Neal Stephenson Takes Blame For Innovation Failure

itwbennett writes "Neal Stephenson is shouldering some of the blame for discouraging budding scientists and engineers, saying in a interview that perhaps the dark turn science fiction has taken is 'discouraging budding scientists and engineers.' For his part, Stephenson has vowed to be more optimistic. From the article: 'Speaking before a packed lecture theater at MIT yesterday, Neal Stephenson worried that the gloomy outlook prevalent in modern science fiction may be undermining the genre's ability to inspire engineers and scientists. Describing himself as a "pessimist trying to turn himself into an optimist," and acknowledging that some of his own work has contributed to the dystopian trend, he added "if every depiction of the future is grim...then it doesn't create much of an incentive to building the future."'"

Comments

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflated sense of self-worth alert

Re:Really?

[multiben]

^This. Don't worry Neal, your works are, at best, forgettable distractions.

Re:Really?

[identity0]

I, presonally, blame George Lucas.

Speilberg may be a co-consiprator.

Re:Really?

[girlintraining]

It is not an inflated sense of self-worth that is the loci of his statements, but rather a sense of social responsibility that is so rare in this consumer-based society that it is in danger of becoming extinct.

He has a valid point; most scifi today portrays a dystopian world, but that is not commentary on the future, but rather the present. The fictional writings of an era have always been heavily influenced by the emotions which surround the writers. Artists have long been the canary down the mine shaft... an early warning of impending social malaise.

Re:Really?

[ATMAvatar]

If you were to ascribe blame to any particular group for the perceived slowing of innovation, the best target would be the lawyers. A dystopian future story pales in comparison to a stampeding herd of patent lawyers when it comes to stifling scientific and technological progress.

You can't even daydream about something new without getting sued for infringing multiple patents anymore.

Re:Really?

[rubycodez]

more people have read Stephson's books than have used desktop Linux.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflated sense of self-worth alert

This article misinterprets what he said at the MIT talk. He said it's a role for all of science fiction to be optimistic about technology. He is just doing his part.

Re:Really?

[dishpig]

What he's talking about is turning his 'art' into pamphleteering. Social responsibility is not, nor should it be, the goal of entertainers. Sting taught me that.

Re:Really?

[turbidostato]

"Inflated sense of self-worth alert"

Yeah, Stephenson is as guilty of current state of affairs in science as much as Wile E. Coyote of suicidal rates by jumping off a cliff.

Re:Really?

[Grishnakh]

I disagree (about sci-fi's role). It's sci-fi's role to reflect society's view of the future. All sci-fi does that, in a general sense. Back in the 60s, and before, there was lots of optimism about technology and the future. Now, people see that the future is bleak, so they're not going to bother buying and reading (or watching) sci-fi that shows a Utopian future, because they know (correctly) that it's much more probable that we'll have a future with a collapsed economy, mass starvation, and kids fighting each other to the death. Just look around at the state of the world; everything's getting worse, not better. Any sci-fi author who tried to sell a Star Trek-like story about humans exploring the cosmos in peace (except for skirmishes here and there with hostile species like the Romulans) would go bankrupt because no one would buy his stories. We see it in movies and TV too: where's the optimism in sci-fi? It's gone. The closest thing to optimistic we've had lately was Terra Nova (which wasn't exactly optimistic; it showed the ecosystem dying in about 150 years and people living in domes to escape the poisonous atmosphere), and that was canceled due to poor ratings. Before that, there was Battlestar Galactica, but that was really about the past, not the future. And what about movies? Avatar wasn't exactly an optimistic picture (human society run by greedy corporations), and that's really the only movie about humans in space I can think of offhand for the last 5 years or so (and it only showed people in space for about 2 minutes).

If Neil wants to write some optimistic sci-fi, he's going to need to do alternate-history sci-fi, writing about a parallel universe that split off from ours somewhere in the mid 1990s where things didn't turn to shit as soon as the millennium passed.

Re:Really?

[lightknight]

Sci-Fi's role, if any, is to reflect one possible future. In reality, however, many utopian / dystopian novels are, sadly, commentaries on the present, with just enough elements changed so they aren't censored. 'Tis easier to say 'In a galaxy, far far away, lived an evil emperor,' than to say 'In this country, here and now, is a villain.' It's also useful to get around people's "filters" on perception: if someone actually presents a valid argument, but does so in a roundabout fashion, it may be weighed quietly for merit; if one labels a character a Republican, Democrat, Christian, or Atheist, then the filters kick in, and the argument is immediately agreed with or dismissed. A lot of what Star Trek TOS did was considered risque at the time, flouting social conventions -> which was okay, because a fictional show about the future.

From Wikipedia:
"In the 1968 episode "Plato's Stepchildren", Uhura and Captain Kirk kiss. The episode is popularly cited as the first example of a scripted inter-racial kiss on United States television.[12][13][14] Originally, the scene was meant to be filmed with and without the kiss, so that the network could later decide whether to air the kiss. However, Shatner and Nichols deliberately flubbed every take of the shot without the kiss so that they could not be used."

Inter-racial kissing was a big thing then. How far we've come...

But yes, a lot of the prominent Sci-Fi being pushed today is either bland, or is politics dressed up for more than it's worth. And yes, BSG (the remake) was terrible: I wanted to like it, had been told it was great, but it left me with the same feeling as Lost. It was just...pointless. I suppose the biggest problem with Sci-Fi (television) is the lack of humor that needs to go with them. Star Wars (not the prequels) -> the actors had a great time off-screen, and didn't take it too seriously. Stargate SG-1 -> the humor can be seen on screen. Firefly -> more of the same. Farscape, The Invisible Man, etc. -> they all had that campy sense of humor.

On a separate note, our comedians are hurting. Seriously, they are. It's painful to see the new blood that Comedy Central is drawing upon these days, and their inability to make me laugh. I get smirks, maybe an odd chuckle, but no outright laughs, let alone a deep-throaty one which ends up with me having difficulty breathing. Anyone else experiencing this?

Re:Really?

[Hognoxious]

And Bono taught him.

Re:Really?

[silentcoder]

I will politely not agree with you. Must be a matter of taste but I consider Stephenson to be one of the greatest writers of our generation - and certainly my favorite (by far) cyberpunk writer.

Re:Really?

[nordee]

Bullshit article title.

I was there. He prefixed most comments with "I don't want to be prescriptive to future authors" or "It's dangerous to make predictions because they were often wrong." He certainly never claimed, or even insinuated, that he was partly or even mostly responsible.

Re:Really?

[fonske]

Neal Stephenson instills a lot of food for thought in my engineer brain.
His thorough historic research is remarkable.
It has been noticed in other posts that his grammar is exceptional.
As a native Flemish speaker I also take interest in his extensive vocabulary.
Metallica got aware in the nineties that their music might have a sociological impact mostly on teenagers - so did Neal Stephenson albeit on another public.

Re:Really?

[jythie]

No drop feels it is responsible for the flood. Sure, this particular author's part might be pretty small, but the idea that science fiction's take on the future can either encourage or discourage young minds is not new and there have been noticeable connections between optimistic science fiction and a rise in the next generation of scientific interest.... so what author's produce does seem to have an impact, and I see no problem with one author acknowledging his own role in this.

Re:Really?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Actually, he's probably on the fast track to Grandmaster status.

Not only are his stories innovative and entertaining, his prose is almost Mark Twain-like in its clever humor and quick wit.

See Cryptonomicon for many excellent examples of this. One of the biggest claims against SF is the mundane writing skills in otherwise fantastic stories. That absolutely does not apply to him.

Re:Really?

[Hellpop]

I've never read Stephenson, but from what I've heard, I'll stick with Gibson on my dystopia SF.
I suspect Stephenson was merely using sarcasm and mockery to make a point. I doubt he actually believes he is responsible. Some people need to lighten up a bit on this one. Even I can see the humor in this.

Re:Really?

[hamsjael]

"You can't even daydream about something new without getting sued for infringing multiple patents anymore." Thats a nice sentence. You just made it into the QOTD of my webmail service login page :-) . sincerely Brian btw: howthehell do i make a newline in this fucking editor?... RANT: ... man i hate web2.0, and feel lucky everyday i dont have to program for a fucking webbrowser like the poor guy opposite me in office.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

what author's produce

"authors".

I doubt that's true

[pluther]

I think you're off the hook Mr. Stephenson.

Remember all those people who caused the tech boom of the 90s grew up during a time when post-apocalyptic fiction was one of the most popular genres.

Between the cold war and the religious mania of the early 80s, "If Jesus doesn't get you, Oppenheimer will" was the phrase of the day.

But a lot of people still went into science and engineering...

Re:I doubt that's true

[cpu6502]

They would have grown-up watching the original Star Trek (me, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates) or the Next Generation Trek (younger folks). Those were both very positive influences showing that technology will improve the human condition. In fact given the ratings of 10% of U.S. households (about 9 million homes), I bet more people were watching trek than reading the negative sci-fi novels.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Fluffeh]

Between the cold war and the religious mania of the early 80s, "If Jesus doesn't get you, Oppenheimer will" was the phrase of the day.

I find that a grim outlook actually makes me dig my heels in much more so. Five years ago, I wasn't too engrossed with privacy, politics or anything like that. These days, I seem to be going out of my way to make noise and generate resolve amoung the population. I think there is an element of Ying/Yang to it, the harder certain people will push to empower themselves or the folks that pay them, the more people will stand their ground.

"Let me say at the risk of seeming ridiculous that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love." - Che.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice sentiment, but Che was a full on asshole.

He ordered people executed, for abandoning his retarded people's revolution (finger quotes galore).

He was a childish, unrealistic douchebag pawn of Castro. And it cost him his life. Oh well, at least he shows up on t-shirts and the occasional dimbulb /. posting.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Rennt]

Thing is, I don't believe it's sci-fi's job to sell technology at all. Even the most positive stories should be tempered with a bit of pessimism.

SF is supposed to ask questions about what technology does to society, and what that means to the society being changed... stories that are all sunshine and rainbows are nothing more then speculative fantasy.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Grishnakh]

Star Trek (the 60s one even) did plenty of that; they simply outsourced the problems to various alien worlds where the inhabitants looked human except for some bits of latex on their faces and fancy costumes (better in the 60s version), rather than trying to show problems back at home. In fact, they simply didn't discuss the Federation homeworlds much at all, except maybe for Spock's (where of course everything was sunshine and rainbows because they had cast aside negative emotions). There were allusions here and there, esp. in TNG, about not needing money and all that, but it was never explained at all, and of course what about the gold-pressed latinum?

They even had one TOS episode about the Federation and Klingons fighting a proxy war on a backwards planet, with them introducing advanced weapons technology to the natives, and Kirk finally giving up at the end and leaving because he couldn't find a way to correct the situation.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Shihar]

I was actually at his talk. He didn't discount the tech boom. His point is that the tech boom wasn't "big" science. If anything, it might have sucked some of the air out of the room for science. He was arguing that the Intertubes landed out our feet, everyone was like "wow, WTF is this and how can we use!?" and stopped doing a lot of other things. That is almost certainly true. We diverted a huge number of people who might otherwise have been "hard" scientist into working in and around the 'tubes. He was talking more about striving for grand science, not just what we call "tech".

I have friends smart technical friends writing apps for cell phones. My most technically brilliant friends work for Google (an ad company) and Facebook (also an ad company). These people are near Savants with how scary smart they are, and their efforts are their brilliance is being funneled into figuring out ways to make you click on ads. For better or for worse, we have turned a huge portion of our most technical minds to working on shit that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't mean a whole a lot.

Now, how much of that is a lack of optimism for the future and how much of it is that Google makes a fuck-ton of money? Eh, I think the money probably has more to do with it. That said, I wouldn't totally discount the subtle effect of sci-fi. I know sci-fi influenced me into going into engineering. I wanted carbon nanotube space elevators. The (delusional) dream of working on something like that is the only thing that lured me away from programming and into engineering. If not for sci-fi, there is a non-trivial chance that my path would have sent me down the road of making apps for people's cell phones instead of making the chips that go inside of them.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Anonymous Coward]

“A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!” -Che

Re:I doubt that's true

[lightknight]

'Tis not Sci-Fi's job to temper things one way or the other. Its job is to tell a story; if the author wishes to make their story fraught with the perils of technology, let them; if not, then no. And for the love of God, no more dressed-up bullsh*t journalistic human interest pieces. Bring back the aliens; let them be different from humans, really different. Let them fight with one another, or not; let them f*ck, or not; let them be interesting or dull. Let them have alien cultures, let them have alien morals, let them have alien languages.

