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The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

ilamont 5y ago
Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace.” He called these examples hieroglyphs: clear, inspiring symbols of what a better future might hold. 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.
- kaycebasques 5y ago
  > William Gibson writing about a better future? That's not what I saw in his books Neuromancer definitely wasn't optimistic, but the description of the software agents (can't remember the terms Gibson used) were so cool that I would interpret it as a kind of inspiration (the cousin of optimism). I'm talking about how the main character would be making his way through cyberspace and he would see the other programs, people, etc. as 3D forms. I agree that this thesis around "SF needs to be usefully optimistic" is a bizarre presumption.
  - smnrchrds 5y ago
    Relevant comic: https://www.butajape.com/comic/sci-fi-predictions/ https://www.butajape.com/comic/sci-fi-predictions/ Make sure you read the description too.
    - kaycebasques 5y ago
      There are some interesting details in the last illustration. Seems like some hints around how the author thinks the real future will actually suck: * Water only being available in bottles, at a very high price * Cyborg tech * Militarized Boston Dynamics robots * Destroyed moon...?
  - at_a_remove 5y ago
    It is more than bizarre, it is a little scary. Looking through the various dystopian fics, films, whatever, they all started as someone's utopia. Somebody out there thought this was a great idea. And like most great ideas you will have disagreement, which must be dealt with, because it's a great idea. Can't have the nay-saying. And the transformation to dystopia begins. Just as an example from the article, a lot of the policy and planning around the pandemic assumed almost total compliance. This is not a reasonable assumption.
    - octopoc 5y ago
      > Looking through the various dystopian fics, films, whatever, they all started as someone's utopia. Exactly! This is always what happens when people have more loyalty to an ideology than to humans.
  - pbourke 5y ago
    “High technology within broken human systems” is how I’d describe much “cyberpunk” writing. Reading tons of it as a younger person has made the present feel eerily familiar. The most unrealistic part of most science fiction for me are not the warp drives and teleporters, but the human civilization that has found its way to post-scarcity.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      the essence of cyberpunk is about exactly where techno-libertarianism will lead. It was so subversive because it was at its core a critique of capitalism, pointed directly at golden age scifi.
- prox 5y ago
  Stargate SG-1 is holding up remarkably well as a long running series that documents the political climate of the day (collapse soviet union, rise of china as a power) as well technological advancements (the early computers in the series vs the final years with laptops and all) Notwithstanding the great chemistry of the actors and commentary on many aspects of society and interpersonal relationships.
  - toolcombinator 5y ago
    I always liked SGA better, but you’re definitely right about SG 1. Which of course begs another question: SG1 was made in a time that we can call the Golden Age of TV Sci fi, along with the Trek shows, Farscape and many more. (Though granted: SG1 is probably more of an action adventure show at heart, if you want to get anal about classifications.) Despite productions that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, why don’t we see show of the same quality today? Yeah, there’s The Expanse and The Orville, but those two are the only exceptions in a media landscape almost barren of good sci-fi like SG-1.
    - prox 5y ago
      The whole series spans almost two decades. I think the quality of SG-1 is really the chemistry between the characters, and not a lot of plot drifting. The Expanse is indeed the only character centered sci-fi at the moment, as I feel ST Discovery misses the mark on the chemistry bit. I was pleasantly surprised with acting and scope in The Foundation (Apple TV), but it isn’t SciFi in the vein of SG-1 (action adventurish as you note)
- someone7x 5y ago
  > yet it doesn't even count as science fiction? To be pedantic, it _did_ win a Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical, but your point stands that it should absolutely qualify as sci-fi.
- jordanpg 5y ago
  I think you missed the point of the Weir mention. The author wasn't taking a swipe at Weir (in the way that many sci-fi snobs do). He was discussing Weir in the taxonomy of Project Hieroglyph, which is clear from the full context: > In fact, The Martian was so modest that it may not have qualified as sci-fi in the first place. Cory Doctorow, another one of Stephenson’s Hieroglyph collaborators, uses the term “design fiction” to refer to works like Weir’s. 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.” The author is saying that Weir's Martian lacks a hieroglyph, which is to say that its problems are too narrow, too local, too provincial. It's missing inspiration on a "heroic scale."
  - ilamont 5y ago
    > He was discussing Weir in the taxonomy of Project Hieroglyph, which is clear from the full context I'm reading it as Weir's work doesn't count as science fiction, which goes beyond following Project Hieroglyph's rules: In fact, The Martian was so modest that it may not have qualified as sci-fi in the first place. Cory Doctorow, another one of Stephenson’s Hieroglyph collaborators, uses the term “design fiction” to refer to works like Weir’s.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      > Weir's work doesn't count as science fiction "The Martian" has only traces of Sci-Fi in it. "Project Hail Mary" definitely has more.
      - jaegerpicker 5y ago
        I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread, so at the risk of repeating myself, how does The Martian not qualify as Sci-Fi, hard Sci-Fi at that? Sure the majority of the tech exists today but not all of it (habs, the ships themselves, etc) and certainly not all of the tech has actually been built or tested. So it's set in the future, it's about scientists and science, it's about a big idea (even more so when it was written) - sending human's to Mars, and it's fiction. Honestly I don't understand how that can't be Sci-Fi through and through. Is it because the tech isn't vastly advanced over what we have now? Because 30 years ago smart phones were Sci-Fi, in 1870 submarines were Sci-Fi, in 1634 the moon and it's relationship with the Earth (Kepler's Somnium) was Sci-Fi. If those qualify I'm not sure how The Martian fails to. Again not offended at this, just really curious how people draw that conclusion.
