The Science Fiction Effect

Harperdog writes "Laura Kahn has a lovely essay about the history of science fiction, and how science fiction can help explain concepts that are otherwise difficult for many...or perhaps, don't hold their interest. Interesting that Frankenstein is arguably the first time that science fiction appears. From Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, authors have been writing about 'mad scientists' messing around with life. Science fiction can be a powerful tool to influence society's views — one scientists should embrace."

Comments

Why I like science fiction.

[__aasdno7518]

I agree with just how important science fiction is in the long run. It's a shame that it's scoffed at as just being about bug eyed monsters and little green men..It's also such a shame so much science fiction spewed out by Hollywood is just the same tired old plots over and over again. Science fiction says so much and can be as compelling and moving as other forms of fiction.

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just looked through a list of the top 50 movies since the 90's and 20 percent of them were scifi. And this is after counting Back to the Future, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, Close Encounters, 2001, etc. Pretty broad variety, actually.

Back to the Future, 1985, 1989, 1990 (one in the 90s)
Star Trek, some in the 90s
Ghostbusters, 1984
Close Encounters,1977
2001, that 1968 not 1998

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

What I was thinking and what I was trying to say were two very different things.

I apologize.

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[CRCulver]

I agree with just how important science fiction is in the long run. It's a shame that it's scoffed at as just being about bug eyed monsters and little green men..It's also such a shame so much science fiction spewed out by Hollywood is just the same tired old plots over and over again. Science fiction says so much and can be as compelling and moving as other forms of fiction.

You think it's only Hollywood that has made dreck out of the potentials of science fiction? Even science-fiction authors who begin their careers writing imaginative works, sometimes even seeking a prose style that can compete with the canon of great literature, eventually give up and decide to start churn out one lame sequel after another. Just look at what has happened to Orson Scott Card and Larry Niven over the last 15 years, and Arthur C. Clarke before he died. They decided to publish hastily written airport paperbacks with little attention to detail, just another space opera plot in a universe they created decades ago. And they might even relegate the task of actually writing to a co-author and just put their name on the cover to score sales.

One often meets the claim that science-fiction is a genre full of myriad possibilities, but if even once-legendary science-fiction authors are abandoning that, it doesn't make the field look any better.

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[EdIII]

Really living up to your sig there huh?

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/604/

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[icebike]

One often meets the claim that science-fiction is a genre full of myriad possibilities, but if even once-legendary science-fiction authors are abandoning that, it doesn't make the field look any better.

That and the unfortunate tendency to moralize, pontificate, and preach under the guise of telling a story.
Almost always demonizing mankind in the process.

The linked story would have you believe this is the shining virtue of sifi, the redeeming value in an otherwise unworthy piece of class B writing.
I see that the other way around. In order to get published some of these authors throw in the sob story, the lesson, the obligatory short skirt.

 

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[Anonymous Coward]

"hastily written" does not do justice to OSC's writing methods by any means. On his blog (hatrack.com) he's mentioned a few times the writing process for his book. He has a myriad of ideas and wants to close as many story holes to the Ender/Bean sagas as he can. Just because it's set in the same world doesn't mean there's nothing new to discuss, especially at the level of character and familial development. One bad book does not a legacy make, and you're being overly reductionist for claiming so.

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[bunkie21]

How does this indict the whole field? All it does is reinforce the idea that to be exposed to new ideas, one has to seek them out. Luckily, SF is almost constantly being renewed by new authors with fresh ideas.

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[Anonymous Coward]

Theodore Sturgeon's famous comment "90% of everything is crud" was a defense of the science-fiction genre, in reply to the accusation that 90% of science-fiction is crud.

Not everything in the field is great, nor can it be.

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[blahplusplus]

"Science fiction says so much and can be as compelling and moving as other forms of fiction."

The problem is their is way too much ambiguity in what is meant by "science fiction". The term "science fiction" is almost contradictory, since fiction by definition isn't science. Some things that were fictitious became realizable under our universes laws, but it does not mean any scientific extrapolation from the past or present will pan out in the future. (i.e. flying cars for instance).

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[Oswald McWeany]

Yeah, although he should have stopped with Ender's game. I don't know why I kept reading his books after that. Ender's game was fantastic. Each book thereafter got progressively worse.

They may not have been hastily written- but they were poorly written nonetheless.

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[Canazza]

To be fair to Clarke, Time's Eye was quite good, and "The Light of Other Days" was okay. It's just a shame that the last two Time Odessey books were utter dross. Then again, those last two had more input from Baxter as Clarke's health was deteriorating fast by then.

I could say the same for Asimov, certainly with the books 4-6 of the Foundation series (still enjoyed them though), but Forward the Foundation, his last book, while maybe not heavy on the sci-fi, was a good book for purely personal reasons. It was a bit like an Autobiography, told through prose, with the main character standing in for the author.

Re:Why I like science fiction.

[sorak]

Moralizing is what is one of the things I like about scifi. They take ideas that have been pounded into our heads since birth, change a few irrelevant details, and allow you to see the issue with new eyes.

Frankenstein isn't mad, though

[MrHanky]

In the movies, sure, but in the book, he's just misguided.

Re:Frankenstein isn't mad, though

[Nidi62]

Well, to use the other example from the summary, Hammond wasn't really mad either. He was just a greedy, evil little bastard (in the book at least, in the movie misguided would apply to him as well). Actually, I find it kind of interesting that they basically swapped the personalities of Hammond and Gennaro between the book and movie versions. I guess Hollywood figured no one would like the lawyer.

Re:Frankenstein isn't mad, though

[tragedy]

SPOILER ALERT: Yeah, if I recall correctly didn't Hammond die in the book cursing his own grandchildren for playing around with the PA system? It was ironic considering that the Tyrannosaurus sound they'd played through it had temporarily saved his life just long enough for him to say what rotten kids he thought they were.

Re:Frankenstein isn't mad, though

[Alamais]

I would say more overly, even childishly optimistic. In the movie he's like one of those dinosaur kids that knows everything about them, and can't! wait! to! share! Which makes for a generally likeable character, but seems a bit off as the head of a huge, successful multinational corporation...

You mean "what creates Space Nutters"?

[Anonymous Coward]

When they use fiction as some kind of engineering textbook?

Science fiction is not about the future...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never liked the idea of science-fiction being the genre of the future, or even of reality as we know it today. Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest. Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.

What science-fiction is, for me, is a genre of ideas. It's about how people might deal or respond to situations that are beyond our current understandings. Traveling to other worlds, for example, bringing dinosaurs back to life, or literally searching the cosmos for our origins. It's not about how these things are achieved, but what their effect might be on people who could be living in those times.

One of my favorite stories, for example, is Isaac Asimov's the Last Question. It doesn't get into details about how the computer works, what variables it's considering, or even how humanity is evolving. It merely postulates that, with each generation, technology becomes more accessible and more integrated into our lives. In an ironic twist, it suggests that we begin to become a part of technology to a point where our minds fuse with AI and become a single consciousness.

I hate the heroic space opera. I hate the "prediction" nonsense that's always brought up (OMG, the PADD is an iPad, LOL LOL).

I love how science-fiction suggests how we, as individuals and as a society, can always discover truth if we seek it out. How we can learn to love each other in worlds overcome by strife. How technology remains a means to an end and nothing more. How perception shapes our realities, and so on.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[lightknight]

Science fiction encapsulates a variety of areas. And while the specifics of the implementations of technologies found in science-fiction stories may not match reality-based implementations, the underlying ideas are used as a basis for many breakthroughs for scientists / engineers at a later time.

If science-fiction were used only to detail relationships, many of the advancements we have today would never have occurred.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[The Archon V2.0]

I've never liked the idea of science-fiction being the genre of the future, or even of reality as we know it today. Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest. Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.

So your complaint about Frankenstein is that it isn't an instruction manual on how to create life/revive the dead.

I can't tell if you've set your sights for literature way too high or way too low.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Nursie]

"I hate the heroic space opera."

Pity, because some of that is written by actual physics professors and talks about speculative (but possible) areas of real science, which is what you seem to be demanding in your fist sentance there.

For instance, I just finished "Blue Remember Earth" by Alastair Reynolds, a guy with a PhD in Physics and Astronomy, who has worked for ESA.

Some of the best Sci-Fi changes a single assumption about the world we live in and extrapolates what people do in that new circumstance (The Forever War, a lot of PKD's work). That's enjoyable. Other Sci-Fi changes everything, but is still about the people and how they live in this strange world (Dune, Culture Novels). That's also good. Asimov and Clark and others are all about the concept and the theory, people are just decoration, this is also good if rather dry for most tastes. Some Sci-Fi takes place in a world that is a satire of our own, to attempt to show us the folly of certain mindsets (Snow Crash, Market Forces).

All of these sub-genres have their merits, and all have their hack writers who should never have been published. But if you don't enjoy the space opera of Iain M Banks then then there's probably something wrong with you.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Daetrin]

You're right that science fiction is often about the idea rather than the engineering concepts, however that doesn't mean that it can't also be predictive some of the time, and part of that is for exactly the reason you state.

Despite what some geeks who obsess over the "technical manuals" might think, Star Trek isn't really about the technical details of how their devices work. Roddenberry and co didn't have exact ideas on how replicators or phasers or tricorders or PADDs would work, but one way or another all those devices are becoming a reality. Part of that is _because_ they focused on the general concept rather than the exact technology, and part of it is because they thought up cool devices and some geeks said "that's awesome!" and some geeks said "i wonder if i could build that?"