What more, Sci-Fi isn't just about technology. Let them have their eco-terrorists and back to earth abolitionists. Fear of technology doesn't sell; an interesting story does.

Re:I doubt that's true

[WillAdams]

One can make an argument that the investment banking boom was more of a problem --- when the best and brightest graduates of the top colleges of the country are getting sucked up by investment groups so that they can earn such groups some slightly larger percentage of profit than was earned previously by creating Haskell programs for High-Frequency Trading that leaves companies doing real work and real science and real advancement of the human condition behind.

Re:I doubt that's true

[lwriemen]

The (delusional) dream of working on something like that is the only thing that lured me away from programming and into engineering. If not for sci-fi, there is a non-trivial chance that my path would have sent me down the road of making apps for people's cell phones instead of making the chips that go inside of them.

Making chips that go into cell phones is more important to society than writing the software that makes the chips do something useful? ???

Let's face it. Software only becomes irrelevant when computing machines go away. Google might be "an ad company", but it's funding a lot of interesting endeavors and introducing competition in new areas. There's danger that it could become another Microsoft and monopolize it's market in a way that stifles innovation (like Microsoft did to the PC industry), but right now a good amount of competition still exists.

Re:I doubt that's true

[painandgreed]

Well, I can see some of that. I was an physics major who left college looking at continuing my work at designing physics lab equipment. Instead I ended up as glorified desktop support for a bunch of doctors because it was easier (no more mind numbing math, although I sort of miss it) and paid more. Still, computers and the internet have vastly advanced health care for example. Everything is digital and transmitted almost instantly across the internet to whoever needs it who are using web based apps. Paper is gone along with the time it takes for that paper trail to go from person to person. The amount of data that is being gathered is orders of magnitude larger that it was ten years ago (in radiology anyway). It can be analyzed in ways that they couldn't imagine twenty years ago. The time it took to take the data and get results went from 24 hours to 24 minutes. Today, we have doctors that can check results and give reports with images displayed on their cell phones in critical cases such as strokes where things need to be decided in less time that it would have taken for the doctor to get dressed, let alone get to the hospital.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Shihar]

Technology is layered. The spiffy stuff we can do with with software hasn't come about because of a few orders of magnitude increase in the efficiency of software. It has come about because the hardware has been driving vastly more power into the device. Smart phones were not waiting for inventive programmers. They were waiting for low power and fast chips. Inventive software maybe shaves a year or two off the time when it is useful to a consumer.

I'm not trashing software. Software is important. However, a lot of software is just stuff floating on the surface of a massive tech pyramid that supports it. It gets a lot of attention because it is what we see. The question you have to ask is, do you want your best and brightest putting paint onto the highest level of this tech pyramid, or do you want them advancing the foundation. Good software gets you prettier apps that run a little faster. Good hardware gets you orders of magnitude faster processors that run at a fraction of the power, that are a fraction of the size, and cheaper than the generation that came before. Your spiffy Google glasses or Google contacts lenses are going to exist because someone made a break through in a semi-conducting lab, not because Google wrote some spiffy software.

The Internet has brought us a lot of wonderful and socially useful things. The world is a vastly better place for having it. That said, and this was Neal's point, we have funneled a huge portion of our creative energy into it, to the point that much of the rest of science has gotten the bum shoulder. It is important to have a pile of people running around making the tech useful for the masses, there is only so much you can do if the rate of innovation on all the bits that support that front slow down.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Anonymous Coward]

the author wishes to make their story

"authors wish" or "his/her".

dressed-up bullsh*t journalistic

"bullshit".

let them f*ck

"fuck".

What more

"What's".

Lawyers

[Nerdfest]

He can try to claim credit, but I'm fairly sure lawyers are far more directly responsible, probably with MBA's being a close second.

Re:Lawyers

[pitchpipe]

Why is this marked funny? It isn't funny.

Re:Lawyers

[outsider007]

Because there's no +1 sad.

Re:Lawyers

[Baron_Yam]

You've been modded 'funny', but it's more 'sad, but probably accurate'.

Re:Lawyers

[geekoid]

Correct, it's flamebait.

China and India are doing the discouraging

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously Mr. Stephenson. When China and Indian students flood into science and engineering, and generate a large decline in income and societal status, is it any surprise there is a decline of American students in engineering?

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[Un pobre guey]

You must live on an isolated mountaintop somewhere. The Indian and Chinese scientists and engineers I have worked with for decades have all been top notch, including all the new ones coming in now.

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[JustNiz]

I have no experience of the work of Chinese developers, but I've seen a lot of work from many different Indian developers and its pretty much all been a horrible clueless mess.

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[Prosthetic_Lips]

I would have to disagree.

While I have seen my share of bad foreign code, there have also been excellent foreign coders.

The difference, I think, is who is "selling" of the coding services. Think of the most slimy American used car salesman (sorry to my friends that are in car sales! Not talking about you!!), and imagine he is selling programming "talent" in another country. He knows that he just has to get his foot in the door and make a sale, and he makes his commission. So, he gets some mediocre (at best) talent, promises the world, all for a vastly lower bid than any American company. Unfortunately, by the time you realize how bad it is (software takes a while to specify and begin to see results, unfortunately), he is already at the next place selling the same bad programmers.

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I'm sure that's the problem. We have some outsourced code from a company in India. Complete trash. We also have outsourced code from a company in North America. Also complete trash.

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[lightknight]

1.) We welcome all races and nationalities to the STEM majors.
2.) Foreign companies hire American engineers, and tend to pay them well. Why are our American companies failing to do the same? Why are our American companies failing to remain afloat without constant bailouts, protectionist policies, and outright bribery? That's not a STEM problem -> it's Americans running those companies, graduated from American universities, and yet they're the ones driving those companies into the ground.
3.) There is a perpetual scarcity of STEM majors at home. Why? Because they're difficult, hence the reason so few people graduate with a STEM degree. Lowering quality (in theory) to put out more STEM graduates isn't a good idea, unless you like airplanes that drop out of the sky.
4.) The decline in income, if any, is temporary, as those companies responsible for paying their people so poorly end up pulling an Enron and go under. We had an article the other day showing, what appears to be, a positive correlation between upper management slashing the IT department, and the company going over the edge.

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[lightknight]

I've had (limited) experience with both in the workplace, and it has nothing to do with race, but style of code.

The Indian guys learned to adapt, but the one Chinese woman I am thinking of caused my coworkers to curse.

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[dbIII]

They do the trick the Russians did with their captured German rocket scientists - put untrained Russian techs on a project with the captured Germans until they've picked up a bit and then shift them on to the real project, then send in some more untrained Russian tech. You guys have been conned into training some Indian developers fresh out of school.
I don't know about software developers but I've worked with some Indian mechanical and electrical engineers that are as good as anybody with the same qualifications and experience

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[Hatta]

Lucky you. The Indian and Chinese scientists I work with are engaged in cargo cult science.

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no experience of the work of Chinese developers, but I've seen a lot of work from many different Indian developers and its pretty much all been a horrible clueless mess.

So, they're exactly like American developers in every way?

Re:China and India are doing the discouraging

[sjames]

The real discouragement is having to watch people who get paid the big bux because they are supposedly savvy at this sort of thing getting suckered repeatedly and still getting a bonus and a raise while the remaining developers get told there's no money for raises this year due to "setbacks" (large wads of cash flushed away overseas perhaps?).

Fuck Neal Stephenson!

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Douglas Adams instead, losers! And get the fuck off my lawn!

A Neal Stephenson Story right after a Turing Story

[Datamonstar]

If a Douglas MacArthur story shows up any time soon, I'm dumping everything outta The Crypt.

WTF dude

[Osgeld]

"the gloomy outlook prevalent in modern science fiction may be undermining the genre's ability to inspire engineers and scientists."

or maybe its the fact you can get a business degree out of a box of crackerjacks and make more money with much less work sitting on your ass as a manager.

Re:WTF dude

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's the problem right there: management is vastly overrated as a profession; it's interesting that moving into management is always perceived as a step up. I've seen plenty of managers expressing shock and horror at finding that some of their underlings make more than they do, and it seems that they've quickly moved to address that issue; it doesn't happen all that often anymore. Management is important and all that, but it does seem that somehow we got stuck in a loop with inflated egos pushing up inflated salaries and vice versa.

Another problem is that a lot of companies seem to have problems coming up with good career paths for scientists and engineers. Especially career paths that don't end up in management. The other day, a fellow contractor working for my client asked me to provide input for his yearly appraisal. One section of the form was titled "future potential", where I was asked my opinion on what level the person would be able to attain in 5 years time, and what level he'd be at the top of his career. The choices were jobs like "programme manager", "department manager", "division manager"... the only option that didn't have the word manager in it was "CEO". And this is supposed to be a career path for an IT architect working for a tech firm?

In general, techies are poorly understood, poorly managed, underpaid and not well respected. And all of these go hand in hand. Small wonder that young people are choosing other career options.

Re:WTF dude

[Anonymous Coward]

Or not. Those motivated by money are not the same people that drive progress.

Re:WTF dude

[lightknight]

Sadly, it's true. It's hard for a scientist to own his own lab these days. What more, the years of hard work, learning that material, are wasted, as the proceeds from his work end up in someone else's hands. They say they want someone who loves their field, but in reality, they want someone who is willing to work perpetually for nothing. Greed here is a killer, and teaches the future generations that it's more important to screw the scientists out of their due than to invent something of worth. I'll let you imagine what kind of society that eventually gives rise to.

Re:WTF dude

[lightknight]

'Tis quite alright. The powerful mismanagement of the tech sectors is causing crashes everywhere. Everyone is just coasting on what's left.

Re:WTF dude

[geekoid]

No it isn't over rated, and it's critical.
However it isn't really monitored, so it's easy to get there and be bad at the job and still collect a pay check.

Yes, In some companies the path to the top is only through management track it horrid.

People working on engineering problems don't track business needs, other project impact, and don't have the time to get proper attention for a project. A good manager does that.

Re:WTF dude

[Zhiar]

This. I'm a teenager, trying to make decisions that will affect my career in the future. I went for an science/engineering career talk recently. When I realised that the speakers were all either managers or waiting to "move up" into management (or professors, but there weren't a lot of them), it was kind of... demoralising that the "pinnacle" of a science job seems to be management. The message they're giving us is: getting a science related job is merely a step to getting a management job. Don't focus so much on the science parts. Way to interest us into getting jobs in science.

Re:WTF dude

[JaredOfEuropa]

Critical? I have seen departments that operate rather well despite the fully incompetent middle managers in charge of them. Managers are important, sure, but so is the network engineer who keeps the bits flowing, and the lady from finance who makes sure that we all get our paychecks on time. And that's just it: if you look at what middle management actually is, the conclusion is that management is part of the plumbing, just like IT, Finance, Legal, etc. Necessary, but hardly strategic... in large firms, middle managers love to pretend they are involved in strategy, but that mostly amounts to reshuffling peons and suppliers a little. It would well behoove those managers to remember that they too are just employees of the company, not gods incarnate.

Executives are much less overrated perhaps (though the inflated egos are certainly there), but again the problem is: there's an awful lot of bad apples in the bunch. Not a surprise if you recruit them from middle management. And it's no surprise either that (in my experience at least) executives often love to talk to non-managers or to free thinkers and artsy folks from outside the company. Their subordinate managers are shopkeepers and poor strategists; talking to other people is more likely to yield a fresh perspective.

By the way, if you get the feeling that I am laying in to middle management rather harshly... I am. I think there is a world to be gained by having *good* middle management in place, but it will require a whole different breed of managers. (Read "Managers, not MBAs" some time).

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

This dude needs to get over himself. Snow Crash was a long time ago.

Re:Huh?

