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Has Sci-Fi Run Out of Steam?

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-about-steampunk dept.

Barence writes "Science fiction has long inspired real-world technology, but are the authors of sci-fi stories finally running out of steam? PC Pro has traced the history of sci-fi's influence on real-world technology, from Jules Verne to Snow Crash, but suggests that writers have run out of ideas when it comes to inspiring tomorrow's products. 'Since Snow Crash, no novel has had quite the same impact on the computing world, and you might argue that sci-fi and hi-tech are drifting further apart,' PC Pro claims. Author Charles Stross tells the magazine that he began writing a sci-fi novel in 2005 and 'made some predictions, thinking that in ten years they'd either be laughable or they'd have come true. The weird bit? Most of them came true already, by 2009.'"

21 of 479 comments (clear)

  1. Sci-fi not predicting far enough? by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Time to look to bulk fantasy for invention inspiration. Indistinguishable from magic and all that rot.

    1. Re:Sci-fi not predicting far enough? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not to open another "sci-fi" vs. science fiction debate, but the place that sci-fi (in the sense of science fiction) has always drawn its inspiration is from, well, science. When Asimov wrote Nightfall, he speculated about what would happen on a planet, inhabited by a society not too different from our own, that was surrounded by stars such that the entire planet was constantly illuminated. What would happen, then, if it were later discovered that every 2000 years or so, one of those suns were visible eclipsed? The society had never experienced dark. His inspiration was drawn from not just the physical sciences, but also the social sciences.

      When he wrote I, Robot, he hypothesized about a computer brain that operated on positrons, which were recently discovered then.

      So look for the sci-fi breakthroughs to occur where the scientific breakthroughs are occurring.

      --
      My blog
    2. Re:Sci-fi not predicting far enough? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wouldn't that only apply to multiple gods from a single machine, rather than a single god from many machines, or many gods from many machines?

      Those would be, in order:
      "Deii ex machina"
      "Deus ex machinae" and
      "Deii ex machinae"

      Additionally, if one takes the phrase "Deus ex machina" in and of itself as the noun, as is the case with many hyphenated words, like "mother-in-law", which plurals as "Mother-in-laws", and not "Mothers-in-law", then "Deus ex machinae" would be the more correct pluralism for the phenomenon.

      Oh, and get off my lawn. (little brats...)

    3. Re:Sci-fi not predicting far enough? by BKX · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The plural of mother-in-law IS mothers-in-law. Hence the plural of deus ex machina is di ex machina (deus is irregular when plural (and in the singular vocative). Furthermore, if deus were regular, its plural nominative would be dei.). (That is, the plural of god-from-machine is gods-from-machine.).

      Of course, if you really insist on the Latin being correct, then in his sentence it should be dis ex machina, since prepositions take the ablative tense in Latin. In reality, that's retarded. I'll go with di ex machina as being the proper plural when used in English, and deuses ex machina when you never took Latin.

      Oh, I almost forgot. Your other forms are also incorrect. In order:
      deus ex machina
      deus ex machinis
      di ex machina
      di ex machinis

    4. Re:Sci-fi not predicting far enough? by agrif · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is the exact reason I love Alastair Reynolds books. He's said before that if he thinks that something is not possible according to science as we know it today, he won't write it in to the books unless it is absolutely necessary.

      In his major trilogy, he only does this twice: inertia suppression machinery and hypometric weapons, both of which were needed to progress the story at an interesting pace. Additionaly, he made it clear that what these devices were doing to space was abhorrently wrong: hypometric weapons gave everyone that looked at them the willies, and inertia suppressors could edit a man out of history entirely, not only killing him but removing any proof he ever existed at all. Both of these were stolen from cultures after many millions of years of space flight. Even his impossibilities begin to seem reasonable.

      Also, I put forth Reynolds as the example of Sci-Fi that continues to amaze. His characters are well built, and his plot is beautiful and approachable, even as it accelerates into deep time. It certainly helps that this man clearly knows some physics, and knows what needs to be said to make technologies seem plausible. I mean, when someone detects a spacecraft based on it's specific flavor of neutrino emissions, that's a credit to the author. Even more so when the antagonists begin to use that specific signature to hunt people down one whole book later.

