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

[fennelgiraffe.livejournal.com]

[delurk]

Near-future: I voted for "Within 25 years", but after reading some of the comments, I have to agree there's a good argument in favor of "Within the lifespan of someone alive today". On the other hand, my initial choice of the shorter time was influenced by discussions about the Singularity over at Charlie Stross's blog.

Proper topics: Anything except elves, fairies, gnomes, & trolls. Unless, of course, they're SFnal elves. A little genetic engineering, anyone?

Mundane SF: I think it's meant as "not space opera", but splitting SF along that axis doesn't map very well onto my own view of the genre, so I may have failed to grasp certain nuances.