So I get this email from Mike:
Information on submitting for the upcoming "Mundane SF" issue of Interzone. At first I thought this was an interesting challenge and wanted to do it, but as I read more of the blog by the co-editors, their snobby attitude toward the rest of the genre gets more and more off-putting. I also increasingly hate that they keep saying that no one is writing about "big ideas" because the submissions are not about their pet causes (global warming, famine in Africa, Donald Trump allowed to breed unchecked, etc.). I mean, I agree with them on most of their little missions, but calling people unoriginal for not writing about what you expect them to write about is just asinine. If you want everyone to write about climate change, make it "climate change month" instead and stop being coy about it. They remind me of the hippies from that South Park episode with the hippy jam band festival, congratulating themselves on how they're changing the world when all they do is smoke pot and smell bad...
So I thought thought I'd at least check it out, and clicked on the link. Take a look at the sources they recommend. I did follow their advice by conjuring a random Wikipedia article and visiting the U.N. General Assembly site (I already keep up with Scientific American and occasionally RealClimate) which gave me a great inspiration for a story about some rogue peacekeeping troops who rampage through Somalia shooting otherwise-recyclable aluminum cans with their laser pistols while listening to the
Four Seasons and complaining about all the hurricanes. One of the brave officers pursuing them is getting a divorce, and his son might have small pox.
Good thing I clicked that Wikipedia link or I'd never have learned about Bob Crewe, the lynchpin of the whole plot. And I
can have laser pistols, according to the rules. There's no way space travel could ever be profitable, they tell me, but laser pistols are okay.
I would be tempted to try a serious one because, snobby editor-twerps aside, it really might be an interesting challenge, but I have a feeling that several big-name authors are also going to try their hand at this, and it'll turn out that the youngest contributor to the final product will be Reanimated Heinlein.
