A poll for science fiction masses

[kinzel]

As someone who went to Clarion West thirty five years ago I'm participating in this years Clarion West Write-a-Thon ... see my page at: http://www.clarionwest.org/events/writeathon/SteveMiller

alas, my stated goal is to write a new near-future science fiction story and now it turns out that the phrase "near future" creates different expectations for different people. So, I need help figuring out what's near future. I also hear that all near future sf "should be mundane" but ... I dunno.

What's your take:

[Poll #1209566]

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I don't know what "mundane SF" is, apart from an oxymoron. As far as I'm concerned, the future starts tomorrow morning when I read my inbox and find a new Physics News Update with stuff which to me is hard SF (except even my favourite hard SF writers don't usually talk much about Bose-Einstein Condensates and anti-Hydrogen caught in Penning-Ioffe traps!). I think "near-future" extends most of a century, I'd define it roughly as "some people alive now will likely see it" and so can deal with pretty much anything in that timescale. Yes, the current worries (global warming, food and energy shortage, etc.) but also things like clothing fashions and TV shows. And cats, of course. Basically, if the author can make it interesting then pretty much anything is non-mundane (a mundane cat? That's another oxymoron!).