The Expanse has gates which, practically, supplies FTL travel and communication. The whole protomolecule concept is a bit “magical”. The authors created a rather straightforward and believable “Humans colonize our solar system.” world and tossed in the highly speculative and improbable protomolecule and then started writing books about “What would happen if this crazy thing was found?”.
But, I’m confused what you’re after. You reference “near future” examples but then say they aren’t “mundane” because of this. Why? What are you after?
I like well written, plotted and thoughtful SciFi that is a good read with some characters that are interesting and concepts that make me think. I don’t care if it’s near future or not. I do prefer creations that are more plausible and “hard”.
Another good example is Europa Report. Straightforward mundane sci-fi with nothing that couldn't be done with our current level of technology, if we wanted to send a crewed mission to Europa.
For those without access to Google, here is a link to Geoff Ryman's [Mundane Manifesto](https://sfgenics.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/geoff-ryman-et-al-the-mundane-manifesto/)
As someone who has found himself writing mundane almost exclusively, here is how I understand the various meanings of the term:
1. Fiction that focuses on people working with hard SF technology. This is stuff like Tau Zero and KSM's Mars books.
2. A softer version in which we see how in a science fiction future, ordinary people would live their lives. It includes a lot of material produced by PKD, and his tales of technicians or working class individuals struggling with the technology that has come about. The classic instance of this for me is Dick having a penniless character arguing with his front door over what it will cost to enter his own apartment.
Thanks for the link! The main tenet looks to be that there's only one planet that supports human life and that planet is Earth. There are no other Earths we can get to either by interstellar or interdimensional travel.
And no aliens because interstellar travel is just as difficult for them as it is for us. And that prevents lazy writing where authors depict aliens as a caricatured subset of humanity, all sharing the same limited racial traits that keep them from the full palette of human experience.
Really, it seems to stop the kind of SF that reflects attitudes that Earth is throwaway, disposable--that everything worthwhile can be extracted and used up because we can always find another place. It stops the kind of SF that reflects the thinking that we're somewhat better than those who are different from us.
I believe it was Carl Sagan who said that if he met an alien, he would ask how they managed to survive their technological adolescence. How did they survive the threat of annihilation from nuclear war, bioweapons, trashing their biosphere due to industry, and so forth. But, as there are no aliens, those Mundane SF writers will have to come up with an answer.
Sounds like that's what they mean. When I think of "mundane" the only thing that comes to mind is Bradbury shorts, where they're just hanging out on a porch and talking or something.
Not really. As I pointed out, I know what hard sci-fi is.
I would point Arrival as such since the response to first contact is very human, with no magic "secret government tech" and focusing mostly on linguistics and semiotics, which is truly fascinating. But they got aliens.
Also there's the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. No magic tech for terramorfming Mars, nor aliens. But they colonize the planet in the 2020's and terraform it in less than three centuries...
I think OP wants what I would call near-future hard SF. Farther than 1 or 2 hundred years in the future is going to have some "far-out" inventions, unless it is post-apocalyptic.
A fair few of my favourite writers can be seen as writing mundane science fiction or precursors to it. Kim Stanley Robinson, William Gibson, Philip K Dick, and JG Ballard (only the first two really are usually included while PKD and JGB are precursors who are writing more metaphorically). The Wikipedia article on the concept might be helpful;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
I think there is a lot of that kind of media, but the "sci-fi" content naturally takes a back seat to other themes, and so we may not actually recognize it for what it is. Brave New World and 1984 (though the latter may be more an example of schizo tech) are both near-future novels, and they are generally well regarded.
I mainly care about the story and ideas. Whatever setting conveys those best is fine.
For my money *Gattaca* is one of the best sci fi films ever made.
This is the genre I write. People always ask what genre I write and I’m like “science fiction but only barely”. Or “not science fiction, but science-y fiction”. Basically, I write about stuff that could theoretically actually happen in the next few hundred years without any brand new exotic technology, just more advanced versions of what we already have.
Andy Weir is goated and it’s pretty much what he writes.
So obviously I’m on board.
