Over at Orion Magazine, Christopher Cokinos talks about the Mundane Manifesto. That’s a wikipedia link, since, alas the 2004 document itself seems to be unavailable on-line.
In any case, this manifesto is one of those periodic spasms in the arts, trying to encourage practitioners to focus their efforts on improving the quality of the field. In this case, the creation of Earth-based science fiction. Asimov had a collection at one time called Earth is Room Enough, so it’s not a new idea, exactly. But a good one. Artists can really muscle up, if you will, by focusing on constraints. Especially writers, who are limited only by words and ideas.
Cokinos likes the idea, generally, and it meshes pretty well with Orion‘s view that, in fact, Earth is room enough, and we’d better take care if it since we don’t really have any alternatives.
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