Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where did all the starships go?

datawrapper.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 369 posts

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#221

Post by CGMthrowaway »

riffraff wrote: post #161
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Star Trek lost ground to Terminator, Foundation to Neuromancer. Interesting POV because Star Trek and Foundation both have recent, big budget streaming series while new Terminator movies were flops and Neuromancer has never seen any development(?)

Neuromancer is currently in development at Apple+ :) FWIW, Amazon made a show based on "The Peripheral" by Gibson which is way more bleak than Neuromancer, and it was crazy good, but they canceled it after one season.

Oh I saw that one. It was good, too bad they canceled it

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#222

Post by danans »

bot403 wrote: post #66
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…

Not sure your point. It's fiction. Are we closer to finding dragons, faeries, or magic? Visiting remote planets is as unlikely as riding a dragon. But both make for great stories.

> Not sure your point. It's fiction. Are we closer to finding dragons, faeries, or magic?

No, but we've become increasingly superstitious, and cultish. A lot of the day to day parts of sci-fi (screens everywhere , instant communication) have become reality so it's not as exciting anymore. Sci-fi no longer serves as escapism. Anymore, it reminds us of our limitations.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#223

Post by jaywcarman »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #205
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…

>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. This makes for more epic story telling though. I've seen sci-fi stories span eons due to the vast distances limited by speed. Even at light speed it still takes a huge amount of tim…

> >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. > >This makes for more epic story telling though. I've seen sci-fi stories span eons due to the vast distances limited by speed. Even at light speed it still takes a huge amount of time.

Here's one such example: [The Destination Star by Gregory Marlow](https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/fiction/the-destinatio...)

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#224

Post by boznz »

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…

Many of us authors are still trying to write optimistic Sci-Fi, we are just getting lost in the noise, and the algorithm. Look harder :-)

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#225

Post by jackcosgrove »

It's far more practical to adapt life to space and other planets, than it is to adapt space and other planets to human life. The problem with writing a story about artificial life exploring the universe is that it's unrelatable without humans in it.

I think humans are stuck on earth permanently because there are no other environments in the solar system we can live in as easily as earth. Traditional sci-fi explained this away using overpopulation pressures, but overpopulation is fading as a reality and plausible narrative device. And forget about interstellar travel, it's too dangerous and takes too long.

If intelligent DNA-based life is still around on earth when it starts getting too hot because of the sun's expansion and it all needs to flee, it will have continued to evolve such that it will be unrecognizable and unrelatable to us. And by then I expect artificial life to have spread to such an extent that biological life on earth is basically a historical footnote.

I actually think life in the broadest sense will spread from earth to other places in the galaxy, but it will be completely alien compared to human life.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#226

Post by int_19h »

WalterBright wrote: post #123
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…

And yet we still have a solar system, empty of life other than Earth, we can expand to. Why try to cross an ocean when everything we could want is across the river? Two things baffle me: 1. The idea that Terran life is toxic and must not be allowed on other planets in the solar system. 2. The one person who is advancing our space faring abilities by leaps and bounds is routinely vilified and excoriated on HackerNews.

I remember Musk being much more popular hereabouts and in my IRL circles 10 years ago.

That things moved from that to outright vilification is entirely due to how he behaved since then.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#227

Post by voidfunc »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #225

It's far more practical to adapt life to space and other planets, than it is to adapt space and other planets to human life. The problem with writing a story about artificial life exploring the universe is that it's unrelatable without humans in it. I think humans are stuck on earth permanently because there are no other environments in the solar system we can live in as easily as earth. Traditional sci-fi explained…

Our trajectory is to meld ourselves with machines. Fleshy humans may he stuck on earth but our machines have no such restrictions and can be engineered for all kinds of extremes.

We will eventually figure out how to imprint our consciousness into a chip. Maybe not for another thousand years but weve been building machines our entire existence to conquer nature. We will figure it out.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#228

Post by int_19h »

chmod775 wrote: post #37
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,…

The Three Body Problem is not even close to hard science fiction.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#229

Post by int_19h »

flohofwoe wrote: post #57
pfdietz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What, you thought early era SF used accurate science? It depends on the author I guess. Stanislaw Lem for instance mostly separated his "silly-fiction universes" (e.g. the Ijon Tichy and 'robot fairytales' novels) from his "hard sci-fi" universes (for instance the Pilot Pirx novels) - and there it was mostly about the restrictions of space travel (where space travel is usually just plain old cargo hauling), Pirx ne…

Early SF would be a couple decades before Lem.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#230

Post by kulahan »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #225

It's far more practical to adapt life to space and other planets, than it is to adapt space and other planets to human life. The problem with writing a story about artificial life exploring the universe is that it's unrelatable without humans in it. I think humans are stuck on earth permanently because there are no other environments in the solar system we can live in as easily as earth. Traditional sci-fi explained…

I don't think we'll ever populate a planet beyond the solar system, but I think at some point we'll leave Earth. The sun has an expiration date, after all. Maybe the space-flotilla species was the most accurate outcome after all, Mass Effect!
Post reply on HN