Re: Oldest SF not necessarily most dated?

"Steven L." <sdlitvin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:hJ6dnbCqB9RTZLXVnZ2dnUVZ_jidnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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.
>>
>> 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?
>
> Sure.
> SF, by its very nature, tends to be based on *current trends* in science

> and technology and their implications for social trends.  An author
looks 
> at where society *appears* to be headed, and then he sort of
extrapolates 
> that way into the future.
>
> For example, in the 1960's, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were in a furious 
> "manned space race."  Therefore, many SF stories of that era assumed
that 
> pace would continue so that by the 21st century, we and the Soviets
would 
> be well on the way toward manned exploration and colonization of the
solar 
> system. Which turned out to be wrong.
>
> Much, maybe most, SF has this theme, "If Present Trends Continue...."
>
> Unfortunately, present trends do *NOT* always continue.  Often they 
> reverse, sometimes in a sudden crash:  The U.S.-U.S.S.R. "space race"
did 
> not continue--it ended.  The Cold War and arms race didn't continue till

> World War III broke out--the U.S.S.R. just collapsed without firing a 
> shot.  Computers didn't get bigger and bigger, requiring liquid helium 
> coolant as some SF writers had assumed; instead the silicon chip and 
> microprocessor were invented, and computers suddenly got a whole lot 
> smaller and cheaper.  Population doesn't continue to exponentiate till
we 
> all starve like in "Soylent Green"; once a society reaches a certain
level 
> of affluence, its birth rate can decline even below replacement levels.

Or once the saturation of the population with a million previously unknown

compounds turns out to increase infertility...