|
Nth Doctor posted:Is there something horrible I need to learn about Kurt Vonnegut, out of curiosity? While his stuff wasn't exclusively science fiction, it was definitely political. "Harrison Bergeron" seems to be well-loved by conservatives who think anything trying to assure equal rights is a massive affront to anyone talented and gifted, but that's not necessarily on Vonnegut. I kind of think the story could go both ways since anyone railing against multiculturalism or diversity pretty much wants everyone to be the same kind of person as well, but that's me. Maybe this leads into a digression into a debate on whether The Incredibles is Objectivist propaganda or SJW indoctrination... EDIT: What do you know? Vonnegut addressed this issue once in the past. https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_could/ quote:The court has ruled that the $2.7 billion in school funding is inadequate and distributed unfairly. The Legislature has approved a $142 million increase and allowed local districts to raise property taxes nearly $500 million more. quote:But in a telephone interview Wednesday, Vonnegut told the Journal-World that the students’ attorneys may have misinterpreted his story. Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Feb 12, 2021 |
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 17:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 05:51 |
|
|
Hobnob posted:One of the interesting things about PKD was that he wasn't really sure about the nature of reality, but was also aware that his brain wasn't working the way other people's did. This leads to some explorations of self-reflection that you don't see from many other SF writers. Speaking of PKD's short stories being adapted to film, Minority Report is an interesting case. It got substantially simplified in its adaptation, but in the process, that turned what was in the end a fairly straightforward mindfuck short story into a much stronger statement on the role and nature of policing. His most political work is by far A Scanner Darkly as a brutal indictment of the war on drugs that was seriously starting to ramp up at the time of writing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 17:26
|
|
|
Aramis posted:Speaking of PKD's short stories being adapted to film, Minority Report is an interesting case. It got substantially simplified in its adaptation, but in the process, that turned what was in the end a fairly straightforward mindfuck short story into a much stronger statement on the role and nature of policing. his sequel to 'second variety', 'jon's world' is also quite political - it basically argues that technology isn't amoral, and that our technological expansion just leads to more brutal and destructive wars, and if we moved elsewhere we'd return to an agrarian paradise. it is also quite critical of psychology and treatment.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 17:31
|
|
|
It's a testament to PkD's brilliance that it's 2021 and I'm still finding out about movie adaptations that I didn't realize were based on his works. I feel like he could've scribbled something on a cocktail napkin and someone would option it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 17:37
|
|
|
Aramis posted:Speaking of PKD's short stories being adapted to film, Minority Report is an interesting case. It got substantially simplified in its adaptation, but in the process, that turned what was in the end a fairly straightforward mindfuck short story into a much stronger statement on the role and nature of policing. The flip side of this was me reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and then watching Blade Runner and being incredibly disappointed with how narrow the scope was and how Deckard was basically a sexual predator who was terrible at his job. Part 3 of this process, Bladerunner 2049, was extremely good however. At least it got me to read a book I really enjoyed a whole lot
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 17:40
|
|
|
Dick Trauma posted:It's a testament to PkD's brilliance that it's 2021 and I'm still finding out about movie adaptations that I didn't realize were based on his works. I feel like he could've scribbled something on a cocktail napkin and someone would option it. One day, someone will attempt to adapt Valis, and it's going to be wild.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 17:45
|
|
|
I love PKD. He wrote a lot of absolute trash, but he never wastes your time, and you can tell pretty quickly if you're reading a banger or garbage.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 17:57
|
|
|
selec posted:I think the obvious glee he took in writing the Panther Modern-assisted sub-caper kind of undercuts this take. He obviously has picked a side in those novels, and his sympathies were more with the people disrupting and trying to route around the corps than the people working for them. Saying he doesn't sympathize with the megacorps he writes about is a lot different than saying he dreads them. He doesn't present Sense/Net in a particularly antagonistic light. They're just a really big company that the protagonists need to rob to get the Dixie Flatline. I think he takes a similar glee in writing the drone attack on the Touring Police on Freeside. I'd chalk these scenes and the others like them to his distaste and distrust of authority rather than a particular animus towards corporations. I get what you're saying about his politics, and I think phrasing it in those terms works a lot