[Dahamma]

Yeah, and I bet it motivated more kids to go into tech so they don't end up as pizza delivery guys. That's one dangerous damn job.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the only Neal Stephenson you've read then I think you've missed his best stuff. Diamond Age was at least as interesting, and imo Cryptonomicon was better than either.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Diamond Age was at least as interesting, and imo Cryptonomicon was better than either.

Cryptonomicon had a lot of interesting bits, but also a LOT of fat. Man, what a slog that book was to read!

By contrast, I couldn't stop turning the pages of Snow Crash.

Re:Huh?

[TheRaven64]

I'd agree on Diamond Age. Cryptonomicon was a bit dull. It rehashed a load of history and crypto theory that I knew already and squeezed a plot into the 50 or 60 pages left over. Read something like The Code Book instead if you want to learn about the history of cryptography - it's better written and more accurate, and doesn't try to shoehorn a weak plot into it.

Re:Huh?

[Cid Highwind]

Gotta disagree. Stephenson seems to have the same amount of "awesome" on hand to put in each book, and the later ones have been much longer and therefore more diluted.

Snow Crash > Diamond Age > Cryptonomicon > Baroque cycle > Anathem. The only exception is Zodiac, which isn't as good as Snow Crash or Diamond Age, but still infinitely more enjoyable than his latest alternate-history textbooks.

He's missed the mark so far

[cpu6502]

For all his 80s and early 90s doom-and-gloom fiction, the future turned out to be pretty bright. TV and radio media is dying-out, being replaced with the instant gratification of the internet media. No need to wait until 8 o'clock to see your favorite show; or wait for MTV to play your favorite song; just watch it now online.

People are talking directly to one another (okay typing to one another) and no longer believing the lies/blatant omissions coming from the old media. The press is once again the people, where it belonged all along. Things are being revealed that were never talked about before.

We now have computers that fit in our pockets, but are ~1000 times faster than the computer Mr. Stephensen used to type his novels. Instead of being confined to just our local community of friends, we can met people of similar interests across the continent. (I've met all kinds of people through facebook -- common goal: Restore the bill of rights. End the wars. Balance the budget.)

No the future's not perfect, but certainly better than the "I feel like slitting my wrist" future described by Neal.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[ColdWetDog]

Gadget wise we're doing better.

Real income for the majority of Americans and Europeans, the structure of society, the fundamentals of the economy, our infrastructure - not so much.

Not to mention the upcoming specter of resource wars and our ever increasing tendencies towards a police state.

We've changed our view of the apocalypse from nuclear Armageddon to the "Hunger Games" but it's still not a very rosy future.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[Anonymous Coward]

Gadget wise we're doing better.

I don't think I can buy a gargoyle suit a la Snow Crash or really any sort of fully immersive VR equipment on the level of Snow Crash. Nor do I think we have nuclear(?) powered dog robots that need to live in chilled kennels.

Also I am reasonably certain we don't have household nanotechnology or interactive novels which evolve with our choices and grows with us to teach us everything we need and then some a la Diamond Age.

Haven't read his other books of that period in the futuristic realm. Only really read those two, Cryptonomicon, Anathem, and the Baroque Cycle. (/stroke e-peen for reading)

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[DerekLyons]

No need to wait until 8 o'clock to see your favorite show; or wait for MTV to play your favorite song; just watch it now online.

Indeed - I just got finished watching a TV episode I TIVO'ed last week. In the middle of the night without having to remember to set the clock or put a tape in either.
 

People are talking directly to one another (okay typing to one another) and no longer believing the lies/blatant omissions coming from the old media. The press is once again the people, where it belonged all along.

Instead, they're believing the lies and blatant omissions coming from the new media... The press hasn't "returned to the people", but rather it has returned to an older era - where every news source took sides and had it's political slant and didn't even pretend to unbiased or accurate. The technology has changed, but people haven't.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[cpu6502]

>>>where every news source took sides and had it's political slant and didn't even pretend to unbiased or accurate

GOOD. I'd rather have obvious bias that I can see, rather than a TV media falsely-claiming "we are not biased" while they push the pro-government or pro-corporate agenda.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[Anonymous Coward]

People are talking directly to one another (okay typing to one another) and no longer believing the lies/blatant omissions coming from the old media.

Instead, they're believing lies/blatant omissions from the mob or a popular internet personality.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[Black Parrot]

We now have computers that fit in our pockets

Huh? I thought everyone was just glad to see me.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[DerekLyons]

Virtually nobody sees the bias in their chosen news sources. They wouldn't even recognize it if it ran up and hit them with a 2x4. (As your first post so aptly demonstrates.) They will however invent bias everywhere else though. (As your reply equally aptly demonstrates.)

At least back then, people *knew* news sources were biased - you were ignorant of it until I pointed it out, and will forget it tomorrow as soon as a piece you agree with scrolls up your screen.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[Anonymous Coward]

Resource wars do not make sense. As fossil fuel resources dwindle, the ability to fight over them does as well; have you seen the ludicrous amounts of fuel and materiel the U.S. military uses on a daily basis? Setting aside entirely the difficulty of convincing a public to accept such an unjust war, the economics of it do not make sense. You can always buy it cheaper than you can take it.
Now, if by resource wars you mean some situation where a country refuses to sell an extremely valuable and limited resource to anyone, that could happen in some very limited circumstances. But the most common example given, i.e. China with rare earths, could never progress in that direction since the U.S. has reserves of those same materials in the ground much closer to home.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[Alex Belits]

Resource wars make a lot of sense when small groups of rich control freaks want full control of resource to dangle it in front of the rest of mankind, and others join the fight afraid that one of those control freaks will win.

The only solution is to keep mentally deficient individuals away from power over other people, and this is incompatible with the ideas of "freedom" and "property".

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[Alex Belits]

Media always was biased, but only recently it started to claim that is is objective.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[dbIII]

Resource wars do not make sense

A lot of real wars have been resource wars.
I don't mean Iraq since that's debatable and a massive net loss in terms of resources anyway - look back a bit furthur. One example was the Pacific war with Japan.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[xhrit]

All war since the dawn of time, in fact all human conflict, is driven by control of resources. Since the first caveman clubbing his neighbor to steal his fire and womenfolk, to the Viking raids, Zulu Slave War. War of the Sabines, East India Company, American Indian Wars, Seven Years' War, Wars of the Roses, that whole Warring States thing. Even the more recent conflicts such as World War 2 where Germany invaded the rest of the world for "lebensraum" and Japan invaded China for control of it's oil. Or the Vietnam war where US forces moved to prevent communist states from acquiring control over the resources therein.

Sometimes the resources are different; be it fire, oil, gold, land, slaves, or 'the hearts and minds'. Sometimes the methods are different; be it indirect control through economic methods, or direct control via assassinations, black ops, or outright warfare and military expansionism.The motives have not changed. Only the scale of the conflict and the ingenuity of the brutality involved has changed.

Blame history, not fiction for mankind's distrust of technology. Even the most liberating tech can be used for unspeakable acts, and through the use of technology the scale of destruction can be magnified. The reality of our world is that science has provided us with weapons powerful enough to destroy all living things on earth nearly instantaneously, and the great nations of the world use the terror of this technology to hold entire populations hostage with fear. This is the official state doctrine of our great nation and the way we maintained our superiority over better part of the last century - the terror inflicted by mutually assured destruction.

The worst science fiction writers can imagine pales in comparison to reality.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[Anonymous Coward]

They are a step ahead of you. Their obvious bias is a feint, a staged struggle designed to distract you from the fact that there are a whole bunch of people cooperating daily to take away freedom and deliver power into the hands of corporations.

Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who think about becoming scientists are actually smart enough to discern at a relatively young age between sci-fi and reality. Survey how many smart kids who saw "Blade Runner" found that movie disenfranchised them about the future, or whether they just thought it was really cool.
 
To some extent people don't want to be scientists because as a society we tend to devalue or outcast smart people and our children pick up on that, but to a larger extent it's because many scientists and engineers are severely underpaid for the many years of studying and training it takes to get in the field. One of my friends has spent 7 years of education, getting her Master's and PhD from one of the top schools in the country and having her thesis put in a top journal, and is now getting paid less than I made my first year as a severely underpaid software engineer at a start-up. She could have skipped school entirely and gone into the plumbing trade and her lifetime earnings would have improved. What do you expect when that's the case? (Also, many of the claims that we lack scientists and engineers are actually corporations who mean we lack cheap scientists and engineers, and are vying for H1Bs.)

Stephenson should feel safe in the knowledge that he has not affected budding scientists and engineers in that way, and thankfully most of them will never have to deal with his writing that's as self-important as he seems to be. (After reading a little of his work, I thought/hoped I was done with him. Now he finds another way to be pompous and annoying.)

Re:Ugh

[Alex Belits]

disenfranchised

The word you were trying to use is "disenchanted".

Re:Ugh

[Iskender]

The people who think about becoming scientists are actually smart enough to discern at a relatively young age between sci-fi and reality. Survey how many smart kids who saw "Blade Runner" found that movie disenfranchised them about the future, or whether they just thought it was really cool.

A lot of people parse stories as trying to discuss reality and humanity. This is what serious stories like the ones discussed here are mostly written as too. If you think "smart kids" on average just take a shallow view and see the surface of a story then you should brush up on your reading skills. Children gradually learn to separate stories and reality, whereas adults often learn how to join them together again.

Stephenson apparently answered a more general question about the attitude of science fiction. I think he was correct. While there are many factors in play, the general attitude towards the future is a result of a myriad discussions in society which create a certain climate of attitudes. Science fiction stories specifically consider the future and are therefore a disproportionally large fraction of those discussions. Stephenson's contribution is a small part of just of a part of the influences on society, but his contribution is not zero.

I went into academia to help the world help itself

[Anonymous Coward]

...I left academia when I discovered that the world doesn't want to help itself, but to destroy itself with a new global religion called "the free market", being neither free nor much of a market.

But gEarth!

[Relic of the Future]

But, as you (painstakingly) reminded us in Reamde, you invented Google Earth. So there's that.

I do blame you, though, for inspiring more geeks to goldbuggery. Tsk tsk.

Re:But gEarth!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't there an invention very much like Google Earth in Douglas Coupland's "JPod"? I thought that NS was giving a shout-out to his fellow Pacific Northwest author.

Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[l0ungeb0y]

Seriously -- Snow Crash was alright and had it's place but Neal Stephenson is far from the technological catalyst he thinks he is.
And frankly Neal should get stuffed for failing to recognize the darkness and dire warnings embedded in many of H.G. Well's stories that still have relevance today. If H.G. Wells can't stall progress and innovation -- who the hell is Neal to say he's even partly to blame?

What I am convinced of is that I will never bother to read a single other book by Neal Stephenson -- I couldn't make it half way through Cryptonomicon before it got too boring and painfully long winded to read and Reamde, while at least starting out at a faster clip quickly devolved into a complete pile of contrived claptrap complete with Russian Mobsters who feel the need to explain themselves, a British Intelligence Agent who bangs everything she can and a Jihadi Terrorist who could double as a CNN Anchor.

Perhaps we should tattoo "Massive Ego" to Neal's forehead.

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[ISoldat53]

Life's too short to read Stephenson.

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[Relic of the Future]

I quite liked Anathem and Diamond Age. If you enjoyed Snow Crash, you may also appreciate them.

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider that his books aren't necessarily shaping an attitude skepticism towards the future of science, but a mainstream reminder that our future with science and technology is really uncertain.

And though the world is only a decade and a half into using the greatest technological tool as yet created, the Internet, look at how much the historical repetition of censorship is trying to stifle it. More so now, than ever before. DMCA was passed, but we got SOPA killed. Now CISPA is here, and even if we kill CISPA, something else will inevitably be promoted. I don't attribute that to Stephenson at all, however when futuristic popular story-telling reminds us of that uncertainty that IS going on in present day, it's easy to make the connection.

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[Anonymous Coward]

And frankly Neal should get stuffed for failing to recognize the darkness and dire warnings embedded in many of H.G. Well's stories that still have relevance today. If H.G. Wells can't stall progress and innovation -- who the hell is Neal to say he's even partly to blame?

