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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, the Culture series, and Vorkosigan Saga Sci Fi does tend to be bleak, these are the ones I can think o
by kadoban 3y ago
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, the Culture series, and Vorkosigan Saga
Sci Fi does tend to be bleak, these are the ones I can think of.
- smsm42 3y agoIt's not used to be. It used to be optimistic. But then I guess the creators thought that "real literature" should be more "complex" and started to put more fear and desolation in. After all, as we know, all happy futures are alike and all unhappy futures are unhappy in their own different ways.
- crooked-v 3y agoDystopic and deeply negative works of scifi date to the literal start of the modern genre. There's nothing at all new about using negative projections to critique or satirize the interests of the time. See: Gulliver, Frankenstein, Captain Nemo, the unnamed protagonist of The Time Machine, etc.
- Aeolun 3y agoStories without conflict are boring. Utopias have very little conflict, so it’s pretty boring to read or write about them.
- Terr_ 3y ago> Vorkosigan Saga Bujold ranks near Terry Pratchett in terms of my favorite re-readable books. Yeah, it's space opera, but it's damn good space opera.
- squigz 3y agoThe Culture series is some of the best scifi I've ever read - and indeed, very hopeful and optimistic. Thanks for the other recommendations!
- Vecr 3y agoSome people think that. I've heard description from multiple smart people along the lines of "empty and despairing" and "leaves me with an empty feeling at the end". I think they probably thought through the implications. I can't comment though, maybe some of the books in the series are different than others.
- squigz 3y agoImplications such as?
- Vecr 3y agoThere's various things, but one of the main problems these people probably have, as some of them are AI researchers/simulationists, is that the real goals of the AIs are very unclear. Simulations at a very high detail either work and are widely used or are faked (causing horrible implications if they really are faked), so it's likely the AIs use simulations in planning. It's even worse if the simulations are not faked at all, as the AIs would run thousands or millions of simulations of really horrible situations, testing different interventions. If they are trying to reduce suffering, even not as their sole concern, why are they doing this? If they aren't trying to reduce suffering very much, the mind control is not really in the "human"'s best interests, it's just to control them.
- kadoban 3y agoSome of the books are _definitely_ different than others. In whole, the universe can be seen as somewhat troubling as well, but the vast majority is quite optimisitic. The majority of the universe that is, bad things still do happen in the plot.