Wells used to say it pretty frequently. When I was a kid I read L. Sprague de Camp's *Science Fiction Handbook*, and I seem to recall him bringing that up repeatedly. It's implicit whenever you look at [u/dys]topian literature as an SF-precursor. I gather it was Lessing's explicit motivation for dabbling in it. Of course you can find an echo of this in Gibson's 90s-era obsession with Japan as that place where the future gets beta-tested. So, yeah, as a rule of thumb I think probably anybody whose stuff we think of as being "good SF" is probably mostly interested in the present via [elfland / the future / the alternate past/present].
I don't really see the piece has having been written for "us", though, but rather for people who need to understand why spec lit matters. On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:07 PM, delancey <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hasn't nearly every SF writer said this at one time or other? > > > > -- eric scoles ([email protected]) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
