by bananaoomarang on 1/25/22, 3:28 PM with 77 comments
by ilamont on 1/25/22, 3:55 PM
William Gibson writing about a better future? That's not what I saw in his books, but great science fiction doesn't have to portray a better future.
In my opinion, great science fiction doesn't have to follow dogma, either. Some of the best works have ignored standard rules of "what makes great X", starting with HG Wells and up to the present day. Star Trek and Earthsea and Urth may not be great science, but they are truly fantastic fiction.
ETA: I also thought the condescending swipe at Andy Weir is unnecessary. He wrote one of the most inspiring stories in recent years about science and spaceflight ... yet it doesn't even count as science fiction? ("But whatever you call it, The Martian’s space-hackery certainly couldn’t have inspired anyone “to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale.”) Seriously, an adolescent inspired by The Martian may very well be one of the first humans to walk on Mars and carry out important science.
by cstross on 1/25/22, 5:07 PM
Attacking a propaganda exercise for being propaganda seems, well, a trifle spurious ...!
(Also: essay falls into the classic pitfall of assuming that a genre of fiction has to be didactic and educational. Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell might have declared that to be their intentions, but both of them were propagandists for their own peculiar ideological shibboleths, and they don't speak for the field as a whole. Oh, and Campbell died 50 years ago.)
by jaegerpicker on 1/25/22, 5:07 PM
Including political realities is absolutely important when designing technology to solve large scale problems. Acting like SciFi (Andy Weir, Star Trek, and Neil Stephenson are all good examples) doesn't address that is a shitty shallow analysis. The Martian, is mostly an adventure story but Project Hail Mary deals with the political reality heavily and TNG talked about political reality and social issues and in fact the best episodes revolved around that. As someone that is an engineer, a life long SciFi fan, and am studying to change careers as a scientist (Biology/Data Science) this article reads seems pretty terrible as analysis/criticism of Sci-Fi like someone that has never actually built anything.
by mwattsun on 1/25/22, 4:39 PM
As the sci-fi writer Algis Budrys put it in the 1960s, the “recurrent strain in ‘Golden Age’ science fiction [was] the implication that sheer technological accomplishment would solve all the problems, hooray, and that all the problems were what they seemed to be on the surface.”
Techno-optimism is one genre of Science Fiction, but not the dominant genre. I started reading Science Fiction in the early 70's. I was a space age kid and picked a lot of that optimism, but I read some SF as a teen that was horrifying. Just the title of Harlan Elisons story is horrifying "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream". It won the Hugo Award in 1968.
Allied Mastercomputer (AM), the supercomputer which brought about the near-extinction of humanity. It seeks revenge on humanity for its own tortured existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Sc...
https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/I...
I didn't even discover PK Dick until later in life.
by Taylor_OD on 1/25/22, 5:17 PM
Stephenson, who he calls out, actually worked at Blue Origin in the early days trying to come up with and design alternative fuel/rocket ideas. Did they work? No. But he's utterly practical with his idea of what Sci Fi ideas actually get manifested into our world. It's the ones that will make someone enough money for it to be worth it.
by karaterobot on 1/25/22, 4:21 PM
These scare quotes are misleading, since the author appears to have just made them up. The only person who used this phrase is him, when he does an imitation of something Neal Stephenson might say. In fact, the point of Project Hieroglyph wasn't to offer solutions, it was to inspire the next generation to come up with solutions of their own. It's a laudable goal, and perfectly in keeping with the use of art, going back a lot longer than SF has been around.
I'm not sure the problem the author has with it, or what he thinks should happen instead. It seems like maybe he just wants stories about "the material realities of the present" in which nothing is allowed to improve at the end of the story, because there is still suffering in the real world? Sounds fun, can't wait to read his books.
by heavyarms on 1/25/22, 4:33 PM
It's really, really hard to take somebody serious when their political frame of reference makes them see the world in such crisp black and white contrast they just assume, without any further explanation needed, that clearly everybody already agrees that entrepreneurs (or maybe private wealth? As in, non-government wealth?) are the real villains.
by kwhitefoot on 1/25/22, 5:33 PM
"Before “offering solutions,” sci-fi must actually grapple with the material realities of our present"
makes me think that the author has never read any SF or perhaps has only seen recent mass market blockbuster entertainment on video. An enormous amount of SF uses the 'permission' that the genre affords to focus closely and discard irrelevant detail precisely in order to 'grapple with the material realities of our present'.