- tomrod 5y ago
  > yet it doesn't even count as science fiction Very dubious that the article's author doesn't consider Hard Sci-Fi to be scifi. It calls into question their assessment of everything tangentially related.
- moomin 5y ago
  Article could have been titled “Andy Weir consider not to be something he never tried to be by a bunch of people who tried and failed”
karaterobot 5y ago
> Before “offering solutions,” sci-fi must actually grapple with the material realities of our present 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.
- ckozlowski 5y ago
  I agree. It also suffers from calling out sci-fi as some homogenous group that owes something to everyone else, and that's a premise I think is incorrect. The writer focuses a lot on Stephenson, and this whole article I think could be simplified by saying "I don't like Neal Stephenson's work because it's too optimistic." Great. But instead it casts it's premise way too wide, and ends up sounding ridiculous.
heavyarms 5y ago
> Remember, Stephenson’s target audience consisted of “scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and entrepreneurs.” Given his choice to court private wealth, it’s no surprise that Project Hieroglyph was doomed from the start. After all, you can’t very well expect to succeed as a hero if you stop to ask the villains for their permission. 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.
- ta2022012501 5y ago
  Yeah, I feel like there’s this absurd amount of commentary floating on the Internet that basically boils down to “the authors aren’t concerned with what really matters, which is to bring the socialist utopia to life”. Any kind of societal, economic, human and environmental ill is caused by capitalism, so anything that tries to solve actual problems instead of eliminating or weakening capitalism isn’t doing enough
  - long_time_gone 5y ago
    > Any kind of societal, economic, human and environmental ill is caused by capitalism, so anything that tries to solve actual problems instead of eliminating or weakening capitalism isn’t doing enough My entire life (40 years) has been feeding me the exact opposite propaganda. In the world I've lived in, capitalism is the answer to all of our ills. Things are only broken (like healthcare or education in the US) because they aren't capitalist enough. It's not really a surprise when the winners of capitalism own the news. I'm personally glad to see another angle. I thought that was one of the things we liked about the internet.
    - EricE 5y ago
      I'm at 50 years and I remember seeing live television pictures of East Berlin and wondering if what I was watching was black and white or color (black and white TV's were still pretty common) and it was always a shock when there was an unexpected splash of color in an otherwise gray and dystopian hellscape on the TV. Turns out the cameras and everything were color, there just wasn't much color from the environment for them to relay. For those so quick to shit on capitalism how about proposing something better? Yup, it's flawed, but that doesn't mean it's still not better than anything else we have tried. And the current flavor of the moment, socialism/communism, sure as hell isn't the answer. Want a good synopsis of how well such systems work in the real world? Grab a copy of the book of "The Hunt for Red October". Skip to the middle where they describe why Ramius's wife died and in particular why it was such a senseless death. Clancy does an awesome job of summarizing the biggest problem with any system that doesn't franchise every participant or provide them with natural incentives to execute their own enlightened self interest. Yup, there are aspects to capitalism that suck - but the answer isn't to chuck it wholesale for some pie in the sky replacement, but instead work on the aspects that suck. Many of them are well understood - most people can't be bothered to get off their ass and actually do something about it; preferring to bitch online and wait for someone else to fix it for them.
bsenftner 5y ago
I've never considered science fiction to be about science or technology, that's the candy coated vehicle for the real meat: the internal philosophy and interactions of the individuals facing an utter unknown, how they mentally deal with the situation, and how ever the outcome unfolds: how they continue.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  I wish I could vote this to the top!
mwattsun 5y ago
The future is notoriously hard to predict and attempting to deliberately shape it with SF seems like a quixotic idea. 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_Scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Sc... https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/I-Have-No-Mouth-But-I-Must-Scream-by-Harlan-Ellison.pdf https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/I... I didn't even discover PK Dick until later in life.
- Fomite 5y ago
  Indeed this comic, which has been around for quite some time, makes fun of sci-fi's tendency toward the opposite. https://imgur.com/gallery/n6vZCm2 https://imgur.com/gallery/n6vZCm2
- toolcombinator 5y ago
  Techno optimism wasn’t just a sci-fi thing, it was the spirit of the times to a large extent in the Western World and Eastern Block alike. All the “Better living through chemistry” and dreams of tiny nuclear power reactors in every car and house, providing virtually free energy to all. And to a certain extent THEY WERE RIGHT! The green revolution in the 60ies revolutionized agriculture, and made a world with more than a few billion people possible. Folks growing up in the 60ies were the first generation in Europe, the USSR and US (Heck, in many countries around the world) who grew up never having seen famine or real hunger. Things that were once unobtainable luxuries, like cars or airplane travel, became something within reach of regular people. The techno optimism might appear quaint today, but likewise we have forgotten just how much life has been transformed for the better.