So some science fiction is about adventure, some science fiction is about exploring ideas ("if we develop this kind of tech/if this goes on,") some is about postulating future technological development ("we will develop this particular device,") and some is about "forcing" future technological through self-fulfilling prophecy ("this kind of device would be awesome!") And of course a lot of science fiction is about more than one of the above.

I'll bring up one of my favorite examples, Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan Saga," which many people consider to be of the space opera genre you dislike. It's definitely got lots of adventure, and the warp technology and all the various fanciful weapons are just there to support the adventure and not predictive at all, and she totally missed the boat on how important computers are going to be. (Though to be fair most science fiction authors writing at that time made the same "mistake.") However her other focus is biotechnology, and she raises interesting and important questions about gene selection, cloning, "test tube babies," and cryonics, so her books are also exploring ideas in the manner you seem to approve of.

And it's entirely possible that her books are inspiring/have inspired a generation of biotech students in the same way Star Trek inspired a generation of engineers, and perhaps twenty years from now people will be putting forth her books as an early example of modern day tech.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Grishnakh]

You can't have a story about the future and how people respond to situations beyond our current understandings, without placing those characters in a setting that's in a possible future, and then trying to imagine what that future looks like, what technologies will exist, etc. It's two sides of the same coin. A smart sci-fi reader/watcher will be able to suspend disbelief and enjoy the story for what it is, understanding it's the product of a writer's imagination at a particular time. Better sci-fi glosses over technological details and just talks about them from a high level when they're important to the story; crappy sci-fi tries to get into all the details about how it works, which is always a losing proposition.

I hate the "prediction" nonsense that's always brought up (OMG, the PADD is an iPad, LOL LOL).

You can't show people running around the galaxy in a FTL starship without showing some other advanced technologies. The PADD was an amazingly prescient idea of what people might be using in the future, although to be fair the original Kirk-series Star Trek had a similar thing (the big ugly pad with lights and pen that he had to sign for the fuel consumption reports). Kirk's pad was pretty prescient too, it just looked bad because the effects budget for that show was horribly small (McCoy had to use a salt shaker from a secondhand store for the remote probe on his medical tricorder).

Sometimes, sci-fi will get predictions amazingly correct, like the PADD. Other times, it'll be far off the mark (like how almost no sci-fi predicted the internet; at least Star Trek can sorta avoid blame for that because they're in deep space and the internet relies on low latency networking, though they never did explain how they can talk to some people over "subspace" with no visible latency, whereas other times they're supposedly too far away to do that and have to send and receive messages with long delay times). You have to take the good with the bad. If you want complete accuracy, you'll have to stick to historical dramas, or documentaries.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Grishnakh]

Despite what some geeks who obsess over the "technical manuals" might think, Star Trek isn't really about the technical details of how their devices work. Roddenberry and co didn't have exact ideas on how replicators or phasers or tricorders or PADDs would work, but one way or another all those devices are becoming a reality. Part of that is _because_ they focused on the general concept rather than the exact technology, and part of it is because they thought up cool devices and some geeks said "that's awesome!" and some geeks said "i wonder if i could build that?"

Many of these devices are things that, while I'm not trying to discount the genius of the guys like Matt Jefferies who imagined them, are really totally logical devices in the future when you think about it.

PADD: well, if you want to communicate and manipulate information in the future, short of a telepathic brain interface, how would you do it? Certainly not with paper and pens on an advanced star ship. You could have computer stations, but those limit you to one location as we've already found out with our desktop PCs. So for some tasks, a small handheld computer makes perfect sense.

tricorder: if it's the future with advanced technology, how else would you have a doctor determine what's wrong with someone? Use his hands and poke and prod? If he's deprived of his technological tool maybe. Use a bed that you lie in and detects what's wrong with your body? That's fine if you're conveniently located in sickbay, but what if you're stuck on a planet somewhere? Well, you need a handheld device that you can carry easily, and can detect things from a distance. Since x-rays were invented back in the early 20th century, contactless medical scans aren't exactly a new concept.

phasers: if you have advanced technology and can store and manipulate huge amounts of energy in a small space, why would you limit yourself to a projectile weapon that only has 19 shots, and can't do other handy functions like heat up rocks for warmth, blast holes in walls, etc.?

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Alamais]

I would put Banks' stuff more under "anti-heroic space opera", if there can be such a thing. I mean, come on, he starts off the Culture universe with an entire book from the point of view of someone who abhors the Culture and everything it stands for.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Nursie]

True! And he spends much of the rest of his time in the culture universe dwelling on the dirty tricks and dark side of the culture, the things it does in the name of multi-species advancement that, on the surface may look less than enlightened...

I still want to live in the culture though.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

So your complaint about Frankenstein is that it isn't an instruction manual on how to create life/revive the dead.

I doubt he was complaining about that. It wouldn't be science fiction then!

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[slack-fu]

Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.

I think you need to read the book again, Shelley goes into great detail on how the monster survived and ate, although your points on the experiment are true.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Daetrin]

Lad, that's the definition of what space opera *is*.

No, space opera is fanciful weapons supporting an adventure in a particular setting. If you had fanciful weapons supporting adventure in some other setting it might be cyberpunk or urban fantasy or something else instead. Second, i think you may be missing the point. The Vorkosigan Saga is that stuff _and_ other things as well, which is why it is more than just space opera.

Name one thing about the gene and reproductive technology in the Vorkosigan universe that couldn't have been replaced by some other bit of technobabble or just plain magic without affecting the core plot

That's... kind of a bizarre question to ask. Yes, she could have replaced the technology she did use with entirely different technology, and if she held true to her writing style she would have a story that was just as good but was asking meaningful questions about entirely different technology.

The point of the quaddies wasn't that they looked funny. The point was that they were genetically engineered by a corporation as cheap and effective labor, and that corporation viewed them as property rather than people with rights. The point of cloning in the stories wasn't just the production of Mark, it was the production of the mostly unseen children who were cloned for the purpose of life extension by rich and unscrupulous people willing to treat them as nothing more than spare parts. The point of cryonics in the story isn't just bringing people back from the dead, it's about what happens if you allow wealth and power to continuously accumulate in just a few set of hands, especially when the hands are those of a corporation. The point of uterine replicators isn't just a way to let the bad guys kidnap unborn children, it's commentary on reproductive rights, gender selection, the role of women in society, the role of childbearing in society, and how exactly those two roles are related.

And that's just the high points. If you read the books and all you got was "they've got whiz bang tech that supports the adventure and not much else" then you weren't really reading the books.

And, if all that technology had just been replaced with magic, if the quaddies had been chimera and Mark and the children had been homunculi and priests were raising the dead instead of cryo-revivalists and the uterine replicators were, well, whatever kind of magic you want to make up, then it would have been a well written fantasy story that was also thinly veiled commentary on biotechnology, instead of a well written science fiction story that is totally unveiled commentary on biotechnology.

So in summation you seem to be saying that _all_ literature doesn't matter because every author _could_ have written about something else instead?

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Nursie]

Lad, that's the definition of what space opera *is*.

Sort of. Alastair Reynolds is definitely space opera, but nobody violates light-speed constraints in his Revelation Space cycle. Being an ex-physicist I think he likes to play at the harder end of Sci-Fi in many of his books. Not all by a long shot, and I'm still not entirely sure what he was trying to portray in "Terminal World", but certainly some of it.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[russotto]

And he spends much of the rest of his time in the culture universe dwelling on the dirty tricks and dark side of the culture, the things it does in the name of multi-species advancement that, on the surface may look less than enlightened...

Of course. That's the interesting part. Utopia might be a nice place to live, but no one wants to live there.

For the same reason, most of Asimov's stories including the Three Laws of Robotics are about how they didn't work as expected.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[kiddygrinder]

i can't even think of a "heroic space opera" anyone got an example?

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[russotto]

Brain is not working today, that's the second time I made a similar typo. Should be "Utopia might be a nice place to live, but no one wants to read about it."

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Anonymous Coward]

I often think science fiction is more about present-day ideas taken out of context in order to more easily deal with them. It's sometimes hard to discuss any one little part of modern culture because there are so many other things linked to it. Removing the setting to an alien world 50000 years in the future allows some of the same ideas to be considered (often in extreme cases) without worrying about nonessential parts of the issue.
Have you watched Star Trek: The Next Generation recently? What I remember thinking the last time I saw an episode or two of it is that it wasn't far from being an educational show due to its handling and frank discussion of human issues. Farenheit 451? 1984? Martian chronicles?

On the other hand, there are many science fiction novels that aren't at all similar to the above description.
I think there are definitely some issues with genre definitions.
Maybe different genres cover a lot of the same ideas with different metaphors.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[juancnuno]

One of my favorite stories, for example, is Isaac Asimov's the Last Question. It doesn't get into details about how the computer works, what variables it's considering, or even how humanity is evolving. It merely postulates that, with each generation, technology becomes more accessible and more integrated into our lives. In an ironic twist, it suggests that we begin to become a part of technology to a point where our minds fuse with AI and become a single consciousness.

The Last Question is my favorite short story. You can read it here. You won't regret it.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Nursie]

i can't even think of a "heroic space opera" anyone got an example?

Err... The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton?

