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I hate to think that what's driving innovation is fantasized movie tech. I always thought it was science fiction literature, and, you know, trying to understand

by j2kun 13y ago

I hate to think that what's driving innovation is fantasized movie tech. I always thought it was science fiction literature, and, you know, trying to understand how the universe works in reality.

krapp 13y ago
Science fiction literature isn't actually all that often about the science. The number of science fiction authors writing about fields in which they're technically experts is likely vanishingly small, as being a successful storyteller is an expertise in and of itself. The trope of science fiction writers not having a sense of scale in regards to interstellar distance or geologic time is one good example. Or Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which weren't even really an extrapolation on the potential encoding of machine morality so much as a plot device, the entire point of which was the clever ways in which it could be broken by antagonists. Of course the counterpoint... when it works (Peter Watts and Neal Stephenson and maybe the near-future stuff by William Gibson... Cory Doctorow maybe) the technology serves the story and illustrates the future in brilliant and almost plausible ways. More often than not though, the science in science fiction is window dressing or magic with "science" spray painted on it, because really how many stories about how bloody hard it is to get into space and not die from something besides aliens can people be expected to read?
- repsilat 13y ago
  Yeah, this essentially comes down to the "hardness scale" of science fiction writing. If you're making a big budget film then it's all for mass consumption, and realistic extrapolation only really makes the cut if the novelty or plausibility of it impresses the audience. Special effects and space battles are a better bet most of the time. As you've said, exceptions exist, but they're even less present in the film market for obvious reasons. I'd actually say there's no dearth of good hard written scifi, though. Charles Stross (sometimes seen around here and on Reddit) has introduced a bunch of incredible new things in "Accelerando" that appear obvious in retrospect, things in Hannu Rajaniemi's "The Quantum Thief" like the privacy settings on Mars were insightful as hell. Just about everything written by Greg Egan is grounded in some jaw-dropping speculative physics or steeped in new thought on the philosophical or social ramifications of foreseeable technologies.

by j2kun 13y ago

I hate to think that what's driving innovation is fantasized movie tech. I always thought it was science fiction literature, and, you know, trying to understand how the universe works in reality.

krapp 13y ago

Science fiction literature isn't actually all that often about the science. The number of science fiction authors writing about fields in which they're technically experts is likely vanishingly small, as being a successful storyteller is an expertise in and of itself. The trope of science fiction writers not having a sense of scale in regards to interstellar distance or geologic time is one good example. Or Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which weren't even really an extrapolation on the potential encoding of machine morality so much as a plot device, the entire point of which was the clever ways in which it could be broken by antagonists. Of course the counterpoint... when it works (Peter Watts and Neal Stephenson and maybe the near-future stuff by William Gibson... Cory Doctorow maybe) the technology serves the story and illustrates the future in brilliant and almost plausible ways. More often than not though, the science in science fiction is window dressing or magic with "science" spray painted on it, because really how many stories about how bloody hard it is to get into space and not die from something besides aliens can people be expected to read?

repsilat 13y ago
Yeah, this essentially comes down to the "hardness scale" of science fiction writing. If you're making a big budget film then it's all for mass consumption, and realistic extrapolation only really makes the cut if the novelty or plausibility of it impresses the audience. Special effects and space battles are a better bet most of the time. As you've said, exceptions exist, but they're even less present in the film market for obvious reasons. I'd actually say there's no dearth of good hard written scifi, though. Charles Stross (sometimes seen around here and on Reddit) has introduced a bunch of incredible new things in "Accelerando" that appear obvious in retrospect, things in Hannu Rajaniemi's "The Quantum Thief" like the privacy settings on Mars were insightful as hell. Just about everything written by Greg Egan is grounded in some jaw-dropping speculative physics or steeped in new thought on the philosophical or social ramifications of foreseeable technologies.