5 ms·

"...but as far as themes go, I’m more inspired by [authors who are] usually clearly anti-capitalist, criticizing scenarios used in Golden Age science fiction —

"...but as far as themes go, I’m more inspired by [authors who are] usually clearly anti-capitalist, criticizing scenarios used in Golden Age science fiction — such as building cities on Mars or expanding beyond the Solar System — by portraying them as capitalist hellscapes." The golden-age optimistic science fiction placed humans on a stage in the future with aliens, and confronted both with challenges on a far greater scale than earth. The implication that today's problems would surely be solved, was not only a nice escapism but also helped to form a fundamental mindset for the solution of said problems. From terraforming other planets to thinking about carbon dioxide globally, from a war with aliens to seeing the futility of wars on earth. From the absense of actual capitalism or communism on that distant colony in space that lived in harmony, to being open minded about new solutions in everyday politics. It does not seem clear if pessimistic science fiction, from an author not from the "ivory tower" but the trenches of education in community college, written with an educational message front and center, can have the reach and cultural impact as the stories from the past. Will the classroom in space convince where the daytime job didn't?

sickofparadox 2y ago
This person has been demoralized, and unknowingly wishes to inflict that fate upon everyone they come into contact with. The frenetic obsession with "capitalism" and the hopelessness of the future is simply the claw of the crab, pulling its victims back down into the bucket.
- anthk 2y ago
  Funny you say that when capitalism has no morals beyond profit. Just have a look on what Boeing it's doing.
  - istultus 2y ago
    The market (which I think is what you mean when you say "capitalism," a word devoid of content) is an abstract thing and indeed has no morals. Humans do. They act together to reduce harm, usually, given our arc of history. When humans form totalitarian "anti-capitalist" regimes they usually go about killing a few million other humans. Hurray for their superior morals.
  - sickofparadox 2y ago
    Its very funny how many creatures have convergently evolved into crabs.
  - queuebert 2y ago
    Boeing's bad decisions were not based on shareholder votes, but rather a cabal of bad actors. You could have this happen in any economic system. In fact, Boeing planes, even with all the cheating, are statistically safer than those produced by the former USSR.
    - agos 2y ago
      I would hope that today's planes are safer than 40 years ago!
    - anthk 2y ago
      Who cares about the USSR, a system who basically turned into Soviet (council) based modern era overnight from feudalism without stepping inside Enlightenment. Of course, it didn't end well. I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR. Regulations? New Deal? Wisdom over centuries? What's that? That doesn't make happy my shareholders, so forget that, right? Said this, Boeing it's a disaster.
      - queuebert 2y ago
        > I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR Technically America is not a democracy -- it's a federal republic composed of states with widely differing interpretations of democracy.
        jowea 2y ago
        Question: where does the idea that democracy and republic are incompatible comes from? I keep hearing this am curious where it started. Is it because the Founding Fathers wanted aristocratic elements to keep popular will at bay? To me the USA is obviously a (or maybe the) federal democratic republic. There is no contradiction. Sovereignity resides in the people and there's no monarch so it's a republic and elected representatives hold most of the power so it's a (representative) democracy.
        queuebert 2y ago
  - lanfeust6 2y ago
    > capitalism has no morals beyond profit. Liberalism does, to the extent the goal is human flourishing. Denigrating Capitalism for not being about morals makes as much sense as denigrating a tractor for not being about morals. Capitalism is merely what is employed as a tool (in part, as we used mixed-market economy) for the economic branch of our system.
    - anthk 2y ago
      That's just trading goods for valuables. Not capitalism. Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods.
      - lanfeust6 2y ago
