{"id":3870,"date":"2010-05-25T10:17:23","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T14:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=3870"},"modified":"2010-05-25T10:17:23","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T14:17:23","slug":"the-dangers-of-writing-near-future-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/05\/25\/the-dangers-of-writing-near-future-sf\/","title":{"rendered":"The dangers of writing near-future SF"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Stross<\/a> gets sandbagged by the unforeseen:<\/p>\n

\n

Back in mid-2008 I mentioned that what I thought was a futuristic-circa-2023 technology for the next novel was too damn close. Slightly more recently, in Living through interesting times, I mentioned that it was becoming near-as-dammit impossible to write near-future SF; I was sore because Bernie Madoff had stolen the plot of my next novel.<\/p>\n

Well, I picked myself up, dusted myself down, re-framed the novel in question, and I’m currently about 80% of the way through writing it when it all happened again<\/em>. First of all, Lothian and Borders Police actually established a recognizable-as-the-embryonic-form version of the unit that one of my protagonists, circa 2023, manages. (Only I got the staffing level and departmental mission statement slightly off-whack …) Next, there’s just been another revolution in Kyrgyzstan (a country which, for reasons I’m not going to discuss here, plays a significant role in “Rule 34”).<\/p>\n

But the worst thing? I’ve been sandbagged by an unanticipated event. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it’s quite understandable — after all these years, who knew there even was<\/em> a “libertarian arm of the Conservative party” to mess up Charlie’s plot of the near-future?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Stross gets sandbagged by the unforeseen: Back in mid-2008 I mentioned that what I thought was a futuristic-circa-2023 technology for the next novel was too damn close. Slightly more recently, in Living through interesting times, I mentioned that it was becoming near-as-dammit impossible to write near-future SF; I was sore because Bernie Madoff had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,28,53],"tags":[85,134],"class_list":["post-3870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-media","category-politics","tag-sf","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-10q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3870"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3873,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3870\/revisions\/3873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}