Yet more on the death of SF

The debate keeps rumbling on, with some great, thought provoking stuff being said.

Paul McAuley says:

"So if you’re a writer, write from the heart as well as from the mind. Aim for an audience if you like, but know this: at best you’re going to hit nothing more than a temporary, here-and-gone demographic. Wouldn’t it be better to try to write the book that means more to you than any other book? You’ll probably fail. But you can always try again, and fail better."

Mark Chadbourn says:

"If you have a fantastic idea, surely you want to communicate it to as wide an audience as possible. That means developing forms of communication - in this case, story, plot, and, most importantly, recognisably human characters with human concerns - that will piggy-back the idea into the minds of readers."

Charlie Stross replies with an entire essay, saying that SF needs to capture the new geek crowd typified by BoingBoing:

"...if your market share is collapsing, it seems to me that the thing to do is to stop doing whatever it is that didn't work, and pioneer a new field. Going back to the 1930s doesn't work because the pulp era relied on certain underlying cultural and political assumptions that are at odds with the modern zeitgeist. Going back to the 1950s will work only insofar as it clutches on to the conservative and change-phobic old farts who are nearing retirement age. What we need to do is to go forward to the era of dot-com 3.1415926535 ... (an infinitely receding string of irrational optimism in the procedurally generated but chaotic future) and grab hold of a new audience by the short-and-curlies."

And then Niall at the Vector blog commented on Charlie's post, which caused Charlie to reply. (I'm using first names like I know them, but I don't)

All very interesting. And as a writer, enough matter to send me into a trance for days just thinking about it.