Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald wrote in his blog:

It is also points up what I found vaguely unsatisfactory about the mundanistas: while there was much I agreed with about the kind of sf it proposed, it seemed too mundane yet insufficiently worldly. The game itself, (as Geoff proposes) is entertaining, but seems too much part of SF's interior dialogue to revitalise the genre, particularly with that general readership that enjoys SF when it comes across it, as long as it doesn't look like that stuff with spaceships with lots of windows. But an SF that looks beyond the American Century to the century we will surely inhabit, in all its diversity and conflict and challenge, seems to me a lot more relevant, and accessible.

That's because this proposes an entirely different manifesto, perhaps a bit more narrowly focused but a possibility worth exploring. But this has politics as its core while ours is more science-oriented, which then affects politics. SF has had a long tradition of dabbling in politics, but to support our manifesto, I'd have to point out the SF is often called science fiction, not political fiction. Of course, the problem of political fiction is that it can teeter off its agenda into propaganda.

But this brings up a question: Is it all right for SF to take place in the US?

A reader, picking up a book of SF, may be asking, "What will the future be like for me personally or my kids?" This is probably why SF published in the US has been set in the US.

(Note: McDonald responded, "Of course it's okay.")