>More God-affirming
Couldn't think of anything more terrifying than making your maker. Would be like an ant meeting an elephant. Ageless, colossal, impossible to understand it's thoughts. Lovecraft had the right idea.
More scientific accuracy, less rayguns and elves. Story and characters need to be more interesting too but mostly I just want to read something informed by trends in engineering and science.
This
If you can get good characters okay, but that's not what we watch/read sci-fi for. Just ask anyone who ever watched star trek. It's shit in terms of plot, characterization, everything, but it has wacky ideas all the time and is optimistic about the future. It's what people want
Over-glut markets are due to people trying to "make-a-living". We are in Gibsons dystopia now, but instead of on steroids it's a mild sedative version. Life is reflected in its fiction and especially its genre fiction. But maybe we're just tired of the empty promises of science. This age of Science as religion...
There is no cure, but to understand your contemporary world and write a story to reflect it. There is no cure, because there is nothing wrong with it. There is something wrong with the contemporary world.
i read the other half but i do tire of there being a lack of this “other half” published in the twenty first century. please wise anon, do you have any recommendations from the last ten years?
There's a strong tendency for the setting to swallow the plot.
Often it seems as though authors develop a world, and the genesis of that world is the defacto plot. And as an extention of this the whole genre is bound by the fixation with explaining the divergence of the fantasy world from our own.
Can't we have stories that are simply ambiguous around the time in which they are set? Can the setting not just be far more localised? Traditionally everything happened on islands or ships instead of alternate realities. Can the charecter have a normal genesis and not be some kind of chosen one meme who's existence is tied to the worlds existence?
Bro I just want the count of monte cristo but in space. There doesn't need to be a reason its in space, the plot had to occur somewhere, which just happens to be space.
Western enlightenment mindset that birthed modern science has a linear conception of history, society, and technology progressing toward an ever improving state.
The "singularity" may or may not be a real thing, but it is an almost unavoidable concept for those who buy into the above mentioned ways of seeing the world. Singularity, however you may define or conceive it, more often than not involves humanity encountering a cognitive horizon whereupon the brain's ability create models of reality and make predictions is diminished, or altogether truncated, as our intelligences is hopelessly outpaced by AI.
Again, broadly speaking, this is the logical conclusion of the western mode of time and history. A secular end time myth implicit in our very approach to being in the world.
So what are the options for writing?
The way I see it there are three major camps.
1. Affirm
Stories about or during AI takeoff that nevertheless remain 'intelligible' and therefore fundamentally human and subsequently peripheral or inconsequential in stakes at a civilizational level as far as the characters can influence the outcome of anything.
2. Deny
AI intentionally curtailed or prevented so it doesn't get in the way of telling a 'gripping yarn' for the most part. Dune, 40k, whatever else.
3. Alt History
Alt-History not so much in a "What if steampunk Japan invaded the Wild West" type stuff, but a divergence from the the assumption that AI is even a possibility, or it gets countered in some way (usually some kind of psychic-magic wankery).
All three of which can be, but not always are, subsumed into Cyberpunk understood not as a sub-genre but a trans-genre.
Cyberpunk here being understood not as "high tech, low life", but as the last genre. The genre about everything that we can think of, produce, and exercise some agency over, right up until the point where we can't.
More grounded technology. The best part of Scifi is seeing how probable it is. A Nuclear fusion generator sitting where a water heater would be in a house, Implants that connect to your neural network, Robots that fight are wars. Not moving into Fantasy like Starwars's The Force. Aliens: Probable. Elves: Impossible.
Rapid cell growth pills: Improbable but still more grounded than fantasy.
Magic healing spell: Impossible/fantasy.
Less filler, more meat.
are you talking about breasts? because I'd prefer more meat, less filler
I loved her…. Ya blew it…. Capiche?
Less gay nihilistic themes and dystopian settings. More God-affirming, glorious utopian mysticism.
What about nihilistic themes but with an optimistic attitude for the future?
>More God-affirming
Couldn't think of anything more terrifying than making your maker. Would be like an ant meeting an elephant. Ageless, colossal, impossible to understand it's thoughts. Lovecraft had the right idea.
Dystopian settings but with Leibnizian optimism
>God-affirming
anti-science
>More God-affirming
Science fiction, not fantasy. Your cure is to reject the genre in its entirety.
funny
Also this. Nihilism and dystopia have been done to death and are always Marxist jane doe's
you’re a huge gay moron
More scientific accuracy, less rayguns and elves. Story and characters need to be more interesting too but mostly I just want to read something informed by trends in engineering and science.
