed for less then the wholesaler wanted.
--
It's easy to think outside the box, when you have a cutting torch.
Howard Brazee
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> The real world sometimes isn't realistic, so to speak, from the point
>of view of a given fictional world.
Yeah, and when someone uses a rocket to travel between galaxies, I get
irritated. Interfaces between people and computers will improve
before we fill up the galaxy with people.
--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
- James Madison
tphile2
> : trag <t...@prismnet.com>
and in New York City, our ex military veterans can own and operate
sidewalk vending stalls and kiosks. they were the ones that prevented
that terrorist bombing not long ago. and don't forget the hot dog
and other fast food vendors on sidewalks, parks and streets. I
wouldn't mind an ice cream vendor right now
tphile2
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:28:19 -0700 (PDT), tphile2
> <news:ed689464-b6c3-40a1...@fv14g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>
> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>
> [...]
>
> > I think the Modesty Blaise novels and comic strips serve
> > as excellent examples of timeless stories. [...]
>
> I largely agree about the stories, but the clothing in some
> of the strips is another matter. I can think of one (though
> not at the moment by name) that is clearly set visually in
> the late 1960s or 1970s, for instance.
>
> Brian
That sounds like Bad Suki which like I said, has them dressing up in
hippy mod outfits to find a drug supplier. but Modesty Blaise is NOT
Austin Powers or anything close to it. Especially the Holdaway era
(the most definitive) but even Romero. Modesty and Willies clothes
are largely conventional and conservative. Their "work clothes" are
black denim and shirts and boots, sometime camy. She wears tights and
black underwear and velcro skirts that she can remove in an
emergency. For the most part their clothes can be worn today without
much notice. Hemlines are a different matter ;-)
Now Sir Gerald does dress more like John Steed but there are still
plenty of brits who do. especially civil servants.
Her homes are furnished with antiques, rustic and conventional
furnishings and curios collected from around the world.
Now we do see her vinyl record collection and turntables but for many
that is still worth having more than an ipod or dvds
Yes they would own the latest cellphone and gadgets but thats usually
the first thing they lose in their adventures and so must do without.
Is John Steed and Emma Peel dated as well? Emma with those jump
suits, miniskirts and go go boots?
David Johnston
wrote:
>On Jul 13, 8:05 pm, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote:
>
>> Still, I'd say for 2011, the primary tell is cellphones. For 1960,
>> it's TV. But seems to me that *more* things date the recent past in
>> 2011 than in 1960. but it's difficult to be objective about it.
>
>Viable Mom and Pop shops for staple items. There mostly shouldn't be
>any in stories of the future. Communications infrastructure and
>database inventory control has completely changed the nature of the
>distribution chain.
? If you say so. Although my town still has five and no sign they're
going anywhere.
David DeLaney
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>> If they are
>> successful, the mercenaries' reward is to be a fabulous treasure in
>> platinum not far from the city of the animals."
>
>Why would anyone want to become platinum? Even if it does amount to a
>fabulous treasure?
The reward is going to be. Not the mercenaries are going to become...
Dave "English: too many tenses, but still fewer than many other languages,
because we tend to wear the corners off ours really quickly" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Brian M. Scott
<tph...@cableone.net> wrote in
<news:2a0a4aef-ca41-49f5...@12g2000yqr.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:
> On Jul 14, 8:31 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:28:19 -0700 (PDT), tphile2
>> <tphi...@cableone.net> wrote in
>> <news:ed689464-b6c3-40a1...@fv14g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>> [...]
>>> I think the Modesty Blaise novels and comic strips serve
>>> as excellent examples of timeless stories. [...]
>> I largely agree about the stories, but the clothing in some
>> of the strips is another matter. I can think of one (though
>> not at the moment by name) that is clearly set visually in
>> the late 1960s or 1970s, for instance.
> That sounds like Bad Suki which like I said, has them
> dressing up in hippy mod outfits to find a drug supplier.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that I was thinking mostly of 'The
Puppet-Master', especially the way Maude was drawn. But
that's a Romero, and while it may be sheer prejudice -- I
prefer both Colvin and Holdaway -- I find that the ones that
he drew are more likely to give me that impression.
[...]
Brian
Derek Lyons
"Suddenly, the door dialated", "quickly, I set the firing switches".
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Derek Lyons
>hey, feedstores don't seem to be chains yet. That's where
>I get birdseed...
Not to mention the chain pet stores, may their bones burn green.
Robert Carnegie
> In article
> <698fa2d5-c3a0-4ffa-b5d8-25fdb804c...@r9g2000yql.googlegroups.com>,
> Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > If they are
> > successful, the mercenaries' reward is to be a fabulous treasure in
> > platinum not far from the city of the animals."
>
> Why would anyone want to become platinum? Even if it does amount to a
> fabulous treasure?
As long as you're fabulous, the details don't matter. :-)
Anyway, they're only /in/ platinum. I think it means they own shares
in a mining company, or the people who make automobile catalytic
converters. :-)
Walter Bushell
d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
> Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> >> If they are
> >> successful, the mercenaries' reward is to be a fabulous treasure in
> >> platinum not far from the city of the animals."
> >
> >Why would anyone want to become platinum? Even if it does amount to a
> >fabulous treasure?
>
> The reward is going to be. Not the mercenaries are going to become...