better than phrasing it in terms of first-worlders. But I still don't think that's particularly accurate. I think Gibson in '80 would be less a social democrat Bernie Bro and more a libertarian Ron Paul Rloveution type. Gibson didn't trust or want government. That's why he wrote so many romanticized versions of the Kowloon Walled City. And I think his class sympathies are still largely the same. Verity is hardly his first out-of-work middle class professional protagonist. She's of a type he's been using since Marly in Count Zero. And she's there alongside Flynn, who's just the latest version of his Horatio Alger hero that he's been using for over 30 years. In short, I think the narrative that Gibson was some lefty who got brain worms and became a boomer centrist is incorrect. Gibson has just followed the normal arc of boomer centrism.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 18:02
|
|
|
Darkrenown posted:I was replying to your huge posts and you asked me to come reply to you in this thread. But it's also tedious to reply to you when you can't quote correctly and are factually wrong on almost every point you make because you barely remember these books. So the best option is to stop posting at each other. The thing is that those posts I made? There were many of them. Trying to respond to several posts worth of responses in one post is tiring. I ain't telling you to stop posting, just keep it managable. Also I told you to come here since we were asked by Aruan to stop derailing the USPOL thread, and you didn't see that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 18:13
|
|
|
In the vein of the conversation about books like Forever War that was happening in uspol, I'll recommend David Drake's book Redliners. It's more approachable than the mountain of Hammer's Slammers stuff (which is also good) and is all about a bunch of soldiers already screwed up by combat trauma trying to keep themselves and a bunch of civilians alive on a deathtrap jungle planet. It's David Drake, so the slam bang action parts are fun, but for a space Vietnam book it's much more First Blood than it is subsequent space-Rambo. Several of the scenes involving soldiers grappling with trauma are gripping enough that I can easily remember them twenty years later. (Also because it's David Drake, there's more to the plot structure than just soldiers fighting their way through a jungle.) Drake himself considers it probably the best and definitely the most important thing he's written. Aruan posted:how can we be talking about Weird Sex Stuff and nobody has brought up later Dune I don't really remember much after God Emperor of Dune, but I think that the sex matriarch stuff was pretty tame compared to what's in some of his other stuff. Whipping Star is about a rich sadist circumventing her societally-mandated mental reprogramming by getting into an abusive relationship with an intelligent telepathic star. Like, the fusing-hydrogen kind of star. Said star develops a much more fulfilling relationship with the main character. The sequel The Dosadi Experiment takes place on a resource strapped survival of the fittest planet that's basically Necromunda with aliens. It features the main character having a frank conversation with one of the locals about the societal problem of homosexuality. Local guy (e: gal? might've been the love interest) makes a point of recruiting gays into nigh-suicidal death squads, because apparently when people have given up on carrying on perpetuating the species it's way easier to get them to give up on self preservation. The main character is horrified by this, not because he disagrees with that drivel but because his society does the humane thing and rounds them up and puts them in camps to keep the rest safe. I swear I'm not overstating the homophobia here. Later on, there's some gender bending stuff that isn't offensive, except in so far as it reads like an excerpt from a hentai game. The Jesus Incident series, which is an otherwise interesting exploration of gestalt consciousness and post-singularity AI, also has some pretty hosed up parts where a villain is manipulating and controlling people with sexual abuse and torture. Darkrenown posted:It's OK not to like the books, although you seem to have read the entire series of 10+ books so it's a little strange if you thought they were stupid bullshit the whole time, Hey now, plenty of us have taste bad enough to enjoy a lengthy series while also being ready to admit it's stupid bullshit. If Weber really meant for Honor's arc to end at book nine, that explains a bit. I gave up about halfway through the eleventh. eviltastic fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Feb 12, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 18:24
|
|
|
eviltastic posted:In the vein of the conversation about books like Forever War that was happening in uspol, I'll recommend David Drake's book Redliners. It was a nice surprise to see someone bring up this book. The Nineties was the last time I had easy access to a library, and that's when I started reading more contemporary sci fi, like Drake, Weber, etc. and Redliners stood out to me as the kind of story that properly balances tech, setting and human issues. I remember enjoying the first couple of Honor Harrington books until I read one that re-used the word "squarely" so many times that I started dog-earing the page each time I found it. EDIT: VVVV I was a teenager in the Eighties so for me there is no such thing as "too much corporate dystopia." 