    5. Re:Sci-fi not predicting far enough? by Your.Master · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You missed the parent's point.

      You don't get thrown back because even though the bowling ball exerts a force back on you, you ALSO exert a force on another object, which is to say, the ground, through your feet, which puts forward another opposite reaction counteracting the bowling ball. Since the angles don't match, you also get a net upward force out of the deal, but gravity counteracts that. If this weren't so, you would slowly topple backward (slowly, because you weigh much more than a bowling ball) unless you shot another bowling ball in the opposite direction with the same impulse.

      In the same way, Sylar just has to push in the other direction. Be it a fixed object, or even just a light wind across a broad swathe of air. Or, alternatively, he might not even be the anchor for the force at all. He could be influencing some other object (again, likely air) to exert a force against his victims, in the same sense that my garage remote doesn't actually exert a force to open my garage door, but simply influences the internal mechanisms to pull the garage door upward (all without being thrown to the ground!).

      I'm not the first in the thread to suggest this, but you haven't been reading, apparently. I don't mean that to be snarky, I certainly don't read all the slashdot comments, I prefer my own self-righteous writing too :).

      Heroes is definitely magic and fantastic rather than scientific, and the solar eclipse was not life-accurate, and I hate the pseudoscientific bullshit that spews from Mohinder's mouth. And hyperbole is all well and good, but don't say "there's not an ounce of science in it" and follow up with an anecdote as "proof". The logical flaw is kind of ironic.

  2. Childhood's End by Da_Reapa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Our time line seems similar to that of Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End"

  3. Jennifer Government works for me by vvaduva · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I see sci-moving into non-technical direction, with stuff like Max Barry's work (which came to my mind right away) where contemporary social issues that still have some sort of sci-fi aspect to them are being brought into our hands thanks to both the Internet and paperback books.

    Ultimately the truth is that today's world is not the world where Snow Crash was created, so the expectations are after all quite different, are they not?

  4. We just don't know it yet... by Fanglord · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To use the Neal Stephenson example, what about "The Diamond Age"? It predicts a very different world in the future, based on the widespread adoption of nanotech. I think it's one of those situations where we can't see the forest for the trees...yet.

    1. Re:We just don't know it yet... by samkass · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Indeed, nanotech often plays prominently in modern sci-fi. Everything from self-assembling structures to epidemiology. In addition, there are many themes that investigate the nature of consciousness and sentience and how that relates to artificial structures (ie. downloading oneself into an artificial construct) and how one might use it to avoid death. In addition, there are various explorations of the intersection of quantum and relativistic phenomenon both on the small scale (Egan et al) and on the large scale (black holes and interstellar travel). Even near-future novels such as Firestar haven't come true yet, since space exploration slowed so dramatically in the last 20 years.

      In short, if you're not seeing any new future tech in SF, you're not reading the same stuff I am.

      --
      E pluribus unum
    2. Re:We just don't know it yet... by arethuza · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I read it once, got to the end and started again and read it through again. It really is an excellent work.

  5. REAL Change by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's because in ten years we will be moving away from technology and into the realm of latent psychic abilities.

    If I'm wrong, no one will remember; but, if I'm right, I'm a frickin' genius!

    For all the technologies that SciFi imagined and helped create, tehre are thousands more that just didn't happen. So of the thousands upon thousands of SciFi stories being written every year, i think you will be able to find some that accurately predicted the rise in tech. They just may not be the mainstream, big name ones. That is perhaps the difference.

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  6. Re:Reality closer to SciFi, SciFi != Fantasy by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lastly, I'd offer up that fewer SciFi authors are being published because SciFi is being muddled with Fantasy. I don't know why they're doing it, perhaps that hard SciFi traditionally had a predominately male readership; while fantasy has broader appeal?

    I read somewhere, many years ago, that sci-fi is popular in good times, when people in general are looking forward to the future, and fantasy is popular in bad times when people are afraid of the future.

    Considering that "fearing the future" has become the norm for most of even the "enlightened" societies, I'd expect that sci-fi would be sinking into obsurity for at least the next generation.

