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It's funny noting things that no longer fit in our universe - not only the Martians, but smoking on personal spaceships, etc. But I'm also reading Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel "The Big Sleep", and noticing things from when that book was written that no longer fit in our universe! Does it bother you when times have made SF (or detective stories) realistically obsolete?

Jim Carleton If anything, such details provide a way to gauge and document changes in Social Mores. This can be very valuable information to a sociologist or histo…moreIf anything, such details provide a way to gauge and document changes in Social Mores. This can be very valuable information to a sociologist or historian. Reading the Fu Manchu novels of Sax Rohmer can be very difficult for a person "trained" to not focus upon the racial background of a person, but the racism inherent in those novels tells us much about the times in which they were written. This helps us to gauge what progress, if any, has been made to overcome those biases. We cannot expect a writer to ignore that most basic of tenets: "Write about what you know." Authors in the 1930s (and even in the 1960s) had no idea that tobacco would become anathema, so it is reasonable that smoking would be part of their work, because it was part of their world, even if they did not smoke.(less)

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Tom Dolan If Lorenzo looks enough like Bonforte to persuade people who know Bonforte that he is Bonforte, then he can hardly be a generation younger than Bonfor…moreIf Lorenzo looks enough like Bonforte to persuade people who know Bonforte that he is Bonforte, then he can hardly be a generation younger than Bonforte.(less)

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