I’ve been reading a lot of mundane science fiction, lately. I’ve even written a few mundane science fiction stories, although I didn’t realise I was writing in a specific subgenre.

Now, I’ve always been a big science fiction fan, but it wasn’t until I started writing, eighteen months ago, that I became interested in definitions. Before that, I was just interested in a good story. Definitions are important to writers because we think a lot about the mechanics of a story. 

Mundane-SF is set in the near future (let’s say the next fifty years), and uses believable technology based on current science. It’s a sub-genre, significant enough to have its own manifesto, and in 2007 Interzone dedicated an issue to mundane stories.  

The Mundane SF manifesto was inspired by the ideas of Julian Todd and Trent Walters and founded by Geoff Ryman and others, during Clarion 2002 (Clarion is a prestigious American residential workshop programme for speculative fiction writers). 

Considering the current knowledge that we have, there are a number of science fiction theme that cannot be used in mundane science fiction. Wikipedia has a useful list of excluded tropes:

  • Interstellar travel and any concept that manages to get around faster than light travel like warp drive and worm holes. So we’re stuck in this solar system.
  • Aliens. Even if they did exist, they probably wouldn’t have interstellar travel, so stories about colonization, and galactic wars and empires are out. If they do exist we wouldn’t be able to communicate with alien because it’s likely that the differences between us would be insurmountable.  
  • Quantum uncertainty certainly exists, but there is no evidence that it affects the macro world, and so it can’t be used as a basis for alternative universe stories.
  • No telepathy stories, either.

To sum it up with a rather nice mundane phrase: “the most likely future is one in which we only have ourselves and this planet.”

 Geoff Ryan explains the reasons that some science fiction writers were attracted to the constraints of mundane science fiction: 

“Mundanity partly came out of impatience with bad science, or with tropes that gave us the SF dream for free.  Also it was impatience with the moral role SF was starting to play… as an irrelevant dream of a future that was unlikely to happen.  The worry is that SF now sometimes actively prevents us imagining the future.”

You can find mundane science fiction everywhere, particularly in science journals like Nature and Cosmos, which publish a limited amount of fiction. Futurismic (http://futurismic.com/category/fiction/) is a good place to find online mundane science fiction. And Ryman has recently edited an anthology: When It Changed: Science Into Fiction, 2009, which is a collection of mundane science fiction stories written with advice from a scientists, with endnotes discussing the plausibility of the stories.  

Personally I write both mundane-science fiction and non-mundane science fiction. I enjoy them both, although my tastes do tend to lean toward the non-mundane stuff. I must admit I like a little razzle-dazzle in my future.  

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Deborah Walker lives in London, with her partner Chris and her two lovely, yet distracting young children.