mundane by name...

I've never engaged with the idea of Mundane SF until today. How did I miss it? Seems to me that it's an exercise in self-limitation. Like we need more of those.

The receptors in our eyes can only see certain frequencies, so what's the point looking beyond them? I'm not likely ever to live in New York, so why would I visit there? The Bible has explained everything, so there's no need to think any more.

Looking outside the box might negatively impinge on my status quo. Better just to stay inside and tinker with the known.

I've written Mundane SF. There's nothing with it per se. But the idea that it needs a name is making me cranky. Like it's something special or unique. Looking at the manifesto on Wikipedia, I see the movement drawing arbitrary and unnecessary lines around particular subsections of SF, such as space opera, and that really raises my hackles.

Space opera doesn't have to have aliens or ftl travel; my new series has neither, but that doesn't make it Mundane SF. I don't want it to be Mundane SF. The manifesto speaks to me of an utter failure of imagination. Anything that encourages writers to shy away from ideas, or actively disses any literature that does not, is, I think, utter garbage.

Gah. I think I need another hot chocolate.

LATER: Ian McDonald's reaction makes me feel slightly more cheerful...

atmospheric squeaking

On a more cheerful* note, the latest edition of New Scientist led me to a bunch of crazy space sounds, like this one, which sounds more like a cage full of robot birds than Earth auroral kilometric radiation.

If I was writing music at the moment, these are exactly the kind of samples I'd love to play with. A pulsar called PSR B0329+54 could be a drum beat, perhaps. And the Leonids could be tweaked into an analogue synth, a la Gary Numan circa 1980. There's a lot of hiss and distortion, but cleaning it up would be half the fun. Or leaving it in and going for something a bit more Gothy.

This recording of dawn in space is practically writing itself.

* With a bit of wistfulness thrown in for good measure.