This is completely idiotic. NS didn't say anything about HG Wells, so what are you even talking about? I bet if you actually asked him about HG Wells, he might agree with you... but instead, you somehow divined his "opinion" then criticized him for it (perhaps we can tattoo "Massive Egg" on your head?)

As for his fiction, I have only read Snow Crash and Anathem. Snow Crash wasn't very good (maybe it was good at the time?) but I thought Anathem was really good. But this is just a matter of taste...

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[l0ungeb0y]

Do you know who H.G. Wells is? Have you read his stories?

Exactly what about my comparison about Neal's statements about him being too dire to H.G. Wells' dark prognostications is idiotic? That was an Apple's to Apple's comparison. The fact that H.G Wells was not mentioned by Neal was my point. Neal isn't a speck on a turd compared to the Man who can lay claim to inventing the scifi genre and who's work is still relevant 150 years later.

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[ChrisMaple]

Jules Verne predates H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allen Poe predates Jules Verne.

Please learn the proper use of apostrophes and capitals.

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand people not liking the baroque cycle (the "Prequels" to Cryptonomicon) and Reamde, but Cryptonomicon? That book is very good, my friend. And as the other poster said before me, Diamond Age and Anathem are as well.

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[geekoid]

Bullshit.

" Man who can lay claim to inventing the scifi genre and who's work is still relevant 150 years later."
Mary Shelly invented science fiction, many decades before HG Wells was born.

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[geekoid]

EAP didn't write Sci-Fi. Unless I am missing something?
In any case, Mary Shells was before Poe.

Re:Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[Anonymous Coward]

Cryptonomicon? That book is very good, my friend.

Cryptonomicon is an overwrought, turgid pile of crap. Its like Twilight, except its for 30 year old geek virgins who live in their mom's basement.

If you think Cryptonomicon is a good book, then you've never read a good book.

Someone needs to smack his head.

[khasim]

He's focused too much on America.
From TFA:

In fact, said Stephenson, we already have much of the fundamental technology we need to fulfill such science fiction ambitions as large scale solar power production, or routine space flight.

Let's see what happens when China gets a man (or woman) on the moon.

We've accomplished all the easy, flashy stuff.

Now comes the not-as-easy-as-before-but-still-possible stuff. Like the first man (or woman) on Mars. Even if it is a one way trip for now.

We're not focused on it because it takes the resources of at least one nation to do so. And we've already set the bar (man on the moon). But there are other nations.

Re:Someone needs to smack his head.

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to the moon with 1960s technology could be called flashy, but it was in no way "easy." Even forty years later, it is difficult to repeat. Maybe I misunderstood you, but dismissing everything already done as "easy" seems like serious arrogance.

Re:Someone needs to smack his head.

[Guppy]

Let's see what happens when China gets a man (or woman) on the moon.

Speaking of China-- their Science Fiction and Fantasy has taken a bent towards time-travel recently, with an explosion of interest in the subject -- to the point where the government banned the topic from television. Perhaps a reaction to the breakneck pace of cultural and economic change, or simple escapism towards imagined golden ages?

Re:Someone needs to smack his head.

[Dr. Spork]

I don't really care that much if we get a man on Mars. That's bound to be an anticlimax anyway, as it turns out that Mars is pretty boring. I think that picturing awesome future science in terms of a mission to Mars shows a real lack of imagination. It's just a copy of something big we've done almost 50 years ago, except bigger. Instead, I want science to do big things that are *unlike* anything we've done before. For example, I want the world's most advanced AI to be something that educates students. And lo, it's Neal Stephenson himself who explores that idea more deeply and insightfully than I could have ever imagined. This is the kind of thing for which we need professional imagineers. Every moron can picture a mission to Mars, and think it's cool. But the real progress in technology will be not in the obvious stuff that every moron can imagine, like flying cars and faster trains. The true innovations will be brilliant things that we don't even realize we're missing! And insightful forward-looking authors like Stephenson or Bruce Sterling really might help us expand the range of what's worth aspiring to.

Re:Someone needs to smack his head.

[randomsearch]

> We've accomplished all the easy, flashy stuff.

Landing on the moon was easy?!

But

[sayfawa]

I only became a scientist so that I could be the one in control of a futuristic dystopia. Mind controls, genome engineered slaves, soylent, high-tech games to the death. I was really excited!

But maybe that's just me.

Re:But

[ColdWetDog]

Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, welcome to Slashdot!

Re:But

[cowboy76Spain]

Exactly what I thought: Hey, if you convince people that new technology will oppress people, no sure R+D will get lots of funding."

Re:But

[cowboy76Spain]

Of course it should read: Hey, if you convince people that new technology will oppress people, it is sure R+D will get lots of funding.

Re:But

[geekoid]

Yeah. but how do I get D&D funding?

Re:But

[Talennor]

Maybe we should be more concerned by the kinds of people that are still interested in engineering the dystopian future. As a like minded person this conversation is making me feel a bit evil geniusy.

Bring in a new Star Trek

[bug_hunter]

Bring in a new Star Trek so we can have a sense of adventure and hope with future technology.
Enough with the arrogant scientist tries to invent new source of power / robots / travel and causes mass explosions / killer robots / aliens to kill us all.
Various treks did have issues with casting, plot, time-travel/hollodeck episodes, but it still always made me feel good about tomorrow.

Re:Bring in a new Star Trek

[lightknight]

Nothing wrong with some mad scientists. There's a manga, Hollowfields, that I wouldn't mind seeing as a live-action series.

Re:Bring in a new Star Trek

[dbIII]

The ones with the bare midriff babes were paticularly inspiring and did make me feel good about tomorrow. All hail the Empress!

Not necessiarly

[Sycraft-fu]

While I certainly wouldn't say one person bears a large load of responsibility, don't knock the idea in general. Star Trek had some very real influence on geeks. They saw a Utopia in it that they'd like to see happened, and some worked towards it. The cell phone really did get inspiration from Star Trek communicators. There was an interview with one of the guys at Motorola who worked on it saying something along the lines of how he saw the communicator not as an impossible sci-fi gadget, but as a challenge to make.

Media can influence culture, and sci-fi can for sure influence geeks. That doesn't mean that authors should necessarily take it on as some kind of personal responsibility, but there's something to be said for Utopian fiction and it does seem to be in somewhat short supply these days.

Re:Not necessiarly

[WaywardGeek]

Neal's books totally rock. He's one of the most influential sci-fi writers out there. There's exactly one book I read with my Dad, Cryptonomicon, and it was so cool that I build a hardware random number generator, and he wrote some software for one-time-pad encryption, and we had fun sending each other stupid e-mails that no one would ever be interested in decrypting, but they couldn't if they tried. Actually I sometimes wonder if our super-secure little unknown communication channel caused some poor NSA dweeb to have to listen to our phones for a year or two. If so... sorry!

Re:Not necessiarly

[dpilot]

Yesterday on Vermont Public Radio, Vermont Edition spoke with an author about the rise in "dark fiction" for youth. There were many good points brought up, but it got me thinking off in another direction...

As someone else here has mentioned, it isn't so much that there's dark fiction, there's always been dark fiction. I see a bigger problem in that the Utopian fiction (like Star Trek) has diminished. The overall tide has gotten significantly darker.

I remember as a kid my first real book was "20,000 Leagues Under the See", which while it had dark elements, was really typical turn-of-the-century Utopian science fiction. Shortly after that, the WW-III nuclear apocolypse stuff typical of the time started moving into the mix. But even as that and environmental disaster sci-fi mixed in, the Utopian stuff was still present.

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part. Around that time, the Utopian sci-fi started dropping off. In more recent years, I've started seeing more "end times" sci-fi, too. (Think "Terminal World", "Feersum Endjin", "The City at the End of Time", "Spin", to name a few.) Peter F. Hamilton and Iain Banks are still pretty optimistic, though with the latter, in "State of the Art" he made it pretty clear that Earth is not part of "The Culture."

No, Stephenson isn't to blame, but he's participated in the problem, and hasn't been part of the solution.

Personally, I think if the swinging pendulum, hope we're pretty much at the limit of the swing, and hope the whole system hasn't gone nonlinear or fallen off its bearings.

Re:Not necessiarly

[DerekLyons]

There was an interview with one of the guys at Motorola who worked on it saying something along the lines of how he saw the communicator not as an impossible sci-fi gadget, but as a challenge to make.
 
Media can influence culture, and sci-fi can for sure influence geeks.

The problem is - work on mobile telephony long predates Star Trek. The first car phones were deployed in 1946! Not only that, but mobile communicators in SF predate Star Trek as well - witness the systems used by the crew of the Bellerephon in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. Star Trek may have inspired him personally to work on the project, but I have no reason to doubt the handheld phones were coming with or without him or Star Trek - the trend had already been visible for decades.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

I recently ran into someone I hadn't seen for years, who used to be heavily into cyberpunk back in those days. I asked him how that was going, and he doesn't read or cosplay any of that any more. I asked why, and he said, "It's not fun any more, it's coming true."

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I see with Star Trek is that it depicted almost everything that can be Utopian and it burned people out. A government that dealt with almost no crime within its borders. Problems within the border are solved with words. Border conflicts that can be deflected with scientific vessels. etc.

Even Star Trek started steering away from Utopia with the Dominion Wars. The Federation started developing warships along side scientific vessels. Voyager tossing out solid Federation principles (with no consequences dished out when they returned because oh you were stranded.) Trekyes can probably remember even more examples.

The pattern I see with Utopia based reading material is it places the Utopia into the next great society. Jules Verne tossed it in upcoming mechanical gadgets that connected continents. Gene Roddenberry tossed it into circuits and space travel connecting solar systems. Where's the next place to toss the utopian ideal and with what unfathomable stuff should be packed around it?

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Apology accepted.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Trogre]

The cell phone really did get inspiration from Star Trek communicators. There was an interview with one of the guys at Motorola who worked on it saying something along the lines of how he saw the communicator not as an impossible sci-fi gadget, but as a challenge to make.

I always thought that was inspired by Maxwell Smart's shoe phone. Indeed, many baby boomers use the term "shoe phone" to refer to cell phones.

Re:Not necessiarly

[ozmanjusri]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

Earlier than that.

Try Philip K Dick or Harlan Ellison for size.

Re:Not necessiarly

[shutdown -p now]

It seems more to me that themes in fiction tend to pick up the overall "attitude" of the society with respect to progress (and other things), rather than the other way around. There's probably some amplification effect from that, like your example with the engineer, but if you look at the timelines, progressive utopian fiction was generally following up on series of scientific breakthroughs - e.g. Star Trek was riding the wave of new tech with roots in WW2 that got appropriated for peaceful purposes. Before it, think of Jules Verne - sure, he did predict a lot of things to come, but his books were based more on the progress that he observed in his time.

For another example, in the country of my birth - the USSR - science fiction (even of the "unofficial", underground kind) was largely optimistic. It had its share of social dystopias early on (like "We"), but after 60s or so, when the horrors of revolution and NKVD became history, no-one could come up with a credible "bad" scenario: the future was universally seen as a time of better things to come due to rapid scientific progress. After the country crashed, Russian sci-fi reacted by turning all doom and gloom: not even sci-fi dystopias, but alt history of all things became the most prolific genre...

With that in mind, the current trend of dystopian sci-fi likely just reflects the overall "meh" attitude towards the prospects of our scientific development. I do wonder what the zombie stories are all about, though...

Re:Not necessiarly

[bdabautcb]

My first Bible was 20,000 Leagues Under the Holy See.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Philip K. Dick had some 'very real' influence as well, and most of it was very pessimistic. But that didn't stop scientific research or innovation. It just led to some great sci-fi noir films.

I believe that Stephenson's commentary about society's use of scientific innovation is right-on, but I don't believe for a second that his, or any other fiction writer's, influence on the minds that make scientific research or development happen will every be profound. If it was then the researchers who were behind that atomic and hydrogen bombs would have ceased their efforts when it was clear that WWII had been won by the allies, instead of leaving such incredibly destructive and influencial technology in the hands of military and political 'leaders'.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Taco Cowboy]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

I recently ran into someone I hadn't seen for years, who used to be heavily into cyberpunk back in those days. I asked him how that was going, and he doesn't read or cosplay any of that any more. I asked why, and he said, "It's not fun any more, it's coming true."