Dick Trauma fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Feb 12, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 18:37
|
|
|
a modern day forever war is 'the light brigade' - same themes, but with more corporate dystopia
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 19:10
|
|
|
The "Shatterday" short story compilation from Harlan Ellison is worth it for the story "Jeffty is five" alone. It's a thing where I'd ruin it by explaining it, just read it. It's also noteworthy for having this back cover, and actually pulling it off.  (Obviously this loses a bit in translation when I can't hand you the paperback, but Ellison's not overplaying his hand here)
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 21:20
|
|
|
eviltastic posted:The "Shatterday" short story compilation from Harlan Ellison is worth it for the story "Jeffty is five" alone. It's a thing where I'd ruin it by explaining it, just read it. Harlan Ellison spent an entire career setting himself up to be a cantankerous old son of a bitch, which on some level I respect. Commit to the bit, even when it means mailing a dead gopher. At the same time, groping a woman on stage when she's introducing you for an award then complaining when she didn't immediately accept a halfhearted apology via a phone call is straight loving lovely.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 21:50
|
|
|
eviltastic posted:The "Shatterday" short story compilation from Harlan Ellison is worth it for the story "Jeffty is five" alone. It's a thing where I'd ruin it by explaining it, just read it. However, screw Harlan Ellison.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 21:50
|
|
|
Nth Doctor posted:At the same time, groping a woman on stage when she's introducing you for an award then complaining when she didn't immediately accept a halfhearted apology via a phone call is straight loving lovely. ...oookay, didn't know about that one. Yikes. I take it there's more? It's never just the once with guys like that. Kchama posted:However, screw Harlan Ellison. Guess I can't disagree now! eviltastic fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Feb 12, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 22:31
|
|
|
I worked at a bookstore back in the Eighties and Harlan Ellison was there for a signing. He saw that there were a number of his paperbacks on the shelf that for some reason he believed were not supposed to be in circulation, so he angrily gathered them all up and made a public display of stripping the covers off of all of them for shipping back to the publisher as proof that the books were going to be destroyed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 22:46
|
|
|
eviltastic posted:...oookay, didn't know about that one. Yikes. I take it there's more? It's never just the once with guys like that. His entire gimmick was basically poo poo like that. Even if it was :stdh:, he talked tales of how he'd go to a woman's house pretending he was going to have sex with her or whatever, and then tie her up and and leave her there to suffer whatever fate happens when you're tied up and abandoned. Harlan's a very well-known monster of a man who was cruel to everyone he felt he could get away with it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 23:10
|
|
|
Kchama posted:His entire gimmick was basically poo poo like that. Even if it was :stdh:, he talked tales of how he'd go to a woman's house pretending he was going to have sex with her or whatever, and then tie her up and and leave her there to suffer whatever fate happens when you're tied up and abandoned.  I didn't know about that poo poo but I am utterly unsurprised. What a fucker.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2021 23:20
|
|
|
Kchama posted:Harlan's a very well-known monster of a man who was cruel to everyone he felt he could get away with it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 00:34
|
|
|
Let's take this thread back to books you'd buy at a gun show or from US Cavalry catalog during the Ruby Ridge era. But, instead of ones that are "What if The Turner Diaries, but a big rock hits the Earth?" and "What if the Turner Diaries, but in space?" how about, "What if America, but everyone is a rich cowboy hippie in a Libertarian private property utopia alternate universe?" The Probability Broach. This book loving ruled (to me, in middle school. I haven't read it since.) There's no fascism/libertarian confusion here. Gorillas have sentience rights, so they give speeches in the unicameral Congress (in Gallatin, Colorado, duh, which is only in session when 90% or more of people or their proxies representing them are tuned in) using voice machines. There's no global warming because people sue GHG emitters before private judges, and anyone who blows off a lawsuit or a judgment is shunned so hard they have to go do asteroid mining. There's fusion-powered airships. People dress like harlequins because freedom. There's the Kingdom of Hawaii as the final, sinister holdout of statism in the world. There's a Webley Electric pocket railgun. As an absolute shocker for hearing the words "libertarian" and "science fiction author," there's zero icky sex (an adult human man and an adult human woman like each other like adult humans do irl, and the other female main character is a rootin' tootin' 65-year-old Annie Oakley). People are aghast and horrified at the thought of an atom bomb. Alexander Hamilton is considered history's greatest monster. Libertarianism is dumb, and no characters in this book are actually employed by anyone else or labor to produce wealth, but who cares? DOLPHIN PHYSICISTS. HOVERCRAFT. LEGAL DUELING. THE BAD GUY IS THE RED BARON. Also this book may suck if you are not an 8th grader, but it does contrast to all the other gun nuts whose libertarian utopia is "liberty for the white men of 1985's Orange County (or their space stand-ins) to do whatever they want to The Other." And, it's wacky. Maybe it's extremely cringy now idk, I only remember the fun parts
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 01:48
|
|
|
spite house posted:Otoh he was very patient, generous and supportive with Octavia Butler, although that may have been because she was also a difficult, cantankerous misfit in addition to being a genius. She was vulnerable, though, and as far as I can tell he was a true ride-or-die. I don't know if its still on Netflix but there's a documentary on Harlan Ellison called Dreams with Sharp Teeth. One of the anecdotes is from his good friend Neil Gaiman. He'd leave voicemails like "Neil this is Harlan. I'm going chain all the doors and burn your house down, piss on the ashes then hit them with a rake until it breaks. Anyway call me back." He was a a very weird dude but seemed to be a very good friend in his own hosed up way.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 04:43
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Heinlein was a libertarian but I always kind of feel like he had stuff he wanted to write about then anything else he didn't care about he'd just write as "I don't care about that, so it's whatever is simplest to write" Out of curiosity, do you give him the same pass for setting conceits that rationalize incest?
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 08:39
|
|
|
Xand_Man posted:I don't know if its still on Netflix but there's a documentary on Harlan Ellison called Dreams with Sharp Teeth. One of the anecdotes is from his good friend Neil Gaiman. He'd leave voicemails like "Neil this is Harlan. I'm going chain all the doors and burn your house down, piss on the ashes then hit them with a rake until it breaks. Anyway call me back." I mean except for how he'd randomly assault people for fun, or publicly lie that he did to humiliate you in front of others. He has a million stories about that. Like this one guy he not only punched him out of nowhere, threatened to sue him for something incredibly stupid, but then went on to brag to everyone he could about how he beat the poo poo out of him and... look, just read this. Ellison was just kind of a constant liar about everything. quote:More than eight years ago, Harlan Ellison struck a glancing blow to the Kchama fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Feb 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 09:27
|
|
|
The Oldest Man posted:Out of curiosity, do you give him the same pass for setting conceits that rationalize incest? Like..... in all you zombies and pull yourself up by your bootstraps?????
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 13:17
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Like..... in all you zombies and pull yourself up by your bootstraps????? Almost the entirety of the "Lazarus Long" series of books has pro-incest views, as described in this very thread even!
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 13:19
|
|
|
I will say that the thread title should read "Posting Guarantees Citizenship." 
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 20:17
|
|
|
I wound up reading Trekonomics for christmas and it's a pretty great read, explaining how the luxury space communism of the Federation is an actual viable economic/societal model (and that it actually predates the replicator, in-universe). Anyway, one of the writers of Star Trek Picard did a write-up on that one city planet they visited and I have been cursed to share this knowledge with you. Apparently Crypto is still going in the 24th century! 