RandomLensman 5y ago
Not sure where this really leads... The history of humans is sort of a tale of techno-optimism: fire, metals, plumbing, antibiotics, and so forth. Yes, technologies do create detrimental effects, but techno-pessimism or even techno-neutrality would have been a bad survival strategy so far.
varelse 5y ago
Sci-fi authors get to do whatever sci-fi authors wants to do. If the author of this hit piece has a problem with that then maybe the author should be writing science fiction that exemplifies what is apparently now required of it according to his new rules. 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.
jaegerpicker 5y ago
Not to be offensive but this article made me feel dumber just reading it. THE MARTIAN isn't enough to inspire people to pursue science? Why? Because it uses clever ideas to "work the problem"? I'm not sure about his background but that is pretty much the only way to solve problems in the real world. Servers down you "work the problem", a researcher who doesn't understand why data looks like it does - "work the problem", trapped on Mars - "work the problem". Then he talks about reality and how Sci-Fi doesn't match up with reality!? 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.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  hey, I loved The Martian too (the book moreso than the film but only because the book was so great) - but it really isn't SciFi, or at least what I'd describe as SciFi. It's set in the modern day using modern day technology. That's not an insult, it's just a categorisation.
  - jaegerpicker 5y ago
    Um Science fiction is literally fiction about science. I'm not sure how ANY definition of Sci-Fi doesn't fit The Martian. It's about Scientist's using Science to do something that we literally can't do today. We believe we know how to travel and land on Mars and we are probably absolutely correct. We haven't done it yet. I don't see how The Martian doesn't qualify.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      how about the Wikipedia definition? > Science fiction (sometimes shortened to sci-fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. It has been called the "literature of ideas", and it often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations.[1][2] That definition doesn't really fit The Martian. If your headcanon definition of SciFi does include The Martian then that's fine, but I don't really understand how you think excluding it from the category is an insult when for most common definitions it doesn't really fit well. In my mind, SciFi is Asimov's Foundation series, or Star Trek, or Dune. It's set in the future or an alternative universe with considerably different, more advanced technology than modern-day reality. The Martian is set 13 years from now, using today's technology.
cstross 5y ago
SF author here: I was invited to participate in Project Hieroglyph and declined to do so, because the explicit remit was essentially to write panglossian techno-optimism rather than downbeat realist-mode depictions of our more likely futures. 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.)
- toolcombinator 5y ago
  If you look back at sci-fi from the 60ies, despite it appearing utopian today, it often dealt with the anxieties and issues of the day. Trek is a good example. It’s often hailed as “utopian” and “visionary” today, totally ignoring the Cold War themes, fear of technology (Just look at how many times Kirk faced an intelligent computer antagonist!), overpopulation and of course the counter culture. In the space hippie episode (Which Way to Eden?) Spock even talks about the discomfort many people feel with technology and the universal longing for a pre-technological eden.
  - cstross 5y ago
    There's also survivorship bias at work here -- the SF we remember from the 1960s tends to be stuff that was initially popular and has stood the test of time. (There was a lot of terrible SF in the 1960s, and it was still cluttering up the second hand bookshops when I was strip-mining them in the 1970s.)
unchocked 5y ago
I try to read these polemics to uncover the seams of my own techno-optimistic worldview. 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.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  The argument is that techno-optimism is about pretending that social problems are technological problems so that we can fix them with technology - which is much more easy to deal with than solving the actual social problem. An example would be trying to solve climate collapse with carbon sequestration technology while continuing to run the world on fossil fuel. The continued dependence on fossil fuel is a political problem, not a technological one - we have the tools to move beyond fossil fuel in most areas of application. We can't always invent our way out of problems that are borne of our misaligned incentives.
  - somenameforme 5y ago
    How is it pretending? If we go back some time there might have been a parallel argument being made where one side was convinced that the solution to enable greater food stability and surplus was more farmers, and the other side was convinced that the solution was better technology. Neither side is really wrong, they just have different perspectives. Most problems can be solved in a practically infinite number of ways.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      Well for example, we are producing far too much CO2 and plastic, and slowly killing our planet. Renewable energy has already been invented, but we continue to do these things because it is profitable. Unless we can invent replacements for existing CO2- and plastic-producing processes that are even more profitable, the status quo will continue. I don't have an issue with trying to do said inventing, but when we put all our eggs into the deus ex machina invention basket, we are ignoring the sociological roots of the pollution, the fact that we could realistically stop now if only we had the political will, and instead opting for a hail mary. I also find it frustrating that many of the people holding out for a tech fix are libertarians, and will actively oppose political solutions in favour of their faith in the free market.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