You've hit the point without even realizing it !

Those who've read the cyberpunk genre knew well in advance what was to come, and better prepared for it

Those who haven't, don't even know what hit 'em

Re:Not necessiarly

[Nimey]

I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Couldn't it be that dark fic is more popular now because of a national malaise?

Re:Not necessiarly

[Soluzar]

Still space.

We don't have any colonies on other planets.

We can't get a manned spacecraft to anywhere much beyond the moon.

There are no man-made objects outside the solar system.

Funding is cut back, people don't see to see the point anymore.

Space is still unattainable.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Zombie stories are essentially war stories except you don't need to waste any time explaining why A is killing B.

Re:Not necessiarly

[shutdown -p now]

War stories usually have some sort of happy end, at least in some distant future, if not for the heroes themselves. Zombie stories, not so much.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Grishnakh]

Sci-fi is a reflection of contemporary culture and its view of the future. Back in the Star Trek days, westerners had a pretty optimistic view of the future. After all, they had just launched people into space, and were about to land them on the moon. Even back in Verne's day, people had very optimistic views of the future (they didn't anticipate two world wars) and the benefits to society that technology would bring. Finally, back in the Star Trek days, people were willing to spend money (through the government) to pursue big projects like this. Now, they're not. Extrapolating from present trends, the idea that humans (at least from western nations) are going to go anywhere beyond LEO anytime in the next 200 years is folly. The idea that society is going to collapse and kids are going to fight each other to the death in gladiatorial combat is far more realistic. Sci-fi authors are simply extrapolating from current trends, and correctly so.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Grishnakh]

We can't get a manned spacecraft to anywhere much beyond the moon.

We could, if we really wanted to. It wouldn't be easy at all; it'd be far more difficult than sending 3 guys to the moon to hit some golf balls and come right back. But we could do it. The problem is that we don't want to. We'd rather fight wars over oil, instead of develop next-generation energy technology.

In fact, we could do well simply by going back to the moon, and building a base there, and extracting minerals and energy, and getting started building infrastructure out there that we can use for future missions as well as returning mining products and energy back to the earth. We don't really need to send humans past the moon any time soon. But we don't even do this.

The whole thing resembles the Roman Republic/Empire in many ways. People back then had a more advanced society (more advanced than what came after during the Dark Ages and even Middle Ages), and much more advanced technology (look how long it took to re-develop concrete), but instead they lost interest in building anything great, preferred to watch stupid reality TV (but live), and society collapsed.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Grishnakh]

but alt history of all things became the most prolific genre...

I sometimes wonder if I accidentally slipped into a bad parallel universe about 10-15 years ago.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Black Parrot]

I see a bigger problem in that the Utopian fiction (like Star Trek) has diminished.

Yes, what the galaxy needs is a Federation that puts strong Americans in charge (to rein in the temperamental Russian crew members) of ships to spread our culture (and their seed) throughout the galaxy.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Black Parrot]

War stories usually have some sort of happy end, at least in some distant future, if not for the heroes themselves. Zombie stories, not so much.

Depends on whose side you're on.

Re:Not necessiarly

[justforgetme]

but instead they lost interest in building anything great, preferred to watch stupid reality TV (but live), and society collapsed.

How much this has been on my mind the past years can't be described. If anything can come out if this is that modern SciFi authors aren't shaping modern society but the other way round, public ignorance and the aversion the establishment expresses to evolution very well influences writer's visions. (If only that was the serious problem here....)

Re:Not necessiarly

[Memroid]

Also note that culture can be influenced by many different directions. Hideo Kojima, whom some of you may know, appears to have felt a similar burden:
"If our children today don't have any dreams, we creators are guilty for not giving them dreams. We are culpable. We must create a dream to leave behind for the sake of our children."
-Hideo Kojima-

Re:Not necessiarly

[fearofcarpet]

While I certainly wouldn't say one person bears a large load of responsibility, don't knock the idea in general. Star Trek had some very real influence on geeks. They saw a Utopia in it that they'd like to see happened, and some worked towards it.

I'm a research scientist and I was heavily influenced by Star Trek as a kid. That utopian world in which technology is a positive force for humanity and where rational thought and curiosity replace ignorance-based fear and militarism was a island of serenity in a small town full of bible-thumping, anti-intellectual fundamentalists. I consumed a lot of science fiction and fantasy, but Star Trek made a particular impression on me. When I was finally exposed to real-world science, I fell in love with Chemistry in my first year of college with cheerful optimism that I might help move the real world slightly closer to that fictional world. I even lobbied hard to name my son Jean Luc.

I do, however, disagree with TFA; when I was in college we didn't have the Internet to tell us about every cute Nature or Science article, so we were left with our imagination and what we could photocopy in the science library. If anything, I think the danger for potential scientists now is that their opinions about what science is are being shaped too much by under-qualified "science journalists" writing pseudo-fiction about real research. It replaces the unbridled imagination and curiosity of young minds--which fiction reinforces--with an erroneous understanding of what modern science actually is. Worse, it emphasizes the unsubstantiated claims about potential future applications that have become a necessary part of the scientific literature (i.e., the chest thumping that under-funding research necessitates) which leads to disappointment when young people are exposed to actual research. This phenomenon culminates in a perception that science fiction--dystopian or otherwise--is even more realistic and fact-based than ever. I think what science fiction needs is more imagination.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Fusselwurm]

Those who've read the cyberpunk genre knew well in advance what was to come, and better prepared for it

Those who haven't, don't even know what hit 'em

I havent. Please explain... what exactly hit me?

Re:Not necessiarly

[Fusselwurm]

Sci-fi authors are simply extrapolating from current trends, and correctly so.

And that's a pity. Because current trends are just that. Current.

Re:Not necessiarly

[sg_oneill]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

I recently ran into someone I hadn't seen for years, who used to be heavily into cyberpunk back in those days. I asked him how that was going, and he doesn't read or cosplay any of that any more. I asked why, and he said, "It's not fun any more, it's coming true."

It reminds me of the old Judge Dredd comics (well I guess they still make em, I havent really read em for a decade). In the back there would always be a letters to the editor where fans would write in to say what they liked and didnt like in the various 2000AD strips. Regularly however you'd get kids writing in and drooling about how awesome Dredd is and how cool living in megacity 1 would be. The editors would absolutely flip it at them, because the kids where missing that whilst Dredd had redeeming qualitys he was still an authoritarian fascist and megacity 1 was a terrible distopia that no sane person would actually WANT to live in.

What scares me, is that is the diminishment of of the intellectual and structural independence of the judiciary (seriously america, you need to get rid of voting for your judges, it sounds like a good idea on paper, but its brought you the phenomena of conservative and liberal judges that would be mystifying anywhere else. remember if election funding can corrupt politicians it can corrupt judges too). This , combined with the growth of the surveilance state, and all the various technologies of discipline , we're actually turning , slowly, into that very distopia 2000AD warned us about.

Its quite scary, but worst of all, some people actually want it.

I think however, SCI-FI authors *should* write about distopias, because its one of the few ways we can really play out the various scenarios in our head and take control over whether technology is indeed going to be a liberating force, or instead our shiny new ball and chains.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Grishnakh]

People were probably saying things like that just before the Roman Empire collapsed. "This is just temporary! Everything will be great again in a few years!"

Besides, things weren't really all that great in decades past either. The 60s saw us getting into the stupid Vietnam War, the 70s were full of inflation, a terrible economy, an energy crisis, and we had a Cold War from the 50s until ~1990. People were optimistic in many cases, but they were largely ignoring the serious problems that were really going on. The cumulative effects of all the bad decisions we made as a nation throughout the entire 20th Century are finally catching up to us now, and there's no way to escape the disaster that awaits us; we've just now become resigned to it, unlike in decades past.

Re:Not necessiarly

[ChrisMaple]

One of the SF greats (Heinlein? Campbell?) pointed out that linear extrapolation is guaranteed to be wrong.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Alex Belits]

I do wonder what the zombie stories are all about, though...

Effects of advertisement and other forms of brainwashing on motivation, combined with comment on lack of education and culture.

Original zombies were commanded by the masters who "revived" the dead into them, and died again once their purpose is fulfilled. Now all they do is expand their ranks (by infecting others), hate everyone who is not a zombie, crave for something they don't seem to benefit from (brains), and act in the most primitive manner possible.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Grishnakh]

True, but the alternative is just to pull some wild-assed guess out of thin air, and that's just as likely to be wrong, and more importantly, people will just think you're crazy and not read your books. At least with linear extrapolation, it's quite believable that things might turn out that way based on present trends, so people accept it.

Re:Not necessiarly

[phantomfive]

This is unrelated, but I want to continue a conversation we had a while ago, to which new data has come out. And slashdot doesn't have private message so I can't talk to you there. (or maybe I can but am too lazy to look).

Last time, you nearly had me convinced that Microsoft is too busy doing other things, and we should excuse them for their failure to implement C99 (or all of C++).

But have you SEEN what the Visual Studio team has been working on with 11? That god-forsaken UI is the ugliest thing I've seen since Motif. And at least with Motif you always knew where one button started and one button ended. Furthermore, some projects break when you try to import them from VS2010. If THAT is their excuse for not implementing C99, may they burn in hell. Or at least their project managers.

(PS your current post is quite good).

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

He's saying if you didn't read those books, then you probably wouldn't realize that you're currently living in the dystopian worlds they described.

Of course we're nowhere near any of those... but you can't help notice some of the individual bits that did happen. And I think we're all more-than-eager to draw parallels, even where they're probably inappropriate. ;)

Re:Not necessiarly

[Securityemo]

I've read a metric ton of golden-age science fiction, Gibson, Stephenson, etc. Personally I think that it's not so much darkness at all, but the fact that you need to elaborate on things to turn it into a story and that results in inventing hypothetical problems out of hypothetical advances.

The counterpoint to Gibson is the post-cyberpunk genre, like GITS and it's ilk. Personally I think that the pendulum swung full-circle towards darkness in the 90ies, much as with superhero fiction which I understand has gone through a similar cycle.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Intrepid imaginaut]

It replaces the unbridled imagination and curiosity of young minds--which fiction reinforces--with an erroneous understanding of what modern science actually is.

Absolutely this. Imagination is a key component of science in all its shapes and forms.

Re:Not necessiarly

[shutdown -p now]

Last time, you nearly had me convinced that Microsoft is too busy doing other things, and we should excuse them for their failure to implement C99 (or all of C++).

But have you SEEN what the Visual Studio team has been working on with 11? That god-forsaken UI is the ugliest thing I've seen since Motif. And at least with Motif you always knew where one button started and one button ended. ... If THAT is their excuse for not implementing C99, may they burn in hell. Or at least their project managers.

Well, it's not like there is a single monolithic "VS team". There are many different teams doing different things, and, most certainly, it's not the C++ team doing the new theme in VS11. In fact, even for the team that does (which would be VS Platform team, and more specifically Shell), most of the work is done by designers - there isn't much dev time spent there. And devs are not easily swappable, either - C++ team is, of course, mostly writing in C++, and they don't really care about much else; while theming work is 99% WPF/C#.

And yes, as far as the theme itself goes, I agree that it's ugly, and it's not like it's even "Metro" (which was the original excuse). Don't ask me how this got through dogfooding, either - I'm too bitter about that to be objective.

Well, at least the people responsible know about that by now... so it's not the end of that story yet.

Furthermore, some projects break when you try to import them from VS2010.

If a VS10 project fails to open in VS11, that's almost certainly a bug. If you have a LiveID or don't mind creating it, file it. If you'd rather not mess with LiveID, I can file it on your behalf.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Aceticon]

Well, the good news with the whole economic depression and breakdown of the consumer society in Developed nations is that Science and Engineering might very well regains the status they lost against things like Finance and Law.

We might very well be at the brink of a new age when people turn to Science to discover the new sources of progress and Engineering to build the structures and machines that let us do things and go places we could never do or go to before.

We could do with some near-future Utopian Sci-Fi to help us along!

Re:Not necessiarly

[AdrianKemp]

Don't forget those irrational blac... Klingons that they had to keep at bay.

I'm surprised sometimes that people don't see the staggering hypocrisy of star trek & ST:TNG. Still great shows though.

