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Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone.
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May 22, 2023 15:46
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. Lots, but my overall favourite is probably from a short story (that I no longer remember the title or author of) set primarily on an earth/moon shuttle. This is a regular civilian shuttle service, show up at the spaceport and buy a ticket sort of thing. Single stage to orbit, nuclear engine, brachistochrone trajectory that gets you to the moon in like 4 hours. The ship is automated, with a sophisticated autopilot that handles all flight operations, including takeoff and landing. It does however have some crew: - the cabin staff, whose job it is to serve snacks to the passengers, give the preflight safety briefing, etc; and - the engineer, whose job it is to load the correct stack of punch cards into the autopilot for each phase of flight.
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May 22, 2023 16:06
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Kestral posted:Are there go-to texts for getting the least-sanitized versions possible? I dearly love the parts of mythology and folklore that are just bizarre to modern sensibilities... https://www.amazon.com/Oh-My-Gods-Modern-Retelling/dp/1451609981 I thought my child was really into mythology, turns out it was one of those growing up experiences comparable to my reading Jerome Robbins books in the 80's.
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May 22, 2023 16:08
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Remulak posted:Oh My Gods by Freeman: I've mentioned this before, but my father's approach to "sex education" was just leaving books he knew or had heard had "dirty parts" lying around where he knew I would find them. Reading Gravity's Rainbow at 13 does weird things to the head, but I turned out . . .fine? Look where I am today!
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May 22, 2023 16:16
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Jeepers I will forever be grateful for my parent's approach to sex education, which is having a bunch of biology and anatomy books around the house and politely answering any questions I asked
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May 22, 2023 16:22
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. In one of Varley’s short story collections, they were sending newspapers and regular old snail mail up from Earth in rockets for the people in space stations/on the moon.
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May 22, 2023 16:31
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I used to think that two people taking over the world via posting was a huge miss, turns out OSC nailed that one.
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May 22, 2023 16:37
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E wrong thread
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May 22, 2023 16:42
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well while I'm here, I finally gave Becky Chambers's Wayfarers series another go after only reading book 1. Halfway through 4 after starting 1 last week, just a very satisfying read. Though so far, 4 has not been as good as 2 or 3 were imo.
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May 22, 2023 16:44
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Just finished Fonda Lee's new novella Untethered Sky which I really enjoyed. It's a story about a woman who is a part of a large group of Roc tamers (think falconers but with mythologically enormous birds). It's kind of a lovely meditation on loss and the relationship between humanity and wild things.
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May 22, 2023 16:58
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. Ralph Nader becoming a martyr that inspires a new political luddite movement that controls 2/3rd of the world is certainly up there. "Gentle Nader" lmao
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May 22, 2023 17:03
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AARD VARKMAN posted:well while I'm here, I finally gave Becky Chambers's Wayfarers series another go after only reading book 1. Halfway through 4 after starting 1 last week, just a very satisfying read. Though so far, 4 has not been as good as 2 or 3 were imo. Yeah, I think it peaks with 3 which I think bucks the trend the others have by having a significant amount of conflict that doesn't really get a clean resolution. 4 is interesting, and I enjoy the part where everyone just dunks on humans for a while, but it has the weakest set up of all of them and basically no real stakes beyond some ultra-personal stuff.
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May 22, 2023 17:08
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Finished up Drew Hayes posthumous education, the latest book in the Fred series. Had no idea it had even come out. Good read though. Read like a whole book instead of the multiple short story feel some of his books have. I liked this one a lot too, and now that you mention it, it is a bit different that it was one whole story instead of a group of associated ones. Also strange that my Kindle didn't put it in the same collection as the other Fred books.
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May 22, 2023 17:40
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. I do have a soft spot for early-nineties novels about the internet that earnestly talk up Cyber-Surfing the Information Superhighway, especially if they feature people being attacked with their own hacker-controlled household appliances.
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May 22, 2023 19:15
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. Larry Niven's Known Space books, mostly written in the 60's and 70's, had lots of people use payphones. Of course no one had the internet. The companion [Blank] of Worlds series was written in the mid-2000's and takes place during the events of the Known Space novels and short stories while expanding on what happens to some of the characters. They were in fact using cell phones, and something very similar to the internet the whole time! It just happened...where you couldn't see it initially!