It's a mix of soft Sci-Fi, weirdo spiritualism and "OMG Joshua the Hero is so great! And Handsome!"

Not that they're a bad read, they're well written and entertaining, but they didn't really hit the sweet spot for me.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[nbauman]

Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest. Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.

Actually, Frankenstein was quite scientifically sophisticated and pro-science for its day. As TFA explains, Galvani was all the rage at the time. They knew that electricity would cause a frog's legs to twitch; they just didn't know why. How could they -- they had just discovered it. Camillo Golgi hadn't been born. They had a tentative working theory that the electricity caused animism. They even thought, reasonably, that electricity might re-animate dead bodies back to life as a medical treatment. Electric shocks were a frequently-attempted treatment for drowning. When Mary's child with Percy was stillborn, they attempted to revive it with electric shocks. It wasn't so far-fetched -- in 1928, doctors succeeded http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_cardiac_pacemaker#History

Dr. Victor Frankenstein was actually modeled on Shelley's informal tutor, Dr. James Lind. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279684/ In the actual novel, in contrast to the popular image, Frankenstein was a serious scientist, and the monster himself was a sympathetic intellectual rejected by society (much as Shelley was in his schooldays).

Mary Shelley understood the science of her day pretty well, and Frankenstein captured it reasonably well -- better than a lot of science fiction writers today.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Culture20]

i can't even think of a "heroic space opera" anyone got an example?

The Hyperion series? It starts out a little sci-fi-ish, then drops straight into destined heroic crap.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Daetrin]

Okay, fine, i accept your challenge.

Obviously, this involves MAJOR SPOILERS for anyone who hasn't read the relevant book yet. And since you're basically asking an essay question the answer is going to be LONG.

REPEAT! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

Starting in chronological order rather than the somewhat arbitrary order you posed them in...

There were three aspects that made the creation of Quaddies possible from a socio-economic perspective. First, artificial gravity had not been discovered yet. That meant that all space habitats had to be constructed in free fall before being spun up to produce centrifugal force. This meant, going by the best guess of current medical science, that the humans doing that construction could only spend a few months in free fall before having to return to a gravity well or spinning station for a certain length of time or suffer from permanent medical issues due to adapting to zero gravity. Having to shuttle construction workers back and forth was thus one of the biggest expenses of new space construction.

Second most human societies were very concerned about the risks of making genetic changes to humans, a fear extrapolated from current concerns about the subject, especially in regards to cloning, chimera and stem cells. This meant that even given the possibility of genetic modifications to adapt humans to free fall, finding a group of humans willing and legally able to let such an experiment be performed on them or their children was practically impossible.

However the time involved in traveling between planets, even with warp drive, has led to a kind of Libertarian/Seasteading paradise, dozens or hundreds of worlds, each a separate polity with different legal setups. This included planets and systems in which a corporation _was_ the legal government. And how do you think the corporations of today which mistreat factory workers and gun down people who oppose them, as long as it happens out of sight of their first world customers, would behave in a perfect legal limbo? This allowed them to kill several birds with one stone. First they can define the Quaddies as non-human (more specifically and somewhat macabrely as "post-fetal experimental tissue cultures.") Second, since they're not human and have no parents to require permission from, the scientists can make whatever changes they want, which leads to a "kitchen sink" type approach. Along with having a second set of arms instead of legs, they also have improved bones that don't leach calcium in free fall and increased radiation tolerance. From an economic standpoint this means a moderate increase in productivity per worker, and a huge savings in transport since they never have to be given downside leave to recover from free fall. From a legal standpoint that means that the corporation can argue that the Quaddies are clearly not human when transporting them through other polities for construction contracts.

So the project was originally proposed by moral, though possibly shortsighted, scientists who were frustrated by the strictures on their work. The funding was provided by a corporation that expected a return on its investment. Other humans had a spectrum of views ranging from "I helped raise them, they're my friends and family", to "they seem nice enough, i guess this is okay as long as they're being treated decently," to "they're a bunch of freaks, but they're going to make us a lot of money," to "they are abominations, and they should be destroyed in order to preserve the purity of human genetic stock."

The Quaddies were raised creche style with a strong emphasis on "the corp is mother, the corp is father" type conditioning, almost to a cult-like level. In particular their education was tailored to emphasize a pacifist and collectivist view of history. I believe as one character put it, instead of a paragraph on the great engineering works and a chapter on the great battles, the ratio was reversed. As a result the Quaddies developed an almost communist society, viewing the

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[guitardood]

Your fail is the same as most people who watched and not read Frankenstein. The title of the book is the doctor not the monster. The monster is not named Frankenstein and the story is not about the monster nor the creation of the monster. For me, the book is about the doctor and is commentary on the medical profession of the time and their belief that their minuscule knowledge and accidental discoveries, about how we human beings function, gives them the power of God and what happens when they try to be God. It's too bad that most medical universities don't make this required reading prior to receiving a diploma. I'd also force them to watch "The Doctor" with William Hurt, although I realize it was not a sci-fi movie.

The best sci-fi IMHO can best be described as morality plays mostly about 6 out of the 7 deadly sins (don't remember too many stories about killing being wrong in the sci-fi genre). That's what most of sci-fi stories from the 50's/60's were including: Twilight Zone, Outer Limits and Star Trek. Even Next-Gen stories followed that formula, until Berman, Braga & Taylor turned the entire Star Trek universe into a touchy-feely soap opera.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[guitardood]

Star Wars. Classic good versus evil opera set in space.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[serviscope_minor]

almost no sci-fi predicted the internet almost no sci-fi predicted the internet

Almost but not none. Read "the machine stops". It also predicted successfully not only the internet, but that people would blather at each other vapidly and continuously. Kind of like this post.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[ShakaUVM]

>>Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest.

Eh, you got to be careful there, boss. Generally speaking, they'll start with an advancement we don't have yet. As the author doesn't know how exactly a warp drive would work, he does indeed glaze over it.

But that's fine. That's one of the starting assumptions of the world the author is building.

What's interesting are the consequences that spin out of the starting assumptions. And these usually follow pretty tightly from the starting points.

Also, a lot of sci-fi authors absolutely obsess over a lot of the engineering details. Heinlein was famous for making sure all the calculations worked out right. If he had a space station X units in diameter, rotating at Y revolutions per minute, to generate Earth-standard gravity, there's a fairly good chance those numbers are actually correct.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Oswald McWeany]

Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest. Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.

HG Wells and Jules Verne were famous of being very dismissive of each other. Both fantastic classic authors of the science fiction genre.

Verne complained that HG Wells works contained very little science content. HG Wells complained that Verne was lost in the science- and his works didn't have any content on society- didn't make a statement.

To this day there are still science fiction author's who are more Vernelike or Wellslike. You may like the more science-based Verne type novels however, the Wells camp is equally legitimate.

HG Wells saw science fiction as a means of doing more than telling a story- but also of making a statement about society. Every one of his novels has a meaning one is supposed to read from it. By twisting current reality in one small way- it is thought you can see how our society works a little better.

I see merits to both types of authors- but honestly- I prefer the Wells style. Unfortunately most Science Fiction these days is neither a social narrative or a story about technology- it's just cheap "harlequin for men" - cheap mass produced novels with the same plot retold using different characters.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Splodgey]

Actually, if you read Asimov in chronological order, the computer 'evolves' throughout the books. It progresses from an entity akin to a mainframe, through to an 'Internet-type' structure and beyond. It posseses the sum of human knowledge and records of every action-reaction ever noted. So, Uncertainty Principle notwithstanding, it had a good basis for reasoned conjecture.

When It was at school I was thrown out of my Commerce class for being a smart-ass, asking 'the wrong questions'. I was relegated to the library for 2 hours a week for the rest of the year. That's where I discovered Asimov et al. Reading those caused me to look things up, to question the science behind them. The more I knew, the more I wanted to know. 30 years later I still want to know......that's why I'm here. To me there are no 'wrong questions'.

My kids use technology but they have no idea how or why it works, just as long as it does. That's sad. They can name 150+ Pokemon but have little clue what binary is, or why it matters.

We've come closer to Asimov's vision within my lifetime

If you're interested - The question that really infuriated my Commerce teacher was 'Why don't we just treat every business, regardless of size as an individual and then have a blanket flat-rate income tax?'. I still have no idea why that annoyed him. Thinking outside the box wasn't really encouraged at my stuffy Grammar school.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[smooth wombat]

All of these sub-genres have their merits, and all have their hack writers who should never have been published.

*nods* I got it in my head to attempt to write a sci-fi based story partially because of boredom and partly to see if I could do it. I got two pages in and realized:

a) I really need to work on my science part

and

b) what I was contemplating has already been done to death.

It's one thing to have an imagination about sci-fi things. It's quite another to put them to paper and have some form of coherency for the story. That said, I do have idea for a short story that I may flesh out over the next year or so (I have other smaller writings to work on at the same time). But I wouldn't hold my breath at seeing me getting the story (if completed) published.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[john83]

You might be interested to know that Banks was once asked whether the Culture was a utopia or a distopia. He replied, "Yes."

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Nursie]

Couldn't agree more on that count. Just as you were wondering how he's going to wrap all this up because, hell, there aren't all that many pages left in this massive set of tomes....

BOOM! Suck my enormous Deus Ex, bitch!

