Discuss: Instead of Suns, the Earth

And I really need to proofread my comments better - sorry for the errors in that last ramble. . .

John

Two additional and relatively recent books I would recommend along this line are:  Michael Flynn’s 2006 book entitled Eifelheim, and Mary Doria Russell’s 1996 book The Sparrow. Both of these deal with a time-honored SF trope of first contact, but in very imaginative ways that reflect on current themes and societal strains.  In Eifelheim, first contact occurs on the eve of one of the many waves of the Black Plague, in medieval Germany.  In The Sparrow, first contact occurs on a planet with not one but two sentient species.  To me, one of the most fascinating aspects of both books is the involvement of religious faith in a nuanced and central way, and the strains that contact with another species and their cultural beliefs and practices place on terrestial faith.  The portrayal of these outside cultures goes way beyond the old-fashioned Bug-eyed Monster paradigm, and suggests that the changes that would occur as a result of a first contact would not simply be one-sided.

For a more upbeat view of near-future SF one might check out SHINE, an anthology of optimistic SF.

Not 100% mundane, but focusses mostly on Earth, and has viewpoints from across the globe.

I totally agree about _The Sparrow_ and its sequal _Children of God_ which continues with the impact that first contact has on the two species. Excellent for both the very thoughtful and scientificly/anthropologically grounded vision of another planet, as well as the commentary on our own society and the explorer mentality (much of what the Sparrow is about is how much damage can occur out of ignorance in contact with another culture).

There is another novel worth mentioning, and I can’t for the life of me remember the author, but it is a recent author from Seattle. The book is about a researcher who gets lost and left for dead on a jungle-planet. The inhabitants of the planet save her by biologically adapting her body to be able to survive on the planet. The native inhabitants are deeply in tune with the environment - which is a tired trope in SF, except that in this case the author knows her rainforest ecology. The lost explorer at one point, to be accepted in the society, must observe a particular tree and describe every creature that lives on, is dependant on, or interacts with the tree - and paints a rich picture or the inteconnected web of life (even if on another planet). I am still trying to dig up the name and author of this one (my bad memory).

Octavia Butler would also deserve a place in this list for the _Parable of the Sower_, which is about a group of people trying to make their way and remain human in a world facing societal and ecological collapse. Her books in general are thoughtful and provacative stories that explore what it means to be human and biological - many of them have to do with some condition in which biology creates a drive against our conscious choice (a disease, for example, that destroys human capacity for language, or that overwhelms our drives to make us into a new species), and in which people strive to remain as human as they can within the structure of the biology they cannot change. Interesting stuff, though not necessarily relevant to the environment.

John

Additional thoughts - having spent some times at the Mundanes blog (mundane-sf.blogspot.com) I understand the project a little more. It was intended to be more of a challenge than a restriction to writers, intended to ask SF writers to take on more relevant questions and less fantasy or escapism (which I would argue have their place). They are not saying that all SF should be mundane, but asking that more Sci-fi focus on envisioning the reality of earth in the future - which has been a significant part of sci-fi all along (is Frankenstien a Mundane SF novel?)

I also note that there is a difference between environmental Sci-fi, and what the mundanes are doing. There is certainly a lot of overlap - but the mundane project seems to be more focused on a specific set of constraints in regard to technological possibilities, wheras environmental sci-fi, if there can be called such a thing, is more focused on environmental concerns (be they oriented towards projections of eco-disaster or envisioning a more sustainable and environmentally sound model). Thus many stories set outside of the perameters of the mundanes may still hold a powerful environmental or social message - eg LeGuin.

(In fairness, the Mundanes don’t completely exclude the possibility of travel to other planets, but do expect that relativity and the energy requirements be considered -which LeGuin actually does in many of her novels - there is no intersteller trade, except of ideas, and many of her novels deal with the relativistic effects of leaving your home planet and returning after tens or hundreds of years have passed and everyone you know is dead and gone).