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May 22, 2023 19:23
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I don't know if it's made it over to books yet, but I've found it interesting that modern scifi TV and movies create worlds that are mixed era technology, so they don't have to write around modern technology that would interfere with the story. Severance and Legion are two that come to mind. Also on the subject of potentially aging due to advances in technology: One of my favorite science fiction book categories is anything space related written in the '50s. After WW2 when the concept of manned space flight was a topic of discussion, but before anyone had actually gone to space. I just read Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, published in 1953, which is the perfect example of that category. The main thing that aged there is the spiritual layers to it, I feel like science fiction of that era is more likely to mix in some things like ouija boards than later science fiction. I was surprised that this novel from 1953 was written to respect both the speed of light and time dilation. I also wonder if it read differently in that era - after finishing it, to me it feels more like a horror story: You have the Overmind using the Overlords to basically prep other species as food for them to consume. Humanity functionally had no agency or choice - the Overlords showed up, adjusted their society to move toward the desired end point of ascending their physical forms to join with the Overmind. The final end point of this process basically results in the last round of humans who didn't make the cutoff depressed, suicidal, etc. This process was so absolutely traumatic to humanity that the echoes of it went back in time to have ancient humans define the physical forms of demons as the Overlords. I kind of thought the author's intent was to be more ambiguous than that, especially around the scenes that show the Overlords as sad that they can't ascend to the level the civilizations they cultivate do. But by the end my interpretation was much more cosmic horror than anything else.
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May 22, 2023 19:43
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. Japan and the Yakuza ruling the world is a classic. The Yakuza barely exists any more, and the average member is in their 50's because young people think they are lame. Kind of like SA, really.
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May 22, 2023 19:44
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron; the title character is a muckraking television journalist who's so influential that he can bring down companies just by badmouthing them on his show. Maybe believable when most of America was tuning in every night to hear what Walter Cronkite had to say about the news, but not so much today.
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May 22, 2023 20:17
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. If I can go slightly off topic to Sci-Fi RPG's I've always been amused by how badly 70's classic Traveller missed Moore's Law and related computer power progress. So that a Tech Level 15 (7 is 70's Earth) Ultra-Computer Mainframe! built in the Capital to help direct The Galactic Empire! was considerably less capable than the latest IPhone.
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May 22, 2023 20:18
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Selachian posted:Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron; the title character is a muckraking television journalist who's so influential that he can bring down companies just by badmouthing them on his show. Maybe believable when most of America was tuning in every night to hear what Walter Cronkite had to say about the news, but not so much today. Tucker Carlson? I'd say that it would be hard to overstate the influence that mass media has in 2023 compared to the pre-internet age, and I think that's the biggest hole in pre-2000s sci fi, just a whiff on what the internet would be and how pervasive it is. I'm pretty convinced that should we shed these earthly chains and spread throughout the galaxy, stumbling across the relics of long dead civilizations, we'll find that Fermi's Great Filter was social media.
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May 22, 2023 20:47
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Zore posted:4 is interesting, and I enjoy the part where everyone just dunks on humans for a while
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May 22, 2023 20:58
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DACK FAYDEN posted:is this the one with the bit about cheese, because that's my favorite thing she has written Yep
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May 22, 2023 21:00
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Chainclaw posted:The main thing that aged there is the spiritual layers to it, I feel like science fiction of that era is more likely to mix in some things like ouija boards than later science fiction. I was surprised that this novel from 1953 was written to respect both the speed of light and time dilation. Ray Bradbury has a few stories like this from the 50s, such as "The Fire Balloons" about priests going into space and talking to Martians about sin
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May 22, 2023 21:06
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Crashbee posted:Ray Bradbury has a few stories like this from the 50s, such as "The Fire Balloons" about priests going into space and talking to Martians about sin https://twitter.com/lizardmancer/status/1608640943640707073
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May 22, 2023 21:14
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logically I feel like the arrival of sentient aliens will signal the final end to religion, but I imagine there'll be millions who delude themselves like this.