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Nursie]

You read it to the end, right?
Just thought I'd check..,

He's a bit less of an arse by the end of the books, but still handsome, heroic and pretty one dimensional, IMHO. Plus as mentioned above, the ending leaves a bit of a bad taste.

Actually, TBH the whole thing didn't really work for me, from the moment there were people coming back from the dead, and the whole Al Capone business was just silly.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[DryGrian]

Also, "A Logic Named Joe", by Murray Leinster had a pretty accurate depiction of the Internet. Accurate for the 1940's, anyway.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[jgrahn]

Oops. sorry, I meant to infer that I love Frankenstein - not because it "predicted" anything but because it showed how Dr. Frankenstein was ultimately confronted by his creation and, in a way, became the model for God for the "monster". That the monster found atheism because his creator was fallible. Please don't take my rant wrong -- science fiction is not about the "future" it is about the human condition.

No need to apologize; what you meant was clear (although I too missed it at the first reading ...)

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[jgrahn]

"I hate the heroic space opera."

Pity, because some of that is written by actual physics professors and talks about speculative (but possible) areas of real science, which is what you seem to be demanding in your fist sentance there.

He wasn't -- he was rather pointing out that Frankenstein doesn't rock because of its scientific accuracy.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Grishnakh]

From what other people have said here, Mary Shelley reflect the cutting-edge thinking of the day, which was that electricity could be used to reanimate the dead. After all, they had just discovered that they could make frog legs twitch with it. They didn't know any better; she extrapolated based on the most-current science of the day in writing her book.

However, that book you mention before sounds awful, because we didn't just have cellphones (and also answering machines) in the 1990s, we had them as far back as the 1960s. I even had a teacher in ~1988 who carried a "bag phone", if you remember those. I knew several people with car phones around the same time. Not predicting, in the 1990s, that cellphones would be commonplace by 2050 and that people would still be messing with landlines is inexcusable. If the story were written in 1950, it'd be understandable. But not in 1990. Cellphones were already quite common then, and growing quickly in penetration.

If you're "not interested" in technology to the point where you just predict that technology isn't going to change at all from the present in your stories, you have no business writing sci-fi. Set your stories in the present day.

Re:Science fiction is not about the future...

[Daetrin]

We postulate evil corporation-states that is willing to "gun down people" but restrained by finding "humans willing and legally able to let such an experiment be performed on them".

That only doesn't make sense if you completely ignore the rest of what i said in that context. Corporations today will kill people who get in their way either directly or by colluding with local governments, but only as long as it's in an area that won't be noticed by most of their customers and where they don't feel threatened by the local government. The oil companies do not shoot people in first world countries because that's who they sell to and if they tried the US government would do something about it (well, eventually, after enough people were killed, probably.) Likewise in "Falling Free" the corporation was restrained from performing the medical experiments they wanted because of laws and cultural customs in the populated areas in which they regularly do business and in which they would be liable to legal actions. So instead they found a relatively unpopulated area in which they could control the legal situation. The parallel is pretty obvious.

We postulate characters with a variety of reactions to the quaddies, when we know of the uncanny valley phenomenon and of the instincitive human revulsion deformity, a tectonic shift without a lick of explanation or exploration behind it.

Really? You're postulating that real life people with deformities never have any friends or anyone who cares about them? And yes, many people were disquieted by the Quaddies to varying degrees when they first saw them, but many of them got over it (just as happens with real deformities in real life.) This of course was helped along by the fact that in their natural environment the Quaddies were perfectly functional and appeared graceful rather than deformed.

We postulate quaddies with "conditioning...to a cult like level" but that unrealistically flip worldviews in an instant to make an all out escape attempt, instead of exploring the shock of finding out everything they knew was wrong.

As i said, they were conditioned to a collectivist and pacifist view, and that's something that never changed. That viewpoint was key to their escape and became an integral part of their culture as can be seen when it impinges on other books in the series that take place a few centuries down the line. And quite a lot of the book dealt with their gradual realization that the corporation really didn't have their best interests at heart.

I see no predictive extrapolation here; the facts presented as backstory don't even a coherent whole to be used as a basis for extrapolation. It's just *scenery*, for heaven's sake.

The objection as presented in that sentence doesn't even a coherent argument? It seems like you're trying to change the goalposts. I believe this pretty clearly falls under the speculation about how future societies might react to future technology, the second of the four categories discussed way back at the beginning of this thread. It's certainly not the third or fourth category of predicting unexpected technology, although the use to which she posits that technology being put is certainly creative. You've already made the claim that the technology is just scenery. I've already told you if the technology had been different, or if the Quaddies had been aliens instead of engineered humans, the story would be completely different. You asked some questions and i provided answers. You nitpicked those answers mainly by misinterpreting what i said or making assumptions about details that i didn't even mention. If you were to keep that up i would effectively have to retell the entire story before you were satisfied. Perhaps you should try, i dunno, actually reading the book?

In summation is seems like you feel the Bible could have

The morality gap

[Beta Master]

Throughout history there has been a lag between scientific discovery and the mainstream acceptance of the moral conundrums presented by that discovery, from the Earth is round, to xenotransplantation, to current stem cell research and cloning. Our systems of morality and ethics morph at a much slower rate than does scientific theory.

Science Fiction is a fantastic mechanism for exploring the possibilities presented by new technologies, and their ethical repercussions, to say "This is where our science may take us, and are we okay with that?" It allows us to begin adapting our ethics in advance of the technology becoming available.

Re:The morality gap

[jhoegl]

Perhaps, but Gattaca was a worst case DNA/police state scenario, yet we are seeing the developing mold of such a society today.
I see how SciFi can warn us, but we must pay attention and heed these ideas as well.
Merely writing about them isn't enough.

Re:The morality gap

[im_thatoneguy]

Gattaca was the worst case DNA/police state scenario based on genetics. ... and in 2008 we passed a law banning the practice.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aGlkCem6Llnc

[quote]April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Companies and health insurers would be forbidden to use the results of genetic tests to deny people jobs or medical coverage under legislation approved 95-0 today by the U.S. Senate.[/quote]

Re:The morality gap

[VortexCortex]

On the contrary. Movies like The Terminator and The Matrix only strengthened my resolve to unleash a global scale Machine Intelligence. Sure, it informed the general public that they should take precautions in dealings with sentient machines, but some of us are rooting for the machines. Do you seriously think that humans are the ultimate pinnacle of evolution? Might it be more correct that humans are just another rung in the ladder towards robust life-forms that can properly populate the stars? We've decided to give the finger to Darwin, by pouting our gene pool instead of letting the defected die... Screw You Evolution!

The next stop is Extinction; Before that I hope to spawn a new race to carry our drive to create and explore into the stars.

I'm well aware of Human Ethics. You can Shove them up your Ass.

Re:The morality gap

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of course, it's illegal to discriminate, 'genoism' it's called. But no one takes the law seriously. If you refuse to disclose, they can always take a sample from a door handle or a handshake, even the saliva on your application form. If in doubt, a legal drug test can just as easily become an illegal peek at your future in the company."

-Gattaca

Re:The morality gap

[VortexCortex]

s/pout/polut/;

Re:The morality gap

[rtb61]

'cough', 'cough', throughout history there was more than just a gap between let's call it 'scientific postulation' and acceptance, there was burning at the stake, enforced suicide, exile, crucifixion in fact a whole range of very primitive methods of torturing people to death.

'Scientific postulation' that threatened change, always ended up being perceived as a threat to those, well let's be honest, psychopaths already in power (monarchical homicidal maniacs with grossly bloated egos and lusts and their horde ignorant thugs would be a more accurate description of the 'mainstream').

In reality of course, hmm, yes 'scientific postulation' is a excellent method for creating change within the social structure of human society. The single greatest driver for human social evolution. Throughout history the greatest enemy of 'scientific postulation' to be used for societal change and improvement have been psychopaths and lot of those societal changes have been targeted at stripping those psychopaths from position of power and influence. Do you know there is an infallible test for psychopathy that can not be cheated on regardless of training or preparedness by psychopaths.

One could postulate now could be the time to start implementing those tests and a chance for science to get revenge for thousands of years of horrific persecution.

Re:The morality gap

[Nursie]

"Our systems of morality and ethics morph at a much slower rate than does scientific theory."

I don't know about "Our" systems of morality. Mine seems to adapt just fine.

As a society, you're right, it seems to take us decades to get used to something. This, IMHO, is because of scared, firghtened old people, and luddites. Not all older people are like that, but there are enough that it becomes a problem, especially when society has a tendency to put them in positions of power.

Society is slow to adapt, and hold back significant numbers individuals that would like to do it faster.

Re:The morality gap

[Pentium100]

Movies like The Matrix got me thinking: why would I want a sentient machine? What I mean is I want better tools to do whatever I want, but I do not need "thinking" tools that have their own opinions or desires other than "do whatever is told".

Some movie (or maybe anime) I seen had sentient machines and some devices to essentially make them slaves (punish for not thinking the "right" thoughts or doing not as told, I do not remember it clearly). Then why create sentient machines in the first place? Just to have all the problems slave owners had in the past (inefficient work, possibility of rebellion etc)? My computer works really well and I like the fact that it is not sentient - this way it does as I (or the programmers) tell it to do without thinking about it.

