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The Rise of Dismal Science Fiction
- autarch 9y agoCharles Stross incorporates economics into a lot of his writing. His two related novels Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood are all about the economics of a post-human society. The latter of the two has a really interesting take on crypto-currency. His Merchant Princes series is all about how a dimensional travelers exploit lack of economic knowledge in parallel worlds with less developed economies. And Halting State and Rule 34, two near future novels, both touch on economics and related themes quite a bit.
- cjsawyer 9y agoI had to check to see that your post wasn't a joke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_34_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_34_(novel) Ha! That really goes to show how important it is to google your prospective name before you decide on anything.
- recursive 9y agoHow does it show that? The title is a reference to the popular rule of the internet.
- philipkglass 9y agoIt's deliberate. The author lurked on 4chan as background research for the novel: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/interview-1.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/intervie... (See comments -- question 9, response by author 15)
- Jedd 9y agoI really enjoy reading Charlie's work, especially the speculation around transition societies. You can add Accelerando to the list of his works that include some serious consideration of economics (in a way that whilst reading you don't think, 'eww - economics' :) Actually, Singularity Sky also has a lot of good - and stealthy - economics material.
- gattr 9y agoI'd also mention P. F. Hamilton's "Fallen Dragon", where FTL travel is possible, colonization of a few nearby Earth-like planets has happened... but it's not economically viable after all, which leads to some twisted consequences.
- cpeterso 9y agoManu Saadia's Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek is kinda the reverse: it's an examination of Star Trek's post-scarcity economy, how matter replicators change everything, and what people do with their free time when they don't have to work. There's a big hole in Star Trek canon of how Earth transitioned from ST:TOS to the post-scarcity economy of ST:TNG. I would love to see Star Trek delve explore that era instead of rebooting and rehashing so many prequals. Here is a transcript from an NPR interview with Paul Krugman about Saadia's book: https://www.marketplace.org/2016/09/07/world/economist-paul-krugman-ponders-sci-fi-economics-star-trek https://www.marketplace.org/2016/09/07/world/economist-paul-...
- Semiapies 9y agoThe problem of telling the story of that transition is that it's like trying to go into detail about the physics in Cochrane's ship in First Contact—the writer would be trying to explain a completely made-up thing (warp drive or the TNG socio-economic system) that itself is nothing more than a handwave to allow stories to be told.
- lostcolony 9y agoNot really. It would be trying to describe the human element of the technology. We'd not be trying to explain the post-scarcity utopia, but -how humans first reacted to it-. Look at how humans act now. We have more than enough resources for everyone on earth to have sufficient food. And yet some starve. Why? Because of distribution problems, of corruption, etc. We expect people to work if they want to eat. Why? Because we culturally view it a moral failing if someone doesn't work without good reason (and even then we view those who have reason with suspicion). Look at the discussion around automation + UBI. Even if we assume automation can handle all the work that has to be done, people take the stance that it won't/shouldn't work, that it will only destabilize the economy, rather than improving everyone's lives. A replicator is just another form of automation in that regard, and there would be plenty of people who could object to it. Just because we have the technology doesn't mean it's initially available to everyone. And even when there's enough availability of the tech, some humans will try and regulate it, to protect the existing interests, and other selfish reasons, with various rationales. That would be -interesting-. Moreover, it would, like all good scifi, reflect our current society, by showing the same attitudes and concerns currently at play, but in a different, futuristic context (one that ideally challenges people's perceptions, but without the baggage that causes them to instinctively get defensive). I think it could make damned good television. Though, I think, it would be a far cry from what we expect from 'Star Trek'.
- locopati 9y agoJohn Brunner, Ursula Leguin and Alfred Bester (to name just a few) were covering this ground back in 60s and 70s.
- whyenot 9y agonot to mention Philip K. Dick
- mirimir 9y agoAs I started reading this, I had to recheck the date. Because this is such an old topic. I mean, haven't Stephenson and crew beaten it to death? And then he went and wrote D.O.D.O., which lacks even the thin edge of hope in Seveneves. Both of which I love, by the way.
- letlambda 9y agoYeah, but he feels sort of bad about it... http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/book/hieroglyph http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/book/hieroglyph All the way to the bank.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoSF is the only literary form to focus consistently on politics and economics. This goes back past Heinlein to the pulps of the 30s and 40s.
