4 ms·

To be fair, those are three very long books, in my reading more about the people and how politics might play out in that situation with competing ideas and fact

To be fair, those are three very long books, in my reading more about the people and how politics might play out in that situation with competing ideas and factions vying for power. My interpretation of the ending is not optimistic - they had to go to the stars to try again, but they did persevere in a way on Mars. The automated robots and factories able to make copies of themselves by harvesting raw materials is not as far fetched as some speculative fiction (the jaunting in The Stars My Destination or instant transportation pads in Ringworld come to mind off the top of my head) but though conceptually I see the steps it is several technological leaps ahead of us at present.

NoTeslaThrow 2y ago
> My interpretation of the ending is not optimistic - they had to go to the stars to try again, but they did persevere in a way on Mars. Humans managed to avoid the collapse of human society into hobbesian violence or "dystopian" fantasy while being tethered to our very real society and cultural conflicts, so that seems pretty optimistic to me. There's also star trek, but that depicts in a post-scarcity world that seems further away than ever. Utopian (in the imaginative, hopeful meaning and not the pejorative sense) sci-fi feels like slim pickings to me. But yes, the automation depicted is certainly many decades ahead of us. Particularly in a world of enshittified, rented everything.