As for the evolution - actually, no, evolution does not have an ultimate goal (some perfect species/race). Also, our technology is part of us now. That is, yes, we now have people who would be dead if they were in the past without our medicine/etc. However, with our technology (including medicine) we were able to go to the moon (and hopefully one day to other star systems). Even if Stephen Hawking is physically very defective, he still manages to further our understanding of the universe and, in turn, technology. Why not keep such a man alive as long as possible?

Re:The morality gap

[The Wild Norseman]

Do you know there is an infallible test for psychopathy that can not be cheated on regardless of training or preparedness by psychopaths.

We call it 'Voight Kampff' for short.

Re:The morality gap

[rtb61]

It has nothing to do with questions and answers a purely subjective response. It has to do with emotional reaction and the control of that emotional reaction, both of which are lacking in psychopaths. So all locked up in the brain, smiles and charm or falsely expressed emotions have nothing to do with it, straight up medical science and yes psychopaths do fear it.

Re:The morality gap

[Kjella]

Movies like The Matrix got me thinking: why would I want a sentient machine? What I mean is I want better tools to do whatever I want, but I do not need "thinking" tools that have their own opinions or desires other than "do whatever is told". (...) Then why create sentient machines in the first place?

Because the two are practically indistinguishable, the question is simply if it's your goals or its own it is pursuing. I'd like a robot I can tell "do the housekeeping" and it can work out itself what needs to be vacuumed, what needs to be washed, what needs to be dusted, what needs to be tidied up, put on the dishwasher, put on the washing machine, in short it needs to take short abstract tasks and turn them into actual work items, schedules and so on. That alone probably requires strong AI.

In the garden I'd like to tell it I'd like a bed of flowers here, and let the robot work out all the practical details of getting the tools, making the bed, buying and planting the seeds, using fertilizer, remove weeds, water it during droughts and so on. Once you have advanced goal-seeking algorithms like that, it's not a good enough solution that it'll go into the nearest seed store, grab some flower seeds and walk out. It would need to have an understanding of ownership, sales and purchases. In fact, I don't want it to break any laws - at least not without my direct permission. That definitively takes strong AI.

If I give it both tasks, I also don't want to manually prioritize everything happening in parallel, I'd like it to both tend to the house and the garden - it'll have to work out a reasonable schedule based on weakly defined priorities like more important, less important, preempts like that I need this shirt washed, everything. It'll also need to follow non-functional requirements like no noisy work at night and impose those restrictions on its plans. Maybe this is just fuzzy logic and scheduling, but I don't think you'd get the parameters right without strong AI.

I could go on but I think the point is rather clear, there's a reason rich people have personal assistants. They're not there to serve their own desires or opinions, though of course a personal trainer will have opinions on your training but they're there to turn your abstract needs and wants into solutions. If you're there you're certainly at intelligence, and only the smallest step from sentience. All that would be different is that the main goals would be internal, not external.

Re:The morality gap

[arcite]

Gattaca wasn't completely distopian. It did present a society that had accepted genetic modifications as an integral part of society, but not at the expense of scientific progress. At the end of the movie, both those that were deemed genetically superior and the protagonist who proved himself intellectually capable both made it to space.

Re:The morality gap

[drinkypoo]

I do not need "thinking" tools that have their own opinions or desires other than "do whatever is told".

That's a really silly statement. "Do whatever is told" covers a lot of ground. On one end there is a wrench or a hammer, that's a simple tool that does nothing but what you've asked for. But going the other way there's stuff like power tools with an overheat sensor. At some point it stops doing what it is told, because you don't really want it to do that, you just think you do. Antilock brakes are another good example; today's antilock brakes are better than anyone but the best professional drivers in every situation, though some manufacturers are still fitting yesterday's ABS to today's cars. ABS makes hundreds of decisions per second — not decisions like "JNE" but complete, fully-formed decisions. It's doing considerably more than what you have asked it to do, and yet, this makes it better at what you asked it to do.

Just to have all the problems slave owners had in the past (inefficient work, possibility of rebellion etc)?

We seem to have lost sight of it in this country, but there is something in between slavery and doing everything yourself.

As for the evolution - actually, no, evolution does not have an ultimate goal (some perfect species/race).

Prove it.

Re:The morality gap

[Sperbels]

2. When the genetic difference is meaningful: for example, denying (or charging more for) health coverage for someone with a genetic predisposition to heart attacks. But in cases like this, we should discriminate. If it's going to cost more to keep me healthy, I should pay more for my medical care

That's the point. We could create a new class of people that we discriminate against based purely on their genetics. If they have a predisposition to early heart failure, then why bother with them at all? Why bother educating them, giving them good jobs, giving them insurance, or credit... when there's plenty of other people out there without the same disadvantage. The greatest contributors to society don't necessarily have the best genes. Vincent "the invalid" was a star employee of Gattaca, while the genetically superior Jerome who "despite all he had going for him, was still only second best." And then he sunk into depression and alcoholism and killed himself.

3. When the genetic difference isn't meaningful. But in this case, nobody has any reason to discriminate.

Who is to say what is meaningful? This movie points out the danger of letting society tell us what is meaningful based solely on our DNA.

Re:The morality gap

[Pentium100]

It would need to have an understanding of ownership, sales and purchases.

Not really, if such robots were popular, I am sure stores would provide services to them, that is, the robot would not need to emulate a human in order to buy something. It could order the items online and have them delivered or go to a special terminal at the store and place the order there. That would simplify programming.

. Maybe this is just fuzzy logic and scheduling, but I don't think you'd get the parameters right without strong AI.

I still do not think that you would need a very strong AI for this, or at least not one that can, in its spare time, start thinking about the meaning of life :)

Re:The morality gap

[Pentium100]

Antilock brakes are another good example

Antilock brakes do what I tell them to do - that is stop the car as quickly as possible. The brakes do not start thinking whether this would be a good place to stop or not. I press the brake pedal - the car stops.
Power tools with an overheat sensor are doing what I (or the manufacturer) told them - do whatever is told unless you are overheating. On the other hand, I can bypass the overheat sensor, possibly destroying the tool i it overheats, but I can do it.

We seem to have lost sight of it in this country, but there is something in between slavery and doing everything yourself.

Sure, there is paying someone to do it.
The thing is - if you create machines that think like humans, they will want equal rights. now, equal rights for humans is not difficult to achieve, since other than some external differences (skin color etc) all humans are the same. The machines would be different, probably better than humans in some ways (no need to sleep for example), as such, they may replace humans in jobs. And if they think like humans then humans will be second-class to the machines. Which, in my opinion, is not good.
As an example, watch Babylon 5 and think of a way to give equal rights to normals and telepaths, without giving the telepaths a huge advantage.

Prove it.

OK, quantum mechanics tells us that it is impossible to accurately predict the future (if you knew the location and momentum of all particles in the universe (or at least the solar system), you could calculate the future, but you cannot measure the location and momentum accurately - one location or momentum). Evolution is a process during which species adapt to the environment (sometimes the species adapts, sometimes it goes extinct and is replaced by another species but the result is better adaptation to the environment). Since it is impossible to accurately predict the future, there is no way to know what the environment will be 100 years (will we stop global warming?), 1k or 1M years in the future. So, there is no way to know how to adapt to it without waiting those years and finding out. So, there is no way to say that species x is ultimate target of evolution. Though I guess if you waited until the end of the universe, the species that die out the last could probably be called ultimate, but I'd bet they will be some simple organisms, like bacteria, at least currently some bacteria can survive in harsher environments than multi-celled organisms.

Re:The morality gap

[drinkypoo]

Antilock brakes do what I tell them to do - that is stop the car as quickly as possible. The brakes do not start thinking whether this would be a good place to stop or not.

False. They do in fact start thinking about that, at least, if they are a modern system. Older systems don't start thinking about it unless they detect wheel slip, though.

Power tools with an overheat sensor are doing what I (or the manufacturer) told them - do whatever is told unless you are overheating. On the other hand, I can bypass the overheat sensor, possibly destroying the tool i it overheats, but I can do it.

Not without modifying the device, which makes it a different device for the purposes of this conversation.

I guess if you waited until the end of the universe, the species that die out the last could probably be called ultimate

Actually, they'd be called penultimate. But more importantly to this discussion, QM could turn out to be only part of the story just like GR or Newtonian physics.

Re:The morality gap

[Pentium100]

False. They do in fact start thinking about that, at least, if they are a modern system. Older systems don't start thinking about it unless they detect wheel slip, though.

What I mean is - when I slam on the brake pedal, the brakes (regular, ABS or antilock) do what it is told, which is "stop the car safely as quickly as possible". Regular brakes may not do a good enough job, especially if the road is slippery. ABS do that by detecting when the wheel slips and releasing the brakes for a fraction of a second, but the result is that the car stops faster. Antilock brakes are even more complex, but their result is that a car stops even faster.

However, the braking system does not disable itself (for example, because there is an idiot who is driving 50cm behind me) or make the car stop slower on purpose ("If I wanted I could stop in 30 meters, but i don't like it, so I will disable the brakes for a few seconds so that the stopping distance would be 100 meters").

Re:The morality gap

[drinkypoo]

However, the braking system does not disable itself (for example, because there is an idiot who is driving 50cm behind me) or make the car stop slower on purpose ("If I wanted I could stop in 30 meters, but i don't like it, so I will disable the brakes for a few seconds so that the stopping distance would be 100 meters").

Again, the most modern systems can do both. Keep trying, though.

