I read this article, Cowardice, Laziness and Irony: How Science Fiction Lost the Future by Jonathan McCalmont (found via Ian Sales) a few weeks back and have been mulling over what to say about it. It is long... very long and somewhat inflammatory. I am fairly certain that a lot of SFF writers would get pretty angry at what McCalmont has to say here. That said, I think anyone writing seriously in SFF should read the whole piece and think about the issues it raises. McCalmont has strong opinions about what is wrong with SF today. I know that many people don't think anything is wrong with SF today and my intention is not to argue that point. However, this article talks about a perceived sense of disaffection and irony in mainstream SFF nowadays. I'm drawn to articles like this for two reasons: