Is Science Fiction the Opiate of the Geek Masses? 747
jimharris writes "After reading Geoff Ryman's Mundane SF website, where he promotes a new form of science fiction based on real science, I got to wondering if traditional science fiction is just the opiate of the geek masses? Most science fiction is based on speculative fantasy rather than hard science - the common example being stories built around faster-than-light travel. Einstein rules, and FTL space travel has about zero chance of ever existing. SF writer Ian McDonald replied in his blog, Heads down, there's going to be incoming... and a rather wide-ranging discussion and elaboration of the idea is held over at mundane-sf.blogspot.com. Proponents of the Mundane Manifesto readily admit that traditional science fiction is just harmless fun, but I have to ask, how many people out there have a positive view on life because they believe in Star Trek in the same way that other faithful do."
Who are these 'faithful'??? (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFS:
It's statements like these that make all geeks look bad.
Mundane SF = Modern Novel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, FTL travel is far-fetched, but it's no less a fantasy than any other science-based predictions an author might make.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
He is just a pessimist (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and Isaac Newton would just laugh if someone told him about weird quantum effects which we accept as obvious today.
In fact, we know that we know almost nothing about the fundamental nature of this Universe, and it's just pointless to discuss what one can and can not do with it.
Is it the opiate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that all sci-fi is actually crap. I'm not one to deny the quality of original Star Wars or great novels from Asimov or Heinlein or Stephenson. But it seems to me that many nerds will like anything and everything sci-fi just because its sci-fi.
What bothers me the most is that I'm a somewhat well rounded geek, but most sci-fi TV shows really don't do it for me. And when all my friends like a show they act like I'm lying when I have no interest and they think its the best thing ever. Things are good because they are good, not because they have a robot, alien, spaceship, magic, etc.
Creating New Technology (Score:2, Insightful)
On another tangent, if you surveyed a large portion of scientists who like science fiction, you would probably see a lot of them having entered the sciences due to the influence of science fiction. So what if FTL is most likely impossible, does that mean all those guys at JPL who love Star Trek, Stargate, B5, etc. should stop watching since it isn't science fact?
My last tangent:
What about programs that look very much like science fact but in reality are much more science fiction? The common example here is the "oh let's just enhance this image through our nifty little computer software, and viola, there's your murder suspect." I somewhat think that this type of fiction does a disservice to real science, not helping it.
Re:He is just a pessimist (Score:1, Insightful)
Slashdot is the Opiate of the Geek Masses. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doug Moen
Einstein doesn't have to be wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
My favorite author, Vernor Vinge [wikipedia.org], writes about a universe where we are in a "slow zone", and the laws of physics allow FTL travel in other places but not here. Vinge has a Ph.D. in math, and writes the kind of hard sci-fi that I like most. In fact it might be that writing with Einstein's constraints helped Vinge since he had to come up with a creative solution.
Re:No (Score:1, Insightful)
Faith in the future, more than Stra Trek. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mundane SF = Modern Novel? (Score:2, Insightful)
100 years ago Flight was quite literally a dream for 99.99999999% of the world.
For 50 years one thought they couldn't travel faster than sound.
in the Late 1970's IBM asked would an home person want a computer.
Just because you can't figure out how, doesn't mean someone else can't.
Sci-Fi has presented a lot of good ideas and possibilities. Andromena. Battlestar Galactic, and several others use regular light speed signals for normal space, then use a twist to get them to a very distant point. All of those methods have been theorized and talked about, but none of them can be known for sure until we get more information.
Re:Who are these 'faithful'??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Science fiction a revision of our times (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mundane SF = Modern Novel? (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. "Speculative fiction" entails a certain level of "speculation". This whole 'mundane' nonsense is grossly oversimplifying matters...there's no SF that's completely 'hard'...if it were, it would cease to be SF. Advocating that authors ought to stick to McGuffins that are more plausible is all well and good...I'm a big fan of so-called 'hard sci-fi' myself...but it's simply not plausible to strip all speculation from the genre...if you do, you have nothing left but modern fiction, exactly as you observed.
Re:How about this....... (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that it's then called entertainment, and its the whole reason most people watch movies, read books and play games. Whenever some form of entertainment starts to try and make me get some 'new perspective,' I go to something else. If I wanted that I'd stick with real life, the rest of this is to get my mind off things, to be entertained and relax a little.
