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We need more optimistic science fiction

craig-russell.co.uk

141–150 of 211 posts

Re: We need more optimistic science fiction

#141
So very agreed and i did this when i wrote my trilogy. My theory when doing it was what's wrong with Captain Marvel.

Your main hero cant be just invulnerable to everything and never get hurt. Having amnesia isnt a kryptonite.

Your bad guy cant be just a total jerk who can be trivially beaten as soon as you've had enough. You bad guy needs to be the baddest of them all with the essentially no weaknesses. That 1 weakness and how they'll be defeated is that optimistic view of the future.

My fun twist in my third book. The main hero comes back to earth on a superpower alien battleship. Absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.

He bluffs that his plan to be emperor on earth and that his first action is to end all violence. That all violence is banned and he's judge jury and executioner from orbit. If violence detected his battleship blasts the criminal and vapourizes them.

But its a bluff, so it's 1 timezone at a time so criminals might not catch on easily and he puts on a show where criminals and named and vapourized on the show. But its all machine ai produced. There are actual shots down to earth which make lightning like booms and leave craters; but nobody is actually hurt.

Slowly but surely violence ends on earth. Then I make my predictions on what life is like when people never fear violence.

Re: We need more optimistic science fiction

#143

I love science fiction, but as someone born in the middle of the last century, I am biased toward authors from the 20th century. I noticed that the novels at the end of Nature (the journal) were sad and weird, but I thought it was probably an editorial choice to look "modern". Yet recently, I read SF novels with authors sorted alphabetically, and it struck me again how weird and sad 21st-century novels are.

That is why I like 1950's SF cinema. They were mostly B-movies aimed at a youth audience, but I enjoy their general tone of optimism.

Re: We need more optimistic science fiction

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would find new things to do with that energy. Making matter from energy would still be inefficient though. c^2 is a really big number.

No we wont. Because if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747. If you can manipulate such insane energy density you can do anything already even before you reach that capability. Also Dyson sphere is old school idea, new more efficient idea is to make small black hole right next to star and harvest energy from that more concentrated flow. So actually black holes colliding…

> if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747

No, you will take that elusive flying car because you can afford the energy for it now. And it will be much less efficient than a 747.

Re: We need more optimistic science fiction

#145
post #23

Unpopular take, and note, I am not an expert: There seems to be an overabundance of sci-fi that is hyperoptimistic with regard to tech advances. The 2nd law of thermodynamics is not understood by most, or waved away as 'overcome thru future science'. fwiw, here's a few works I've found to be less the above: book: Kim Stanley Robinson's _Aurora_ short stories: Damon Knight's _Stranger Station_ Larry Nivens' _Inconstan…

I wouldn't ever classify Kim Stanley Robinson as "optimistic". With maybe the lone exception of the Mars books which are at least not completely pessimistic.

Re: We need more optimistic science fiction

#146
post #143

I love science fiction, but as someone born in the middle of the last century, I am biased toward authors from the 20th century. I noticed that the novels at the end of Nature (the journal) were sad and weird, but I thought it was probably an editorial choice to look "modern". Yet recently, I read SF novels with authors sorted alphabetically, and it struck me again how weird and sad 21st-century novels are.

That is why I like 1950's SF cinema. They were mostly B-movies aimed at a youth audience, but I enjoy their general tone of optimism.

I just watched the 1951 The Thing movie last week. The humans win at the end.

The 1982 movie... some humans survive. Maybe.

Re: We need more optimistic science fiction

#150
post #128
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at even just 4%, the thermal emissions from a partial Dyson swarm would still be enough to heat Earth by twice what anthropogenic climate change has managed so far: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092702482...

"anthropogenic climate change" isn't heating the planet by literally heating it up with joules from burning stuff but by shifting the balance between absorbed and radiated heat from the sun.

The cause of the energy isn't as important as the amount.

Either way, our ecosystem heats up.

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