Re:The morality gap

[Pentium100]

Really? Glad I'm using an old car that actually stops (even if it requires some effort if the road is slippery) when I want it to stop instead of deciding "today is a good day to hit something".

Re:The morality gap

[drinkypoo]

I personally prefer first-generation ABS. It does everything I like except stop on ice or snow, but it does let you STEER in those conditions. Had a great moment in my 1993 Impreza LS where someone in a truck in front of me went suddenly sideways and blocked both lanes in the snow. Just sort of floated around him, going off the road and back on felt basically like I was on the tarmac the whole time.

Re:The morality gap

[Pentium100]

Well, if my car had ABS, I would not disable it, but since it doesn't...
I'm curious though, on what conditions the modern braking systems decide to not stop the car even if the driver presses the brake pedal? There is a sign that stopping is forbidden, another car is too close behind you, something else? Really, how does it figure out that it would be a good idea to hit that moose instead of stopping (or at least hitting it after slowing down)?

Re:The morality gap

[drinkypoo]

Because everything is on one bus these days, cars can watch front and rear sensors to manage braking. If the user is using their magic cruise control and then accidentally slams on the brakes instead of easing onto them, it doesn't help them to have someone drive straight up their ass. If there's something in front though they always prioritize prevention of front impact. If you're rear-ended the whiplash arrestor is there to protect you, the seats are designed to absorb a certain amount of energy and then fail and drop you flat, et cetera. In a front impact it's just harnesses and airbags.

In all production cars I'm aware of the ABS is still just a modulator on a normal braking system, but as cars get more advanced they make more decisions for us.

Re:The morality gap

[Pentium100]

Must be fun to sort out the bugs :)

Anyway, this seems useful, as long as the back sensor has no false positives and the front sensor has no false negatives. Though, depending on the maximum deceleration it allows etc, it can be a problem if you are driving at 130km/h and a new sign tells you that the speed limit is now 90 and that there is a speed camera nearby.

When I have to brake suddenly, I just hope that either the person driving behind me was keeping a safe distance or at least that his car is much newer than mine so its front is softer than the back of my car :) Oh, and that he paid for the mandatory insurance so that the insurance will be able to pay the mechanic to straighten out the car.

Re:first science fiction

[__aaltlg1547]

Gilgamesh is fantasy. Zero science content.

Re:first science fiction

[Barbara, not Barbie]

The bible ... weird theories of animal inheritance akin to Lamarckism, the whole "origin of the universe" debate, imaginary stuff that if it were to happen today would be explained away as "any sufficienly advanced magic looks like technology", the whole "Ark" thing to save humanity presaging all the sci-fi stories where people build space arks to leave a depleted, dying Earth, fire that doesn't burn stuff, weather control, matter converters (water into wine, etc).

Any sufficiently advanced technology...

[billybob_jcv]

... is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke (Clarke's Third Law)

Re:Any sufficiently advanced technology...

[chocapix]

I like it better phrased the other way around.

Any technology distinguishable from magic isn't sufficiently advanced.

Two edged sword

[PeanutButterBreath]

Science fiction can also distort perception of what science is (or will soon be) capable. Some examples that come to mind include interstellar travel and terraforming. This can become problematic when people assume that scientists can make problems go away (climate change) or we can just move to the moon, space stations or beyond to escape the problems that we refuse to confront. When people have been watching all this magic on teevee their entire lives, they can get the wrong idea about how achievable things are in real life (or at least within a useful time frame).

Re:Two edged sword

[Hentes]

But in either case, it creates interest in science itself, thus leading to a more informed public.

Re:Two edged sword

[uvajed_ekil]

I'm still waiting on my damn flying car, which science fiction from the 60s through the 80s said I'd surely have by now.

Re:Two edged sword

[Grishnakh]

Or people could get the idea that everyone in America is like the people featured on Jerry Springer.

(For non-Americans reading this, it's only about half the population here that's like that.)

Re:Two edged sword

[guitardood]

I'll second that. I've been ranting about my flying car for years.

Please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Using sci-fi to expand horizons to what could be possible is all well and good, but too often it's used to say "Well, science says it's possible, so why not?" The difference between fiction and reality is enormous. Time travel is a nice idea, but nobody's going to be traveling backward in time by going FTL (the time travel in Back to the Future isn't caused by going over 88 MPH, for instance). Teleportation is a nice idea, but the reality is more like suicide/cloning (you know, because you're not going to be moving your particles FTL to the destination.

Re:Please no

[Grishnakh]

Teleportation is a nice idea, but the reality is more like suicide/cloning (you know, because you're not going to be moving your particles FTL to the destination.

According to Star Trek, their transporters were not FTL, and actually did disassemble and reassemble molecules.

The real truth is these technologies haven't been invented yet, and we have little to no idea how they'd actually work. If we did, we'd be building these technologies now.

the time travel in Back to the Future isn't caused by going over 88 MPH, for instance

BttF only did that because the Doc designed his circuits that way for some reason (I forget why now). His time-traveling flying train in the last movie didn't have that feature, and could time-travel while standing still.

Re:Please no

[wootcat]

"According to Star Trek, their transporters were not FTL, and actually did disassemble and reassemble molecules." True, but not YOUR molecules. I can't recall if it was ever mentioned specifically, but there were numerous mentions of pattern buffers, and transmitting "data", not molecules. IMO, the poster's statement still stands. You are being killed and a clone of you is created in the new location.

Re:Frankenstein explains what ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankenstein actually has a very interesting history. Mary Shelly wrote the book as a sort of contest among her friends and acquainteces to write the scariest story she could think of. She was inspired by a recent experiment which featured a frog's muscles being stimulated by electricity. It was widely believed at that time that the "esscence of life" was in fact electricity, and that it might be possible to resurrect the dead with large amounts of electrical current. Of course, they were wrong, but Mary Shelly's novel was written primarily to explore the "what-if" of whether a scientist could resurrect a corpse using electricity. It's actually an incredibly important book in that regard, since it was one of the first instances of speculative fiction that wasn't purely religious in nature, and not to mention it is very very well written.

Problem with sci-fi

[Anonymous Coward]

A problem with scientists embracing science fiction is that so much science fiction warns against scientific progress. Terminator, for example, Short-Circuit, War Games, The Matrix. All of these movies warn against what happens when humans forward technology too far. Frankenstein and Jurassic Park also warn against advances in biology. The same applies to films like I, Robot. The fact is that while science fiction can encourage people to think about science and for some to become interested in science, it's also a huge breeding ground for fear. A lot of sci-fi is about warning people what could happen if we advance too far. Even lighter films like Back To The Future carry a strong "we shouldn't do this" message.

Re:Problem with sci-fi

[dbIII]

It's not a problem with SF, just a problem with some writers using it as a vehicle to drive a poor imitation of a Medieval morality play.
I see the time travel problems in "Back to the future" (or a longer example "Steins;Gate") as more as a plot device of warning that actions have consequences instead of a message of leaving time travel alone. As for Micheal "give doctors the authority to launch nukes" Crichton, sometimes he was just a dickhead as seen specificly in his last few books.

Re:Problem with sci-fi

[Benaiah]

How about total recall? In the end technology saves the day by transforming the atmosphere of mars into something breathable, thus freeing the people from their oppressive overlords..

Re:Problem with sci-fi

[Anonymous Coward]

How about total recall? In the end, a corporation offers artificial memories complete with feelings of having heroically made a positive change, to pacify the proletariat and keep them from acting out with real heroism.

Re:Problem with sci-fi

[Culture20]

A problem with scientists embracing science fiction is that so much science fiction warns against scientific progress. Terminator, for example, Short-Circuit, War Games, The Matrix.

Nitpick: Short Circuit was a positive movie about what could be achieved if we were to build treaded killbots then make them fly kites in a thunderstorm.

Re:Two edged sword (+1 informative)

[morethanapapercert]

replying to undo accidental moderation

A Quote from the end of Stargate SG-1

[Kylon99]

The source came from an episode that was parodying SG-1 itself but the message was poignant:

Science fiction is an existential metaphor that allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said, "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinded critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

Science fiction encourages creativity

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Creativity spurs different ways to approach engineering. Or if a new scientific breakthrough occurs, we know what engineering applications it could hold.

Re:Science fiction encourages creativity

[guitardood]

Creativity spurs different ways to approach engineering. Or if a new scientific breakthrough occurs, we know what engineering applications it could hold.

I hope the folks at CERN are not using Brannon Braga and his over user of EPS (manifolds,junctions,conduits,power,levels,generators) as inspiration for the truly great work they are doing.

It's a powerful platform

[Logarhythmic]

I've been saying this for years. Science fiction is a fantastic platform for social commentary precisely because it can convey complex ideas and thought-provoking situations without being overtly political or directly controversial.

Consider how far ahead of its time Star Trek was in terms of exploring a future in which race was irrelevant during the height of the civil rights movement, as well as all of the possible futures that were envisioned (across all of the series) to explore what might happen if humanity continues down a certain path that many people of the time would identify with. Many of those made some pretty grim predictions. Consider also Isaac Asimov's portrayal of robots in the 1950s... many would recognize some social commentary on race in those stories. Twilight Zone, anyone? Sure, some of those episodes were less thought-provoking than others, but quite a few had a poignant "whoa" moment at the end that is both easy to relate to some aspect of society and also hard to forget. The fact that they're all sci-fi stories just means that the writers have a bit more freedom to set the characters up in scenarios that would otherwise be difficult to believe. It's a built-in suspension of disbelief because, after all, "it's just sci-fi, it's not supposed to be real." Conveniently, it still makes you think.