        "That", i.e. the economic branch of Liberalism, is Capitalist, which is a combination of the right to private profit and property + market economy. > Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods. They used a bartering system. Price signaling came later. Coinage was technically existent rather early but did not see widespread use. Systems devoid of price-signaling a) don't scale, b) are irredeemably terrible. I guess you agree that it ought to have nothing to do with morality because this appears to be a non-sequitur.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Boeing is a good example of capitalism working. Go and look at their financial statements. Look at their stock over the past half decade. It's all deep in the red. They're still alive because their past achievements are significant enough to carry them through this and they will probably still be salvaged. Otherwise they'd be long bankrupt, freeing up immense human, physical, and financial capital to go do something else. In other words, the system is built to allocate resources to companies based on performance - of course that doesn't mean each company always works perfectly. Pointing to a bad company as an example of capitalism failing is like pointing to a lazy civil servant and saying we should abolish all government.
    - jhbadger 2y ago
      But Boeing is the only remaining US-based manufacturer of airliners (among other things). This didn't used to be the case, but through mergers and acquisitions it's true today. There is just no way the US government would ever let Boeing go under and let the Europeans or Chinese dominate airliners. Like the banks in 2008, Boeing is just "too big to fail".
      - FredPret 2y ago
        That's true but it's hardly a failure of the market. Airliners are big, complex products that are apparently best managed by big, complex companies (not my opinion, just an observation). If the government decides airliners are a strategic priority and decides to interfere with the market, the cost of that decision is that tax money is going to be used to prop up the incumbent, instead of funding for the poor. I think a little bit of industrial policy can be a good thing.
delichon 2y ago
For good or not capitalism is efficient at incentivizing people to exploit resources. It's easy to project that into guessing that at least our early forays to heavenly bodies will be propelled by that impulse. It's probably the reason that earthly new world cultures are more capitalistic than the old world's. Some ideologies promote exploration more than others. You don't have to like it to predict it.
- UweSchmidt 2y ago
  The point of sci-fi is to lay off the most obvious and current convictions and impulses and to imagine other possibilities.
  - a-french-anon 2y ago
    But still use your medium as a vehicle for a very obvious and current "understanding" of politics... with the completely natural "I love Science^tm" veneer tailor-made for Reddit, nice Hugo award material, I guess? Oh, just noticed it's nature.com
    - UweSchmidt 2y ago
      Can no one in this thread grasp the possiblity a neutral, non-prescriptive way to tell an inspirational story set in the far future that is not a vehicle for anything?
  - lanfeust6 2y ago
    The point is whatever we want it to be. Pulp adventurism and space exploits was as popular as anything else. Even the ideological books are not necessarily tantamount to "space communism" (see: Neal Stephenson).
    - anthk 2y ago
      Neal Stephenson depicted anti-state turbocapitalism as Mafia corpostates in "Snow Crash". Which is what actually would happen if no one regulated business.
KittenInABox 2y ago
I don't really find such science fiction pessimistic. In the way this "golden age optimism" is arguably just coddling humans with lies about the harm that they do, science fiction that critically examines the systems being built and suggests ways to repair. Ways to empower. Ways to unify against systemic harms in a way that includes all people. We have the entire solarpunk genre specifically for how humans can build a more unified, equal future. I also disagree with this depiction of Golden Age science fiction. Ursula Le Guin and Marge Piercy were doing this well during this period.
- UweSchmidt 2y ago
  I do think post-war Scifi was optimistic as it reflected the general sentiment of the times, with increasing prosperity, scientific and social progress, and tangible examples of the ability to unite for a common cause and accomplish megaprojects in general. Environmental issues were beyond the horizon, and today's societal divisiveness even further out. Civilization succumbing to technological addiction and stagnating scientific progress were considered as disappointing and unlikely timelines.
queuebert 2y ago
I read the author's short story from the article, and your comment is by far the better piece of writing.
jerf 2y ago
I think it's a bit ironic that a story that is polemic first and story second is actually less effective as polemic than a story than is story first and polemic second or third or even lower. Classic age science fiction was often polemic, but it works because the stories were prioritized above the polemic and generally decent. Of course like any genre, "polemic first" has things that occasionally transcend their genre even so, but those are also as always the exceptions, and authors really shouldn't put all their chips on being one of those exceptions. If anything the odds are probably worse than most. CC: Hollywood, Disney. You'd be better propagandists if you paid more attention, much more attention, to stories.