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May 22, 2023 21:23
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. Connie Willis's Doomsday Book, where an historian is sent back in time with a recording device that can hold 2.5 gigabytes of data. (I mean, in 1992, gigabytes were a fond dream, but still)
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May 22, 2023 21:32
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Deptfordx posted:If I can go slightly off topic to Sci-Fi RPG's I've always been amused by how badly 70's classic Traveller missed Moore's Law and related computer power progress. Traveller is just all cassette futurist space vcrs and big clunky buttons, like alien isolation, I love that aesthetic. I don't think it tries to hard to be an authentic prediction
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May 22, 2023 21:48
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Crashbee posted:Ray Bradbury has a few stories like this from the 50s, such as "The Fire Balloons" about priests going into space and talking to Martians about sin
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May 22, 2023 21:48
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Perdido Street Station (Bas-Lag #1) by China Miéville - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBFO8C/ Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder #1) by Brian McClellan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KT7YTV4/ Cold Iron (Masters and Mages #1) by Miles Cameron - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079L5669Y/ Rumo & His Miraculous Adventure (Zamonia #2) by Walter Moers - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MWC9NZJ/ The Alchemaster's Apprentice (Zamonia #4) by Walter Moers - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MXDJJHF/
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May 22, 2023 22:28
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Fate Accomplice posted:logically I feel like the arrival of sentient aliens will signal the final end to religion, but I imagine there'll be millions who delude themselves like this. Final end? Anything more alien than a Star Trek humanoid will make theology debates of every flavor way more complicated and impassioned and god help us if the aliens resemble anything described in holy scriptures
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May 23, 2023 00:45
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There's nothing about the existence of alien life that would contradict anything in most major religions. Cute Internet Atheist bit though.
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May 23, 2023 01:58
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Jesus was an alien
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May 23, 2023 02:09
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Gaius Marius posted:Jesus was an alien Are there any good books about this as a plot point?
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May 23, 2023 02:11
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StrixNebulosa posted:Are there any good books about this as a plot point? Phillip K. Dick kinda? Valis more specifically I guess
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May 23, 2023 02:15
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StrixNebulosa posted:Are there any good books about this as a plot point? And I heard it was good, but I did not read it. And it's not exactly what you asked. But it's kinda close.
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May 23, 2023 02:25
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Behold the man by Michael Moorcock sort of fits
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May 23, 2023 02:30
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zoux posted:Do you guys have a favorite miss from past sci fi that dates it horribly? You know like how 80s sci fi movies are riddled with CRTs displays, or how almost everyone missed the idea of the smart phone. Kind of the opposite, but I liked how Ian Banks anticipated smart phones a couple of times in the culture novels, since there are so many other 90's space operas where people have FTL travel but no pocket computers/instant communication devices. He even wrote a joke in The Player of Games about how in the culture a lot of fiction stories begin with people somehow losing access to their terminals (their version of smart phones), since always having a terminal on you eliminates a lot of potential for drama or horror. The bit in Use of Weapons where people play MMO games in their sleep instead of dreaming, which was written before MMORPGs were a thing also really stuck with me. Ian Banks was a pretty thoughtful guy who anticipated a lot of poo poo.
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May 23, 2023 02:35
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StrixNebulosa posted:Are there any good books about this as a plot point? Not precisely, but C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy is all about imagining a Christian cosmology of inhabited alien worlds. Blastedhellscape posted:The bit in Use of Weapons where people play MMO games in their sleep instead of dreaming, which was written before MMORPGs were a thing also really stuck with me. Ian Banks was a pretty thoughtful guy who anticipated a lot of poo poo. It's pretty cool how The Player of Games' depiction of Azad prefigures Civilization and other computer wargames.
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May 23, 2023 02:42
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zoux posted:I used to think that two people taking over the world via posting was a huge miss, turns out OSC nailed that one. Yeah I thought the future part in Cloud Atlas where they just call movies "disneys" was silly and anachronistic, whoops.
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May 23, 2023 02:44
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StrixNebulosa posted:Are there any good books about this as a plot point? The short story La Befana by Gene Wolfe The film version of the Man Who Fell to Earth sort of. Not sure about the novel
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May 23, 2023 02:54
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