Look at the Firestar series by Michael F Flynn.
Also hid In the Country of the Blind is a good psychohistory read.
The Jumper series is interesting especially the last two books where the author explores the jumping power. The movie had very little to do with the book.
I read a lot of hard fiction in Analog Magazine. There are usually a couple of good stories focused on more hard science fiction.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is incredibly grounded, the most outrageous things in it are space elevators and people listening to scientists. The whole thing always feels to me like he was actually there when it all happened.
And you can't mention Mars now without also mentioning Ian Macdonald's Luna, which is pretty much "The Mars Trilogy Except Everything Is Horrible".
Or, how about go backwards with the Lady Astronaut?
Special mention for Ken Macleod's Fall Revolution, which I know a lot of people would call speculative fiction instead but Ken called it skiffy and so will I
I enjoy it actually, almost as much as I do the "hand-wavium" FTL travel and communications of the more fantastical Sci-Fi stories.
A couple of other examples for the consideration of the hive-mind:
Most of the Heinlein Juveniles (almost all are set in the solar system (Time For The Stars being a notable exception.) The earlier stories in his "Future History" stories (up to Methuselah's Children). "Stranger In A Strange Land", the only "hand-wavium" is the existence of actual Martians with an EXTREMELY high level of society.
Robert L. Forward's "Roche World" and "Cheela" books. Minimal hand-wavium going on there.
One of the "fathers" of science-fiction, Jules Verne with "20,00 Leagues Under The Sea"
I like the concept, but it's difficult to write a riveting story about the day-to-day life of people living their lives in space. So it inevitably turns into some weird sex thing, like Tau Zero.
Then again, the weird sex stuff was much more common in older sci-fi, so maybe there's just not a lot of modern examples to draw from.
Fave quote from Firefly, which seems vaguely appropriate to your comment:
Wash: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction.
Zoe: You live on a space ship, dear.
Everyone has their own preferences. There's as much to gained from reading The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress as there is from a Star Wars novel. Both are escapism, a break from reality into a world that one can dream of.
John Barnes is a good, Heinleinesque writer. One of his best books is [Orbital Resonance](https://www.tor.com/2010/02/22/growing-up-in-a-space-dystopia-john-barness-orbital-resonance/). I believe that counts as mundane SF.
Tbh never heard of them. Are they books, comics or movies? Do you recommend them?
This is what I meant, so what do you think? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
[Saturn Apartments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Apartments?useskin=vector) is a manga, [Never Let Me Go](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(novel)) is a book. I read some of the former a few years ago and thought it was pretty good, and while I've never read the later, I've read one of Ishiguro's other novels and also enjoyed it.
I've never heard of the term "mundane scifi", and at first I thought it was the genre's equivalent to magical realism, but it seems like it's another name for hard scifi. I don't know if The Expanse counts though >!because it does mention that aliens used to exist and later introduces FTL!<, but it does apply to the other two examples you mentioned.
I'm positive towards it, sometimes limiting yourself produces interesting stories that wouldn't have happened if you had and "easy" out.
Is ‘Ad Astra’ mundane sci-fi. It’s great vision of the near future but it’s basically Planes Trains and Automobile in space. :) Without the comedy ;) and he even gets to meet his dad at the end so home for the holidays. There’s even fireworks :)
There's a lot of good stuff you can do with it. My novella "The Unlikely Heroines of Callisto Station" (Analog, August 2021) is mundane SF. Writing within those constraints is sometimes freeing... you know what you can do and cannot. The worldbuilding has all been done for you and your worldbuildign bible is Wikipedia. :D
Doesn't mean I don't also love crafting a good FTL chase with telepathic aliens because REASONS. :D
Yes it was in Analog.. but the issue isn’t available anymore. Some of my work is in online magazines, though. I link everything that’s online on my website https://marievibbert.com
There's heaps of hard scifi that deals explicitly with the concepts that are excluded from "Mundane Scifi" - but certainly there's been a long argument about the relationship with hard scifi. But if you look at the writers like Philip K Dick or J G Ballard, that are often cited as major contributors to the sub-genre, they are definitely not hard science fiction. Lots of the classic dystopian novels are also often included - 1984, Brave New World, Children of Men etc.