Re:He is just a pessimist (Score:5, Insightful)
As for science fiction being fantasy... well, duh. There really isn't much difference between the two, except that science fiction is _usually_ speculative, and has more of a basis in our own reality, while other fantasy is free to explore the more farfetched. A careful writer can actually make it very difficult to tell the difference between SF and fantasy. (Frank Herbert, China Mieville, and others.)
As was kind of stated before in this topic, you can only make science fiction so 'realistic' before it's no longer science fiction, but simply realistic fiction.
Re:Mundane SF = Modern Novel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there is a certain amount of extrapolation allowable. For instance there are technologies that are theoretically possible and for which the science exsts, but which are currently beyond our engineering capabilities. A good example, up until just recently anyway, was the space elevator.
Not that the MSF manifest sounds terribly attractive, you understand
Re:Mundane SF = Modern Novel? (Score:3, Insightful)
If your definition of "exists" requires that existing things have mass, then you're using a very distorted definition of the word.
So try technology-based predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody wants science fiction stripped of the fiction, some people just don't want it all stripped of the science. Science fantasy can still be entertaining, but it shouldn't be allowed to slip into otherwise consistent science fiction any more than traditional fantasy should corrupt traditional fiction. I suspect most of the Slashdot readers currently whining about how "why does everything have to be based on real facts" would turn the TV off in disgust if the next episode of "24" featured a nuclear bomb stolen by leprechauns or if "CSI" started occasionally solving mysteries with magic spells.
Here is a one-liner for you.... (Score:2, Insightful)
For me thats, for the serious part of it, SciFi is all about. I heared the sentence on Discovery channel once (though in Dutch translation so i don't know if I retranslated it correctly)... Anyone can attribute this to an actual person?
Re:He is just a pessimist (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comparison with Newton is quite flawed; Newton bascically founded classical physics as we know it, and other than the work done by Greek mathmaticians, had basically no 'head start'. By contrast, the physicists of today have much more advanced tools, much broader knowledge and talent base, and about ten orders of magintude more in the way of experimental data. In short, while it is true Newton was a true genius, he is still quite far in the past as far as today's physics are concerned.
In a word, yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who are these 'faithful'??? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it makes the "traditionally faithfull" look back.
The fact that people are as devout towards a recent, outrightly fictional show further bellitles the devoutness of those that obsess over older, obfuscated works of fiction. Even as both have enriched the lives of many.
Of course, anytime you say anything short of "jesus is love!!1!!111111!" when regarding religion you get persecuted through abuse of moderation points, but I don't care, they won't change my mind that way, nor stop me from speaking it.
Now, mod me down, all ye "faithfull", I'm used to it by now.
It doesn't have to be accurate... (Score:2, Insightful)
StarTrek and "positive views of life" (Score:3, Insightful)
Is amazing that such an obvious reference to the Marxist utopia came from Hollywood... =)
Re:No (Score:1, Insightful)
Problems with "scientific" science fiction (Score:3, Insightful)
In the end, this turns into a massive speculation. How accurate are your current predictions going to be?
Still, I find realistic sci-fi much more appealing than say, Startrek, because of the possibility of such future ACTUALLY happening. This has a very good potential.
Now - the second problem is, the future might be much darker than we imagine. Suppose you write about a near future (2050) where ecology is rule #1. But recently on physorg I read that global warming cannot be stopped easily and that the current trend is that the planet will heat about 1 degree centigrate per year. This means that in the future there would be a scenario of overheated regions of the planet (i.e. deserts), something like Mad Max. Not exactly a post-nuclear wasteland, but certainly worrysome.
So, the question is: How much realism do we want to impregnate our stories with, and how benevolent are we going to be with the future?
Well, there's got to be some degree of freedom. Besides these obstacles, writing a realistic story is very appealing, at least to me. I've been slowly losing interest for unrealistic sci-fi. Why? I know it's not real. There are no time portals, warp speeds, so I know this thing will NEVER EVER become real. So why think about something that will never happen but PRETENTS to be possible?
When Star Wars was created, I fantasized about all those things becoming real. (After all, that's the catch, isn't it?) Space travel was thought far-fetched, but NOT impossible. And this is what lets us dream.
Because, sci-fi and fantasy is about dreaming, isn't it?
Science Fiction (Score:3, Insightful)
The sci-fi channel is even less a part of the same genre. There is a little overlap, but not very much.
