That’s very true. It was much less likely for a cyberpunk novel to be published at all, so anytime you got any cyberpunk it was a big deal. Now we have a flood of mediocre cyberpunk novels uploaded to the Kindle store daily so it takes more to be remembered.
I still think one thing that helps a sci-fi novel stand the test of time is when they accurately predict some aspect of the future. For example, The Machine Stops imagines a world where everyone just sits alone in their bedroom staring at a screen reading other people’s opinions and posting their own opinions. And it was written in 1909. It doesn’t matter what else happens in the story, just that prediction is incredible.
On the other hand, there’s Trouble and Her Friends. I remember seeing some review that said the novel perfectly describes what people in the 90s thought the internet would become in the future. It was open and community-driven with no presence of commerce at all. At the time, it was the dream of what could be. But in hindsight, we know it never happened.
That’s very true. It was much less likely for a cyberpunk novel to be published at all, so anytime you got any cyberpunk it was a big deal. Now we have a flood of mediocre cyberpunk novels uploaded to the Kindle store daily so it takes more to be remembered.
I still think one thing that helps a sci-fi novel stand the test of time is when they accurately predict some aspect of the future. For example, The Machine Stops imagines a world where everyone just sits alone in their bedroom staring at a screen reading other people’s opinions and posting their own opinions. And it was written in 1909. It doesn’t matter what else happens in the story, just that prediction is incredible.
On the other hand, there’s Trouble and Her Friends. I remember seeing some review that said the novel perfectly describes what people in the 90s thought the internet would become in the future. It was open and community-driven with no presence of commerce at all. At the time, it was the dream of what could be. But in hindsight, we know it never happened.