Science Fiction.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

My favorite "set" would be The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand. I sometimes overuse that term.

[Mike Cl]

I guess my first book that could be called sci-fi was A Wrinkle in Time. I don't know how many times I read it, but it was more than several.

The Golden Age of SF was extremely creative, in some ways, because authors had more leeway for their imaginations to roam. And early on, when hardly anything had been done, it was a little bit like speciation of life, finding and filling ecological niches. A lot of it was visionary, too, but not visionary enough. Clarke predicted the communications satellites, for example. But no one predicted the Hubble telescope or the LIGO detector. I always check the copywrite date of a sci-fi book, so I know what kind of technology to expect. If it's more than 50 years old, I know they probably won't have anything like an internet or smart phones.

I think my all-time favorite SF is the Ringworld series. I had a great time watching Louis Wu trying to figure the place out, and then to survive the place. What a romp!

Actually, I read most SF for it's comments on society rather than predictions of future technology.  Stranger In A Strange Land is a mighty example of that.  Or I read it for a good adventure story.

[Unbeliever]

I read it mostly to experience the wonder of what might someday be.

[Mike Cl]

I read it mostly to experience the wonder of what might someday be.

that's a good reason (although reading for just the writing is good enough--if one really even needs a reason).  But I like apocalyptic SF, so I really hope that isn't what might someday be. :))

[Gawdzilla Sama]

SciFi is whatiffing society.

[Hydra009]

I see Science Fiction as a series of What If scenarios which we can then use to guide our future development.  It gives us more of a sense of control over the future and knowledge of what to expect.

And while that's all well and good on paper, there are a few practical problems with this.  For starters, a lot of sci-fi is way off the mark.  Take any sci-fi series that takes place before today.  No flying cars here.  Another is that it's so crowded with cautionary tales that I wonder if sci-fi might actually be leading to a sort of fear of the future and a knee-jerk dislike of advancing technology.  Take any recent invention and you have people falling over themselves to claim that it'll be used for nefarious purposes.  Obviously, we should be skeptical, but damn, there is a line where caution starts edging over into paranoia.

Imho, something we need to see a lot more of in sci-fi is advancing knowledge being used in productive ways and futuristic societies that ought to serve as something we should work towards.  Dystopia after dystopia can be taken the wrong way and give people the wrong message.  Scifi should inspire, not panic.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Dystopias tell us how we can go wrong. Books like the PERN novels tells how we can go right.   

And movies like "Starshit Troopers" tell us how we can go right up our own asses.

[Mike Cl]

Dystopias tell us how we can go wrong. Books like the PERN novels tells how we can go right.   

And movies like "Starshit Troopers" tell us how we can go right up our own asses.

I've read a few of the Pern novels and really like them.  I think my intro in dystopia books was Swan Song.  I was impressed and wanted more like it.  And I still like that genre.  If I deem then well written.  I tried to read The Last Ship and could not finish it--a rare thing for me.  The writing was just not to my taste. But somebody must have liked it; they made it into a TV show; which after the first episode or so, became just like the book--could not watch it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Anne made dragons live for me. I call those books "technological fantasy stories". "It could happen that way."

[Baruch]

Recent Joe Rogan, one of the early military eye-witnesses ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ

So real.  But apparently too advanced to be hostile.  The "tick-tack" simply jammed the Navy radar when a plane got close.  But lots of these were seen from the ship radars, for days before, and per protocol, they didn't prior inform the flight crews (stupid).

[EmpJohnIV]

I grew up on Star Trek TNG, and still have some tender feelings for it, but sci-fi as a whole I think is kinda  a crazy head trip lots of the time. It takes trends in industralism and project them "what if we keep going this way forever?" Take flight. From the Wright brothers to the SR-71 planes got so much faster... but that was a program from the 60's, and oxygen breathing planes haven't gotten faster ever since. Aviation basically reached maturity a generation before I was born, and peaked. Sure there have been a lot of petty refinements, but the real era of innovation was almost all in the first half of aviation history, the 50 some odd years since the Blackbird hasn't progressed a ghost as much as the time between those bike mechanics and then.

Space Operas are this same issue on uppers. Remember people walking on the moon, or pushing back on the final frontier? I don't. I heard history of people in the past who did that, like Columbus or something, but not in my life time. We checked out space, found that it was vividly inhospitable, and for all practical purposes gave up on a childish dream. It was a cute dream, and appealing to think of the skys as filled with breathable atmospheres, edible biology, and Sexy Green Alien Chicks... but if our theories of evolution are anything to put stock in, even among life bearing planets, we should expect only a vanishingly small fraction of them to have environments even vaguely comparable with our biological needs, or our passions for that matter. We are the result of billions of years of interweaving symbiosis with exactly one biosphere. The rest of space of beautiful to behold, to contemplate, but it offers our kind no quarter.

The harshest desert, or point on Antarctica, or mountain peak, or ocean trench, is more accommodating of human biological needs than any other square yard of terrain in the solar system.

I love sci-fi as a fantasy trope, the impossibility of animal life on Mars no more ruins a good story than the lack of Elves in pre-historic Europe dents my cherishing of Middle Earth. But, the notion that these fairy tales in space have any thing to say about our kind's future (other than a warning sign of terminal hubris) is naive.

[Unbeliever]

Yeah, in some ways science fiction has done us a great disservice, because of the way it's portrayed the universe as having lots of livable planets that are relatively easy to get to. So many people don't realize that this Earth is all we have, and all we're ever going to have. While too many other people think God will save us - or "the aliens" will save us - from the consequences of our own bad behavior. And science itself may not be able to save us, either.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

SciFi is most useful when it examines possible sociological trends. People who miss this point are likely to call books like Starship Troopers "fascist".

[EmpJohnIV]

I mean the Greco-Roman classical civilization discovered fantastic new domains of logic in their hayday. Difficult problems fell before the power of logic like trees to the ax. But, as they approached the dark ages they found that as good a logic was for certain problems there were issues of ethics and natural phenomena which it simply didn't work against. The used it for what it was good for, did fantastic things, and found that there were a terminal amount of problems it didn't help with.

The west looks to be on a similar road with Natural Philosophy to my eye. We added to the greek logic a methodology for carefully measuring and quantifying observations, so that ancedotes and experiences could be systematically studied with the tools of logic we picked out of the ruins of the classical civilization. And golly gosh so many problems were solved. But, turns out it is only useful for so many things. As we start to deal with problems that have multiple variables, or which are hard to give definate quantities to our studies loose reproducibility. Also the infrastructure to do science beyond the simple problems of the 17th century is fantastically expensive, and we have maintained our current rate only by blasting through a billion years of fossilized sunlight in a couple human lifespans, like a coke fiend with a winning lotto ticket.

Sci-fi was the dream of what could happen if science never hit a limit, just like Plato's Republic was a dream about a human society where reason never hit a limit. Such dreams are moving and informative to consider, but we must face our responsibilities in the would wakefully.

[Baruch]

Primary problem with scifi is Space Progressives aka Space Communists.  Star Trek classic is fascist.  Star Trek next gen is communist.  All notions of progress, including Marxism, is based on the "free lunch" aka "endlessly cheap energy".  It costs so much dollars per kilowatt-hour, and it takes so many kilo-watt hours to get to Mars.  Only a Marxist could imagine that economics is transcended.  And inevitably, our utopias are based on Rousseau or Marx, both of which go back to the Jerusalem community depicted in the Book of Acts.  Jesus was a hippie communist faith healer.