Sf purists (e.g. Asimov, when he was around) hate the term sci-fi. They consider it a Hollywood term that has very little to do with sf.
Re:Ya think? (Score:5, Insightful)
The main upside to the Star Trek 'prophecies' is that it is supposed to be based upon cooperation amongst the entire human race (tribalism is death), requires the application of hard science to address our current problems, and stresses that no hand from the sky is going to reach down and clean our diapers for us. We're going to have to do it ourselves. I'll take that over the Great Wet Nurse in the Sky any day. The boneyard of history is littered with civilizations whose motto was "God will provide."
Does it serve as an opiate? It probably does...to trekkies. But then, the really hardcore fanatic is always winged out on something. Better "Live long and prosper" than "Die, unbeliever!" I prefer my loonies sedated rather than armed.
Sci fi is real life, pretending to be fake (Score:5, Insightful)
Soft science fiction, done well, is generally an exploration of aspects of how the universe really is, projected for expository purposes into a universe that is different in many ways. The original Star Trek, for example, was a discussion of 1960s American gender and race relations, with a veneer of unreality that made it acceptable to broadcast in explicit detail. Aliens and FTL travel were just props; the vision of the future was a black woman on the bridge and nobody finding it notable.
Re:Mundane SF = Modern Novel? (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was studying science one of the key things to recognise about any theory of physics was that the theory should be treated as a model which reflects our current understanding of the universe, not as the definition of the universe. The model gets used for as long as it matches all observable phenomena, and should be replaced when it disagrees with some observable phenomenon with some model that explains the new observable phenomenon and the old observable phenomena.
To say that the theory is well tested is merely to say that it adequately explains many observations it has been tested against already. That is not to say that no possible future observation will contradict it.
When you say that general relativity means FTL is impossible, you are using the model as the definition. It may well be that some future observation will reveal a flaw in the general relativity model (and the models derived from it) that leads to the discovery of a new, better model which does provide for the possibility of FTL.
It is impossible to say at any point in time that some outcome is entirely prevented by physics. All we can say is that given our understanding of physics at a particular point of time, there is no way for the outcome to occur that would fit the existing model. FTL may well be possible - but if it is it will need to be explained by some successor model to general relativity.
Re:Mundane SF = Modern Novel? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it the opiate? (Score:1, Insightful)
Name one thing that can't be said of "Oh its just a soap opera set in X"
Re:Who are these 'faithful'??? (Score:3, Insightful)
At any rate,
I think it makes the "traditionally faithfull" look back.
It definately demonstrates the innate desire for humans to search after something to obsess after/find truth in. One man might take that piece of evidence to suggest that all of these things we obsess over are clearly wrong, but another man might take it to mean that this desire to seek after a set of ideals or truths suggests that such a truth exists; someone created us with the desire to "return home." As Solomon put it, God may have set eternity in the hearts of men.
Now I'm not trying to establish that what I just supposed is the case, merely that my conjecture will stem from my world view, and yours will do likewise. What I think I have established is that our final opinions are pretty much guesses that confirm the beliefs we had before we got into this discussion.
It takes wisdom, not intelligence, to consider all the possible reasons for things being the way they are.
Re:How about this....... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's this whole thing that "entertainment" is so sanctified, that it is above any reproach. Really, it's fine; I really am not judging, but I guess that it seems worth it to have a life that's not so bad that one needs escape from it. Once can be engaged in games, books, or movies, and experience them as a useful part of getting to know others, the world around us, or ourselves. Or one can only take those same things as frivolity, tune out the mind, escape. If that's the aim, it's the same as crack or opium. In fact, I have to say that the experiences I got when I tried crack were overall more interesting (if not necessarily positive) than I ever got from playing a video game or zoning out on the television.
When something is looked at as only "entertainment," it's basically like saying, "I just want to sit and let the thing push the positive brain chemical buttons in my brain." It's a denial of any true depth of experience and it seems a waste. I dunno... I'm not trying to get all agro, it just seems like your opinion comes up over and over again here, that when someone engages a subject another person has to rejoin them with, "relax, it's only *entertainment*". It's as if that's some god-given reason why critical thinking should just be discarded.
Real life can offer relaxation too... it just seems a waste of the small time we have to disregard it. Even the experience of reading a book or playing a game with someone interesting can be a cool addition to life rather than a dulling of it. Advertisers and media agents just love the entertainment angle though; it allows them to make crap that is disconnected from anything that might inspire tumult or conflict. I'm not saying that I don't disengage sometimes, it's just worth realizing that when we do that we're doing no different than smoking the crack pipe, hitting the opium... sometimes hard to resist, but ultimately incredibly dull.