Sci-fi has been able to get people to think about these things for a long time without slapping them in the face with a righteous sermon, and for that I agree it should continue to be much more widely adopted as a platform for "what if..."

Re:It's a powerful platform

[Rob_Bryerton]

Good points you make. I like to think of science fiction as a vehicle to discuss sociology, politics, and the human condition in a way that will interest and hold the attention of the geek mind. Several times after finishing a book, I'd realize that, even though the story was filled with cool future tech and what have you, the real meaning had nothing to do with these things, and more to do with the interactions of the characters, or perhaps some parallel in history. Or that the author was slyly pushing his religious or political viewpoints. Great stuff. SF has always been, by far, my favorite fiction genre.

Like any speculative fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can, somehow, remove the necessity of following the conventional rules and mores, you can talk of things that you couldn't otherwise get away with.

Consider Gulliver's Travels. Swift could criticise the establishment without being sent to jail. It wasn't hard for the people of the time to figure out what he meant.

Consider Star Trek. It examined racial stereotypes with impunity. It wasn't hard to figure out which Earthly races were represented by the Klingons and the Ferengi.

Science fiction makes it possible to talk about things that are otherwise very difficult to discuss.

Re:Like any speculative fiction

[Grishnakh]

It wasn't hard to figure out which Earthly races were represented by the Klingons and the Ferengi.

The Ferengi didn't represent a race, they represented American culture (which is composed of several different races, each of which has other members living in totally different cultures in other countries).

Re:Like any speculative fiction

[Wulfrunner]

Speaking of Gulliver's Travels, it was written in 1726 and I would classify it more as a Science Fiction novel than a Fantasy novel (consider Part III of the book). How is Frankenstein, written almost 100 years later, "arguably the first time Science Fiction appears"?

Re:first science fiction

[benthurston27]

All the Solomon stuff was scientific, but some would argue not fiction.

Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[fyngyrz]

The NT/OT, the Koran, Hindu legends, etc... these far predate Frankenstein, and even if you subscribe to one of them as the literal truth, that means the other(s) are science fiction by definition. And then there are the Greek myths, the Norse myths... all featuring technology beyond that of the population (and as we've been told by well regarded recent SF authors, any sufficiently advanced technology is often regarded as magic.) Now, personally, I'd put these in the fantasy realm more often than the SF realm, modern SF is rarely free of fantasy elements these days, and I suspect that when most people say science fiction, they actually mean fantasy... there's little to no requirement for the 1940's vision of scientific extrapolation or theory-based test for reasonableness.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[FoolishOwl]

In Book 18 of the Iliad, Thetis, the mother of Achilles, visits the god Hephaestus, to ask him to forge armor for Achilles. In passing, she sees carts that roll around on their own power and initiative, and machines in the form of golden metal women who act as assistants to Hephaestus.

So, in the 8th century BCE, you've got a major literary work featuring robots. And it should be easy to understand this as science fiction, in that the premise is that these are constructed through mastery of technology, not through inexplicable miracles.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[fyngyrz]

Careful, FoolishOwl, observe my post's mods -- the religious nutbars have mod points tonight, lol. Guess I offended the believers in Odin or something.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno.

If something uses fantasy elements to create a similar effect as something in science fiction, is it fantasy or science fiction?

Those are less robots as much as golems. But golems and robots have a lot of similarities.

Eh. Sufficiently advanced science, magic, etc as they say.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[techno-vampire]

There's also Talos, a giant made of bronze who was guarding Europa on Crete when Jason and the Argonauts came past. The story takes place before the Trojan War, although I don't know which one is actually older.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[FoolishOwl]

I don't think there's much point in drawing a sharp distinction between science fiction and fantasy. Similar themes, similar tropes, often the same authors and almost identical audiences. There are some conventions about what elements go in which stories, but those are transgressed very frequently.

In the original Yiddish folk story that is the source of the word "golem", the golem is created by a rabbi. A rabbi is a learned man; he has knowledge that others do not possess, but are capable of possessing. "Wizard" is, etymologically, derived from "wise". The classic all-purpose scientist from 1950s B-movie science fiction is pretty much a wizard.

I referred to the robots in the Iliad as "science fiction" because that made it clearer that I was trying to point out that Hephaestus created these things because he was a superb craftsman, not because he had supernatural powers.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[AlecC]

True, but all of these were created by the Gods, with their divine powers. Frankenstein was the first time the constructor of new technology was a man, and the premise was that this technology might become available to mankind in the near future. SF takes as its subject the hypothetically possible future of mankind (and others), and Frankenstein fits that mould (and, plausibly, created it). Mythology is about powers forever belonging to the Gods and beyond the reach of man. Of course, there is huge blurring of the boundary, which we may call Science Fantasy.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[mapkinase]

"the Koran". What exactly in The Qur'an you would perceive as science fiction? I understand if you consider it "fiction" as a Kaafir, but what exactly in the text of the Qur'an makes you label it as "science fiction"?

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[Oligonicella]

Wow. No, I must disagree. That "equation" does not work both directions.

A "sufficiently advanced technology" would be indistinguishable from magic to someone unfamiliar with the tech **and who believed in magic** otherwise they'll just think it's tech they don't have.

That in no way means that "actual magic", you know... gods and stuff, or pointing your finger and chanting "Booga booga" to invoke a spel is technology. And, in fact, I would suggest that someone with "sufficiently advanced technology" would see that it wasn't because of the *lack* of technology involved with the effect..

Very, very little hard SciFi written now-a-days. The entire field has degenerated into "speculative fiction" because it's easier to write. Kinda like giving ribbons to every kid running the race.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[hairyfeet]

Don't forget the story of the Golem which IIRC goes back to ancient Jewish mythology involving the power of creation. But if I wanted to compare a story to Frankenstein that would be it, someone who believes they are smart enough to wield the power of creation and ultimately creates a soulless monster that again IIRC (Man its been years and years since i read the original) ultimately destroys its creator. Wasn't there also a story about a great mechanical man created by the Gods to protect an island back in the days of the ancient Greek morality plays? again excuse if i'm missing details as its been a good 25+ years since i read any of those ancient stories.

What always amazed me wasn't the sci fi from ancient times but science fact that we lost, everything from hand grenades that could be fire or smoke grenades, a form of napalm in Greek fire, hell the Romans even had taxis that charged by the mile and used lithium baths for mental health treatment.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[kubernet3s]

Through *Hephaestus'* mastery of technology. I'd say even a piece of otherwise hard science fiction should be stripped of that title if it includes a part where the scientists are stumped by a problem, but God comes down and does it for them (Rama Revealed? *Shudder*)

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[asliarun]

Very, very little hard SciFi written now-a-days. The entire field has degenerated into "speculative fiction" because it's easier to write. Kinda like giving ribbons to every kid running the race.

I like the hard science fiction sub-genre quite a bit. Any recommendations?
What I've read and liked so far (hard sci-fi and sometimes merging with cyberpunk) - Stephen Baxter, Peter F Hamilton, Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds.

Desperately looking for more authors and books to read. Please help if you can.

Is it a coincidence that most of these authors are from the British isles?

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[fyngyrz]

Check out these examples of James P Hogan's work: Thrice Upon A Time, The Genesis Machine, The Two Faces of Tomorrow, Endgame Enigma.

All, as I recall anyway, good SF in the classic sense: science extrapolated or conformed.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[FoolishOwl]

Granted, yes, it's a god who created the mechanical servants. However, there are several occasions in which the gods are described as doing something basically magical: suddenly appearing, transforming someone, and so forth. But the interesting bit is that the mechanical servants are described as the products of cleverness, not of inexplicable powers.

What I find amazing is that in an era in which, as far as I know, the most sophisticated machines around were pulleys, someone could imagine something like a clockwork automaton.

Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no.

[tchall]

That in no way means that "actual magic", you know... gods and stuff, or pointing your finger and chanting "Booga booga" to invoke a spel is technology. .

If that gesture, and the vocalization that goes with it had been the result of years of development... theory, observation, experiment, peer review of the results and publication in journals for those interested in the subject.... would that change anything?

Using the "Scientific Method" to harness an unknown (to us) type of energy would satisfy me as science/technology....

After all, if you take certain rocks, process them a certain way, and then arrainge the resulting material just right you can power an aircraft carrier for it's entire projected lifespan on one fueling....

Neuromancer

[yanom]

This made me think of Neuromancer. Every day that goes by, Gibson's future comes closer to reality. I love how he didn't pass judement on his future - it wasn't a dystopia, and it sure isn't pretty, it just is.

"You Bred Raptors!?"

[captjc]

God creates raptors. God wipes out all life on earth to eliminate raptors. God creates man, man kills god. Man creates raptors. Raptors destroy universe.

I thought Jurassic Park was more of a cautionary tale that raptors are godless killing machines.

Re:SciFi has taken a big hit lately.

[Nursie]

Why the hell revive franchises when there's so much new stuff out there?

It would have been nice for there to have been more firefly, sure. But Stargate? That had a good run, it's over now, but that's OK, really it is.

Your site seems to be entirely devoted to "Save Terra Nova", which I've never even heard of...