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 21:50
|
|
|
Yvonmukluk posted:I wound up reading Trekonomics for christmas and it's a pretty great read, explaining how the luxury space communism of the Federation is an actual viable economic/societal model (and that it actually predates the replicator, in-universe). The economics of star trek is always weird, maybe just because our view is limited to a quasi-military starship. Everyone seems to like, own one personal object they keep in a small sparsely decorated room. I feel like there was episodes o'brien had to work late to buy a birthday present for his daughter. I think nog lives in a cardboard box. picard owns a modest sized vineyard but it's his family's and that seems like about how rich a super decorated military officer would be just anyway. It's like everyone told everyone else they live in a post scarcity society but everyone is mostly poor as frig and it's just the future so stuff is better.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 22:35
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:The economics of star trek is always weird, maybe just because our view is limited to a quasi-military starship. Everyone seems to like, own one personal object they keep in a small sparsely decorated room. I feel like there was episodes o'brien had to work late to buy a birthday present for his daughter. I think nog lives in a cardboard box. picard owns a modest sized vineyard but it's his family's and that seems like about how rich a super decorated military officer would be just anyway. It's like everyone told everyone else they live in a post scarcity society but everyone is mostly poor as frig and it's just the future so stuff is better. The whole point of luxury space communism is that if you can get whatever you want whenever you want, then personal property becomes mostly meaningless beyond sentimental items. Pointing at it and saying: "Sure looks to me like most people don't own much at all" is one heck of a head scratcher. Edit: Also, lol at pointing at a Ferengi's living conditions, as if the whole point of the entire race isn't to be a massive capitalism straw man . Aramis fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Feb 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 22:58
|
|
|
a post scarcity society will still have personal property through if nothing else objects that hold sentimental value - which you don’t see in Star Trek because it’s poorly written
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 23:05
|
|
|
Aramis posted:The whole point of luxury space communism is that if you can get whatever you want whenever you want, then personal property becomes mostly meaningless beyond sentimental items. The point is, the show makes a big point that they live in luxury space communism, but that is never really shown in any way. It's not like if you were in a modern military/exploration boat they would be making you pay for the food or anything. No one ever seems to be living in conditions that are specifically any better than it seems like they would be if it wasn't "space communism". The show makes a big point that it's a post scarcity world but never really shows that in any particular way. The replicator is a special effectsy way to get a cup of tea, but it's not like the officer on a ship couldn't just have tea now. There isn't much in the writing that is written very post scarcity in any way. If they didn't tell you it you wouldn't really know by watching things that happened.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 23:18
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:The economics of star trek is always weird, maybe just because our view is limited to a quasi-military starship. Everyone seems to like, own one personal object they keep in a small sparsely decorated room. I feel like there was episodes o'brien had to work late to buy a birthday present for his daughter. I think nog lives in a cardboard box. picard owns a modest sized vineyard but it's his family's and that seems like about how rich a super decorated military officer would be just anyway. It's like everyone told everyone else they live in a post scarcity society but everyone is mostly poor as frig and it's just the future so stuff is better. It's pretty clear from Picard that the Federation is only post-scarcity in a UBI type way and that there are very distinct class divides - some people live in small apartments, some people live shacks in the desert doing drugs, while Picard has a family-owned vineyard he inherited that is massive and is clearly not just a museum piece since it's got robot agricultural hoverbots flying around in addition to tons of hand laborers. And that's just Earth. Other places (including places we saw as far back as TNG) on the periphery are poverty-stricken. We see extractive mining and other takings happening out on the periphery as well. The Federation government institutions and military are still centered on Earth, at the imperial core. Picard's speech from First Contact about how people in his century have found things to motivate them beyond the pursuit of money is probably just an aristocrat's pretense rather than a fair description of the Federation's economic order. So I think the Federation is probably best interpreted as a sort of future analogue to Bismarck's Germany. It's more multicultural and multipolar than other peer nations, more forward thinking and democratic, and clearly does better by its underclasses than most of the other nations around it, but it's still a scarcity-based class society under everything else and "better" was clearly not enough to stop it from sliding into imperial decline as depicted in Picard.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 23:27
|
|
|
Yeah, and I understand why you'd write like that, but it's interesting that even in terms of relatively popular sci-fi star trek is the most often talked about as the post scarcity one but is the one that never really shows that on screen. No one really has more or less than the equivalent person in a modern society would also have except having the future space version of it. No scifi but a scifi explicitly about it would ever just do 'every episode is about the singularity and nothing is familiar" but star trek is really particularly dogmatic on really very very clearly having no hint that it's post scarcity except the trappings that the technology they have would allow it to be that. Like jetsons or futurama are more post scarcity seeming than star trek is. With the way the characters live, not just the technology that exists.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2021 23:46
