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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.
  - slothtrop 2y ago
    Good thing we have regulation. I actually had Seveneves and Termination Shock in mind, as more "optimistic" novels.
BobaFloutist 2y ago
There are way too many kinds of sci-fi to sum up the genre in one convenient statement like that. Some sci-fi seeks to lay off the most obvious and current convictions and impulses to imagine other possibilities. Other sci-fi slightly exaggerates the flaws and assumptions of our world, and tries to logically extend them into a future in which they make even less sense, to demonstrate their absurdity. Still other sci-fi creates a world exactly like ours except with one significant technological advance, and tries to imagine where we'd go with that. Still other sci-fi takes what we know of how humans behave, puts them in completely unfamiliar settings, and uses those settings to explore the nature of people, rather than focusing on the technology. And some sci-fi, arguably the most fun, if not necessarily the most educational merely starts "Wouldn't it be cool/weird/fucked up if..." and just keeps going until it runs out of steam.

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.
- slothtrop 2y ago
  Good thing we have regulation. I actually had Seveneves and Termination Shock in mind, as more "optimistic" novels.

BobaFloutist 2y ago

There are way too many kinds of sci-fi to sum up the genre in one convenient statement like that. Some sci-fi seeks to lay off the most obvious and current convictions and impulses to imagine other possibilities. Other sci-fi slightly exaggerates the flaws and assumptions of our world, and tries to logically extend them into a future in which they make even less sense, to demonstrate their absurdity. Still other sci-fi creates a world exactly like ours except with one significant technological advance, and tries to imagine where we'd go with that. Still other sci-fi takes what we know of how humans behave, puts them in completely unfamiliar settings, and uses those settings to explore the nature of people, rather than focusing on the technology. And some sci-fi, arguably the most fun, if not necessarily the most educational merely starts "Wouldn't it be cool/weird/fucked up if..." and just keeps going until it runs out of steam.