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  7. Re:Reality closer to SciFi, SciFi != Fantasy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Reminds me of a discussion I had with a startrek zombie about the ramifications of widespread inertial dampening technology.

    The point of inertial dampening is that you exert an energy field to make some random bit of matter have a different acceleration curve than the one it's mass usually implies it should have. (Specifically, it makes this acceleration curve much higher, so that less energy is needed to accelerate it, and conversely, less energy is transferred when it stops suddenly.)

    What happens when you focus such a device on.. oh... Say THE SUN?

    Guess what! The Gravity VS Fusion energy equilibrium of the star, which determines it's radius, RADICALLY CHANGES, because the particles inside the sun can accelerate faster!

    That's right, the bread and butter staple of "Makes you not turn into jelly on the wall" would also make a damn fine doomsday device!

    Likewise, artificial gravity generators being widely used without some means of "insulating" the artificial gravity wells would make starships that employ them "Very attractive" to cosmic dust and gas, and would promptly grow a shroud of atmosphere, and accumulate dirt on the hull.

    Moreover, the pointmass needed to simulate 1 "earth gravity", with REAL gravity, would be insane! The well you would generate would have deleterious effects on natural gravity in a planetary system. The artificial gravity could tug small moons and asteroids out of orbit, or subtly change the orbital periods of larger, heavily visited bodies over time. ...

    Needless to say, the conversation with said zombie did not go over well. :D

  8. Why SF is dead. by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The real problem is that most of the big themes in classical SF require vast amounts of energy. And that's not happening. There hasn't been a new source of energy in fifty years, just marginal improvements in the old ones. This matters.

    That's why space travel is a bust. With chemical fuels, it will never be more than an overly expensive, marginal enterprise. The better '50s SF writers all knew this; read Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon". They just assumed that, somehow, the energy problem would be cracked. Didn't happen. So space travel remains an expensive ego trip for countries and billionaires.

    Industrial civilization is only 200 years old. 1808, the first time someone bought a train ticket on a commercial railroad and went someplace, is a good starting point. Industrial abundance, being able to make more stuff than people could consume, only goes back to WWII.

    During most of the 20th century, "progress" was a big theme. We don't hear that phrase used much any more. The number by which one measures "progress" for the average Joe, "per capita median real income for urban wage earners", peaked in 1973. (Median income, not average income; the average is biased by wealth concentration to rich people.) Back then, a guy without a high school diploma could get a job at GM and make enough to buy a house, two cars, a boat, and an education for his kids. That's over. (You don't see that number mentioned much any more. It was heavily publicized back when the US boasted "the highest standard of living in the world".)

    Now we're starting to run out of energy and raw materials. Nobody serious thinks there's enough left to sustain current output for another century, let alone bring China and India up to US levels of consumption.

    It's hard to write good SF about "the great winding down". It's been done, but it's not read much. The glory days of SF coincide with the period during which "progress" was a win for the little guy.

    That's why SF is dead. The plausible future sucks.

    1. Re:Why SF is dead. by crazyjimmy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The real problem is that most of the big themes in classical SF require vast amounts of energy. And that's not happening. There hasn't been a new source of energy in fifty years, just marginal improvements in the old ones. This matters.

      That's why space travel is a bust. With chemical fuels, it will never be more than an overly expensive, marginal enterprise. The better '50s SF writers all knew this; read Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon". They just assumed that, somehow, the energy problem would be cracked. Didn't happen. So space travel remains an expensive ego trip for countries and billionaires.

      Industrial civilization is only 200 years old. 1808, the first time someone bought a train ticket on a commercial railroad and went someplace, is a good starting point. Industrial abundance, being able to make more stuff than people could consume, only goes back to WWII.

      During most of the 20th century, "progress" was a big theme. We don't hear that phrase used much any more. The number by which one measures "progress" for the average Joe, "per capita median real income for urban wage earners", peaked in 1973. (Median income, not average income; the average is biased by wealth concentration to rich people.) Back then, a guy without a high school diploma could get a job at GM and make enough to buy a house, two cars, a boat, and an education for his kids. That's over. (You don't see that number mentioned much any more. It was heavily publicized back when the US boasted "the highest standard of living in the world".)