This is gay. God science fiction is wacky thought experiments were the characters don't matter.
This
If you can get good characters okay, but that's not what we watch/read sci-fi for. Just ask anyone who ever watched star trek. It's shit in terms of plot, characterization, everything, but it has wacky ideas all the time and is optimistic about the future. It's what people want
There are some good plots in TOS.
Dont worry anons, my book will change science fiction for the better. I’m getting it back on track.
Stop morons who know nothing about science and tech from writing science fiction.
If you think science fiction is about science and tech, you don't get it.
Limit page count to 250
more war less thinking
scifi needs more originality. half the shit is just ripping off of star wars, dune, or doctor who.
Over-glut markets are due to people trying to "make-a-living". We are in Gibsons dystopia now, but instead of on steroids it's a mild sedative version. Life is reflected in its fiction and especially its genre fiction. But maybe we're just tired of the empty promises of science. This age of Science as religion...
There is no cure, but to understand your contemporary world and write a story to reflect it. There is no cure, because there is nothing wrong with it. There is something wrong with the contemporary world.
So read the other half.
Short stories do exist.
i read the other half but i do tire of there being a lack of this “other half” published in the twenty first century. please wise anon, do you have any recommendations from the last ten years?
Ban virgins from writing fiction.
Your mom would be a bestseller hahahhaha gottem
There's a strong tendency for the setting to swallow the plot.
Often it seems as though authors develop a world, and the genesis of that world is the defacto plot. And as an extention of this the whole genre is bound by the fixation with explaining the divergence of the fantasy world from our own.
Can't we have stories that are simply ambiguous around the time in which they are set? Can the setting not just be far more localised? Traditionally everything happened on islands or ships instead of alternate realities. Can the charecter have a normal genesis and not be some kind of chosen one meme who's existence is tied to the worlds existence?
Bro I just want the count of monte cristo but in space. There doesn't need to be a reason its in space, the plot had to occur somewhere, which just happens to be space.
Western enlightenment mindset that birthed modern science has a linear conception of history, society, and technology progressing toward an ever improving state.
The "singularity" may or may not be a real thing, but it is an almost unavoidable concept for those who buy into the above mentioned ways of seeing the world. Singularity, however you may define or conceive it, more often than not involves humanity encountering a cognitive horizon whereupon the brain's ability create models of reality and make predictions is diminished, or altogether truncated, as our intelligences is hopelessly outpaced by AI.
Again, broadly speaking, this is the logical conclusion of the western mode of time and history. A secular end time myth implicit in our very approach to being in the world.
So what are the options for writing?
The way I see it there are three major camps.
1. Affirm
Stories about or during AI takeoff that nevertheless remain 'intelligible' and therefore fundamentally human and subsequently peripheral or inconsequential in stakes at a civilizational level as far as the characters can influence the outcome of anything.
2. Deny
AI intentionally curtailed or prevented so it doesn't get in the way of telling a 'gripping yarn' for the most part. Dune, 40k, whatever else.
3. Alt History
Alt-History not so much in a "What if steampunk Japan invaded the Wild West" type stuff, but a divergence from the the assumption that AI is even a possibility, or it gets countered in some way (usually some kind of psychic-magic wankery).
All three of which can be, but not always are, subsumed into Cyberpunk understood not as a sub-genre but a trans-genre.
Cyberpunk here being understood not as "high tech, low life", but as the last genre. The genre about everything that we can think of, produce, and exercise some agency over, right up until the point where we can't.
>How would you improve science fiction literature?
make it fantasy
Write more starship troopers
More grounded technology. The best part of Scifi is seeing how probable it is. A Nuclear fusion generator sitting where a water heater would be in a house, Implants that connect to your neural network, Robots that fight are wars. Not moving into Fantasy like Starwars's The Force. Aliens: Probable. Elves: Impossible.
Rapid cell growth pills: Improbable but still more grounded than fantasy.
Magic healing spell: Impossible/fantasy.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books had a realistic form of life extension. Only finished the first though. Will likely retry reading the series
AI will do it for us ... in power-saving mode.
Sci-fi is literally a collection of cliches. All sci-fi authors do is configure them to their taste.