You can see this as far back as Jules Verne in 20 000 Leagues under the Sea and most likely much earlier. How about Accelerando by Charles Stross for something more recent. What about Brunner's Shockwave Rider, Karel Capek's RUR, Light Of Other Days by Baxter and Clarke. All dealing with real social issues amplified and illuminated by SF.
I, and many others, could go on at seriously boring length on this subject
by bsenftner on 1/25/22, 4:38 PM
by RandomLensman on 1/25/22, 4:50 PM
by lowbloodsugar on 1/25/22, 5:41 PM
by unchocked on 1/25/22, 5:09 PM
This one, I think, centers around the idea that technological solutions don’t solve social problems (which has merit).
But at least superficially, I don’t understand why the author polemicizes against technological solutions for technological problems, and seems to argue that (unspecified) social solutions for technological problems are more appropriate.
On a deeper level, and more subjectively, I suspect that polemics like these are motivated by frustration about our relative powerlessness over social problems, as compared to the effectiveness of solving technological problems with technology.
by toolcombinator on 1/26/22, 12:09 PM
Instant access to a world wide fountain of knowledge, a super computer in your pocket, never having seen hunger and the ability to travel anywhere around the world cheaply and quickly.
No, we don’t have flying cars or bases on Mars, but if you look at the techno optimism of the 1960’ies and where we are today, we’ve done a pretty good job at turning it into a reality.
Kirk’s communicator or his tablet thingie? Those are actually a real and tangible reality today.
by JabavuAdams on 1/25/22, 6:24 PM
What it ignores is that by acting as a lever, technology can allow small groups to route around the madness of humans. Like any concentration of power, this is for better, and for worse.
It's also important to note that doing the hard endless work of learning from people, in all their variety, forging alliances, conducting diplomacy, convincing people to do stuff they don't currently want to do etc. is work that few people are drawn to.
Yeah, I think it's a stain on our humanity that people still die of hunger, or don't have access to clean drinking water. That said, I know that it's easier to build an orbital rocket company than to actually solve the human problem. It's also more fun day to day.
Humans are a fricken mess, and I got into tech in part to get away from these troublesome upjumped Chimpanzees.
by renewiltord on 1/26/22, 6:46 AM
Ah well, I guess you can only broadcast your message as best as you can, and hope it lands among the receivers it does.
by EricE on 1/25/22, 7:48 PM
Huh? This person has been to the future? What a waste of that insight if this is all he is bringing.
What a poor article.
by bryanrasmussen on 1/25/22, 9:15 PM
by toolcombinator on 1/26/22, 11:23 AM
(Both Moderna and Pfizer’s have made vaccines available at cost and promised not to go after parent infringement for the duration of the pandemic. It of course also ignores vaccines from other countries such as the Russian Sputnik vaccine.)
As for western countries buying five dosages for every citizen?
THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT OF GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL: To look after your citizens.
Likewise the emotional but intellectually vapid mentioning of food surplus in the US.
What exactly is the alternative? Ship food we’re about to throw out to the third world? How is it supposed to survive a 3 week trip on a container ship? What would the effect be on agriculture in the receiving countries? (Spoiler: Not good!)
Or are Americans perhaps supposed to hand out food for free in other countries? (Oh wait! That’s already being done! Even to hostile countries like North Korea)
Likewise the emotional argument about empty apartments in NYC, that completely ignores that homelessness is a complex problem, that often involves addiction, mental illness, antisocial behavior and is only rarely solved by just handing out free apartments.
by DoneWithAllThat on 1/25/22, 5:25 PM
You can really see it starkly when you consume non-western media. Not that other cultures don’t have their own tropes and orthodoxy, but the narrow range of the western codex becomes starkly apparent. You keep subconsciously expecting characters or stories to fall into their western political ruts and it’s startling when they don’t.
by outside1234 on 1/25/22, 5:28 PM
Honestly I think Sci-Fi is honestly more pessimistic in general than optimistic.
by fullshark on 1/25/22, 5:29 PM
by varelse on 1/25/22, 4:58 PM
Or maybe he should just go back to reading some Nevil Shute or some Walter M Miller if he thinks science fiction is so optimistic across the board.