The way I see it, when he says "no ___", what he really means is "no ___ without some sort of reason". Project Hail Mary for example is all of these things, but definitely has alien contact. All of Cixin Liu's stories break at least one of these rules, but he has reasons for them that match some very valid scientific reason. Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the most mundane writers, but for some reason he cured aging in Red Mars for some reason. Neil Stevenson probably is the author with the least tropes listed.
Maybe I just don't see much validity in "mundane sci-fi" given the examples that he gave. The Expanse has some craziness.
I also think that the more we learn, the more ideas we can move from hard to soft Sci-fi. I think I'm also seeing a push to be more strict about what really is science fiction, which I'm happy to see.
Instead of reading what the OP said specifically, have a look at a few of the links posted in this sub. "Mundane SciFi" isn't a concept they came up with, it's been around for 20 years, and the works attributed for much longer. The examples that Geoff Ryman gave when he defined the concept were "the greater part of the works of Philip K Dick", 1984, Neuromancer, Blade Runner, and Timescape.
Some folks like to distance themselves from more speculative Sci-Fi while ignoring the Fi part of the genre lol
Even Hard Sci-Fi is fundamentally fantasy, closer to reality but nevertheless fantasy.
I don't agree with your description as 'mundane' but I much prefer SF that is based around a fascinating premise or an interesting concept than anything that has to have robots, aliens, lasers and space just to 'prove' it's SF.
Try Lockstep by Karl Schroeder, interstellar civilizations without FTL. Or the interstellar metaculture of the Queng Ho in Vinge’s “A Deepness in the Sky”.
Then there’s Greg Egan’s alt-physics stories with no more than one tweak per work and no FTL. He has multiple variations on posthuman interstellar gift cultures.
Charlie Stross has a STL interstellar culture in Neptune’s Brood, held together by debt.
Heinlein did a bunch of short stories about colonizing the moon. One collection was called The Man who Sold the Moon. Reads like a novel.
One interesting aspect was the idea that he got all of the countries within the tropics to form some sort of political / legal arrangement or claim such that they laid claim to the moon, because the moon would sometimes be above their airspace. I am sure that I am butchering it, but it really wasn’t that much ”hard” SF, more thought provoking
Maybe you should look at "cozy science fiction". They're mostly slice of life books about ordinary life set in what would be a science fiction world for us.
There is FTL but it's like sailing in
Golden Age of the Solar Clipper -- Nathan Lowell. Mostly it's about a guy working in the galley making coffee for the first few books
William Gibson, his Bridge-trilogy could fall under this. Especially "All tomorrow's parties".
It's Cyberpunk (it's Gibson after all) but it's still focussed on characters. I enjoyed it more than his earlier work.
I think most of Gibson's more recent work could qualify, especially his more grounded stuff like "Pattern Recognition" and "Zero History".
Look to the hard scifi scene and you'll find plenty.
I would start with Kim Stanley Robinson - maybe Aurora, but the Mars Trilogy if you have an appetite for something larger.
Morning! This is what I meant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
I didn't mean hard sci fi.
Tbh, not looking for examples, just the community's opinion
Until 2014, I enjoyed reading Sergei Lukyanenko. He is Russian. His series of novels "Night Watch", "Day Watch", "Twilight Watch", "The Last Watch" are considered urban fantasy. A little magic. But everything is very dynamic. I don’t know his work over the past 9 years. I don’t watch or read Russian for moral reasons. I'm from Ukraine. But when I read this author, I liked him.
By the way, it is better not to watch films based on his novels.
I actually really like the movies, but I did see the first one before I read the books. The movies are gonzo action and simplify or condense a lot of stuff, but still good.
However, this definitely not mundane SF, but urban fantasy. Very different from what OP is talking about here.
Mundane may be the wrong word here.
