Re: Oldest SF not necessarily most dated?

On Tue, 13 May 2008, Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:

> On 13 May 2008 04:24:50 GMT, "Dan Goodman" <dsgood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
> >Steven L. wrote:
> >
> >> 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.
> >
> >_Tends_ to be, yes -- but not all of it is.  Some writers pick up on
> >trends which others don't notice (which, of course, may be as illusory
> >as the Martian canals.)  Some are contrarians.  Some work off their
> >hopes and/or fears.
> 
> Philip Dick had a contrarian streak -- e.g., when everyone else was
> writing overpopulation stories, he wrote _The Game-Players of Titan_,
> where there's been a population crash and everyone's desperately
> trying to procreate.
> 
> That was one reason I loved his work when I was a kid.

In one of the DANGEROUS VISIONS anthologies, Ellison's introduction to one
Dick's stories mentioned that he had asked for a story about
hallucinogens, hopefully written while on hallucinogens, and implied that
this is what Dick had supplied for him. Dick supplied
a reversal of that ... a story about a man who is NOT on hallucinogens
while everyone else is. I believe Dick had issues with Ellison's
implication in his introduction, that Dick had been on hallucinogens when
he wrote the novel.