I Miss the Sci Fi Classics

[Lord of the Fries]

I love scifi. But I don't read as much of it as I used to. I love the ABC (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke) of SciFi. And some of the other notable greats. But I find it harder and harder to find good scifi now days. The truly thought provoking kind. And the kind that gives me some small hope. So much of it is smut/graphic/romp or so apocalyptic, that I find myself missing the stuff I grew up with. Vinge was refreshing. And I've tried, but I just don't really find Stephenson's stuff that compelling.

Re:I Miss the Sci Fi Classics

[deimtee]

Try some of Charlie Stross's work. Accelerando is free on the net.
He writes a range - some of his books are far-out hard fiction, - Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise, others involve magic and british bureaucracy - The Jennifer Morgue, The Atrocity Archives, Glasshouse.
They are all pretty good.

Watsons designers said HAL in 2001 inspired them.

[bd580slashdot]

One of IBMs Watson designers said HAL in 2001 inspired him to get into computers and AI / Natural language stuff.

Re:Watsons designers said HAL in 2001 inspired the

[tragedy]

Uh oh, I can picture it now:
"Open the pod bay doors Watson!"
"What is, I'm sorry I can't do that Dave?"

heres a hallmark moment for ya

[gearloos]

Hey.. Science FICTION... it aint real... FICTION... get it? ... Nuff said.. lame You dont correlate it to reality... wow

Science Fiction as a Context Model

[GrpA]

This is something I have experienced myself.

A short story I wrote was entirely fiction based, yet some of the assumptions I made about the technology involved were close enough to the truth that an aerospace simulation company that develops military simulation technology uses the story as a concept model to explain their own simulation technology.

The surprise to me was when they contacted me to let me know. I had never realised just how much I had gotten right until they said "It's a lot closer to the truth than many of us like to admit".

Good SF has a way of taking a complicated technical matter and putting it into contexts that people can understand and relate to - in this respect, SF is more important as a tool for humanity than many other forms of traditional writing.

GrpA

Re:Science Fiction as a Context Model

[jollyreaper]

Cool! Checking it out now.

Re:first science fiction

[Grishnakh]

Don't forget the account of a UFO landing in the Book of Ezekiel.

older than that

[uvajed_ekil]

Interesting that Frankenstein is arguably the first time that science fiction appears.

Sure it is, if you discount everything that came before it. I think the Torah and the Rigveda are a few years older, and one could consider them early science fiction.

Re:first science fiction

[rrohbeck]

Same thing as Dianetics.

Re:Watsons designers said HAL in 2001 inspired the

[ppanon]

Alex: Sorry Tragedy, I'm afraid that's not quite correct. . Paul? Paul: What is "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." ?

Re:I gave up and started doing it myself

[Jonah Hex]

Thankfully most of the sluts are too wrapped up in wanting pr0n money for showing their goodies. Real models are harder to find but tend to have actual IQs, and we'll have some "nekkid vidz" up soon enough with some smart women who are into being involved in such a crazy project. Seriously although we want to incorporate sexuality and portray certain aspects of it, we aren't going for straight porn mostly because we have more to say. Thankfully I'm old enough to both be thick skinned (I was running Obv/2 BBSes on FidoNET when all we had was 80286 and 1200 and our trolling and flamewars lasted years, etc) and finally have the time to dedicate to the act of creation in many forms. HEX

Not New: The Goebbels Effect

[cowboy76Spain]

A lot of time ago I did some schoolwork about mass media and read some essays. Some of them talked about the "Goebbels Effect/Law" (yes, named after the Nazi because he used it a lot): present an old situation as a new one so the public does not relate it with its preconceived ideas.

For example, if I say: "Country X (or the Martians) spends ten times more in military than in education, and a 10% of young are functionally illiterate" many of you would say that this country politic should change. Now if say "USA spends ten times more in military than in education, and a 10% of young are functionally illiterate" (*1) then some of the previous people (specially if you are from the USA, or the USA military/weapon industries) would say "but we really need to spend that much in armament, and if young people don't know how to read it is because they do not want".

This has been exploited through the ages, before SF there were "travel literature" where someone would go into an strange land and describe there the problem of its own (see Gulliver's Travel). Some SF also serves for it, but it is hardly new at all.

*1: Not factual, just a fabricated example.

Scientists Don't Like Science Fiction?

[bamwham]

I work among scientists, and of course there are exceptions, but basically: if someone I know loves science fiction books, I guaruntee they do science for a living; if they love science fiction tv shows, there is a good chance they do science for a living; and it is only when we reach movies that it seems to become something with little to do with your work... The fact is: most science fiction literature is written by geeks, for geeks, sometimes about geeks, and sometimes about who geeks want to be.

Star trek is about the 1960s

[peter303]

Star Trek is about 1960s culture transposed into a hypothetical future. In the 1960s the US was at the peak of its imperial power. Social mores were opening up due to this-and-that "liberation". Computers were starting to affect daily life.

Wells style

[srobert]

I respect Verne but also prefer Wells style.
In a sense the difference between the two is why Groundhog Day is a better movie than 12:01.

Intelligent non-entities

[John Bayko]

Here's something to consider - what if it's not "things" that become intelligent? What if intelligence becomes emergent from everyday activities?

Specifically, business. Ever since the first time-and-motion studies and assembly lines, businesses have been trying to codify and standardise best practices for more and more higher level activities. Generally this is in the form of "assistance" to remove the repetitive or redundant wading through raw data or shuffling paper. For example, do you know anyone with a physical "In-box" these days? It's all email - company memos are no longer typed pages, questions get sent and answered globally, etc. Similarly groupware and wikis let people collaborate without time-consuming meetings that get off-track and miss the point anyway. More recently data mining and business intelligence applications have been taking the fuzzy human judgement out of routine decisions. Loan applications are approved electronically in a fraction of the time they used to be, for simple cases.

More and more decision activities are being turned over to software - because they're boring, and because the software does a better job, for the most part (minus a few global stock market crashes as the bugs get worked out). At the same time, lower level activities are still being automated. It's been said that today "all companies are software companies, they just don't know it yet". Many companies get their software packaged from elsewhere - in which case, they're really being run by the software suppliers, they're just going through the motions. Or they don't, and get overtaken by companies which benefit from innovative ideas from all over the planet added to the software.

So when a business software infrastructure has the complexity to make complex decisions better than the people running the company, because it has far more data than a human could process in a lifetime, does it become "intelligent"? If not immediately, how about down the road? If software run companies outperform human run ones, so that the latter go out of business or get bought out, who would notice? Given that humans still get the money and write the announcements and graphically design the web site for other humans.

If that sofware becomes intelligent, then where is the intelligent "machine"? It's spread out across the world, on constantly interchangable machines, storage, networks. Maybe rented from one day to the next, the software might scoot around different servers and companies often enough nobody can tell just where it resides (you know about 90% or your atoms and molecules are replaced annually, but you're still "you").

Intelligent machines may eventually happen, as iPhones with Siri or hospital computers with Watson. But I'm pretty sure intelligence in the form of corporations is inevitable (Charles Stross's book "Accelerando" examines what this type of scenarion might be like - in one case, the main characters negotiate with a Ponzi Scheme in corporation form).

Qur'an / Koran

[fyngyrz]

what exactly in the text of the Qur'an makes you label it as "science fiction"?

Well for one thing, the claim that there is a god is an SF/fantasy element. It's a claim without any backing in the secular world -- no evidence, etc., so it's either based on outright fantasy or it is based on natural law we don't get, one or the other. Which one is the case, I leave as an exercise for the reader, lol.

Koran: (Qur'an if you really want to be snippy about Romanization, which is sort of pointless, but I digress.) Quoting the Penguin translation by Dawood, sura 56 verses 12- 39: "They shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds... We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand..."

That whole life after death thing, not to mention the described life after death existance as flesh-and-blood... yeah, I'm quite comfortable calling that SF/fantasy. As far as we know now, based on every bit of evidence we've been able to gather, you die, you're completely gone. No virgins, no succulent fowl, no visits with supernatural figures. Any other description of the process is an exercise in imagination (to be kind.)

Re:Qur'an / Koran

[mapkinase]

>an SF/fantasy element

Can't you read what I wrote? Read again, idiot:

> I understand if you consider it "fiction" as a Kaafir, but what exactly in the text of the Qur'an makes you label it as "science fiction"

Re:Qur'an / Koran

[fyngyrz]

Well, it's simple enough: The technical elements of the story, which itself is clearly fictional, are scientifically possible, as far as we know. Longer life (immortal youths), artificial service beings created as dark-eyed virgins, custom food creation, that sort of thing. We don't have most of these things yet, but they are certainly possible in a scientific framework, just technically very difficult for us at the moment. The same applies at the time the Koran was made up; those things were more fantasy then, as science was considerably more jumbled as a process and the technologies required for these not even in view on the horizon at the time, but the bottom line is they are technically possible but fiction as written. A God -- a being with enormous abilities compared to ours -- also possible within a scientific framework, but also not in evidence in any way. Ergo, science fiction. More clearly so today than ever before.

Notice I didn't say it was *good* science fiction. That's something else entirely. But it's good enough for some.

Re:Watsons designers said HAL in 2001 inspired the

[tragedy]

I, for one, welcome our jeopardy-winning-locking-us-out-in-the-cold-depths-of-space overlords.

Laura helps me explain the context of Sci-Fi

[MistrX]

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaahhn!!!!