![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Steve Wilson, on his "My Elves Are Different" blog, is having some fun at the expense of the mundane SFers. I'm meme-ing it!
(Here's a concise defintion of "mundane SF.")
So, if your SF can't have faster-than-light travel or communications, aliens, time travel, alternate universes, immortality, telepathy, or any other type of speculative (unproven) ideas, what do you have left? Mundane-ness! So let's mundane some famous novels. Here are my offerings:
Budrys:
Rogue Earth
Card:
Ender's Computer Game
Gunn:
Campus
Sturgeon:
Less Than Human
Vinge:
A Fire upon the Shallows
Zebrowski:
Microlife
What would you add? I assume you also can't have artificial intelligence, re-created dinosaurs, technological singularities, mind uploads, or anti-gravity. Dark matter is iffy, I would bet. Let's mundane-ize SF!
(Here's a concise defintion of "mundane SF.")
So, if your SF can't have faster-than-light travel or communications, aliens, time travel, alternate universes, immortality, telepathy, or any other type of speculative (unproven) ideas, what do you have left? Mundane-ness! So let's mundane some famous novels. Here are my offerings:
Budrys:
Rogue Earth
Card:
Ender's Computer Game
Gunn:
Campus
Sturgeon:
Less Than Human
Vinge:
A Fire upon the Shallows
Zebrowski:
Microlife
What would you add? I assume you also can't have artificial intelligence, re-created dinosaurs, technological singularities, mind uploads, or anti-gravity. Dark matter is iffy, I would bet. Let's mundane-ize SF!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Lucky Starr and the Suborbital Flight
The Cat Who Walked Through Doorways
From:
no subject
The first is the only Heinlein edited book, Tomorrow the Stars
From:
no subject
Asimov's "The Humans Themselves"
"2001: No Space Odyssey"
"Rendezvous with Ramen" - no, damn, that's been done in the comments over on "My Elves Are Different"
JCG's "1Tail Fox"
etc...
From:
no subject
or
2001: Trading Space Oddities
From:
no subject
Oh dear. All right. If we must.
Heinlein:
I Will Fear Longevity
Asimov:
I Human
Jack Finney:
Invasion of the Celery Snatchers (in which the neighbor's kids are caught shoplifting)
Spider Robinson:
Callahan's Skanky Dive
From:
no subject
Citizen of the Galapagos
Cruise Ship Troopers
Podkayne of Maine
Have Business Suit-- Will Travel
Manhattan Is a Harsh Mistress
Orphans of the Sea
The Door into Some Room
The Man Who Sold the Mountain
From:
no subject
A Wizard of Earth
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Asimov, "I, Roomba"
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Anderson: Tau Kappa
Benford: Landscape
Brown: What Mad University
From:
no subject
Ring Around the Rosie
or....
Crap, at its worst...
You end up with Kevin Costner in Waterworld.
From:
no subject
you mean 'whatever'-world!
From:
no subject
It used to be a guilty pleasure for me to watch it.
From:
no subject
Mad Max has a Wet Dream
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(Soylent Green - orig "Make room Make room")
V for Vanilla
The Mortal Mortal - Mary Shelley
Gulliver's Homelife
A Cabride for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Sloppyhouse Five by Vonnegut
Rendezvous with Mama by Arthur C. Clarke
Timecard by Gregory Benford
From:
no subject
Simak: Why Call Them Back from Yonkers (That won an F&SF Competition.)
Pohl & Kornbluth: The Land Merchants
Vonnegut: The Sirens of North Dakota
Brown: Texans, Go Home!
Sheckley: Dimension of Lucky Chances
From:
no subject
Stephenson: "Snow Shovel"
Heinlein: "Racoon is a Marsh Mistress"
Ted Chang: "Blood Test"
Mieville: "Broadway & 9th Street Station"
Dick: "Do Sheep Dream?" and "You Can Remember It Your Own Damn Self For Free"
[you can blame
From:
no subject
Rowland: Harry Potter and the Rolling Stones
Adams: Hitchhiker's Guide to the U.S.
Dick: The Man in the White House
Burroughs: A Princess of 5th Avenue
From:
no subject
Future Crock
The Year's Meh'st Science Fiction
From:
no subject
Niven & Pournelle: The Mote in My Eye
Gerrold: The Man Who Folded His Paper
Dick: S.I.L.A.V. (Small Insignificant Lives Around Ventura)
Stephenson: Trip To Comic Con
(on second thought, maybe that last one wouldn't be quite so mundane.)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Agent to the Cars
Botoxed Person's War
Heinlein:
Stranger in a Strange Land: The Guantanamo Edition
Martin (to mundanize a fantasy series):
A Song of Nachos and Beer