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:No scifi but a scifi explicitly about it would ever just do 'every episode is about the singularity and nothing is familiar" but star trek is really particularly dogmatic on really very very clearly having no hint that it's post scarcity except the trappings that the technology they have would allow it to be that. I'm not really convinced Star Trek has ever shown any hint that it does have the technology to be a truly Culture-esque post-scarcity society. They have replicators that can make food and equipment, but that party trick is irrelevant without more information about the technology and its inputs. What if a replicator costs fifty billion dollars, requires an entire city's power output to make a sandwich, and is only worth it on deep space starships that already need that power output for the warp drive anyway? We see plenty of old fashioned hand labor and conventional construction happening in Star Trek which suggests that replicators aren't a post-scarcity technology.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2021 00:42
|
|
|
I think even outside that real singularity post human type technology star trek is weirdly split in how much it talks up how much society is changed by their more advanced thinking and new technology vs how much the society it depicts is identical in all ways to being exactly the same. Everyone has replicators but everyone shown works full work days to seemingly have access to material wealth in exact proportion to how much you'd have expected their rank in society to award them anyway. It's a show that wants to talk about being post scarcity and communal, but nothing would ever have you know that, it isn't a show interested in exploring how any technology changes society, everything is simply a space version of what we have now in most cases. Their lives are more or less untransformed by being in a communist post scarcity society, it's more or less the same as it would be otherwise. The boss still gets the nicest bed, blue collar miles still is blue collar and has to bum drinks off his doctor friend (his doctor friend that needed illegal medical treatment to fix him being too dumb to know what a cat was). I mentioned jetsons, and that show isn't real serious sci-fi, but even it has a little more to say. Like a central part of the joke premise is that george's job is absurdly easy, where he simply presses one button (he's a digital operator, get it?) and only works an hour a day and only 3 days a week, but it generally effects him like a modern day job because his boss is excessively mean to him and his job is very demanding by his own contemporary standards. Like technology reshaped their whole life experience, but they feel the same way about it. While star trek they talk about how different everything is but looking at it life is exactly the same but the space version.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2021 02:10
|
|
|
The thing about Star Trek is that the whole "humans don't have money or care about personal wealth (or mourn the dead or believe in gods, or disagree with each other about thingsetc)" thing was just basically declared by Roddenberry near the beginning of TNG and none of the writers really knew what to do with it, because it made writing episodes difficult, especially the nobody disagrees thing. So they had Picard/Riker make condescending speeches about it and then pretty much ignored it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2021 03:04
|
|
|
It seems like the federation is not so much post-scarcity as it a prosperous slavery-supported democracy like ancient Athens, just technically advanced to the point that their slaves are artificial intelligences which aren't legally or even morally (by most people) considered people. It's established that holograms are used to do all the real poo poo jobs, and they become sentient if you leave them on long enough, and that this has happened because we see some hologram miners or tube-scrubbers or whatever sharing the Doctor's subversive novel. It's clear that they still need a lot of labor, natural resources, etc that the replicators can't make. It's even a recurring plot point that the replicator can never make the thing you really need.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2021 03:08
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:I think even outside that real singularity post human type technology star trek is weirdly split in how much it talks up how much society is changed by their more advanced thinking and new technology vs how much the society it depicts is identical in all ways to being exactly the same. Everyone has replicators but everyone shown works full work days to seemingly have access to material wealth in exact proportion to how much you'd have expected their rank in society to award them anyway. It's a show that wants to talk about being post scarcity and communal, but nothing would ever have you know that, it isn't a show interested in exploring how any technology changes society, everything is simply a space version of what we have now in most cases. Their lives are more or less untransformed by being in a communist post scarcity society, it's more or less the same as it would be otherwise. The boss still gets the nicest bed, blue collar miles still is blue collar and has to bum drinks off his doctor friend (his doctor friend that needed illegal medical treatment to fix him being too dumb to know what a cat was). Part of the thing in Star Trek is optimism. Yeah, even in the post-scarcity full-luxury gay space communism of the Federation there are still problems and conflicts, but part of the difference is a deep abiding belief that there is no such thing as an unsolvable problem or conflict. There's a reason the Starfleet Types who don't believe that you can have peace with the Klingons are the bad guys.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2021 03:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 05:51 |
|
|
Sanguinia posted:Part of the thing in Star Trek is optimism. Yeah, even in the post-scarcity full-luxury gay space communism of the Federation there are still problems and conflicts, but part of the difference is a deep abiding belief that there is no such thing as an unsolvable problem or conflict. There's a reason the Starfleet Types who don't believe that you can have peace with the Klingons are the bad guys. That feels like another thing the show tells us about the show but rarely is shown in events. Star Trek really doesn’t seem optimistic. Nothing really seems that good for anyone. Everything mostly seems awful everywhere. We can assume off screen maybe there is happy people but every planet they ever show is always a real bad place to be.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2021 03:34
|
|