I would rather claim that contemporary Earthfic is a literary wasteland. Even shminux seems to implicitly agree, notice that the only one of his examples from the last 100 years started out as fanfiction to a fantasy novel.
This is not due to any inherent limitations of Earthfic but due to certain political/cultural trends (the same ones responsible for the ugliness of modern art) over the past century.
I was at a science fiction convention today where the following exchange (paraphrased) took place:
“In the future, as humanity expands out into the stars, there will be all these different areas and domains with different social norms, so when a person goes from one to another they will have to learn what is allowed there.”
″… you know, we have that now, it’s called nations.”
Sometimes fans forget just how much alienness there is to be had on Earth.
(And in any event, Sturgeon’s Law can be expected to apply to earthfic just as much as to sf.)
I would rather claim that contemporary Earthfic is a literary wasteland. Even shminux seems to implicitly agree, notice that the only one of his examples from the last 100 years started out as fanfiction to a fantasy novel.
This is not due to any inherent limitations of Earthfic but due to certain political/cultural trends (the same ones responsible for the ugliness of modern art) over the past century.
I was at a science fiction convention today where the following exchange (paraphrased) took place:
Sometimes fans forget just how much alienness there is to be had on Earth.
(And in any event, Sturgeon’s Law can be expected to apply to earthfic just as much as to sf.)
.