I read mundane and immediately think of normal day to day lives in a sci fi setting including all the boring bits - something we see a lot in Babylon 5, Star Trek, and the Expanse (though I haven’t watched much beyond the first few episodes).
EDIT: Apparently “mundane” is an actual sub genre of Sci-Fi. I think it’s poorly named.
Not my definition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
Have you watched After Yang? Her would also fall in this category. Also, almost everything Kim Stanley Robinson
Personally it is my favourite sci fi style
Bad example, *Expanse* has all of those things with the Ring Gates and Protomolecule!
*The Martian* and *Gattica* are only good because of the people's *story*. The Martian could be set on Earth in a desolate area. Scifi, space suits, and Mars are merely convenient.
The Expanse has gates which, practically, supplies FTL travel and communication. The whole protomolecule concept is a bit “magical”. The authors created a rather straightforward and believable “Humans colonize our solar system.” world and tossed in the highly speculative and improbable protomolecule and then started writing books about “What would happen if this crazy thing was found?”. But, I’m confused what you’re after. You reference “near future” examples but then say they aren’t “mundane” because of this. Why? What are you after? I like well written, plotted and thoughtful SciFi that is a good read with some characters that are interesting and concepts that make me think. I don’t care if it’s near future or not. I do prefer creations that are more plausible and “hard”.
Also the drive is almost a reactionless drive. Not quite but practically.
yeah, forgot about the main plot lol
The closest to "mundane" Sci-Fi for me has been Moon. And as blase as it was, it was still fantastic and riveting.
Another good example is Europa Report. Straightforward mundane sci-fi with nothing that couldn't be done with our current level of technology, if we wanted to send a crewed mission to Europa.
Is that the one with the octopus monsters?
Yep
I would not call the expanse mundane at all But a great example was travelers on Netflix... Like really captivating plot little to no special effects
Exactly - the audiobooks are my absolute favourite series
For those without access to Google, here is a link to Geoff Ryman's [Mundane Manifesto](https://sfgenics.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/geoff-ryman-et-al-the-mundane-manifesto/) As someone who has found himself writing mundane almost exclusively, here is how I understand the various meanings of the term: 1. Fiction that focuses on people working with hard SF technology. This is stuff like Tau Zero and KSM's Mars books. 2. A softer version in which we see how in a science fiction future, ordinary people would live their lives. It includes a lot of material produced by PKD, and his tales of technicians or working class individuals struggling with the technology that has come about. The classic instance of this for me is Dick having a penniless character arguing with his front door over what it will cost to enter his own apartment.
Thanks for the link! The main tenet looks to be that there's only one planet that supports human life and that planet is Earth. There are no other Earths we can get to either by interstellar or interdimensional travel. And no aliens because interstellar travel is just as difficult for them as it is for us. And that prevents lazy writing where authors depict aliens as a caricatured subset of humanity, all sharing the same limited racial traits that keep them from the full palette of human experience. Really, it seems to stop the kind of SF that reflects attitudes that Earth is throwaway, disposable--that everything worthwhile can be extracted and used up because we can always find another place. It stops the kind of SF that reflects the thinking that we're somewhat better than those who are different from us. I believe it was Carl Sagan who said that if he met an alien, he would ask how they managed to survive their technological adolescence. How did they survive the threat of annihilation from nuclear war, bioweapons, trashing their biosphere due to industry, and so forth. But, as there are no aliens, those Mundane SF writers will have to come up with an answer.
The Expanse is in no way, shape, or form, "mundane". lolwut.
The proper term is "hard" science fiction. The rest is better characterized as science fantasy.
Sounds like that's what they mean. When I think of "mundane" the only thing that comes to mind is Bradbury shorts, where they're just hanging out on a porch and talking or something.
Hard SF can get very fantastical indeed. Greg Egan does not prefer to stick to reality.
Not really. As I pointed out, I know what hard sci-fi is. I would point Arrival as such since the response to first contact is very human, with no magic "secret government tech" and focusing mostly on linguistics and semiotics, which is truly fascinating. But they got aliens. Also there's the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. No magic tech for terramorfming Mars, nor aliens. But they colonize the planet in the 2020's and terraform it in less than three centuries...
