Where did all the starships go? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#31

Post by foobarbecue » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

chasil wrote: post #15

delichon wrote: post #7

The starships left with the optimism. In the 50s there was a greater demand for stories with an unconstrained vision of the future where growth and expansion amount to flourishing. Later generations that lived in the excesses of growth saw it as the source of an intensifying dystopia. They stood athwart history and demanded decelleration. Star Trek lost ground to Terminator, Foundation to Neuromancer. Escaping sidewa…

Also, we've realized the scientific reality that traveling faster than light is likely impossible, and the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology. Interstellar space is also hostile to life, and any life present at the destination will not use the same DNA coding for protein (if gene expression even works that way). We also do…

Maybe, but the most compelling scifi to me personally is the generation ship stuff, like Ring by Steven Baxter.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#32

Post by Alex-Programs » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:32 PM UTC

chasil wrote: post #15

delichon wrote: post #7

The starships left with the optimism. In the 50s there was a greater demand for stories with an unconstrained vision of the future where growth and expansion amount to flourishing. Later generations that lived in the excesses of growth saw it as the source of an intensifying dystopia. They stood athwart history and demanded decelleration. Star Trek lost ground to Terminator, Foundation to Neuromancer. Escaping sidewa…

Also, we've realized the scientific reality that traveling faster than light is likely impossible, and the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology. Interstellar space is also hostile to life, and any life present at the destination will not use the same DNA coding for protein (if gene expression even works that way). We also do…

This is motivated pessimism. We knew in the 50s that breaking the speed of light was highly unlikely. We dreamed of the stars anyway. Now we refuse to dream, or to even attempt to solve the problems (a common pattern when discussing spaceflight is people who are blatantly searching for problems, rather than solutions), because we are pessimistic, devoid of imagination, and seek to legitimise our collective depression through scientific and engineering arguments.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#33

Post by Ekaros » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #29

jmclnx wrote: post #17

I have been seeing the trend of Fantasy slowly taking over SF for a while, maybe as long as 30 years :( Real Science based SF seems to have disappeared completely, at least based upon the only Book Store left in my area, Barnes and Noble.

> Barnes and Noble ...this might be the main problem (same with Thalia in Germany), those large book store chains are aggressively optimized for monetization, and that kicks off a death spiral of filling the available space with cheap industrially produced trash. The good stuff might still be there, but it's much harder to find, and you need to know where to look (same thing that happened to music basically).

Not to forget being linked to main-stream publishers that have different editorial goals compared to era when these works were released. Not saying there were not biases back then. But now the biases are different and thus the published output is as well.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#34

Post by datsci_est_2015 » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #25

pfdietz wrote: post #22

A great deal of science fiction is just fantasy with spaceships. It uses technological tropes to seem like it isn't fantasy, but that's just surface gloss.

Which is unfortunately true, but also just illustrates how far science-fiction has fallen - not sure when it started but I guess Star Wars played an important role to remove the 'science' from 'science-fiction'.

I believe people use the word “hard” to differentiate more scientifically rigorous scifi. I’m not well-versed enough to know when that started being a term, or what the status quo was before it was a term.

Interestingly there’s also “high” fantasy to differentiate between earth like and non earth like subject worlds, and then even “historical fiction” to describe books that try to be faithful to some degree to some historical time period on earth.

Anyway, this is all to say maybe “how far science-fiction has fallen” might be a narrow interpretation of what’s been happening to fiction in general over the past 75 years. More options than ever, maybe…

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#35

Post by xtiansimon » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

That was fun.

I recall an early editorial of the podcast Escaped Pod describing science fiction as a means to more directly engage with topics of the human condition by using the conceits of science fiction. _Have a difficult time discussing your relationship with your parents? Write a story about orphans raised by space aliens._ That sort of thing.

Maybe something is going on with our human condition that science fiction is not as productive a foil as it once was?

I don’t know. I’m not a fiction writer. But I can say that since I bought my second motorcycle (back on a moto after 20 years away) I am enjoying spaceships in my science fiction.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#36

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #14

That Berlin bookstore (Otherland) also has great staff for recommendations. The resident scifi attendant was quite knowledgeable about original scifi written in German (as opposed to translated works). That's quite useful if your knowledge of the field is limited to the obvious Andreas Esbach (unsurpassed) and Perry Rodan (pass).

I enjoyed The Carpet Makers (which is available in English.) Sometimes translated works rub the wrong way because of cultural differences, but in that one the differences enhanced the experience.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#37

Post by chmod775 » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #22

A great deal of science fiction is just fantasy with spaceships. It uses technological tropes to seem like it isn't fantasy, but that's just surface gloss.

Really though? Seems to me that the only sub-genre of space science fiction that is surviving relative to others is hard space science fiction. There's an abundance of high quality titles to choose from even (compared to the previous millennium).

Edit: Highlights include Leviathan Wakes/The Expanse, The Three-Body Problem, Children of Time, Pushing Ice (and other titles by Alastair Reynolds), Interstellar (debatable, but it's good), Project Hail Mary, For All Mankind, and many more.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#38

Post by chasil » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

Alex-Programs wrote: post #32

chasil wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, we've realized the scientific reality that traveling faster than light is likely impossible, and the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology. Interstellar space is also hostile to life, and any life present at the destination will not use the same DNA coding for protein (if gene expression even works that way). We also do…

This is motivated pessimism. We knew in the 50s that breaking the speed of light was highly unlikely. We dreamed of the stars anyway. Now we refuse to dream, or to even attempt to solve the problems (a common pattern when discussing spaceflight is people who are blatantly searching for problems, rather than solutions), because we are pessimistic, devoid of imagination, and seek to legitimise our collective depression…

I have upvoted you, and perhaps you are right that there are shades of pessimism in this perspective.

The 2020s have not been known as reasons for great optimism. The pandemic and AI culling clades of the job market have been traumatizing experiences.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#39

Post by krapp » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

Alex-Programs wrote: post #32

chasil wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, we've realized the scientific reality that traveling faster than light is likely impossible, and the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology. Interstellar space is also hostile to life, and any life present at the destination will not use the same DNA coding for protein (if gene expression even works that way). We also do…

This is motivated pessimism. We knew in the 50s that breaking the speed of light was highly unlikely. We dreamed of the stars anyway. Now we refuse to dream, or to even attempt to solve the problems (a common pattern when discussing spaceflight is people who are blatantly searching for problems, rather than solutions), because we are pessimistic, devoid of imagination, and seek to legitimise our collective depression…

I don't think it's motivated pessimism so much as a shifting tastes and changes in media. There are tons of SF stories with starships in movies, games and streaming platforms. It just happens to be the case that fantasy is more popular then SF at the moment where books are concerned.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#40

Post by krapp » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #27

flohofwoe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is unfortunately true, but also just illustrates how far science-fiction has fallen - not sure when it started but I guess Star Wars played an important role to remove the 'science' from 'science-fiction'.

It's been there since day one. What, you thought early era SF used accurate science? No, they used made-up rules based on whether they could tell a good story. Science fiction usually doesn't conform to how the world actually works in the same way pornography usually doesn't conform to the way sexual relationships work. They are both there to tell titillating stories, not describe reality.

For instance: Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics aren't based on any practical science, they exist as a plot device for setting off mystery stories with robots and morality plays about hubris. And the reason robots have positronic brains is that positrons were recently discovered at the time, and it sounded cool. Yet people will swear Asimov is one of the hardest SF authors around.

Sometimes you might get a SF author who's an expert in a particular field or has a specific hyperfixation, and that one aspect of their stories might be grounded somewhat in plausibility, but everything else turns out to be complete nonsense.