The Universe Is Shaped Exactly Like the Earth

I was catching up recently with some back issues of Locus when I came across a reference in one of the book reviews to "a splinter group among SF writers who dub themselves the Mundanes, devoted to eschewing space opera theatrics and preposterous physics in favor of dense near-future realizations." And I thought, well, that's the stuff for me, since I'm already a fan of authors like Kim Stanley Robinson, Bruce Sterling, and William Gibson.

Turns out they have an online manifesto that celebrates, among other things, "the imaginative challenge that awaits any SF author who accepts that this is it: Earth is all we have," then asks, "What will we do with it?" They also have a blog with a lot of compelling elaboration upon their basic themes...and if you're at all interested in how any fiction grapples with real-world issues, I think you'll find it interesting. (A little more info can be found in a conversation between writers Geoff Ryman, who serves as a sort of Mundane mentor, and Kit Reed. That page has its own amusing properties; I'd quite forgotten how entertaining the MUD/MOO paradigm could be...)