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Ned: Nevil Shute - apart from the fact that he was Anglo-Irish by birth - wasn't really a SF writer, was he? I'd say
On The Beach follows the pattern of some of his other books - for example,
No Highway or
What Happened To The Corbetts in that it is speculative fiction, but not going far beyond the technology that was current when he wrote it.
What Happened To The Corbetts is about the possible effects of a bombing campaign on England, written I think in 1938. The materials science in No Highway is nonsense,* but not too bad for the time it was written; to be honest I'm not sure what its date is. Shute, incidentally, was an important aeronautical engineer in the 20s and 30s; he designed the first plane with a retractable undercarriage.
* the plot of No Highway revolves around fatigue failure in aircraft. There are several mistakes which now seem glaring, but reflect the fact that in Shute's day materials science was relatively poorly studied - and, furthermore, was not something that the majority of engineers knew very much about.
― caitlin (caitlin), Wednesday, 4 May 2005 07:19 (nineteen years ago) link
Greg Egan is a fairly prominent Aussie SF writer. He may be a better com-pu-ter whizzkid than he is at literature, but the ideas are interesting.
As an adjunct to the question: short story vs novel(la)? Too many stories end up as lame-ass one-liners ("and it turned out he was Hitler!"), but the best are jewels of rare price, whereas novels allow writers to develop more of what they're really about, for better or worse.
― Liz :x (Liz :x), Wednesday, 4 May 2005 08:45 (nineteen years ago) link