Re:Mundane SF = Modern Novel? (Score:3, Insightful)
Eh, biotech advances could repair Vincent and Irene's heart defects too.
And that's only the start. There are more unbelievable things in Gattaca. In fact, it is one of a list of scifi stories suffering from the "single advancement" problem: the author takes us 20-70 years into the future to tell a cautionary tale about one specific technological development, but meanwhile everything else has stayed the same.
Specifically in Gattaca, the degree of genetic testing that went on was absurdly frequent- why in the world would NASA retest the DNA of astronauts every few weeks? In case they might mutate or something? A government that engages in that behavior clearly enjoys pervasive privacy intrusions... but if so, then why wasn't there also some more mundane forms of surveilance, like simple database mining that could pick up that two people were living in one man's home?
Re:Try this perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who are these 'faithful'??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Further, there are plenty of religious people who are not "uniquivists" (for lack of a better word.) One can be a Unitarian Buddhist. A devout Jew can learn from the Tao Te Ching.
Re:FTL is the same as time travel (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:About as believable as... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Who are these 'faithful'??? (Score:3, Insightful)
> This is Slashdot. It's defending Christianity that gets you attacked by the moderators-on-crack.
Um, no--I have never defended Christianity in my life, nor am I likely to ever do so (except in the most broad of terms), but I have gotten negative mods nearly every time I've mentioned religion in any way.
> It definately demonstrates the innate desire for humans to search after something to obsess after/find truth in. One man might take that piece of evidence to suggest that all of these things we obsess over are clearly wrong, but another man might take it to mean that this desire to seek after a set of ideals or truths suggests that such a truth exists
And yet a third man (i.e. me) might suggest that it simply demonstrates that people feel a strong need to find explanations for things, without attaching a value judgement, good or bad, to that fact. The human brain is remarkably good at finding patterns, even where no patterns exist. This pattern-finding ability has generally stood us in good stead over the years, but has also lead many, many people to believe in the significance of apparent patterns that spring from randomness.
> It takes wisdom, not intelligence, to consider all the possible reasons for things being the way they are.
Now that I fully agree with. And yet, I have almost never run into a religious person who has actually considered all the possible reasons for things being the way they are. In fact, in one sense, it's impossible: there are an infinite number of possible reasons for things being the way they are. For example, consider the Invisible Pink Unicorn [demon.co.uk] hypothesis. Is it true? I can't say. But I see no reason to think it's any more or less likely than any of the other many theories humanity has come up with.
Most religious people I've encountered (although, to be fair, I do have to say, not all of them) seem to think it boils down to two possibilities: the religion they were brought up with or out-and-out atheism. When you try to throw in all the other religions that exist, and the infinite number more that don't, but could, they get very uncomfortable and try to brush you off. At best, they say their religion "feels right" to them. (They often use far more emphatic terms, but that's what it boils down to.) Well, gee, why, possibly, might the religion you were brought up with feel right? Hmmm? Could it possibly be merely because it was what you were brought up with? Oh no, it must be the One True Religion! They can just feel it in their bones! Bah, pfui!
To bring this back vaguely on-topic, one of the best things I find in science fiction (and even, frequently, in science fantasy), is that it can open your eyes to the mere fact of new possibilities. If the strange alien race has a strange alien religion, it can suddenly make you realize that there's more than one (or even four) possible religions. Of course, that doesn't just apply to religion--it applies to all sorts of things, like politics, economics, biology, sexuality, art, etc., etc. Sure, a lot (probably even most) science fiction is mere brain candy, but the genre is still, at its core, about exploring boundaries and new ideas, and I think that's a good thing, despite Sturgeon's law.
"The Entire Human Race" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hard-SCI Fi is NOT fantasy based (Score:2, Insightful)
You obviously don't read much science fiction these days (or don't know where to look for the quality stuff).
A much higher percentage of science fiction writers have advanced degrees today than in the "golden era" and 60's. There are many physicists, mathmaticians, etc. out there writing (I can think of several just off the top of my head, including at least one who has already been mentioned in this thread).
There are even a couple of prominent NASA engineers who often grace the pages of Asmimovs from time to time.
-Eric
Pessimists are better engineers (Score:2, Insightful)