Your mission, should you choose to accept it

[james_davis_nicoll]

In an article referenced in an article reference here, Ken MacLeod said:

It's just rare to see stories written about a future that the writer believes in and the reader can get excited about - let alone one they'd like to live in. What we need is a new intellectual engagement with the real possibilities, coupled with a new confidence in humanity's capacity to deal with them.

Outline such a future [of your own creation]. Extra points for not tucking "embrace poverty" into it in one form or another, not creating a backswing setting [1], not praising the virtues of oligarchy or dictatorship and on and so forth. In other words, outline my Nightmarish Future or something equally attractive.

I have a report to do on something that is the exact opposide of MNF so my entry will have to wait until tomorrow.

1: Settings where the author slaughters ninety nine of a hundred people to give his characters more room for their sword's backswing. I think Andrew Wheeler invented the term. He certainly has expressed distaste for settings that as a side-effect wipe out his kids.

Comments

[florbigoo.livejournal.com]

Why won't SF write about meals, vacations, occupations, associations, and ekistics?

Culinary Randism! Agronomic Vertigo! Satanism and Site Planning! Fourth-person Fertilizations, Fatherhood and Fraternity in Family Law!

It's a gold mine of story ore. Who might aspire to 21st century Robert Mosesdom in energy infrastructure, and what might be a power generation analog to the construction of the East Tremont section of the Cross-Bronx Expressway?

[autopope.livejournal.com]

That does't sound like terribly good fodder for commercial drama ... (which is the business we professional SF writers are in)

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

It's a legitimate mode. A guy running an interstellar bar. Two teenagers parked by the spaceport watching the ships come in. A quiet dinner on Mercury. A liner cruise to Mars. Colonists waiting for the mail. Working your way through college on top of the space elevator.

Heinlein made his bones with stories like this. [ding!] Down and Out in Luna City. I'd read that.

What's wrong with the Cross-Bronx Expressway?

[(Anonymous)]

Dirty little secret, Florbigoo: the neighborhoods abutting the Cross-Bronx are quite nice these days, and the presence of the freeway does nothing to make them less nice.

I'll say the same for, say, Cape Wind, which is the kind of thing that I you're getting at. Or Mayor Bloomberg's current plan to encourage wind farms inside the city limits. I think. To be honest, I'm not sure.

Ob Blog Plug: http://noelmaurer.typepad.com/aab/2008/06/gridlocked.html. Second picture down.

Science fiction is a strange thing, Carlos.

NM

Re: What's wrong with the Cross-Bronx Expressway?

[florbigoo.livejournal.com]

Noel,

I'm just trying to get at the human drama of large scale development projects.
Bob Caro's East Tremont vs. Bob Moses is a good story. I'm not interested in pushing your hot buttons re: municipal road development and mass transit.
But not all stories have to be gigantic.

Congrats, btw, on the recent news!

Re: What's wrong with the Cross-Bronx Expressway?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I like mass transit. Just pointing out that the story of large-scale development is going on right now (Cape Wind, Mayor Bloomberg) and that like all good stories, neither side is completely evil.

Thanks for the congrats! Pix eventually at TPTM, aka www.noelmaurer.com.

Hasta,

NM