Science fiction is becoming more of a diverse kind of genre.
Most near-future fictions are boring. It's always dark and always raining, and people are so unhappy.
Novels set in imaginary futures are necessarily about the moment in which they are written.
Ben Bova seems to work very hard at working in new discoveries into his Glum Future but alas, his future is glum and not that well written.
[The Muse of our Fiction of the future] will lead you - if you are humble and honest with her - straight into a World of Working Men, crude of speech, swift of action, strong of passion, straight to the heart of a new life.
I have argued about the future of fiction with jaded novelists, far-seeing postmodernists, technologists, television critics. The argument that future generations will not know the pleasures of the novel has been a staple of book reviewing since at least 1960.
Most fiction says you may or may not be alive tomorrow; science fiction talks often about the future.
A funny thing about near-future stories: the future catches up to them. If the author is unlucky, the future catches up faster than the book can get out the door.
