Describe this actual utility, please - particularly in context of the average citizen.

And I can hazard a guess that spacemen will drop out of the sky and host a tea party in my living room - doesn't mean it's remotely likely.

Half of America basically refuses to use PAPER money, choosing instead to be subject to the horrors of modern banking for the convenience of debit cards. You think people are going to put up with direct gold/certificate exchange if given a choice?

This is perhaps the most gloriously subtle troll I've ever seen.

The thing I really love about this series (well, one of the things) is how, in later books, after many of the main characters from the first are gone or inactive, it becomes more a story of how people in the world are reacting to living in the world that the main characters have radically altered through technology and influence.

Hmmm... That sounds interesting - I only read her elf-fantasy books (name forgotten, I think it was something like The Dreaming Tree) and didn't care too much for them. Another person who did the "FTL but no other physics outs" style of sci-fi is Walter Jon Williamson, in his Dread Empire's Fall series. It's pretty interesting - it's a very, very "everything is grey" world, where the protagonists are trying to keep a pseudo-victorian society based on strict hierarchy and torture from being taken over by other elements of the same empire. The main character is an unprincipled social climber; which is essentially the moral norm in the society he lives in.

This. Also, I'm totally using your "Contrast with Wyndham" strategy the next time someone defends E. E. Doc Smith with "But he's good for the time!"

Just as an aside - I agree that Karel Capek was a serious writer, but he's not a serious writer - I've seldom laughed the way I did at parts of War with the Newts and The Absolute at Large .

Tad Williams was about the first person whose books felt like they had the same kind of authoritative weight as Tolkien. Fantastic writer, although his later stuff had some structural issues.

Also, he has some of the best book names ever. My favorite is Why Call Them Back from Heaven?

I mega-second Dilvish, the Damned and The Changing Land. These are my happy-place books - they're pulpy fantasy with just that touch of wry self-awareness that makes Zelazny so perfect when he's good.