sickofparadox 2y ago

This person has been demoralized, and unknowingly wishes to inflict that fate upon everyone they come into contact with. The frenetic obsession with "capitalism" and the hopelessness of the future is simply the claw of the crab, pulling its victims back down into the bucket.

anthk 2y ago
Funny you say that when capitalism has no morals beyond profit. Just have a look on what Boeing it's doing.
- istultus 2y ago
  The market (which I think is what you mean when you say "capitalism," a word devoid of content) is an abstract thing and indeed has no morals. Humans do. They act together to reduce harm, usually, given our arc of history. When humans form totalitarian "anti-capitalist" regimes they usually go about killing a few million other humans. Hurray for their superior morals.
- sickofparadox 2y ago
  Its very funny how many creatures have convergently evolved into crabs.
- queuebert 2y ago
  Boeing's bad decisions were not based on shareholder votes, but rather a cabal of bad actors. You could have this happen in any economic system. In fact, Boeing planes, even with all the cheating, are statistically safer than those produced by the former USSR.
  - agos 2y ago
    I would hope that today's planes are safer than 40 years ago!
  - anthk 2y ago
    Who cares about the USSR, a system who basically turned into Soviet (council) based modern era overnight from feudalism without stepping inside Enlightenment. Of course, it didn't end well. I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR. Regulations? New Deal? Wisdom over centuries? What's that? That doesn't make happy my shareholders, so forget that, right? Said this, Boeing it's a disaster.
    - queuebert 2y ago
      > I'm talking about America, with a so-called democracy far older than the USSR Technically America is not a democracy -- it's a federal republic composed of states with widely differing interpretations of democracy.
      - jowea 2y ago
        Question: where does the idea that democracy and republic are incompatible comes from? I keep hearing this am curious where it started. Is it because the Founding Fathers wanted aristocratic elements to keep popular will at bay? To me the USA is obviously a (or maybe the) federal democratic republic. There is no contradiction. Sovereignity resides in the people and there's no monarch so it's a republic and elected representatives hold most of the power so it's a (representative) democracy.
        queuebert 2y ago
- lanfeust6 2y ago
  > capitalism has no morals beyond profit. Liberalism does, to the extent the goal is human flourishing. Denigrating Capitalism for not being about morals makes as much sense as denigrating a tractor for not being about morals. Capitalism is merely what is employed as a tool (in part, as we used mixed-market economy) for the economic branch of our system.
  - anthk 2y ago
    That's just trading goods for valuables. Not capitalism. Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods.
    - lanfeust6 2y ago
      "That", i.e. the economic branch of Liberalism, is Capitalist, which is a combination of the right to private profit and property + market economy. > Every system in the world since the Neolithic used tokens to interchange goods. They used a bartering system. Price signaling came later. Coinage was technically existent rather early but did not see widespread use. Systems devoid of price-signaling a) don't scale, b) are irredeemably terrible. I guess you agree that it ought to have nothing to do with morality because this appears to be a non-sequitur.
- FredPret 2y ago
  Boeing is a good example of capitalism working. Go and look at their financial statements. Look at their stock over the past half decade. It's all deep in the red. They're still alive because their past achievements are significant enough to carry them through this and they will probably still be salvaged. Otherwise they'd be long bankrupt, freeing up immense human, physical, and financial capital to go do something else. In other words, the system is built to allocate resources to companies based on performance - of course that doesn't mean each company always works perfectly. Pointing to a bad company as an example of capitalism failing is like pointing to a lazy civil servant and saying we should abolish all government.
  - jhbadger 2y ago
    But Boeing is the only remaining US-based manufacturer of airliners (among other things). This didn't used to be the case, but through mergers and acquisitions it's true today. There is just no way the US government would ever let Boeing go under and let the Europeans or Chinese dominate airliners. Like the banks in 2008, Boeing is just "too big to fail".
    - FredPret 2y ago
      That's true but it's hardly a failure of the market. Airliners are big, complex products that are apparently best managed by big, complex companies (not my opinion, just an observation). If the government decides airliners are a strategic priority and decides to interfere with the market, the cost of that decision is that tax money is going to be used to prop up the incumbent, instead of funding for the poor. I think a little bit of industrial policy can be a good thing.

delichon 2y ago

For good or not capitalism is efficient at incentivizing people to exploit resources. It's easy to project that into guessing that at least our early forays to heavenly bodies will be propelled by that impulse. It's probably the reason that earthly new world cultures are more capitalistic than the old world's. Some ideologies promote exploration more than others. You don't have to like it to predict it.

UweSchmidt 2y ago
The point of sci-fi is to lay off the most obvious and current convictions and impulses and to imagine other possibilities.
- a-french-anon 2y ago
  But still use your medium as a vehicle for a very obvious and current "understanding" of politics... with the completely natural "I love Science^tm" veneer tailor-made for Reddit, nice Hugo award material, I guess? Oh, just noticed it's nature.com
  - UweSchmidt 2y ago
    Can no one in this thread grasp the possiblity a neutral, non-prescriptive way to tell an inspirational story set in the far future that is not a vehicle for anything?
- lanfeust6 2y ago
  The point is whatever we want it to be. Pulp adventurism and space exploits was as popular as anything else. Even the ideological books are not necessarily tantamount to "space communism" (see: Neal Stephenson).
  - anthk 2y ago
    Neal Stephenson depicted anti-state turbocapitalism as Mafia corpostates in "Snow Crash". Which is what actually would happen if no one regulated business.

KittenInABox 2y ago

I don't really find such science fiction pessimistic. In the way this "golden age optimism" is arguably just coddling humans with lies about the harm that they do, science fiction that critically examines the systems being built and suggests ways to repair. Ways to empower. Ways to unify against systemic harms in a way that includes all people. We have the entire solarpunk genre specifically for how humans can build a more unified, equal future. I also disagree with this depiction of Golden Age science fiction. Ursula Le Guin and Marge Piercy were doing this well during this period.

UweSchmidt 2y ago
I do think post-war Scifi was optimistic as it reflected the general sentiment of the times, with increasing prosperity, scientific and social progress, and tangible examples of the ability to unite for a common cause and accomplish megaprojects in general. Environmental issues were beyond the horizon, and today's societal divisiveness even further out. Civilization succumbing to technological addiction and stagnating scientific progress were considered as disappointing and unlikely timelines.

queuebert 2y ago

I read the author's short story from the article, and your comment is by far the better piece of writing.

jerf 2y ago

I think it's a bit ironic that a story that is polemic first and story second is actually less effective as polemic than a story than is story first and polemic second or third or even lower. Classic age science fiction was often polemic, but it works because the stories were prioritized above the polemic and generally decent. Of course like any genre, "polemic first" has things that occasionally transcend their genre even so, but those are also as always the exceptions, and authors really shouldn't put all their chips on being one of those exceptions. If anything the odds are probably worse than most. CC: Hollywood, Disney. You'd be better propagandists if you paid more attention, much more attention, to stories.