5 ms·

A lot of key SF books in the cannon are dystopias 1984, We , Brave New World, Gulliver's travels could possibly be considered SF as well.

082349872349872 6y ago
I'm not sure that 1984 isn't just The Republic (an ancient greek's utopia) with minor differences. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 (Properly speaking, it's only truly dystopic for 13% of the population who are self-censoring Outer Party members https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975900 . Proles are free. The Inner Party is meritocratic. Presumably the Outer Party members are those who are both too snobbish to be proles yet insufficiently apt to join the Inner Party, so it is no wonder they —as some do in our present— make up for lack of ability via surplus of ideology. Someday I should try to write a short story in which the recently-promoted Syme is telling his new colleagues amusing anecdotes about this fellow Smith he used to work with: not a bad chap at heart, but frightfully prone to paranoid[1] conspiracy theories.) As for Brave New World, it's a (utilitarian) utopia, just one that doesn't have any room for English Literature teachers, so of course they'd be against it, wouldn't they? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24098309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24098309 We does seem truly dystopic, a precursor of the Paranoia RPG. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film) . I don't think it directly influenced Brave New World, however, because BNW can be constructed simply by taking the pillars of the pre-WWI world (church, family, wealth, etc.) and imagining a world where either things are reversed (e.g. doing one's duty doesn't mean putting off the pleasant to do the unpleasant. Doing one's duty is consuming pleasantries.) or, even more heretically, completely irrelevant (families, nuclear or otherwise. No need to straighten out who inherits what when money doesn't seem to be an issue.). Where BNW does agree with pre-WWI mores is in its class system, which is just handled more efficiently, if no less obviously, in the After-Ford future because people colour- rather than costume-code themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222905 (or, if costume doesn't suffice, refer to postal code.) For clear evidence of technical progress between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries, we can compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine with GPT-3. [1] Blair/Orwell > "I have said that at St Cyprian's we were not allowed to keep our own money. However, it was possible to hold back a shilling or two, and sometimes I used furtively to buy sweets which I kept hidden in the loose ivy on the playing-field wall. One day when I had been sent on an errand I went into a sweet-shop a mile or more from the school and bought some chocolates. As I came out of the shop I saw on the opposite pavement a small sharp-faced man who seemed to be staring very hard at my school cap. Instantly a horrible fear went through me. There could be no doubt as to who the man was. He was a spy placed there by Sambo! I turned away unconcernedly, and then, as though my legs were doing it of their own accord, broke into a clumsy run. But when I got round the next corner I forced myself to walk again, for to run was a sign of guilt, and obviously there would be other spies posted here and there about the town. All that day and the next I waited for the summons to the study, and was surprised when it did not come. It did not seem to me strange that the headmaster of a private school should dispose of an army of informers, and I did not even imagine that would have to pay them. I assumed that any adult, inside the school or outside, would collaborate voluntarily in preventing us from breaking the rules. Sambo was all-powerful; it was natural that his agent should be everywhere. When this episode happened I do not think I can have been less than twelve years old."
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Plato’s Republic is nothing like 1984 and to suggest so shows a deep, fundamental lack of knowledge on Plato’s conceptions of the soul, truth, beauty, and innumerable other things generally considered ‘positive.’
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    - soul: do you have a cite? I believe Plato is fairly orthodox in ascribing souls to people, not to the state. - truth: is what the rulers make of it http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D3%3Asection%3D389b http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... et seq and certainly would be undermined by the arts, necessitating heavy censorship http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D10%3Asection%3D607a http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... - beauty: does this occur in 1984? It's not in Goldstein at all, so I have nothing to parallel. In the meantime, Jowett's translation of Book V: > "Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of beauty, any more than the enthusiastic old men who in spite of wrinkles and ugliness continue to frequent the gymnasia. Yes, indeed, he said: according to present notions the proposal would be thought ridiculous. But then, I said, as we have determined to speak our minds, we must not fear the jests of the wits which will be directed against this sort of innovation; how they will talk of women's attainments both in music and gymnastic, and above all about their wearing armour and riding upon horseback!" makes me wonder if he'd had any exposure to Scyths, etc.? e.g. https://d30womf5coomej.cloudfront.net/c/d4/0cb93d1b-dc27-43dc-bc46-ed549fd6fa76.jpg https://d30womf5coomej.cloudfront.net/c/d4/0cb93d1b-dc27-43d... (from https://tapas.io/episode/1577942 https://tapas.io/episode/1577942 ) and compare http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~wald/lit/heroine_barbarian.html http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~wald/lit/heroine_barbarian.htm... (incidentally, "Who needs to wait for daylight? I just work by _sensus tactilis_." is a classical reference, but I recall neither poem nor author at the moment.)
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
bencollier49 6y ago
Arguably the stuff from the Golden Age wasn't quite so much that way inclined.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  We is 1920's
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Science_Fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Science_Fiction, the Golden Age was brief: 1938-1946.

