"When you decide to write a story set in the near future, or speculating about things that might..."

“When you decide to write a story set in the near future, or speculating about things that might happen, you’re running the risk of looking like a jackass. Nobody expects a science fiction story to predict the actual future—not if they know anything about science fiction, anyway. But given how slowly publishing can move and how fast the world changes, your story can look outdated before it even sees print. I ran into this a bunch of times with my novel All the Birds in the Sky. Because this novel took so long to write, and then had another two years between getting a book deal and actually getting published, there was tons of stuff in there that I had a queasy feeling would be just completely wrong by the time this book saw the light of day.”

- When your cool future is obsolete before you’re even finished writing it