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Star Trek clearly has a communitarian, if not communist, economy. I would posit this as the left pole in sci-fi. Positing Star Wars as the capitalist right pole
by jackcosgrove 10y ago
Star Trek clearly has a communitarian, if not communist, economy. I would posit this as the left pole in sci-fi. Positing Star Wars as the capitalist right pole is not accurate though. The right pole in sci-fi is Dune, which is the middle ages in space.
For anyone not familiar with the Duniverse, it is a feudal order in which computers have been banned by the single human religion, because in ages past artificial intelligence became sentient and enslaved humanity. Humanity rebelled and won its freedom, and chose to ban computers to avoid history repeating itself. To maintain their interplanetary civilization, humans approach the capabilities of computers using intense training and psychotropic drugs.
Star Wars, on the other hand, is just a fantasy mishmash.
- subway 10y agoI've never taken the time to read/watch Dune, but this has certainly piqued my interest. Thanks
- jackcosgrove 10y agoDon't bother watching either production.
- DanCarvajal 10y agoTotally disagree, but I'm a David Lynch fan and even I will admit it's not actually a good movie. But if you've read the book you get a lot of what he was going for before people said "Dude, you can't have a four hour movie...." I find it a fascinating and enjoyable movie. The book is my single favorite book ever.
- ericd 10y agoRandom side note, but the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, about a version that was never made, is excellent.
- rbanffy 10y agoMaybe Netflix can get the rights and do a proper miniseries.
- ericd 10y agoI'd actually be really excited about that. Unfortunately, a lot of the original cast/crew are dead/a bit too old. Dali was to play the emperor, H.R. Giger, the artist who went on to do the design for the aliens in Alien, was doing the concept designs, but died not too long ago. Mick Jagger was playing the young Harkonnen prince, with Orson Welles as the Baron Harkonnen. The storyboard book and a lot of the concept art was completed, though, so I'm sure Netflix could still make a great go of it, and Jodorowski himself seems incredibly fired up for an 87 year old. He seems to have more fire in his belly than most 30 year olds.
- mikeash 10y agoI don't think any of the adaptations are worth watching, but the book is deservedly a classic. I don't know about the sequels, I've heard bad things and never tried them, but the original one is great.
- metaphorm 10y agofirst book is great. books 2 and 3 are worthy sequels. stop reading after the third book.
- tnecniv 10y agoI've only read the first trilogy, but some people maintain that the forth book is the best. I didn't like 2, but realized its necessity for 3.
- metaphorm 10y ago> in which computers have been banned by the single human religion computers beyond a certain level of technical capability, anyway. they do seem to have simpler kinds of machines. they just don't use AI for anything because it is considered blasphemous and dangerous. the subject of hyperspace navigation is an interesting one though. presumably the vastly powerful AI minds of the past could do it and so used their monopoly on that capability as a lever of power to ensure domination. the spice powered navigators seem to have developed an equivalent ability that operates by vastly different mechanisms (a kind of precognition applied to collisions with astronomical objects).
- tnecniv 10y ago> single human religion Dune actually has a number of religions [1], normally based on a fusion of modern-day religions. It's also worth noting that banned technology exists in Star Trek. The Earth government has banned genetic modification after the disaster that was the Eugenics War [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dune_religions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dune_religions [2] http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Eugenics_Wars http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Eugenics_Wars
- Arizhel 10y ago>The Earth government has banned genetic modification after the disaster that was the Eugenics War Yes, and it's not just Earth, it's the whole Federation, as seen with the problems Julian Bashir had in DS9. However, there's a big exception in the 2nd season episode of TNG where there's a colony genetically engineering kids with super immune systems and this creates a disease that infects Pulaski. Star Trek has a lot of inconsistencies.
- tnecniv 10y agoI couldn't remember if Bashir was modified at a planet inside the federation or not so I just kept it to Earth for safety.
- Arizhel 10y agoIt was a major plot point that Bashir was modified at all, and this made him basically "an illegal", and ineligible to serve in Starfleet. The planet had nothing to do with it, it was a Federation-wide law.
- vidarh 10y agoA more reasonable modern "left pole" in sci-fi is the Culture series, where the Culture is explicitly a post-scarcity society described by Banks himself as "socialism within; anarchy without" [1], and where Banks as an unabashed socialist actually did spend time thinking and writing about how he saw the implications of that (and how he saw this as rising out of the post-scarcity society he envisioned). Star Trek is much more ambiguous about it - they pay lip-service to the post-scarcity line, but still have people working jobs that seems unlikely to be attractive in a true post-scarcity situation, for example. [1] http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hx87 10y agoStar Trek is (like most 20th century SF) very bioconservative, so I wouldn't put it at the left pole.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoI think the right pole is Robert Heinlein's novels like Stranger In A Strange Land or Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.