Did anyone else read this article and still not really get the point the author is trying to make? Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed or finished a sci fi novel last night that ended with a little too much like Bruce Willis Saves The Day. 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.
- hideo 5y ago
  Yeah I re-read it 3-something times and I have no idea what's going on here. Here's what I took away - Most Sci Fi is too dystopian - Project Heiroglyph forced authors to be techno optimist and it didn't go anywhere - Authors must deal with human malfeasance (isn't that just the dystopian fiction that he is against) - ??? - Profit?
  - toolcombinator 5y ago
    Don’t forget: “Entrepreneurs are evil!” Because you know, entrepreneurs aren’t an integral part of who helps shape the future. They’re evil capitalists. And in the future they’ll be evil space capitalists.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  What many people here are sadly not getting is that this article is a critique, but not primarily of Sci-Fi in general, but of "Project Hieroglyph" (1) A specific attempt to make Sci-Fi more usefully optimistic, and the flaws in it. Project Hieroglyph launched in 2011 (2) and is now dead or dormant. Sci-fi has of course always veered wildly between impossible wide-eyed utopian space technomancy (e.g. Star Trek) and grimdark dystopia (e.g. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream). Project Hieroglyph was a optimistic rejection of both of those. The article concludes "the subsequent years have shown, optimism has very real limits", because unfortunately, as you probably already know, people. If commenters here are not familiar with Project Hieroglyph and just want to ramble about sci-fi in general, go ahead but don't mistake that for a relevant criticism of the original article. 1) https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/ https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/ 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hieroglyph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hieroglyph
DoneWithAllThat 5y ago
I read this as the author viewing media through a very modern (and deformed) lens: that books, TVs and movies should have a message and that message should be correct and proper for the current dogma. The idea of a story not conveying some kind of appropriate (usually left wing) morality is totally alien to them. I’ve seen this more and more - younger people seeing older movies like Scott Pilgrim (to take an example) and seem alternately aghast or baffled that the protagonist isn’t a paragon of politically correct virtue. “What am I supposed to take away from this?” is the typical refrain (or a variant of it). They’re utterly confused by the idea of characters not conforming to political and ideological stereotypes. It’s caused this winnowing of acceptable tropes and themes and frankly made most modern media extremely frustrating to consume. 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.
outside1234 5y ago
Techno-optimism? He clearly hasn't read The Expanse, Dune, or Red Rising series (all recommended by the way :)). Honestly I think Sci-Fi is honestly more pessimistic in general than optimistic.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  Or even Neal Stephenson’s latest book, attempts to grapple with the clash of techno-optimists and politicians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)
- dagss 5y ago
  The article, if you read it, does not disagree with you. It is discussing an initiative someone took to attempt to create more positive scifi.
fullshark 5y ago
Yeah yeah, everything has to reflect your own political opinions, and all cultural failures are due not doing it enough. Read this piece many times.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
The first sentence I saw when following the link: "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
lowbloodsugar 5y ago
Stephenson himself appears to have decided that such naivety doesn't help, and has returned to form with 2019's Fall [1]. In it he goes so far as to wonder if the last 300 years of science and facts are coming to an end, and we are returning to the rule of kings and priests. In the past, the kings and priests had a monopoly on what the populace think. For a brief 300 years we had science and facts being communicated to everyone and the kings and priests lost control. Now, the kings and priests have found a way to saturate the communication with noise (and lies and half-truths) so that their messages appear as valid as any other. [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KL61VYS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KL61VYS
JabavuAdams 5y ago
Though I don't agree with all of it, this is an insightful article. The people are the problem. Technological solutions that ignore our human foibles are extremely likely to fail. 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.
EricE 5y ago
"Star Trek wowed us with visions of warp drives, holodecks, replicators, teleporters, and a slew of other high-tech wish-fulfillment devices. There was only one problem: Many of these technologies could never actually exist." 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.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
If you spend a lot of time keeping stuff out of your Science Fiction garden that many people might otherwise let in, don't get upset when the people with the Literary Fiction gardens won't let your Science Fiction in.
renewiltord 5y ago
Damn, literary criticism is hard. You can’t really tell people anything without the shared context. I totally get the characterization they’re getting at and the distinction between (say) Diamond Age and The Martian and I can’t think of any words more than what they’ve come up with, but clearly that infuriates some Andy Weir fans (I’m a fan but not in the infuriated-by-this category). Ah well, I guess you can only broadcast your message as best as you can, and hope it lands among the receivers it does.
toolcombinator 5y ago
I just can’t take it seriously when the author presents such falsehoods as Western “vaccine greed”. (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.
toolcombinator 5y ago
Imagine sitting and complaining about “techno optimism”, when the very thing you write your screed on, is a product of it. 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.

Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace.” He called these examples hieroglyphs: clear, inspiring symbols of what a better future might hold. 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.

kaycebasques 5y ago
> William Gibson writing about a better future? That's not what I saw in his books Neuromancer definitely wasn't optimistic, but the description of the software agents (can't remember the terms Gibson used) were so cool that I would interpret it as a kind of inspiration (the cousin of optimism). I'm talking about how the main character would be making his way through cyberspace and he would see the other programs, people, etc. as 3D forms. I agree that this thesis around "SF needs to be usefully optimistic" is a bizarre presumption.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  Relevant comic: https://www.butajape.com/comic/sci-fi-predictions/ https://www.butajape.com/comic/sci-fi-predictions/ Make sure you read the description too.
  - kaycebasques 5y ago
    There are some interesting details in the last illustration. Seems like some hints around how the author thinks the real future will actually suck: * Water only being available in bottles, at a very high price * Cyborg tech * Militarized Boston Dynamics robots * Destroyed moon...?
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  It is more than bizarre, it is a little scary. Looking through the various dystopian fics, films, whatever, they all started as someone's utopia. Somebody out there thought this was a great idea. And like most great ideas you will have disagreement, which must be dealt with, because it's a great idea. Can't have the nay-saying. And the transformation to dystopia begins. Just as an example from the article, a lot of the policy and planning around the pandemic assumed almost total compliance. This is not a reasonable assumption.
  - octopoc 5y ago
    > Looking through the various dystopian fics, films, whatever, they all started as someone's utopia. Exactly! This is always what happens when people have more loyalty to an ideology than to humans.
- pbourke 5y ago
  “High technology within broken human systems” is how I’d describe much “cyberpunk” writing. Reading tons of it as a younger person has made the present feel eerily familiar. The most unrealistic part of most science fiction for me are not the warp drives and teleporters, but the human civilization that has found its way to post-scarcity.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    the essence of cyberpunk is about exactly where techno-libertarianism will lead. It was so subversive because it was at its core a critique of capitalism, pointed directly at golden age scifi.
prox 5y ago
Stargate SG-1 is holding up remarkably well as a long running series that documents the political climate of the day (collapse soviet union, rise of china as a power) as well technological advancements (the early computers in the series vs the final years with laptops and all) Notwithstanding the great chemistry of the actors and commentary on many aspects of society and interpersonal relationships.
- toolcombinator 5y ago
  I always liked SGA better, but you’re definitely right about SG 1. Which of course begs another question: SG1 was made in a time that we can call the Golden Age of TV Sci fi, along with the Trek shows, Farscape and many more. (Though granted: SG1 is probably more of an action adventure show at heart, if you want to get anal about classifications.) Despite productions that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, why don’t we see show of the same quality today? Yeah, there’s The Expanse and The Orville, but those two are the only exceptions in a media landscape almost barren of good sci-fi like SG-1.
  - prox 5y ago
    The whole series spans almost two decades. I think the quality of SG-1 is really the chemistry between the characters, and not a lot of plot drifting. The Expanse is indeed the only character centered sci-fi at the moment, as I feel ST Discovery misses the mark on the chemistry bit. I was pleasantly surprised with acting and scope in The Foundation (Apple TV), but it isn’t SciFi in the vein of SG-1 (action adventurish as you note)
someone7x 5y ago
> yet it doesn't even count as science fiction? To be pedantic, it _did_ win a Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical, but your point stands that it should absolutely qualify as sci-fi.
jordanpg 5y ago
I think you missed the point of the Weir mention. The author wasn't taking a swipe at Weir (in the way that many sci-fi snobs do). He was discussing Weir in the taxonomy of Project Hieroglyph, which is clear from the full context: > In fact, The Martian was so modest that it may not have qualified as sci-fi in the first place. Cory Doctorow, another one of Stephenson’s Hieroglyph collaborators, uses the term “design fiction” to refer to works like Weir’s. 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.” The author is saying that Weir's Martian lacks a hieroglyph, which is to say that its problems are too narrow, too local, too provincial. It's missing inspiration on a "heroic scale."
- ilamont 5y ago
  > He was discussing Weir in the taxonomy of Project Hieroglyph, which is clear from the full context I'm reading it as Weir's work doesn't count as science fiction, which goes beyond following Project Hieroglyph's rules: In fact, The Martian was so modest that it may not have qualified as sci-fi in the first place. Cory Doctorow, another one of Stephenson’s Hieroglyph collaborators, uses the term “design fiction” to refer to works like Weir’s.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > Weir's work doesn't count as science fiction "The Martian" has only traces of Sci-Fi in it. "Project Hail Mary" definitely has more.
    - jaegerpicker 5y ago
      I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread, so at the risk of repeating myself, how does The Martian not qualify as Sci-Fi, hard Sci-Fi at that? Sure the majority of the tech exists today but not all of it (habs, the ships themselves, etc) and certainly not all of the tech has actually been built or tested. So it's set in the future, it's about scientists and science, it's about a big idea (even more so when it was written) - sending human's to Mars, and it's fiction. Honestly I don't understand how that can't be Sci-Fi through and through. Is it because the tech isn't vastly advanced over what we have now? Because 30 years ago smart phones were Sci-Fi, in 1870 submarines were Sci-Fi, in 1634 the moon and it's relationship with the Earth (Kepler's Somnium) was Sci-Fi. If those qualify I'm not sure how The Martian fails to. Again not offended at this, just really curious how people draw that conclusion.
tomrod 5y ago
> yet it doesn't even count as science fiction Very dubious that the article's author doesn't consider Hard Sci-Fi to be scifi. It calls into question their assessment of everything tangentially related.
moomin 5y ago
Article could have been titled “Andy Weir consider not to be something he never tried to be by a bunch of people who tried and failed”

