Mundane movement in Science-Fiction?

No FTL Travel.No Aliens(Visitors),no outside of Solar System Travel.

Know of any Mundane movement Authors?
Hundreds of famous SF books follow this*; not sure of many authors who always followed it, though.

* e.g. Bova's Grand Tour books, A Fall of Moondust, Greybeard, Drowned World, Dayworld, The World Inside, Brainwave, The Man who Melted, Why Call them Back from Heaven? - and that's just a random selection off the top of my head.
 

I have thought of it as a category in my mind though I didn't really have a name for it. I had no idea it was a movement.

Clarke's A Fall of Moondust certainly fits into it.

I thought Mundanes was what SF readers called non-SF readers. LOL
 
Last edited:
I doubt that Ryman, at least -- taking him as spokesman for mundane sf -- would admit generation star ship stories. For all its familiarity, which has made it seem just something "science" hasn't quite invented yet, the concept (whether with starships like Heinlein's "Universe" or with crew in suspended animation -- and the distances involved even to the nearest star -- would be beyond the "mundane." Ryman wants science fiction stories that work with the science we have or reasonable extrapolations thereof. No "magic."
I gather that "mundane" is also intended to imply "earthly, of the world" and center Earth and the problems of people living on and around Earth.

That would also tend to argue against generation ship stories, with the possible exception of KSR's Aurora which (spoilers?) is a critique of the generation ship concept from multiple perspectives.

Anyone else tired of Space Opera.
I do get tired of Space Opera from time to time but I think to a degree it comes down to Sturgeon's Law (90% of anything is crap), there's so much Space Opera out there...


Regarding the Mundane movement it doesn't appear to have had a major impact on the genre but the more I think about it the more I feel it has merit and it would be nice to be able to categorize books in this vein (perhaps with a more marketable name.)

I don't think the Expanse is mundane, there's alien tech and magic portals and other weirdness.

I wouldn't call Terra Ignota mundane either, though I haven't read past the first book. Spoiler: Isn't there a character who can do literal magic?

Gibson's sprawl books would seem to fit but I recall reading something explicitly comparing Mundane SF with cyberpunk SF so I'm not sure the Mundanes would agree. Perhaps the tech extrapolation gets a bit too out there for them?

So yeah it's a bit slippery how much suspension of disbelief you need to agree to before it's too much to fit in Mundane. Still I get tired of universes full of aliens who want to hang out and trade and be friends with humans all the time and who are zipping around the galaxy having swashbuckling adventures. Give me SF that goodreads reviewers complain about needing a physics degree to understand. (Sometimes, other times I do like to hang with aliens and swashbuckle.)
 
Apart from the Monolith, I would have thought that 2001: A Space Odyssey would fit this category: travel within the solar system; suspended animation because of the length of the journey; malfunctioning computer equipment...
HAL9000 icon.jpg
 
Gibson's sprawl books would seem to fit but I recall reading something explicitly comparing Mundane SF with cyberpunk SF so I'm not sure the Mundanes would agree. Perhaps the tech extrapolation gets a bit too out there for them?

I went looking for the comparison I referenced and landed on the original Mundane Manifesto which includes Neuromancer in a list of Mundane-conforming books so I'm going to retract my statement above.
 
The "greater part of the works of Philip K. Dick" qualify, as does 1984. Although my own interest in PKD recently waned while Perry Rhodan waxed, Orwell remains as pertinent as ever.

I submit that this manifesto was drafted by aliens who don't want us mucking around in their corner of the universe.
Keep the savages in their place: and all.
 
One Second After by William Forstchen. Similar to Alas Babylon. A little slow start (1st chapter and a half) but really a good read overall. I guess Forstchen made it into a series. When I originally read One Second After, it seemed a standalone, and I have not read further. It might be a great three book series, but just not tempted enough to diminish, in my mind, the first tale.
 
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr
 

Similar threads


Back
Top