- mirimir 9y agoAnd further back, if you consider Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) to be SF. There is a flying island, after all. SF and fantasy give authors much greater leeway to challenge cherished beliefs. Because it's all so preposterous.
- walrus01 9y agoI don't even know how an article managed to mention dystopias and blade runner, in 2018, without even a mention of "Altered Carbon". That, and it ignores that "The Expanse" was a series of novels (I think there's like... eight books now?) a long time before it was a TV series. The novels go into a great deal more detail on the lives of the Belters and how the political situation depicted came about.
- dbcooper 9y agoAltered Carbon treats the brain as a computer that can have its hard drive swapped out. That's really stupid and a good reason to ignore it. It's also particularly poorly written.
- Semaphor 9y ago> Altered Carbon treats the brain as a computer that can have its hard drive swapped out To be fair, that's just magical alien technology. Humans don't even know how it works. > It's also particularly poorly written. The writing is not great but not horrible either. The plot is far ahead of the writing style though.
- posterboy 9y agoThe expanse has a little bit of what might count as hard sci-fi and the rest is just milking it for adventure storytelling in an admittedly capturing manner.
- Apocryphon 9y agoThe Expanse takes pains to treat space travel, combat, and so on in a hard sci-fi way to the point of making it seem rather mundane. But you're right- the point of the series is about the human element, which is actually relevant to the OP- >> Okay, so what you’re really asking me there is if this is hard science fiction. The answer is an emphatic no. I have nothing but respect for well written hard science fiction, and I wanted everything in the book to be plausible enough that it doesn’t get in the way. But the rigorous how-to with the math shown? It’s not that story. This is working man’s science fiction. It’s like in Alien, we meet the crew of the Nostromo doing their jobs in this very blue collar environment. They’re truckers, right? Why is there a room in the Nostromo where water leaks down off of chains suspended from the ceiling? Because it looks cool and makes the world feel a little messy. It gives you the feel of the world. Ridley Scott doesn’t explain why that room exists, and when most people watch the film, it never even occurs to them to ask. What kind of drive does the Nostromo use? I bet no one walked out of the film asking that question. I wanted to tell a story about humans living and working in a well populated solar system. I wanted to convey a feeling for what that would be like, and then tell a story about the people who live there. https://www.orbitbooks.net/interview/james-s-a-corey-2/ https://www.orbitbooks.net/interview/james-s-a-corey-2/
- beefman 9y agoThe film Tomorrowland (by Brad Bird) is a wonderful take on this. Like Iron Giant, it bombed in theaters. And somewhat ironically, got some of the worst reviews of any good movie I can think of.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI love Tomorrowland and I recommend it to all my friends. I'm sad it bombed; I only discovered it accidentally on Netflix last year. Now I rewatch it from time to time to get a boost of motivation and positive energy. I love this movie because it's positive about humans and future - which is unlike pretty much anything made in the last two decades. (Hell, it even goes meta on that point.)
- lykahb 9y agoThe examples in the articles used the economic ideas only as a building block, not as the primary motivation for writing the novels. I don't believe that Blade Runner is about recession more than the AI and humanity. Where good fiction uses ideas to supplement world-building, bad one would build the world to illustrate an idea.
- question_that 9y agoAs a simple guy I really miss monster of the week TV series. I watch The Expanse for the aliens. My favorite recent movie is Annihilation. Lately I've been reading fiction so old it's in the public domain.
- _coveredInBees 9y agoI think this article could have used a few more Amazon affiliate links. I always enjoy a well-researched article with lots of irrelevant cross-references.
- mpreda 9y agoBut no mention of PKD (Philip K. Dick) and his novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", on which the movie "Blade Runner" is based.. ?
- pjc50 9y agoBlade Runner the film has remarkably little economics in it, it's more of a post-colonial treatment: some runaway slaves from the colonies have escaped back to the motherland, where they are subjected to pseudo-scientific tests to deem them subhuman so they can be executed. The original PKD novel is much stranger and explicitly mentions a World War Three which has made a large number of animal species extinct. It's much more focused on the questions of mechanical substitutes for emotional relationships and the affect on the self.
- girvo 9y agoTo add to the recommendations, I’d like to mention Kim Stanley Robinson’s “New York 2140” which is heavily focused on the economic structures that he posits will arrive after future catastrophes driven by climate change. And the rather smug interludes are witty and amusing and somewhat depressing all at the same time.