181–190 of 469 posts
The most interesting thing about science fiction to me isn't the things the authors get right, but what they get wrong. Like, the whole house talking in a ChatGPT voice, intelligent appliances, etc: brilliant prescience. But he still thought we'd be having linoleum on our floors...
Born in 1968 I missed “duck and cover” but rode the wave of Reagan brinkmanship with my skater friends until 1990, watching all the broadcast TV PSAs and songs and art about nuclear war. It was real. It pervaded daily life: the notion that two old white men were having a pissing contest with every human as disposable bargaining chips. And as always, 25% of the US population cheered for purification of the planet beca…
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What do you find unreasonably hateful in the statement?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as we know life is only present on Earth, we presuppose that in the vastness of Cosmos there are other instances of it or that it can re-emerge from almost zero, but the reality is that we simply don't know. So maybe there is a possibility that wiping out all the life on Earth also wipes it from the entire Cosmos, forever.
Or perhaps the comment you were responding to was asserting "knowing" or "caring" is not something Nature can do.
The most striking incongruity with our modern era to me is that the family was all outside when the blast occurred. With pervasive screens, we just don't get outside like we used to. And why on earth was that dad mowing when the house was able to take care of it?
(In Bradbury's time, we knew Venus was covered in thick clouds, and could only speculate about what might be beneath the clouds. Clouds = rain = lush vegetation?)
I feel like the modern version of this would have the neighbourhood largely intact, but humans killed via miniature drones. Drives home the point how few anticipated that batteries would advance so much.
There are many ways this could all end, a nuclear war is still on the list. "Wireheaded by social media so hard you're unemployable" is at least as plausible as a city-scale antipersonel drone strike; even Ukraine's strikes against Russia are around 1200-1800/day.
I feel like the modern version of this would have the neighbourhood largely intact, but humans killed via miniature drones. Drives home the point how few anticipated that batteries would advance so much.
you say that like trump wasn't stopped from launching nukes at iran by one of his military advisors.
It's interesting to look at the short a story and see where we are still behind on home automation. We still don't have robot firefighting or accurate robot cooking, for example.
The most striking incongruity with our modern era to me is that the family was all outside when the blast occurred. With pervasive screens, we just don't get outside like we used to. And why on earth was that dad mowing when the house was able to take care of it?