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

My thoughts

[muehe.livejournal.com]

A disclaimer: I wrote this before reading the other comments – and I was too lazy to re-write after reading some other comments.

The time span for near future science fiction is:
Is there such a thing? If you write about next year and next year rolls around, well then you just wrote an alt universe story.
I like far future -- I want the stars, without having my character die of old age getting there.

Proper subject matter for near future science fiction is:
A rip in the fabric of space allowing travel to a universe other than our own. I dodge that bullet!
The ones you listed seem kind of boring to me. But I have read good stories on those subjects.

Mundane SF
Well, it is ok. Since space technology is moving pretty slow I image you could go out 50 plus years and be writing about mining on asteroids.
I never really understood that, seems to me if we can mine metal in deep space we ought to be able to dig into the mantle and mine that. Well, I would prefer we mess up some rocks in space than the rock we live on. LOL, which is a rock in space.
You could parallel some current crises and apply it to the future. Instead of running out of natural resources on earth we could be running out of said resource in the solar system.
Although I seems like we have been getting an awful lot of stories about our shortsightedness – if you are going to preach to me: at least make it interesting. What am I say, I know it will be interesting.

Write on!

Re: My thoughts

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

I never really understood that, seems to me if we can mine metal in deep space we ought to be able to dig into the mantle and mine that.

Space is a much more benign environment, though, really, there's no rain, sleet, hail, snow, sudden vicious thermal gradients, the solar wind has a lot less mass and force and pressure than Earth's atmosphere at sea level involves moving around, there's no corrosive salt air, no free oxygen looking for atoms an molecules to glom onto and oxidize, etc.