082349872349872 6y ago

I'm not sure that 1984 isn't just The Republic (an ancient greek's utopia) with minor differences. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 (Properly speaking, it's only truly dystopic for 13% of the population who are self-censoring Outer Party members https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975900 . Proles are free. The Inner Party is meritocratic. Presumably the Outer Party members are those who are both too snobbish to be proles yet insufficiently apt to join the Inner Party, so it is no wonder they —as some do in our present— make up for lack of ability via surplus of ideology. Someday I should try to write a short story in which the recently-promoted Syme is telling his new colleagues amusing anecdotes about this fellow Smith he used to work with: not a bad chap at heart, but frightfully prone to paranoid[1] conspiracy theories.) As for Brave New World, it's a (utilitarian) utopia, just one that doesn't have any room for English Literature teachers, so of course they'd be against it, wouldn't they? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24098309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24098309 We does seem truly dystopic, a precursor of the Paranoia RPG. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film) . I don't think it directly influenced Brave New World, however, because BNW can be constructed simply by taking the pillars of the pre-WWI world (church, family, wealth, etc.) and imagining a world where either things are reversed (e.g. doing one's duty doesn't mean putting off the pleasant to do the unpleasant. Doing one's duty is consuming pleasantries.) or, even more heretically, completely irrelevant (families, nuclear or otherwise. No need to straighten out who inherits what when money doesn't seem to be an issue.). Where BNW does agree with pre-WWI mores is in its class system, which is just handled more efficiently, if no less obviously, in the After-Ford future because people colour- rather than costume-code themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222905 (or, if costume doesn't suffice, refer to postal code.) For clear evidence of technical progress between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries, we can compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine with GPT-3. [1] Blair/Orwell > "I have said that at St Cyprian's we were not allowed to keep our own money. However, it was possible to hold back a shilling or two, and sometimes I used furtively to buy sweets which I kept hidden in the loose ivy on the playing-field wall. One day when I had been sent on an errand I went into a sweet-shop a mile or more from the school and bought some chocolates. As I came out of the shop I saw on the opposite pavement a small sharp-faced man who seemed to be staring very hard at my school cap. Instantly a horrible fear went through me. There could be no doubt as to who the man was. He was a spy placed there by Sambo! I turned away unconcernedly, and then, as though my legs were doing it of their own accord, broke into a clumsy run. But when I got round the next corner I forced myself to walk again, for to run was a sign of guilt, and obviously there would be other spies posted here and there about the town. All that day and the next I waited for the summons to the study, and was surprised when it did not come. It did not seem to me strange that the headmaster of a private school should dispose of an army of informers, and I did not even imagine that would have to pay them. I assumed that any adult, inside the school or outside, would collaborate voluntarily in preventing us from breaking the rules. Sambo was all-powerful; it was natural that his agent should be everywhere. When this episode happened I do not think I can have been less than twelve years old."

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Plato’s Republic is nothing like 1984 and to suggest so shows a deep, fundamental lack of knowledge on Plato’s conceptions of the soul, truth, beauty, and innumerable other things generally considered ‘positive.’
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  - soul: do you have a cite? I believe Plato is fairly orthodox in ascribing souls to people, not to the state. - truth: is what the rulers make of it http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D3%3Asection%3D389b http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... et seq and certainly would be undermined by the arts, necessitating heavy censorship http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D10%3Asection%3D607a http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... - beauty: does this occur in 1984? It's not in Goldstein at all, so I have nothing to parallel. In the meantime, Jowett's translation of Book V: > "Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of beauty, any more than the enthusiastic old men who in spite of wrinkles and ugliness continue to frequent the gymnasia. Yes, indeed, he said: according to present notions the proposal would be thought ridiculous. But then, I said, as we have determined to speak our minds, we must not fear the jests of the wits which will be directed against this sort of innovation; how they will talk of women's attainments both in music and gymnastic, and above all about their wearing armour and riding upon horseback!" makes me wonder if he'd had any exposure to Scyths, etc.? e.g. https://d30womf5coomej.cloudfront.net/c/d4/0cb93d1b-dc27-43dc-bc46-ed549fd6fa76.jpg https://d30womf5coomej.cloudfront.net/c/d4/0cb93d1b-dc27-43d... (from https://tapas.io/episode/1577942 https://tapas.io/episode/1577942 ) and compare http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~wald/lit/heroine_barbarian.html http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~wald/lit/heroine_barbarian.htm... (incidentally, "Who needs to wait for daylight? I just work by _sensus tactilis_." is a classical reference, but I recall neither poem nor author at the moment.)
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago

bencollier49 6y ago

Arguably the stuff from the Golden Age wasn't quite so much that way inclined.

C1sc0cat 6y ago
We is 1920's
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Science_Fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Science_Fiction, the Golden Age was brief: 1938-1946.