karaterobot 5y ago

> Before “offering solutions,” sci-fi must actually grapple with the material realities of our present 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.

ckozlowski 5y ago
I agree. It also suffers from calling out sci-fi as some homogenous group that owes something to everyone else, and that's a premise I think is incorrect. The writer focuses a lot on Stephenson, and this whole article I think could be simplified by saying "I don't like Neal Stephenson's work because it's too optimistic." Great. But instead it casts it's premise way too wide, and ends up sounding ridiculous.

heavyarms 5y ago

> Remember, Stephenson’s target audience consisted of “scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and entrepreneurs.” Given his choice to court private wealth, it’s no surprise that Project Hieroglyph was doomed from the start. After all, you can’t very well expect to succeed as a hero if you stop to ask the villains for their permission. 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.

ta2022012501 5y ago
Yeah, I feel like there’s this absurd amount of commentary floating on the Internet that basically boils down to “the authors aren’t concerned with what really matters, which is to bring the socialist utopia to life”. Any kind of societal, economic, human and environmental ill is caused by capitalism, so anything that tries to solve actual problems instead of eliminating or weakening capitalism isn’t doing enough
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  > Any kind of societal, economic, human and environmental ill is caused by capitalism, so anything that tries to solve actual problems instead of eliminating or weakening capitalism isn’t doing enough My entire life (40 years) has been feeding me the exact opposite propaganda. In the world I've lived in, capitalism is the answer to all of our ills. Things are only broken (like healthcare or education in the US) because they aren't capitalist enough. It's not really a surprise when the winners of capitalism own the news. I'm personally glad to see another angle. I thought that was one of the things we liked about the internet.
  - EricE 5y ago
    I'm at 50 years and I remember seeing live television pictures of East Berlin and wondering if what I was watching was black and white or color (black and white TV's were still pretty common) and it was always a shock when there was an unexpected splash of color in an otherwise gray and dystopian hellscape on the TV. Turns out the cameras and everything were color, there just wasn't much color from the environment for them to relay. For those so quick to shit on capitalism how about proposing something better? Yup, it's flawed, but that doesn't mean it's still not better than anything else we have tried. And the current flavor of the moment, socialism/communism, sure as hell isn't the answer. Want a good synopsis of how well such systems work in the real world? Grab a copy of the book of "The Hunt for Red October". Skip to the middle where they describe why Ramius's wife died and in particular why it was such a senseless death. Clancy does an awesome job of summarizing the biggest problem with any system that doesn't franchise every participant or provide them with natural incentives to execute their own enlightened self interest. Yup, there are aspects to capitalism that suck - but the answer isn't to chuck it wholesale for some pie in the sky replacement, but instead work on the aspects that suck. Many of them are well understood - most people can't be bothered to get off their ass and actually do something about it; preferring to bitch online and wait for someone else to fix it for them.

bsenftner 5y ago

I've never considered science fiction to be about science or technology, that's the candy coated vehicle for the real meat: the internal philosophy and interactions of the individuals facing an utter unknown, how they mentally deal with the situation, and how ever the outcome unfolds: how they continue.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
I wish I could vote this to the top!

mwattsun 5y ago

The future is notoriously hard to predict and attempting to deliberately shape it with SF seems like a quixotic idea. 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_Scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Sc... https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/I-Have-No-Mouth-But-I-Must-Scream-by-Harlan-Ellison.pdf https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/I... I didn't even discover PK Dick until later in life.

Fomite 5y ago
Indeed this comic, which has been around for quite some time, makes fun of sci-fi's tendency toward the opposite. https://imgur.com/gallery/n6vZCm2 https://imgur.com/gallery/n6vZCm2
toolcombinator 5y ago
Techno optimism wasn’t just a sci-fi thing, it was the spirit of the times to a large extent in the Western World and Eastern Block alike. All the “Better living through chemistry” and dreams of tiny nuclear power reactors in every car and house, providing virtually free energy to all. And to a certain extent THEY WERE RIGHT! The green revolution in the 60ies revolutionized agriculture, and made a world with more than a few billion people possible. Folks growing up in the 60ies were the first generation in Europe, the USSR and US (Heck, in many countries around the world) who grew up never having seen famine or real hunger. Things that were once unobtainable luxuries, like cars or airplane travel, became something within reach of regular people. The techno optimism might appear quaint today, but likewise we have forgotten just how much life has been transformed for the better.

