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Alexb nebula programs running1/1/2023 ![]() ![]() I think this is in general a huge mistake unless there's an explicit reason for our future society to have suppressed a raft of useful technologies and social trends. It's quite common for future-oriented SF stories to loot historical backgrounds and settings. Note, however, that you'll do a lot better if you read some social history texts rather than believing what you see in the movies. Which is to say, if you're going to write a trilogy with a young soldier on the rise and a throne and an evil emperor, you can do a lot worse than plunder the decline and fall of the Roman Empire for your social background. In general, High Fantasy steals its dress from pre-modern history Urban Fantasy buys off-the-shelf in TK-Maxx: and Science Fiction goes for that bold futurist look. ![]() ![]() So I'm going to focus on providing a human environment. Or you can go for the "they're not human, don't look human, and they have no connection with us", but what you get is either borderline-unreadable at best, or suffers from human-mind-in-a-giant-land-snail-body syndrome (which risks demolishing the reader's willing suspension of disbelief). "Diaspora", by Greg Egan "Saturn's Children", by me) you need to provide some sort of continuity with the human and give the reader reasons to feel concerned for them. Humans are interested in reading fiction about humans.Ĭonstraint #1 on any work of fiction is that it needs to provide an environment in which recognizable human protagonists can exist. ![]()
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