October 26, 2004

Just what is around the corner? I know that quite a few Monkeys are science fiction readers. So, here is a brief discussion involving Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross about writing science fiction when you the world around the corner is perhaps even less knowable than before.
posted by dj 20 years ago
  • when you the world around the corner is perhaps even less knowable than before. It certainly is. Thanks for the link, I love Cory's stuff, and look forward to reading it.
  • sorry dj but I can't resist. when you Stand on Zanzibar, when you Martian Time-Slip, when you Consider Her Ways,
  • Cory Doctorow doesn't write novels and stories. He writes thinly disguised propaganda for the EFF.
  • Anybody care to name a science fiction writer that has actually predicted an existing technology that hadn't already been proposed by an engineer? Not an application, but a base technology like steel or a transistor.
  • What is the EFF? Name dropping trivia - Cory Doctorow went to my highschool, and then to the same university,* but dropped out of that university, whereas I graduated and went to grad school. Now he is a famous science-fiction writer and I get to stay up all night writing grant applications. So kids, now you know: Don't stay in school :) (but both several years earlier, so I didn't know him, though I think I met him once through a party thrown by someone in my dad's amateur theatre troop...how's that for weird degrees of separation?) mexican - Sci-Fi writers are rarely scientists - they are fantasists. Personally, my favorite sci-fi has much more speculation on society than science, but I'm a social studies geek.
  • mexican - here. hehe Viagra = Hardovax
  • tellurian, those are all either applications or non-technology discoveries.
  • jb: The EFF is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Cory Doctorow works for them. I don't really know about Doctorow's politic affiliation (he, after all, votes NDP), but his novels & the EFF often have a bad case of teh Techno-Utopianism.
  • what exactly are you after, mexican? FTL space travel? science fiction doesn't necessarily involve 'science' or 'technology' - some of the greatest science fiction works don't involve an awful lot of shiny tech at all, or are set in worlds only slightly separated from our own. some involve linguistic science or the future of politics. if you're just reading the aliens-meet-cowboys-in-space stuff, then it's a pretty lonely universe!
  • Point taken mexican - okay, I got nuthin.
  • Those who can, write. Those who can't, write science-fiction.
  • prismatic: you, like, linked to the same Le Guin book twice.
  • dammit! that was supposed to be the sheep look up by john brunner. my bad. thanks richer (although i've a good mind to nail you to walls after that quote!)
  • Those who can't, write science-fiction. Iain M. Banks can write. As could Orwell, Huxley, Zemyatin, David Ireland, and Stanislav Lem.
  • A transistor is as much of an application as a laser printer, water bed, viagra, and mp3 players. Same goes for a harder metal.
  • I've got more negative comments about the linked article and science fiction writers in general but I like the topic. I think this thread should move towards the topic of our own predictions for the future. I'll got first: I predict a virtual reality wearable house. Like a combination between the Fremen stilsuit from Dune and a mini portable version of the Matrix interface. Good for those exploring remote places like the Jungle or outer space, or just relaxing at the office.
  • I don't hate science-fiction, and with my measly computer engineering major, I can't be a Great Fiction snob. It's just that Doctorow gets on my nerves. Hey, I still read Boingboing (for Xeni, mostly). And I couldn't tell if Huxley, Ireland & al. can write: except for 1984, I've only read translations, and they went from acceptable to awful.
  • My prediction: someday, the 1980s will come to mainstream programming, and we'll all use a language that's almost good as common lisp circa 1986.
  • Ah. I am A Snob, but you merely have an axe to grind. No wuckers!
  • prismatic7 - of all the books to link to twice, that is a pretty high quality one :) I actually have it on my shelf right now - I've been wanting to read it for sometime. I really liked her *Four for Freedom*.
  • Just a gentle pull of the leg, Richer.
  • Wolof: that, and brain damage due to exposure to Bad Science Fiction.
  • We snobs don't like your being snobbish. Tell Marge Piercy, Ursula LeGuin, and Doris Lessing that they can't write.
  • And name One Thing that science fiction writers have written about that Nostradamus didn't write about first.
  • I'll happily tell Le Guin that. Terremer is torture, I tell you.
  • Science fiction thought of it first, a couple of quick pointers off the top of my head. Long thread here: http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/01/11/26/1752206.shtml Heinlein: the water bed