Read a contemporary novel about the activities of journalists, lawyers, police officers, security consultants, politicians etc who live and work in a modern capital city. Then consider that a similar novel about the activities of comparable professionals could be set, e.g., in the Solar Commonwealth or the Archopolis of Poul Anderson's Technic History. In the Commonwealth period, the protagonists who would not be space traveling employees of the Solar Spice & Liquors company would nevertheless buy SSL products and view news about deals or scandals in the Polesotechnic League.
The short story, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," is one very short step in this direction. Stieg Larsson's novels read in translation have what is, for many readers, the exotic setting of Stockholm. This slightly distances them from narratives set in an English-speaking capital like London. At a further distance would be works of fiction set in a future period that has been partly realized by the imagination of Poul Anderson. Heinlein's Future History was commended for giving the future a daily life but I think that more could be done in this direction.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I have no objection to writers giving us stories with characters of the types you listed, along with others I could add, such as farmers, clergymen, and futuristic equivalents of plumbers. And I would expect such persons during the era of Nicholas van Rijn to frequently buy products sold by Solar Spice & Liquors. And I don't deny there would be some interest in the details of every day life in tales set in the time of the Polesotechnic League.
But, I would still argue that a problem or conflict needing to be somehow resolved would be needed in such stories to make them interesting enough for many readers to want to read them. You would need something like that for such stories to be worth the trouble of authors writing them--because they make their living that way. I don't think you have adequately addressed the need for an interesting problem or conflict in the kind of stories you would like to see written.
Sean
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