RandomLensman 5y ago

Not sure where this really leads... The history of humans is sort of a tale of techno-optimism: fire, metals, plumbing, antibiotics, and so forth. Yes, technologies do create detrimental effects, but techno-pessimism or even techno-neutrality would have been a bad survival strategy so far.

varelse 5y ago

Sci-fi authors get to do whatever sci-fi authors wants to do. If the author of this hit piece has a problem with that then maybe the author should be writing science fiction that exemplifies what is apparently now required of it according to his new rules. 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.

jaegerpicker 5y ago

Not to be offensive but this article made me feel dumber just reading it. THE MARTIAN isn't enough to inspire people to pursue science? Why? Because it uses clever ideas to "work the problem"? I'm not sure about his background but that is pretty much the only way to solve problems in the real world. Servers down you "work the problem", a researcher who doesn't understand why data looks like it does - "work the problem", trapped on Mars - "work the problem". Then he talks about reality and how Sci-Fi doesn't match up with reality!? 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.

beaconstudios 5y ago
hey, I loved The Martian too (the book moreso than the film but only because the book was so great) - but it really isn't SciFi, or at least what I'd describe as SciFi. It's set in the modern day using modern day technology. That's not an insult, it's just a categorisation.
- jaegerpicker 5y ago
  Um Science fiction is literally fiction about science. I'm not sure how ANY definition of Sci-Fi doesn't fit The Martian. It's about Scientist's using Science to do something that we literally can't do today. We believe we know how to travel and land on Mars and we are probably absolutely correct. We haven't done it yet. I don't see how The Martian doesn't qualify.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    how about the Wikipedia definition? > Science fiction (sometimes shortened to sci-fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. It has been called the "literature of ideas", and it often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations.[1][2] That definition doesn't really fit The Martian. If your headcanon definition of SciFi does include The Martian then that's fine, but I don't really understand how you think excluding it from the category is an insult when for most common definitions it doesn't really fit well. In my mind, SciFi is Asimov's Foundation series, or Star Trek, or Dune. It's set in the future or an alternative universe with considerably different, more advanced technology than modern-day reality. The Martian is set 13 years from now, using today's technology.

cstross 5y ago

SF author here: I was invited to participate in Project Hieroglyph and declined to do so, because the explicit remit was essentially to write panglossian techno-optimism rather than downbeat realist-mode depictions of our more likely futures. 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.)

toolcombinator 5y ago
If you look back at sci-fi from the 60ies, despite it appearing utopian today, it often dealt with the anxieties and issues of the day. Trek is a good example. It’s often hailed as “utopian” and “visionary” today, totally ignoring the Cold War themes, fear of technology (Just look at how many times Kirk faced an intelligent computer antagonist!), overpopulation and of course the counter culture. In the space hippie episode (Which Way to Eden?) Spock even talks about the discomfort many people feel with technology and the universal longing for a pre-technological eden.
- cstross 5y ago
  There's also survivorship bias at work here -- the SF we remember from the 1960s tends to be stuff that was initially popular and has stood the test of time. (There was a lot of terrible SF in the 1960s, and it was still cluttering up the second hand bookshops when I was strip-mining them in the 1970s.)

unchocked 5y ago

I try to read these polemics to uncover the seams of my own techno-optimistic worldview. 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.

beaconstudios 5y ago
The argument is that techno-optimism is about pretending that social problems are technological problems so that we can fix them with technology - which is much more easy to deal with than solving the actual social problem. An example would be trying to solve climate collapse with carbon sequestration technology while continuing to run the world on fossil fuel. The continued dependence on fossil fuel is a political problem, not a technological one - we have the tools to move beyond fossil fuel in most areas of application. We can't always invent our way out of problems that are borne of our misaligned incentives.
- somenameforme 5y ago
  How is it pretending? If we go back some time there might have been a parallel argument being made where one side was convinced that the solution to enable greater food stability and surplus was more farmers, and the other side was convinced that the solution was better technology. Neither side is really wrong, they just have different perspectives. Most problems can be solved in a practically infinite number of ways.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    Well for example, we are producing far too much CO2 and plastic, and slowly killing our planet. Renewable energy has already been invented, but we continue to do these things because it is profitable. Unless we can invent replacements for existing CO2- and plastic-producing processes that are even more profitable, the status quo will continue. I don't have an issue with trying to do said inventing, but when we put all our eggs into the deus ex machina invention basket, we are ignoring the sociological roots of the pollution, the fact that we could realistically stop now if only we had the political will, and instead opting for a hail mary. I also find it frustrating that many of the people holding out for a tech fix are libertarians, and will actively oppose political solutions in favour of their faith in the free market.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

