Re: Oldest SF not necessarily most dated?

ilya2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

> While all SF from 30's, 40's and 50's is dated in obvious ways, it is
> 1970's SF I find most jarringly dated. One example is John Varley's
> "Titan". Granted, one dated trope is technological -- 7-person
> space****p arriving at Saturn apparently without a single unmanned
> probe preceding, -- but what strikes me most is the very "1970's feel"
> to the book. Free love and widespread drugs. Everyone on board the
> ****p sleeps with everyone else (in series, not at once) except for two
> clones who are in an exclusive *****uous lesbian relation****p (that's
> a mouthful!) -- and *NASA is described as prudish*! Apparently because
> NASA prefers the above facts not to be known to public. And if you
> think that streches the belief, cocaine is not only legal, but is
> allowed on board. I doubt any publisher today would touch such a book
> with a ten-foot pole for that reason alone.

Well, it's not like there were any incurable STDs left....
 
> Greg Benford's "Into the Ocean of Night" was also written in 1970's,
> takes place in 1999, and to me is equally jarring. Chronic shortages
> of oil and clean water, famines in India, three-corner marriages taken
> for granted, etc.
> 
> Does anyone else feel the same way?

And sf being published today will seem at least as dated in a couple of
decades.

Maybe even in a couple of years.  Or less.  I recall seeing "USSR
invades America!" novels in bookstores after the Soviet Union's
collapse.

-- 
Dan Goodman
"I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers." 
Tennessee Williams,  A Streetcar Named Expire
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