31–40 of 78 posts
Perhaps shoes that don't explode and planes that don't nose dive?
Serious athletes hate it when sporting goods manufacturers "improve" their products, and accidentally end up making them worse due to not understanding what their customers actually valued. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possible plot twist: The aliens follow the books too, in order to understand the human response? Actually that seems like a highly likely plot twist. I wonder if some alien species would appear as Vulcans if only to fit our expectations? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4xm7x052XQ Hopefully they didn't see this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXw6hC7hxBA
I think it's likely that if we were to see them as "alien" they would need to be the same or very very similar to human form. Otherwise, it's likely we'd just call them a beast of some sort. Would you say a Gorilla is alien to a Human? They're not that different. Would you say a Dolphin and a Human are too different? They both have the capacity for independent thought, a consciousness, and are self-aware.
It would make sense that if you're going to make first contact.... you want to meet those folks on the most similar or relatable terms.
Humans read body language a lot and such. It would probabbly facilitate a lot of communication to emulate human behaviors and etc to get started. Reduce tensions, communicate better, etc.
This is nothing new. I know a number of other SF writers who are professional futurists, with selling books as their side hustle; others who do consulting gigs for industry from time to time. In general, corporations pay more than publishers …!
In the novel Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, the government employs science fiction writers to help them understand the invading aliens and predict what they'll think and do.
Possible plot twist: The aliens follow the books too, in order to understand the human response? Actually that seems like a highly likely plot twist. I wonder if some alien species would appear as Vulcans if only to fit our expectations? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4xm7x052XQ Hopefully they didn't see this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXw6hC7hxBA
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possible plot twist: The aliens follow the books too, in order to understand the human response? Actually that seems like a highly likely plot twist. I wonder if some alien species would appear as Vulcans if only to fit our expectations? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4xm7x052XQ Hopefully they didn't see this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXw6hC7hxBA
Plot twist: The most accurate and prescient Sci fi author is a benevolent and shapeshifting alien.
I've noticed these stories on The Verge and all I can think is that this is the most cyberpunk twist of all: the very texts that might inspire a cultural shift against these entities are instead repurposed and weaponized by capital to support their continued reign.
I also highly, highly recommend "K-Punk" by the same author (now deceased, RIP): https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mark-fishers-k-p...
To me, what's interesting is the ways the lens of Sci-Fi can distort one's ideas. The flying car is the most classic, wrong science fiction prediction ever (even if it should come to pass). The way that the flying car fails is that ground motion doesn't translate directly into flying motion - flying transport has achieved some equivalence to ground motion but going from a "flying bus" (a conventional airplane) to a personal "flying car" turns out to be a vastly harder problem than going from a train to a car.
One might say, Sci-Fi involves extrapolation of experience, since the writer ultimately has describe the experiences of their characters. So what's missing overall, is "the dull parts", as least for "classic Sci-Fi", which has historically been adventure novels extrapolated into a new world (the novels of Robert Heinlein being the model).
Here, in a sense, dystopian and other novelist genres can give further insight a leg-up because they aren't constrained to make the future fun.
A really interesting story is EM Forrester's story "The Machine Stops", predicted many aspects of the Internet in 1909!
I wonder how solicited sci-fi stacks up to unsolicited sci-fi, like: "The Revolution, Brought to You by Nike" by Andrea Phillips: https://firesidefiction.com/the-revolution-brought-to-you-by...
For example, game designers are known to have been hired by government agencies and corporations to create games that will help them understand side effects of policy proposals (especially complicated ones). But you probably wouldn't just box it up and sell it afterword.
In the sci-fi case, they need to try to predict something like "If we invented an AI powered shoe, how would people react?" etc. If the writer is any good, they'll ask for info about the brand's values etc, and the brand would supply user surveys to help the writer predict better.