Re:Not necessiarly

[AdrianKemp]

You *really* should have ordered that soup

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Url Serq, lbh sbetbg gb EBG13 lbhe fynfuqbg cbfg ntnva! AFN cbyvpl vf IREL fgevpg nobhg rapelcgvat NYY bhgtbvat zrffntrf.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Earlier than *that*.

Try H G Wells' The Sleeper Awakes (1910) for size.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Regularly however you'd get kids writing in and drooling about how awesome Dredd is and how cool living in megacity 1 would be. The editors would absolutely flip it at them, because the kids where missing that whilst Dredd had redeeming qualitys he was still an authoritarian fascist and megacity 1 was a terrible distopia that no sane person would actually WANT to live in.

I first saw 'Blade Runner' when I was 12 and I kept thinking how awesome that onscreen world was and wished I could live there. "Ooo, flying cars!"

Then I saw it as an adult and was astonished the trappings blinded me to how depressing that world really was. :)

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Baby Boomer. We call our cell phones, "Peripatetic Wireless Speaking Devices."

Re:Not necessiarly

[bickerdyke]

Star Trek had some very real influence on geeks. They saw a Utopia in it that they'd like to see happened, and some worked towards it.

And they saw engineers saving the day!

They might have mainly done so by reversing some polarity, but it was defintly a change from seeing cowboys, stuntmen, P.I.s, soldiers or policemen beeing the usual heros of the day.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Brian Feldman]

I think you're one of those people that hasn't read enough dystopian fiction to draw all the right parallels. We are not "nowhere near any of those" unless you ignore, say, CISPA about to go in front of congress; Monsanto; NDAA; our wars; the conspiracy against acknowledgment of climate change...

Re:Not necessiarly

[GameboyRMH]

Regularly however you'd get kids writing in and drooling about how awesome Dredd is and how cool living in megacity 1 would be.

And those kids grew up to be today's neoconservatives.

I've always wondered if when libertarians were kids, they read Snow Crash and similar dystopian cyberpunk, and thought to themselves "Wow, living in this world would be SO AWESOME!"

Re:Not necessiarly

[Hatta]

You're right. Things could collapse far quicker than anyone dares to imagine.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

I recently ran into someone I hadn't seen for years, who used to be heavily into cyberpunk back in those days. I asked him how that was going, and he doesn't read or cosplay any of that any more. I asked why, and he said, "It's not fun any more, it's coming true."

You've hit the point without even realizing it !

Those who've read the cyberpunk genre knew well in advance what was to come, and better prepared for it

Those who haven't, don't even know what hit 'em

Or, coming back to the article, maybe cyberpunk did serve as inspiration, but not to scientists, but rather to a new age of businessmen who realize their companies are big enough to shape politics, laws and countries around them.

Re:Not necessiarly

[flirno]

There are some very early Indian and Hindu works describing flying machines that could access outer space and dive into the oceans not to mention things like the tales of Gilgamesh in Sumeria (although that was more fantastic than sci-fi). The Ovid's Metamorphoses struck me as very sci-fi at the time that I read it. There are stories of traveling around the universe in One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and the Japanese have ancient stories of time travel.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

The cell phone really did get inspiration from Star Trek communicators. There was an interview with one of the guys at Motorola who worked on it saying something along the lines of how he saw the communicator not as an impossible sci-fi gadget, but as a challenge to make.

I always thought that was inspired by Maxwell Smart's shoe phone. Indeed, many baby boomers use the term "shoe phone" to refer to cell phones.

And here I was thinking it was inspired by James Clerk Maxwell's equations.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd go into why that is somewhat unfair to TOS, but instead I'll just cite a name to demonstrate easily that your description is certainly not applicable to Star Trek as a whole: Captain Jean Luc Picard.

Re:Not necessiarly

[phantomfive]

Well, it's not like there is a single monolithic "VS team". There are many different teams doing different things, and, most certainly, it's not the C++ team doing the new theme in VS11. In fact, even for the team that does (which would be VS Platform team, and more specifically Shell), most of the work is done by designers - there isn't much dev time spent there. And devs are not easily swappable, either - C++ team is, of course, mostly writing in C++, and they don't really care about much else; while theming work is 99% WPF/C#.

No doubt you are right. I know all that. I don't care, they get nothing but spite from me now. They can hire anyone who ever took a compiler class in college to write the change to let me declare variables anywhere, in like a day. They could have fired the entire UI design team to save money, kept the old design, and ended up with a better product.

If a VS10 project fails to open in VS11, that's almost certainly a bug. If you have a LiveID or don't mind creating it, file [microsoft.com] it. If you'd rather not mess with LiveID, I can file it on your behalf.

Surely it is. Their redesign added bugs. I'll see what I can do about filing it. I'll have to go back and verify that it actually is a bug, and not just some setting I have to tweak differently. Eventually we were able to get it open.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Federal judges aren't elected. We still have problems. This leads me to believe it's a defect in American culture.

Re:Not necessiarly

[dyingtolive]

+1 chilling.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

That utopian world in which technology is a positive force for humanity and where rational thought and curiosity replace ignorance-based fear and militarism was a island of serenity in a small town full of bible-thumping, anti-intellectual fundamentalists.
You do realize it was about Star Fleet right? A military organization.

Re:Not necessiarly

[painandgreed]

I do wonder what the zombie stories are all about, though...

Zombies are a natural disaster that a person can shoot in the face. The stories aren't about man versus zombie, they are about man's interactions with each other in the face of nature. Nature manifests in zombies just to provide some action.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that as meaning that the Motorola guy was inspired by the form of the Star Trek communicator. Sure, there were big car phones much earlier, not to mention the classic Motorola "brick" phone. But who could look at their StarTAC without thinking that the designers had been watching a Star Trek episode or two?

Re:Not necessiarly

[DiscountBorg(TM)]

Yeah that and really, in Star Trek, much of the universe was a messed up wasteland of constant war. I recall the show dealing with topics ranging from colonialism, racism, genocide to torture in a way that nearly anyone could engage with, which if you think about 80's television was actually pretty subversive. If anything the show was dealing with these topics and contrasting them deliberately with its' utopic ideals, ideals which often were challenged and failed. It's hardly the brain-dead clap happy show people claim it is. If anything it was just family-friendly.

Re:Not necessiarly

[HeckRuler]

I always thought zombies represented man's inhumanity to man. They're all about people becoming a liability rather than a resource. A metaphor for society breaking down usually followed up with a literal breakdown of social circles as the survivors turn on each other.

Re:Not necessiarly

[HeckRuler]

Well did you compromise at least and go for John Luke FearofCarpet?

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Star Trek promised me computers I could talk to. Science gave me telephones I type on.

Re:Not necessiarly

[mjwalshe]

or Fury Cl More and H Kutner written in the 40's is almost proto CP - and I am fairly sure that More is the writer alluded to in the blind assassin by Margret Atwood.

Re:Not necessiarly

[SkimTony]

Wow. This just recast "Zombieland" in a whole different light. Neat.

Re:Not necessiarly

[sjames]

Even in those cases, questions were asked. Leaders bowed to necessity but ONLY as far as was necessary and not without accepting that there might be hell to pay.

While it was a step back from the more purely Utopian style, it would still be a huge step up for our current society.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Taco Cowboy]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

I recently ran into someone I hadn't seen for years, who used to be heavily into cyberpunk back in those days. I asked him how that was going, and he doesn't read or cosplay any of that any more. I asked why, and he said, "It's not fun any more, it's coming true."

You've hit the point without even realizing it !

Those who've read the cyberpunk genre knew well in advance what was to come, and better prepared for it

Those who haven't, don't even know what hit 'em

Or, coming back to the article, maybe cyberpunk did serve as inspiration, but not to scientists, but rather to a new age of businessmen who realize their companies are big enough to shape politics, laws and countries around them.

Back in the 1950's to 1970's, back when the cold war was raging fiercely, a few Western corporations already realize that the future ahead of them is to be more like the authority than the authority

That is when some of those corporations started to work in tandem with secretive organizations like MI6 or CIA in semi-covert operations throughout the world

Even "innocent looking" companies like DHL routinely worked with "law enforcement agencies" (you go figure out which ones) in letting the "law enforcers" to use their delivery trucks as a cover in their surveillance operations

Re:Not necessiarly

[Savantissimo]

Or I. Asimov, or F. Pohl, or for that matter, H.G.Wells. Even Swift was pointing out the dystopian potentials of the trends of his time, particularly the sections in Laputa and Luggnagg. But as the GP poster said, there has always been dark fiction.

I'd put the tipping point a little earlier than cyberpunk, though. It seems like SF in the 60s was mostly basically optimistic, but by the early 70s nearly everything had turned sludge-colored.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Savantissimo]

I don't know much East Bloc SF, but Stanislaw Lem never cheered me up much - Kafka was really more fun. The movie "Stalker" was the most dystopian thing I have ever seen, even 30 years later, even just counting the bits I could manage to stay awake through.

Who are some of these optimistic Soviet SF writers? Any translated into English?

Re:Not necessiarly

[shutdown -p now]

Who are some of these optimistic Soviet SF writers? Any translated into English?

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky would be a good place to start; more specifically, their Noon Universe novels. So far as I can see from the wiki, most of them have been translated one way or another.

This isn't to say that the books are entirely cheerful. To be interesting, they have to present some conflict, after all. About half of them use the same plot device as Star Trek often employs: contact with other "underdeveloped" human civilizations. Some of the books - "Hard to be a God" and "Prisoners of Power" - are, in fact, almost entirely set in the context of those societies, and don't venture much into the background of Terran characters that are involved in them - those can be pretty close to dystopias, with the major difference being that Terrans serve as a kind of deus ex machina that, while be able to solve everything instantly, are at least known to be doing something about it - so there's no "boot stomping on the human face forever", only right there and then. However, there are also those that focus almost entirely on the relations within the Terran society itself, either its normal life - "Noon" - or in some crisis, usually externally imposed by forces of nature or supposed meddling of more-developed beings - "Far Rainbow" and "Beetle in the Anthill".

Re:Not necessiarly

[fearofcarpet]

That utopian world in which technology is a positive force for humanity and where rational thought and curiosity replace ignorance-based fear and militarism was a island of serenity in a small town full of bible-thumping, anti-intellectual fundamentalists. You do realize it was about Star Fleet right? A military organization.

Whose flagship was on a mission is to seek out new life, and new civilizations; to go boldly where no one has gone before. The entire premise of the Star Trek universe is that humanity put aside its petty squabbles to refocus society on technology and peaceful exploration, which is the antithesis of militarism. Star Trek was conceived of in a world where a single agressive act from a nuclear-armed superpower could have ended modern civilization. It embraced the idea that humanity would eventually learn valuable lessons from that era and put aside territorial and ideological disputes once we learned that we're not alone in the universe. The fact that Starfleet is humanity's only military organization underscores that point. Compare that vision to Dr. Strangelove, which is an allegory for the consequences of militarism in the nuclear age.

Re:Not necessiarly

[fearofcarpet]

Don't be silly, FearOfCarpet was my cat's name.

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

GITS and it's ilk

"its".

With all due respect...

[jejones]

Mr. Stephenson, you're just part of a much larger bunch. Technophobic literature and movies have been around for a long time. The mad scientist has been a stock character since Frankenstein, and these days he's usually combined with today's other knee-jerk evildoer, the businessman. George Lucas wanting to show technology defeated by cute, fuzzy little commercial tie-ins probably had a lot more effect than your writings--again, with all due respect, and no indication of relative quality implied.

How many films these days are masturbatory fantasies for the greens? Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Day After Tomorrow, The Hunger Games.... or TV series, like the History Channel's Life After Humans.

All that said, you're right to the extent that you're certainly not helping. Once upon a time, Lloyd Biggle Jr. accurately said, as best I can recall, "Given a bunch of people in a sewer, mainstream literature will lovingly describe those who are content to stay there. Science fiction will write about those trying to get out." That's at best less true than it was.

Re:With all due respect...

[0123456]

I think a large part of the blame must go to publishers, who have apparently only been interested in 'literary' SF about dark characters (preferably written by raving socialists) over the last few years. This is probably why 60% of the best-selling SF e-books on Amazon were self-published, last I checked.

