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Counterpoint: the classic "The mote in God's eye", by Jerry Pournelle and David Niven. It's a great story, but the details aged so badly as to make it super dif
by the_biot 4y ago
Counterpoint: the classic "The mote in God's eye", by Jerry Pournelle and David Niven. It's a great story, but the details aged so badly as to make it super difficult to read. Spaceships that run exactly like 18th century British sailing ships, with all the class differences between grunts and officers, and everybody smokes (on a spaceship!), the woman are ornaments etc etc.
- snowwrestler 4y agoYeah, that’s a good example. Niven often would have characters riding through hyperspace with aliens but also smoking and being casually chauvinistic. Like if you took all the male characters in Mad Men and drafted them into interstellar war. Mote is actually one of the rare instances where the authors got the computer predictions right. All the characters carry hand computers that fit in their pockets, and all the rooms have big screens that can be used to display information. Not too far from how things work today.