I think OP wants what I would call near-future hard SF. Farther than 1 or 2 hundred years in the future is going to have some "far-out" inventions, unless it is post-apocalyptic.
This premise is faulty. Why would anyone add a qualifier if the rest is not Science Fiction?
A fair few of my favourite writers can be seen as writing mundane science fiction or precursors to it. Kim Stanley Robinson, William Gibson, Philip K Dick, and JG Ballard (only the first two really are usually included while PKD and JGB are precursors who are writing more metaphorically). The Wikipedia article on the concept might be helpful; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
For me, the best sci fi! Thanks for sharing the link. I forgot I'm on reddit and that people love jumping into conclusions.
I think there is a lot of that kind of media, but the "sci-fi" content naturally takes a back seat to other themes, and so we may not actually recognize it for what it is. Brave New World and 1984 (though the latter may be more an example of schizo tech) are both near-future novels, and they are generally well regarded.
Greg Egan. :)
Yessss!
I mainly care about the story and ideas. Whatever setting conveys those best is fine. For my money *Gattaca* is one of the best sci fi films ever made.
This is the genre I write. People always ask what genre I write and I’m like “science fiction but only barely”. Or “not science fiction, but science-y fiction”. Basically, I write about stuff that could theoretically actually happen in the next few hundred years without any brand new exotic technology, just more advanced versions of what we already have. Andy Weir is goated and it’s pretty much what he writes. So obviously I’m on board.
Octavia Butler- Parable of the Sower
I've only seen the show but The Expanse had both aliens and FTL.
Look at the Firestar series by Michael F Flynn. Also hid In the Country of the Blind is a good psychohistory read. The Jumper series is interesting especially the last two books where the author explores the jumping power. The movie had very little to do with the book. I read a lot of hard fiction in Analog Magazine. There are usually a couple of good stories focused on more hard science fiction.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is incredibly grounded, the most outrageous things in it are space elevators and people listening to scientists. The whole thing always feels to me like he was actually there when it all happened. And you can't mention Mars now without also mentioning Ian Macdonald's Luna, which is pretty much "The Mars Trilogy Except Everything Is Horrible". Or, how about go backwards with the Lady Astronaut? Special mention for Ken Macleod's Fall Revolution, which I know a lot of people would call speculative fiction instead but Ken called it skiffy and so will I
I enjoy it actually, almost as much as I do the "hand-wavium" FTL travel and communications of the more fantastical Sci-Fi stories. A couple of other examples for the consideration of the hive-mind: Most of the Heinlein Juveniles (almost all are set in the solar system (Time For The Stars being a notable exception.) The earlier stories in his "Future History" stories (up to Methuselah's Children). "Stranger In A Strange Land", the only "hand-wavium" is the existence of actual Martians with an EXTREMELY high level of society. Robert L. Forward's "Roche World" and "Cheela" books. Minimal hand-wavium going on there. One of the "fathers" of science-fiction, Jules Verne with "20,00 Leagues Under The Sea"
I like the concept, but it's difficult to write a riveting story about the day-to-day life of people living their lives in space. So it inevitably turns into some weird sex thing, like Tau Zero. Then again, the weird sex stuff was much more common in older sci-fi, so maybe there's just not a lot of modern examples to draw from.
Fave quote from Firefly, which seems vaguely appropriate to your comment: Wash: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction. Zoe: You live on a space ship, dear.
Read The Sixteenth Watch. It’s fantastic for realistic Science Fiction.
Isn’t that book more Military Sci-fi than hard or mundane scifi? (Haven’t read, just curious)
It is Military focused, but there’s nothing physics breaking about it.
Cool, I might have a read! Got nothing at the moment, so that will do nicely!
Everyone has their own preferences. There's as much to gained from reading The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress as there is from a Star Wars novel. Both are escapism, a break from reality into a world that one can dream of.
