Does a book count as a techno-thriller when it's set in 1973? The story features items that are high-tech for the time, but the time is a half-century ago.
(Chris Hadfield has written two of these, so far.)
I'd tend to fil;e that under "period fiction" myself, but it's not like genres are as such are really exclusive. "Techno-thriller" could easily also apply. You could make arguments for a lot of Jules Verne's work fitting that pairing as well.
Technothrillers written in the 1970s and set in the 70s are still technothrillers, so I can't see why one written now and set then wouldn't be. But yeah, classicdrogn is right -- it's also period fiction.
The important bit about 'techno-thriller' fiction is, IMO, that the technology and its implications are central to the plot. That it's talking about technology of what we consider yesteryear is irrelevant.
... does that make that movie about some fellow in the American South introducing fingerprinting to solve crimes - Melon-Head Williams or something - a techno-thriller?
Are you referring to Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson? I wish I could remember enough of it to give you an answer, but I last read it some forty or more years ago.
Ah, tes, that's the title! I'd forgotten if I ever knew it was by Twain, I just rmember some kid-rated movie from somewhere in the 80s or late 70s and that the plot hinged on determining the guilty party in ... I think what was tiptoed-around for the sake of the rating but in direct terms was a rape case? Anyway, the amazing new technique of fingerprint analysis played a pivotal role.
I don't really rmember, because Ghostbusters was the "fun" movie we rented for after the "educational" one, and, well, Ghostbusters.
(11-07-2023, 05:08 PM)classicdrogn Wrote: [ -> ]Ah, tes, that's the title! I'd forgotten if I ever knew it was by Twain, I just rmember some kid-rated movie from somewhere in the 80s or late 70s and that the plot hinged on determining the guilty party in ... I think what was tiptoed-around for the sake of the rating but in direct terms was a rape case? Anyway, the amazing new technique of fingerprint analysis played a pivotal role.
If it was (as I vaguely recall hearing at the time) a faithful adaptation of the original, it was a murder, not a rape. Also, it might be the book Pterry spoke of librarians being asked about, of which the reader could only recall that "it had a red cover and it turned out they were twins." (Well, sort of.)
Quote:I don't really rmember, because Ghostbusters was the "fun" movie we rented for after the "educational" one, and, well, Ghostbusters.
That'll do it, I guess. (Well, that and being however old you were at the time, I suspect.)
As for my original question, I've decided to go with "Period Thriller" for Chris Hadfield's novels. They don't quite focus enough on the tech to be techno-thrillers, on second thought and IMHO.