Tendo City

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/weekin....html?_r=2

So apparently some writers are kinda bitter about how being connected by wireless devices in ALL OF EVERYWHERE renders age old plot devices nearly useless.

Well, not really. There are work arounds, you just can't use the missed connection in a modern setting with ordinary people any more. But hey, if we ever get a colony started on Mars, it'll be there again every several months or so when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun, and that'll work fine until "mirroring" satellites are set up to bounce signals around the ol' man Sol.

But hey I've been noticing a lot of movies lately intentionally setting themselves in earlier periods. Works just fine.

Just be glad we don't have insta-repair nanotechnology yet. Then DEATH would be eliminated as a plot device :D, and shortly afterwards, you'd need to find something else besides CONFLICT to design a plot around :D.

"Oh noes! Now we can't have stories about people taking weeks or months to travel from one side of the country to the other because now cars and planes exist!"

So you either work with it, or make up a reason why those new things don't apply in this case. Like, as the article says, blowing up the key cellphone tower or something, for instance. :)

(I don't have a cell phone, and don't want one...)

Nostalgia has always been a popular motif in literature. Whenever technology improves our way of life, we long for the days when life was more difficult because it seemed more like an adventure back then. Then we write about people living in those days, add a few dragons, and voila! Literature is born! :)