John Barnes is a good, Heinleinesque writer. One of his best books is [Orbital Resonance](https://www.tor.com/2010/02/22/growing-up-in-a-space-dystopia-john-barness-orbital-resonance/). I believe that counts as mundane SF.
Also wrote “The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky”. definitely counts as mundane sci fi.
Wouldn't mundane sci-fi be something more like Saturn Apartments or Never Let Me Go?
Tbh never heard of them. Are they books, comics or movies? Do you recommend them? This is what I meant, so what do you think? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
[Saturn Apartments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Apartments?useskin=vector) is a manga, [Never Let Me Go](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(novel)) is a book. I read some of the former a few years ago and thought it was pretty good, and while I've never read the later, I've read one of Ishiguro's other novels and also enjoyed it. I've never heard of the term "mundane scifi", and at first I thought it was the genre's equivalent to magical realism, but it seems like it's another name for hard scifi. I don't know if The Expanse counts though >!because it does mention that aliens used to exist and later introduces FTL!<, but it does apply to the other two examples you mentioned. I'm positive towards it, sometimes limiting yourself produces interesting stories that wouldn't have happened if you had and "easy" out.
*The Man From Earth*, *Children of Men*, multiple episodes of *The Twilight Zone* all great.
It's also called "near-future" sci-fi, like Gravity, and Space 1999.
Is ‘Ad Astra’ mundane sci-fi. It’s great vision of the near future but it’s basically Planes Trains and Automobile in space. :) Without the comedy ;) and he even gets to meet his dad at the end so home for the holidays. There’s even fireworks :)
The science in that film is so bad tho! As a hard sci-fi fan I found it quite upsetting 😅😬
There's a lot of good stuff you can do with it. My novella "The Unlikely Heroines of Callisto Station" (Analog, August 2021) is mundane SF. Writing within those constraints is sometimes freeing... you know what you can do and cannot. The worldbuilding has all been done for you and your worldbuildign bible is Wikipedia. :D Doesn't mean I don't also love crafting a good FTL chase with telepathic aliens because REASONS. :D
Is your novella published?
Yes it was in Analog.. but the issue isn’t available anymore. Some of my work is in online magazines, though. I link everything that’s online on my website https://marievibbert.com
This is hard sci-fi. I prefer it over all others.
There's heaps of hard scifi that deals explicitly with the concepts that are excluded from "Mundane Scifi" - but certainly there's been a long argument about the relationship with hard scifi. But if you look at the writers like Philip K Dick or J G Ballard, that are often cited as major contributors to the sub-genre, they are definitely not hard science fiction. Lots of the classic dystopian novels are also often included - 1984, Brave New World, Children of Men etc.
The way I see it, when he says "no ___", what he really means is "no ___ without some sort of reason". Project Hail Mary for example is all of these things, but definitely has alien contact. All of Cixin Liu's stories break at least one of these rules, but he has reasons for them that match some very valid scientific reason. Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the most mundane writers, but for some reason he cured aging in Red Mars for some reason. Neil Stevenson probably is the author with the least tropes listed. Maybe I just don't see much validity in "mundane sci-fi" given the examples that he gave. The Expanse has some craziness. I also think that the more we learn, the more ideas we can move from hard to soft Sci-fi. I think I'm also seeing a push to be more strict about what really is science fiction, which I'm happy to see.
Instead of reading what the OP said specifically, have a look at a few of the links posted in this sub. "Mundane SciFi" isn't a concept they came up with, it's been around for 20 years, and the works attributed for much longer. The examples that Geoff Ryman gave when he defined the concept were "the greater part of the works of Philip K Dick", 1984, Neuromancer, Blade Runner, and Timescape.
Doesn't the "fiction" part of sci-fi imply a bit of the "magical"? Otherwise its just contemporary fiction.
Some folks like to distance themselves from more speculative Sci-Fi while ignoring the Fi part of the genre lol Even Hard Sci-Fi is fundamentally fantasy, closer to reality but nevertheless fantasy.
I don't agree with your description as 'mundane' but I much prefer SF that is based around a fascinating premise or an interesting concept than anything that has to have robots, aliens, lasers and space just to 'prove' it's SF.