Re:With all due respect...

[Black Parrot]

How many films these days are masturbatory fantasies for the greens?

Call me old-fashioned, but when I hear "greens" the first thing I think of is chariot racing hooliganism.

Re:With all due respect...

[Iskender]

Once upon a time, Lloyd Biggle Jr. accurately said, as best I can recall, "Given a bunch of people in a sewer, mainstream literature will lovingly describe those who are content to stay there. Science fiction will write about those trying to get out." That's at best less true than it was.

I'm confused, what does this make Futurological Congress?

Tighten UP!!!!

[MarkvW]

Stephenson is really great but he needs to tighten his prose up, big time! I'm a fan, but it's obvious he could cut a LOT of the fat out of his books.

Re:Tighten UP!!!!

[Pesticidal]

No way! The fat is what separates the nerds from the riff-raff. I'm hoping that REAMDE isn't just the start of an attempt to appeal to the mainstream.

Re:Tighten UP!!!!

[Altus]

What he need to do is learn how to end a story.

Re:Tighten UP!!!!

[cowboy76Spain]

I only have read the three Cryptonomicon books, and at least for these books your comment is so true...

Re:Tighten UP!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

He eventually figured that out. Baroque Cycle, Anathem, and Reamde all had real endings.

The funny part is you can see the point where he would normally have ended the book about a chapter before the end; it's as if an editor handed him back his manuscript and told him, "no, go finish it."

zamyatin begs to differ

[decora]

he was a pessimist because he was a realist, and quite a lot of the stuff he wrote about came true.

if we had more pessimists in the 1930s, the world would be in a lot better place.

who were the optimists? they were the 'futurists', and they were allied with this new thing in italy called 'fascism' - the glorification of the machine of state, and the state of the machine.

what is optimism in this age? "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela. "My Country and the World" by Andrei Sakharov. "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan et al.

Re:zamyatin begs to differ

[shutdown -p now]

So, what predictions in "We" came true?

And not all "futurists" were fascists, you know. Not by a long shot.

Re:zamyatin begs to differ

[Anonymous Coward]

what is optimism in this age? "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela.

Indeed, one can't help but look at modern day Johannesburg and not be filled with an overwhelming sense of optimism. And a few stray bullets.

Re:zamyatin begs to differ

[laejoh]

An optimist is a mal-informed pessimist!

Re:zamyatin begs to differ

[geekoid]

pessimist is a fancy name for 'Hater'.

hooray for a global military dictatorship?

[decora]

i dont think so. i rather think freedom of speech is not just a recreational activity, it is vital to the ongoing survival of the human species. same for the other rights that suffer when all of space is controlled by a military dictatorship, aka, 'the federation'

Re:hooray for a global military dictatorship?

[NiteShaed]

same for the other rights that suffer when all of space is controlled by a military dictatorship, aka, 'the federation'

You fail at Star Treks. The government is the United Federation of Planets, which has an elected President and representitves. It's not much different than today's democratic governments. Starfleet is the military/exploration arm of the Federation. Please turn in your geek card.

Re:hooray for a global military dictatorship?

[Anonymous Coward]

We rarely see Federation culture, but what we know is that they are democratically elected government. The Federation on free speech is similar or equal to most western democracies.

Star Trek is about the men and women of Starfleet. Starfleet having the dual roles of NASA and National Defense.

Re:hooray for a global military dictatorship?

[Dr. Spork]

You must have not been watching the actual episodes, geek-pretender! It's pretty clear that the United Federation of Planets is basically a symbolic body about as potent as our UN. There have been many important diplomatic negotiations in many episodes and movies. Did you once see the president or any other democratically elected figure even participating in them, much less leading them? No, you didn't, because it was always admirals or some other higher-ups from the Navy/Starfleet. So while there may be a token civilian democracy in the Federation, it's really the military that exercises all the executive power. How could you miss that?

Re:hooray for a global military dictatorship?

[NiteShaed]

Then why during the Dominion War did Starfleet officers have to try to stage a coup to take control of the Federation, and then get arrested and jailed when their plot was revealed? If they were in charge all along, they'd just do what they want and the puppet president would have gone along with it. Admirals certainly wouldn't have gone to prison for attempting implement martial law if the civilian government wasn't actually in control.

Did you once see the president or any other democratically elected figure even participating in them, much less leading them?

Sure, at the conference at Khitomer in "Undiscovered Country". Kirk and friends have to prevent the president's assassination during talks with the Klingons.

No, you didn't, because it was always admirals or some other higher-ups from the Navy/Starfleet.

Except for when it was ambassadors or other representatives. C'mon, the galaxy is a big place, the president can't be everywhere (not to mention, it's a TV show, it's more interesting to watch Picard do things on screen than have a new political representative on every week that Picard just follows around saying "Yes Mr. Ambassador" to over and over).

So while there may be a token civilian democracy in the Federation, it's really the military that exercises all the executive power. How could you miss that?

I didn't miss it, it's not there.

Re:hooray for a global military dictatorship?

[geekoid]

How could you miss the fact that Starfleet is NOTHING like today's military? And the the government of earth is really different as well.

At you only see admirals because that's who a Capt. would talk to.
Of course Starfleet was made up after the show started airing (Court Martial?). So to try and draw it's course from episodes in a series where continuity was..shaky is fool hardy.

And Geekcards are for posers. I don't need no damn perceived acceptance to be a geek and nerd.

Re:hooray for a global military dictatorship?

[Dr. Spork]

How is it different, exactly? They have a chain of command, uniforms, salutes, orders, gunships... Even their headquarters are in a fucking fort. The only difference I see is that they never show the slightest hint of being answerable to, or even checked by, a civilian authority, elected or not.

Pretty funny timing...

[trawg]

...given programming legend Michael Abrash (now currently at Valve Software) just announced that he's currently researching wearable computing more or less as a direct result of Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash!

His post on the Valve blog is really interesting and worth reading.

Not technophobic

[Jafafa Hots]

Human-phobic.

I think there's ample evidence that technology is wonderful but the people using it just suck.

Tech is advancing but our species isn't. We invented sharpened sticks to hit each other with to win food and mates and just generally let loose our ape rage.

Now we use integrated circuits. Same shit.

Re:Not technophobic

[ChrisMaple]

About 50 years ago Mack Reynolds wrote a delightful story about a couple of men with a machine that gave partial mind control. They decided to try to improve the lot of a slum. They broadcast a "be active" signal, and the slum-dwellers rioted. They broadcast a "learn something" signal, and the lowlifes learned to make weapons.

So, your point about people vs. technology is well taken. But if the story were written today by the typical SF author, it would be a great deal nastier and wouldn't end as well as the Reynolds story did.

Re:Not technophobic

[geekoid]

Another sci-fi story based on the protagonist being stupid, and the misguided belief that are default state is violence.

The could have broadcast learn math. Learn critical thinking, get me a soda.

Bad Summary!

[PeanutButterBreath]

No need to "reply" to Neal Stephenson that he is not personally responsible.

its pretty good for India and China

[decora]

i mean, thats kind of the point of a 'free market' - it shouldnt matter what country you come from as long as you do the job well.

Guess I'm Reading it Wrong

[paleo2002]

I've always gotten the impression that the dark and dystopian futures prevalent in cyberpunk and related genres are the result of corruption and abuse of the power and potential of technology. They are a warning against what technology can become if not applied responsibly. Most tech-heavy sci-fi ends up being a warning against potential results of some new science and technology.

Snow Crash . . . is basically reality now . . . Diamond Age is a better example. It portrayed two opposing views of nano tech implementation: centralized vs. decentralized production. Either way it demonstrated the potential of nanotechnology. And, hey, now we have people building 3D printers in garages and using them to make toys for their kids rather than enslave the underclass.

Re:Guess I'm Reading it Wrong

[Brian Feldman]

Are you conveniently ignoring the fact that the underclass is already enslaved?

Re:Guess I'm Reading it Wrong

[geekoid]

There is nothing to ignore. They aren't enslaved.
As long as I can see people go from living on the street nothing, to successful, I can't really believe they are enslaved.

Distracted? yes.

I went from living in my car, to middle class.
Now, it took me8 years to start making livable income for a family.
It took planning.
But it is doable.
Would have been faster if I hadn't had the foolish notion that I shouldn't get any services to help me.

Don't get me wrong...

[Nationless]

Don't get me wrong, I love his work.. But that's like saying The Terminator discourages roboticists from picking up a screwdriver. If anything it's spawned more because of the awareness of the field and how much of an influence it would have on our lives today.

He couldn't be more wrong.

[onyxruby]

The futures grim, but it has jack squat to do with science fiction stories. Instead it has to do with the cold hard realities of outsourcing and a lack of jobs. People don't want to go into a field without a future, especially when the people who would go into such a field tend to be more logic bound than passion bound to begin with. Why would anyone go into a field when society places no value in doing so?

Re:He couldn't be more wrong.

[JustNiz]

>> People don't want to go into a field without a future

I can't think of a field that has more effect in making a more interesting future than software development. Well maybe stuff to do with physics and/or genetics but even that usually comes down to relying on software somehow.

>> Why would anyone go into a field when society places no value in doing so?

Because they love the work?
Personally I went into software development because I couldn't conceive of doing anything else. The fact it pays better than average (or even at all) was entirely coincidental and lucky for me. It truly wasn't a factor in my career decision making. As a matter of fact I don't think I ever really made a decision to be a developer, as much as just continued to do what I do.

I've observed that nearly always, people that choose software development only because they think it pays well:
a) Have no intuitive feel for it, so mostly dont even understand how or why to write good code, let alone actually ever do it.
b) Are often unhappy at work.
c) Have changed their career path radically at least once.

These type of people need to get into sales or something ASAP because their low quality work just gives the rest of us who are career professionals a bad image, and they will ultimately flunk out on their own anyway given enough time.

Re:He couldn't be more wrong.

[geekoid]

The future is not grim. It's better then it's ever been.
The world is safer, free'er, and healthier the it has ever been.
The paths to knowledge is as flat as it can get without it being injected straight into the brain.

There is a future in science. Are you going to get rich working for someone else? not likely. But that true for any career.

Re:He couldn't be more wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think of a field that has more effect in making a more interesting future than software development. Well maybe stuff to do with physics and/or genetics but even that usually comes down to relying on software somehow.

Yowza. Son, you need to get out of the basement more. In the grand scheme of new and wonderful things to be discovered about this universe, software is a utility, not an end.

Re:He couldn't be more wrong.

[onyxruby]

Define better, are you referring to happiness and contentedness in life? Are you referring to job prospects, rights, medical care or some other metric? Look at historical data for things like job satisfaction and you will see that many things are far from better than they have ever been. Things like mass censorship aren't supposed to be possible, yet people as notable as Sergey Brin have recently talked about how it is actually getting worse.

Certainly in many ways things are better than they have ever been. Take the example of slavery, now outlawed in every country on earth, yet it still roars it's ugly head by the tens of millions all over the world. Things like cars have been improved dramatically, when I was younger a car with a 100,000 miles on it was considered high risk and ready for the junk yard. Nowadays a car with a 100,000 miles on it can still be worth quite a bit of money. However in that same period of time we've gone from having cars like a honda crx, ford festiva and chevy sprint that got 40-50 mpg to cars that are breaking 40+ mpg and they are touted as the greatest thing since sliced bread. We traded safety for fuel economy, who am I to judge which is the better?

The car example could be used to show that we are safer, yet we've had more wars since the end of the cold war than during the entire cold way combined. Do you define safety by the body count on the freeway or field?

Understand I believe that there is a future in science, this has always been the case. A society that emphasizes technology tends to benefit and become stronger. I don't argue the merits of the benefits of science and technology. I argue the logistical practicalities of going into a field when your society has chosen that the field does not have value. I work at one of the largest universities in the world, our masters and phd programs are full of students - from places like China. These students will go home, be valued and turn China into the next powerhouse. They will do so because our society would simply outsource them at first opportunity to gain a short term profit instead of a long term gain.

Re:He couldn't be more wrong.