>
> Dave "English: too many tenses, but still fewer than many other languages,
> because we tend to wear the corners off ours really quickly" DeLaney
That was the way I parsed it the second time I read it, but good style
should avoid making the reader do double takes. I think grammatically my
first reading is correct, although it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Of course, the possibility exists that I was just being an anal
sphincter.
Michael Stemper
>Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
I'll put 1966 as an upper bound on the answer, due to Damon Knight's
collection _Turning On_.
>Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
>is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
>characters, lack of non-white characters,
By "lack of non-white characters" do you mean "lack of characters who
are explicitly stated to be non-white"? When iread a book, I normally
can't tell the color of a character's skin, or hair, or eyes.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
This email is to be read by its intended recipient only. Any other party
reading is required by the EULA to send me $500.00.
Suzanne Blom
> Wayne Throop wrote:
>
>> : t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan<tednolan>)
>> : 1990s is way too early to pass as current.
>>
>> So... fifteen years, give or take 5, is way too long ago.
>> I wonder if that same 15-ish years would apply in, say, 1960
>> instead of 2011? That is, is it trending as "future shock"
>> and/or Vinge might expect?
>
> Sometimes, a few months is enough to make a story oldfashioned.
>
From say August to October in 2001? Fiction feels different and some
WIPs had to be abandoned.
Michael Stemper
>On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:13:43 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>On 7/13/11 3:06 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>>> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
>>> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>> Technology assumptions are the ones that will kill you in all eras. You
>>could take some of Schmitz' stuff and probably do pretty well issuing it
>>under another name, but you'd have to look carefully at the little side
>>things like whether you're using miniature microfilm to store data, for
>>instance.
>
>Yes. Arthur C. Clarke was generally amazingly good at finessing
>technological change, but there were odd little ventures into
>over-specificity that tripped him up. Almost all of "Against the
>Fall of Night"/_The City and the Stars_ will pass, but IIRC
>there's one place where he has a computer using punched cards, or
>maybe tape.
In "The Road to the Sea", he has the protagonist dial up a meal
from the community kitchen. Literally "dial up". The narration
includes words very similar to: "using a ten-holed dial that
would have been familiar to anybody from any time in the past
fifty centuries."
I'll have to ask my son if he's ever used (as opposed to seen) one.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him talk like Mr. Ed
by rubbing peanut butter on his gums.
Suzanne Blom
>
>> On 7/13/2011 2:06 AM, Ted Nolan<tednolan> wrote:
>>>
>>> Different dates? Those rare Books that came from before your date
>>> but could "pass"?
>>>
>> There is a story from around 1903 called perhaps "When the Machine
>> Stops" that still worked amazingly well, but they didn't have good
>> VR, among other things. Curses, when I started this, I thought I
>> would say it would work.
>
> E. M. Forster, "The Machine Stops." 1909, if I recall correctly.
>
And it still works a lot better than most things written forty to
seventy years later. As a matter of fact, I think I first noticed this
when I was reading an anthology of old sf, and, when I came to it, I
went, 'hunh, this sounds too recent to be in this anthology." Then I
found the date and went 'wow.'
Suzanne Blom
> In article<984ug4...@mid.individual.net>, t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan<tednolan>) writes:
>> Or to put it another way, what's the earliest year you could take an SF
>> book from and pass it off as a new book today?
>
> I'll put 1966 as an upper bound on the answer, due to Damon Knight's
> collection _Turning On_.
>
>> Clearly any book from the Golden Era, as fun as it might be to read,
>> is going to raise flags with dialogue, characterization, lack of women
>> characters, lack of non-white characters,
>
> By "lack of non-white characters" do you mean "lack of characters who
> are explicitly stated to be non-white"? When iread a book, I normally
> can't tell the color of a character's skin, or hair, or eyes.
>
similar, and, when people are described it is in terms of hair and eye
color with maybe some mention of "tan" or "his knuckles turned white"
for skin, then you know that the default human is clearly a white male.
Suzanne "nondefault" Blom
Brian M. Scott
<pr...@panix.com> wrote in
<news:proto-026B08....@news.panix.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:
> In article <slrnj1vaf...@gatekeeper.vic.com>,
> d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>> Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>>> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>>>> If they are successful, the mercenaries' reward is to
>>>> be a fabulous treasure in platinum not far from the
>>>> city of the animals."
>>> Why would anyone want to become platinum? Even if it
>>> does amount to a fabulous treasure?
>> The reward is going to be. Not the mercenaries are going
>> to become...
> That was the way I parsed it the second time I read it,
> but good style should avoid making the reader do double
> takes. I think grammatically my first reading is
> correct, although it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Both are grammatically correct: 'his reward is to be X' is
inherently ambiguous. However, since the reward is in the
future, it's a stylistically poor choice for your
interpretation: 'is to be made X', 'is to become X', or the
like would be preferable. The intended interpretation, on
the other hand, works just fine on this score.
[...]
Brian
Bill Snyder
". . . and saved the sum of things for pay," OTOH, was probably
intended to be taken both ways.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Michael Stemper
>: Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com>
>: Well, that's versus 1945: in the interim they had real space rockets.
>: And McCarthy.
>How many science fiction books mention Mccarthy, even after it was
>absorbed into pop culture?
I'm not aware of any explicit references. However, the attitude was
portrayed quite a bit. One example that comes trippingly to mind
is "McHinery" (sp?) of Blish's _They Shall Have Stars_, although he
seems to be a blend of Tail-gunner Joe and J. Edgar.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce,
they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.