Did anyone else read this article and still not really get the point the author is trying to make? Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed or finished a sci fi novel last night that ended with a little too much like Bruce Willis Saves The Day. 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.

hideo 5y ago
Yeah I re-read it 3-something times and I have no idea what's going on here. Here's what I took away - Most Sci Fi is too dystopian - Project Heiroglyph forced authors to be techno optimist and it didn't go anywhere - Authors must deal with human malfeasance (isn't that just the dystopian fiction that he is against) - ??? - Profit?
- toolcombinator 5y ago
  Don’t forget: “Entrepreneurs are evil!” Because you know, entrepreneurs aren’t an integral part of who helps shape the future. They’re evil capitalists. And in the future they’ll be evil space capitalists.
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
What many people here are sadly not getting is that this article is a critique, but not primarily of Sci-Fi in general, but of "Project Hieroglyph" (1) A specific attempt to make Sci-Fi more usefully optimistic, and the flaws in it. Project Hieroglyph launched in 2011 (2) and is now dead or dormant. Sci-fi has of course always veered wildly between impossible wide-eyed utopian space technomancy (e.g. Star Trek) and grimdark dystopia (e.g. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream). Project Hieroglyph was a optimistic rejection of both of those. The article concludes "the subsequent years have shown, optimism has very real limits", because unfortunately, as you probably already know, people. If commenters here are not familiar with Project Hieroglyph and just want to ramble about sci-fi in general, go ahead but don't mistake that for a relevant criticism of the original article. 1) https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/ https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/ 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hieroglyph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hieroglyph

DoneWithAllThat 5y ago

I read this as the author viewing media through a very modern (and deformed) lens: that books, TVs and movies should have a message and that message should be correct and proper for the current dogma. The idea of a story not conveying some kind of appropriate (usually left wing) morality is totally alien to them. I’ve seen this more and more - younger people seeing older movies like Scott Pilgrim (to take an example) and seem alternately aghast or baffled that the protagonist isn’t a paragon of politically correct virtue. “What am I supposed to take away from this?” is the typical refrain (or a variant of it). They’re utterly confused by the idea of characters not conforming to political and ideological stereotypes. It’s caused this winnowing of acceptable tropes and themes and frankly made most modern media extremely frustrating to consume. 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.

outside1234 5y ago

Techno-optimism? He clearly hasn't read The Expanse, Dune, or Red Rising series (all recommended by the way :)). Honestly I think Sci-Fi is honestly more pessimistic in general than optimistic.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago
Or even Neal Stephenson’s latest book, attempts to grapple with the clash of techno-optimists and politicians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)
dagss 5y ago
The article, if you read it, does not disagree with you. It is discussing an initiative someone took to attempt to create more positive scifi.

fullshark 5y ago

Yeah yeah, everything has to reflect your own political opinions, and all cultural failures are due not doing it enough. Read this piece many times.

kwhitefoot 5y ago

The first sentence I saw when following the link: "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

lowbloodsugar 5y ago

Stephenson himself appears to have decided that such naivety doesn't help, and has returned to form with 2019's Fall [1]. In it he goes so far as to wonder if the last 300 years of science and facts are coming to an end, and we are returning to the rule of kings and priests. In the past, the kings and priests had a monopoly on what the populace think. For a brief 300 years we had science and facts being communicated to everyone and the kings and priests lost control. Now, the kings and priests have found a way to saturate the communication with noise (and lies and half-truths) so that their messages appear as valid as any other. [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KL61VYS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KL61VYS

JabavuAdams 5y ago

Though I don't agree with all of it, this is an insightful article. The people are the problem. Technological solutions that ignore our human foibles are extremely likely to fail. 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.

EricE 5y ago

"Star Trek wowed us with visions of warp drives, holodecks, replicators, teleporters, and a slew of other high-tech wish-fulfillment devices. There was only one problem: Many of these technologies could never actually exist." 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.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

If you spend a lot of time keeping stuff out of your Science Fiction garden that many people might otherwise let in, don't get upset when the people with the Literary Fiction gardens won't let your Science Fiction in.

renewiltord 5y ago

Damn, literary criticism is hard. You can’t really tell people anything without the shared context. I totally get the characterization they’re getting at and the distinction between (say) Diamond Age and The Martian and I can’t think of any words more than what they’ve come up with, but clearly that infuriates some Andy Weir fans (I’m a fan but not in the infuriated-by-this category). Ah well, I guess you can only broadcast your message as best as you can, and hope it lands among the receivers it does.

toolcombinator 5y ago

I just can’t take it seriously when the author presents such falsehoods as Western “vaccine greed”. (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.

toolcombinator 5y ago

Imagine sitting and complaining about “techno optimism”, when the very thing you write your screed on, is a product of it. 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.