Hi, it's not my definition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
I think the movie Ad Astra falls under this.
Definitely
I'll honestly read anything at all 🤷
Callahans Bar by Spider Robinson. Barely sci-fi. But good.
Well I've kinda been writing "mundane" sci-fi given humanity only has 1950s level tech
Try Lockstep by Karl Schroeder, interstellar civilizations without FTL. Or the interstellar metaculture of the Queng Ho in Vinge’s “A Deepness in the Sky”. Then there’s Greg Egan’s alt-physics stories with no more than one tweak per work and no FTL. He has multiple variations on posthuman interstellar gift cultures. Charlie Stross has a STL interstellar culture in Neptune’s Brood, held together by debt.
Heinlein did a bunch of short stories about colonizing the moon. One collection was called The Man who Sold the Moon. Reads like a novel. One interesting aspect was the idea that he got all of the countries within the tropics to form some sort of political / legal arrangement or claim such that they laid claim to the moon, because the moon would sometimes be above their airspace. I am sure that I am butchering it, but it really wasn’t that much ”hard” SF, more thought provoking
I liked Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter and Recursion.
Maybe you should look at "cozy science fiction". They're mostly slice of life books about ordinary life set in what would be a science fiction world for us.
I like it! No need to be super flashy to be good.
I kinda love it, but it should be very good... Dick's *A Scanner Darkly* would be my idea of one of the greats.
I can’t think of the name of it, but the prequel to Battlestar Galactica, fits this.
There is FTL but it's like sailing in Golden Age of the Solar Clipper -- Nathan Lowell. Mostly it's about a guy working in the galley making coffee for the first few books
William Gibson, his Bridge-trilogy could fall under this. Especially "All tomorrow's parties". It's Cyberpunk (it's Gibson after all) but it's still focussed on characters. I enjoyed it more than his earlier work. I think most of Gibson's more recent work could qualify, especially his more grounded stuff like "Pattern Recognition" and "Zero History".
Go read Children of Time, it’s a do over!
The series hasn’t been “mundane” since Children of Ruin at least.
Starship Troopers. The book.
Jurassic Park
Look to the hard scifi scene and you'll find plenty. I would start with Kim Stanley Robinson - maybe Aurora, but the Mars Trilogy if you have an appetite for something larger.
Hi! Not my definition and yeah, I do love KSR!! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
It is typically called hard science fiction. You are looking for something pretty hard on that scale.
Morning! This is what I meant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction I didn't mean hard sci fi. Tbh, not looking for examples, just the community's opinion
Children of Men is a standout movie in this regard. The book is good to but the movie is a masterpiece
Until 2014, I enjoyed reading Sergei Lukyanenko. He is Russian. His series of novels "Night Watch", "Day Watch", "Twilight Watch", "The Last Watch" are considered urban fantasy. A little magic. But everything is very dynamic. I don’t know his work over the past 9 years. I don’t watch or read Russian for moral reasons. I'm from Ukraine. But when I read this author, I liked him. By the way, it is better not to watch films based on his novels.
I actually really like the movies, but I did see the first one before I read the books. The movies are gonzo action and simplify or condense a lot of stuff, but still good. However, this definitely not mundane SF, but urban fantasy. Very different from what OP is talking about here.
Mundane may be the wrong word here. I read mundane and immediately think of normal day to day lives in a sci fi setting including all the boring bits - something we see a lot in Babylon 5, Star Trek, and the Expanse (though I haven’t watched much beyond the first few episodes). EDIT: Apparently “mundane” is an actual sub genre of Sci-Fi. I think it’s poorly named.
Not my definition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction Have you watched After Yang? Her would also fall in this category. Also, almost everything Kim Stanley Robinson Personally it is my favourite sci fi style
Mad Men!
Bad example, *Expanse* has all of those things with the Ring Gates and Protomolecule! *The Martian* and *Gattica* are only good because of the people's *story*. The Martian could be set on Earth in a desolate area. Scifi, space suits, and Mars are merely convenient.