      Now we're starting to run out of energy and raw materials. Nobody serious thinks there's enough left to sustain current output for another century, let alone bring China and India up to US levels of consumption.

      It's hard to write good SF about "the great winding down". It's been done, but it's not read much. The glory days of SF coincide with the period during which "progress" was a win for the little guy.

      That's why SF is dead. The plausible future sucks.

      I think you're right, in a lot of ways. However, I suspect a chunk of the problem is that the best path to better energy begins with that N word people are so afraid of embracing. Our society has discovered a new form of fire, and it scares us. Until we're willing to actually embrace it (dangers of use and all), we're going to be stuck in our caves.

      --Jimmy

    2. Re:Why SF is dead. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Regarding household income, it's only higher because more women are working than before. Per worker, median income isn't so rosy. It used to be a man could be the breadwinner and the woman could be a housewife. Today, this isn't even a choice. Most mothers have to work so the household can keep up with the Joneses. I'm not saying women should stay home, but often they can't even if they wanted to. Maybe it's because they're servicing that ridiculously large second mortgage they took a few years back to buy that SUV and 50 inch babysitter.

  9. Re:Reality closer to SciFi, SciFi != Fantasy by michael_cain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I read somewhere, many years ago, that sci-fi is popular in good times, when people in general are looking forward to the future, and fantasy is popular in bad times when people are afraid of the future.

    Indeed. For many people, the worst parts of previous generations' speculative fiction appears to be coming true.

    • The giant corporations are winning. Ask people if they think it more likely that genetic research will result in exciting new medical treatments or be used by enormous health insurance companies to deny coverage.
    • The Luddites are winning. Polls show that almost as many Americans believe in creationism as evolution. I find it disturbing that "If This Goes On--" could be Heinlein's most accurate social forecast.
    • The problems keep turning out to be harder than most people thought. LEO is still a bloody expensive place to get to. Commercial nuclear fusion is always 30 years away. We'll probably never get flying cars.
    • The general attitude towards engineering seems to have changed. We went from the neutron as a theoretical particle to 100 commercial reactors in 50 years; but nuclear waste is regarded is a problem that engineers won't solve even if given hundreds of years.
    • The Club of Rome's forecasts are turning out to be depressingly accurate. Many economists now believe that the Baby Boomers' kids will be the first generation in the US with a lower standard of living than their parents.
  10. Re:Reality closer to SciFi, SciFi != Fantasy by arotenbe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The giant corporations are winning. Ask people if they think it more likely that genetic research will result in exciting new medical treatments or be used by enormous health insurance companies to deny coverage.

    What people think is not the same as reality. In the U.S. at least, using genetic information to deny insurance coverage is illegal. Of course, people will believe what they want to believe, which just emphasizes the GP's point. I'm sure plenty of my beliefs are wrong, too.

    --
    Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
  11. Re:Plenty mainstream TV shows by arb+phd+slp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Flashy graphics means lots of horsepower wasted on eye candy. This is NOT what I'd expect in a forensic tool, or any professional tool. I can see the need for a colorful, easy to use interface. What I can't see is displaying every wrong search result (honestly, even retrieving the full file set from the database is a waste, let's not even talk about displaying it for a split second only to retrieve the next mismatch and display it). Or wasting valuable screen real estate for nonsensical rubbish. No wonder they need 100" see-through touch screen displays (which I'd love to see rationalized next time the budget comes up).

    A lot of that is actually great narrative storytelling through visuals. They are showing the audience what the tool is doing (sorting through a database) without adding words to the script. Just like if a super slow-motion camera were to follow a bullet into a human, you wouldn't really be able to see the internal organs and bones that clearly. It's meant to be impressionistic.

    --
    There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
  12. Re:PC Pro just needs to read more Sci-Fi by Ost99 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So true.

    Most of the tech in the story has the feeling of something just beyond the horizon, something that could come true soon. And still, the effects on society is enormous. It's a bit frightening, for the first time I felt it was possible that I might end up feeling left behind and belonging to the technologically impaired.

    --
    ---- Sig. gone.