[JustNiz]

Software is just a utility. heh. Total hogwash.
You clearly don't understand much about the world so you must be one of those people who's work involves a lot of talking instead of ever actually doing anything productive like making anything. You clearly feel the need to validate your miniscule existence by putting others down, but the fact you do it anonymously means in life you dont have the balls to be open, so you must mostly exist in the hope that you can distract the world just long enough from noticing you for the sham you are. I'm thinking you do something like marketing. Am I right?

Like all tools, software usually isn't the final objective in itself, but that detracts absolutely nothing from its value. Good tools are of the highest value as they allow us to make good stuff. Other than the human brain, computers and software are the most powerful tools that man has ever created. Consequently software is always the tool of choice for performing groundbreaking research work, i.e. moving the whole civilization onward. Without computers and software the world would be hardly any different to a century ago.

Pessimist

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> a "pessimist trying to turn himself into an optimist,"

Yeah right, like that's gonna happen.

I'm more discouraged by his employer

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more discouraged by Stephenson's working for patent troll 'Intellectual Ventures'.

SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Taco Cowboy]

I am an avid scifi freak

Have been reading scifi since 1960's, and still can't stop reading the stuff (including manga since late 1980's and animation nowadays)

But my love of Science didn't emerge from my scifi reading habit

My love of Science stems from my curiosity of what happens all around me

The scifi genre is just like any other, there are good ones and there are real lousy ones, but no matter how good or bad the scifi is, it will never encourage or discourage me from exploring

Nope, I just ain't gonna be influenced by a book

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I just ain't gonna be influenced by a book

I see that Strunk and White must have harmlessly bounced off the impenetrable fortress of your mind.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[niftydude]

The scifi genre is just like any other, there are good ones and there are real lousy ones, but no matter how good or bad the scifi is, it will never encourage or discourage me from exploring

Nope, I just ain't gonna be influenced by a book

This. Especially not bad books. I quite enjoyed Cryptonomicon, and so right now I'm trying to read The Baroque Cycle.

What self-indulgent drivel it is. Pages and pages of History lessons than don't advance the plot at all, or even serve to improve the historical context. It is a case of: Neal read something interesting in a history book, and so is going to jam the detail into his prose regardless of whether it is relevant or useful.

His recent work is horrible. Neal has bought into his own celebrity and lost all sense of what made him a decent author. I bet the dude thinks each of his individual farts has a unique and pleasant aroma, and so is worth preserving for posterity.

And what innovation failure? I and the people around me have been innovating our asses off. I'm not going to self promote, but anyone in the world can go to http://scholar.google.com/ and see all the incredible research that is going on if they want to.

Message to Neal: You ain't that influential.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

And what innovation failure? I and the people around me have been innovating our asses off. I'm not going to self promote, but anyone in the world can go to http://scholar.google.com/ and see all the incredible research that is going on if they want to.

Message to Neal: You ain't that influential.

At the talk, he was very clear in saying there is a LOT of innovation right now. He wasn't criticizing the rate of innovation, so I'm not too sure where you came up with this.

If you want to know the details, the moderator asked him why people were pessimistic about technology, and whether science fiction authors had any role to play in shaping this viewpoint. Naturally, he said that science fiction (as a whole) could write optimistic futures to help inspire scientists and engineers.

This is not completely off-base. If you've read any science fiction, you'll definitely notice the trend towards dystopias with pandemics, genetic engineering, energy crises, and overpopulation, especially in comparison to earlier sci-fi

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[firewrought]

I'm trying to read The Baroque Cycle.

What self-indulgent drivel it is. Pages and pages of History lessons than don't advance the plot at all, or even serve to improve the historical context. It is a case of: Neal read something interesting in a history book, and so is going to jam the detail into his prose regardless of whether it is relevant or useful.

Wait til you get to book 3 (The System of the World) and you have to wade thru chapters of theology. It's way worse. It's worth reading book 2 (The Confusion) though, if you've gotten that far.

The real shame is that if he had cut the drivel and tightened the plot (book 3 in particular reads like a B-movie with pointless double-crosses), he could have had a good one-booker.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh jesus. Virtually every important person in technology, of the last 20 years, cites Snowcrash as a major influence on their work.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[demachina]

Anathem is another recent book that is pretty good though it is, like most of his book, too long.

Reamde is total crap. Its pretty much a bad ghost written Tom Clancy action flick. It has no redeeming technological insights or interesting dialogs which is what make Stephenson's good books worth reading.

Stephenson was trying to do an interactive, online, kind of book. Not sure what happened to it, but I assume it sucked up a lot of time and money, and presumably he phoned in Reamde to try and raise some cash or fulfill a contract with a publisher. Sad really.

Neal, I love ya man, I read all your books, but Reamde was total crap.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[niftydude]

Wait til you get to book 3 (The System of the World) and you have to wade thru chapters of theology. It's way worse. It's worth reading book 2 (The Confusion) though, if you've gotten that far.

The real shame is that if he had cut the drivel and tightened the plot (book 3 in particular reads like a B-movie with pointless double-crosses), he could have had a good one-booker.

I just started The Confusion - 1 chapter in. I almost didn't cause book 1 was so bad, but I usually try to finish what I started.

I agree it probably could have made a good one-booker, there are some gems in there, but they are very few, and very far between.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[alexborges]

SnowCrash is, however, a fucking wonderful read and, for its time, trully visionary.

The steampunk stuff aint my thing. Cryptonomicon and Snowcrash is what i keep from neil.

Now, Master Gibson is in another level in the literary sense, of course. That guy, to me, delivered the best scifi writing since Phillip K. Dick. Buuut... it stops once we get to spook country which, to me, is a bit hum... how to put it... weak.

Right now, i think fucking palanihuk should delve into scifi and see what he can deliver.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

This is not completely off-base. If you've read any science fiction, you'll definitely notice the trend towards dystopias with pandemics, genetic engineering, energy crises, and overpopulation, especially in comparison to earlier sci-fi.

I think it's because sci-fi has gotten older and more mature than it was in the 60s.

Back then, people looked at what was going on in the space program, and extrapolated from that trend (humans went from riding horses to walking on the moon in less than a century) that the future would be a bright place: they acknowledged that some problems would pop up between now and then, such as overpopulation and genetic engineering (both of these were covered in 60s Star Trek; the latter being central to Khan), but that technology and improved social systems would overcome these problems.

People at the time didn't realize that what would really happen would be that people would decide they'd rather not bother too much with pursuing science and technology (unless it helps them make fancy hand-held devices they can play games on), and certainly not with space exploration, because they'd rather spend money on wars over oil. And the naive ideas people had back in the 60s about social conditions improving have obviously turned out to be bunk, with much of western society turning back to Dark Ages-style fundamentalist religion. Nowadays, sci-fi authors are just looking at the way society has turned out over the last decade or two, and they're again extrapolating from current trends, and correctly surmising that our future is quite dark indeed.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[niftydude]

Oh jesus. Virtually every important person in technology, of the last 20 years, cites Snowcrash as a major influence on their work.

I think the reason we're going to disagree on this is that you don't mean the same thing by technology that I do.

Very few, if any of the people that I consider influential in aerospace, biotech, micro-electronics fabrication or MEMS that I've dealt with through the years would have even have heard of Snowcrash. I myself read it about 10 years ago, and I barely remember it, and wouldn't say that has influenced my work one way or another.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Black Parrot]

Neal has bought into his own celebrity and lost all sense of what made him a decent author.

That means he should be ready to start writing his prequels...

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

If plot advancement is all you care about have some Digital Fortress instead.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[anubi]

Taco Cowboy... you didn't waste any time getting to the very core of why anybody would mess with STEM.

My love of Science stems from my curiosity of what happens all around me

Your devotion to science is driven by the same faction that drives mine.

We had a discussion on Slashdot a few days ago of correct test answers being marked as wrong. It was full of very interesting comments.

If there is anything discouraging STEM, its not Neal. He's not even on the radar screen.

Slashdot brought the dragon right out for everyone to see.

How can we get our kids interested in science, which revolves around a lot of diligent work searching for truth, only to find the rewards start out with being called the teacher's pet, progressing through "being a Boy Scout", "not a 'team player'", then forcible unemployment because one feels obligated to "do that which is right"?

The comments here on Slashdot reinforced my observation that "being liked" is far more financially productive than "being right". No wonder the kids see through it.

I got canned for standing up for what I thought was right.

Many others had the same experience.

Like religion, rejection based on your beliefs comes with the territory. A manager may want something based on how well a salesman did his job, whereas an engineer may reject it based on his experience of seeing stuff like that fail in the field. Political power ultimately rules.

From what I can tell, this country no longer needs STEM workers, as other countries can do this much cheaper than we can. I am amazed at all the high-tech parts I can get from aliexpress.com .

And I am also alarmed that a lot of datasheets I am interested in are in Chinese. I have disassembled several Chinese Lithium Ion battery chargers and noted how cleverly they were made - with Chinese house-numbered parts, no less.

We cultivate a need for financial professionals, lawyers, insurance, and real-estate investment. Look at our tax laws - they really cream anybody earning a buck.

I don't blame businesses for not trying to innovate in the USA.

I am afraid to try as well. No sooner than I produce and try to sell anything, I will get sued - if for nothing more than paralyzing me until I financially die. This is on top of all the paperwork IRS requires of anyone that actually tries to DO anything in this country. Our Congress passes so much frivolous special-interest law that no-one can do anything without exposing themselves to lawsuits. Only the financially strongest can survive at that game.

We may still love science, But we find something else to do for a paycheck.

No, Neal, you are not killing STEM.

Our system is.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Noah_Wolfe]

I recently had to drive up the east coast, and the Audible version of Quicksilver was my companion. You might think that would be a quick way to end up waking up with an airbag in your face, but Simon Prebble's reading of it is masterful, and a highly recommended way to enjoy it.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Macgrrl]

Dan Brown certainly catapults you through the plot at a rate of knots. Irrepressable, but unmemorable.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Noren]

Yeah, because science fiction in the sixties certainly didn't have any of that. The future would be a bright place, and they certainly never wrote back then about pandemics, genetic engineering, or overpopulation. And certainly no science fiction of the 60s had some elements of all of that. (I admit that I couldn't think of good examples of 'pure' energy crisis memes in 60's SF, though it was an element in the above works that dealt with overpopulation.)

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Boronx]

Plus, Stephenson's writing sounds good. Try picking up one his books and reading it out loud. Calling it poetic may be going too far, but not by much.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Brian Feldman]

Some people can't handle epics. Some can. I would recommend never even acknowledging the existence of the Wheel of Time.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

If you find the Baroque cycle self-indulgent drivel, then you are the problem.

Put the book down and go read something from the children's section.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

Wrong, and wrong.

Go watch Star Trek TOS. If that isn't "leftist", I don't know what is: a utopian society with a big government where there's no poverty, no real use of money, etc. It basically seemed to show the supposed end-state of Marxism.

And you're wrong about fundamentalism. Go look at the numbers. In the USA back in the 60s, mainstream Protestants used to be the overwhelming majority, with only the Southern Baptists as the ones closest to "fundamentalist", and the Lutherans, Methodists, etc. basically being fairly benign (wasn't it Lutherans who first started making female preachers back in the 1500s?). The fundamentalists were a small, small minority, mainly confined to the South. Not any more. Now, the "mainstream" Protestant denominations are a minority and shrinking fast, while fundamentalist churches are growing quickly nationwide, as seen with all the "megachurches", and Roman Catholicism is growing pretty fast too with the huge influx of Latin Americans (and their brand of Catholicism is much more conservative from the more liberal Americanized version I was raised with back in the 80s). The fundamentalist Christians aren't just noiser, they're much greater in numbers. Go into some mainline Protestant churches like a Presbyterian church; half the congregation is elderly. Over the past couple decades, younger people have been turning to fundamentalism. Not coincidentally, the American population, unlike the way it was in the late 60s and 70s, is all for more war, as this is preached to them in their fundamentalist churches.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[phantomfive]

Nope, I just ain't gonna be influenced by a book This. Especially not bad books.

And yet these days you can't go anywhere without hearing people who've been influenced by the Hunger Games. The next time I hear someone talking about bread and circus, only knowing what it is because of the hunger games, I'm going to puke.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Intrepid imaginaut]

with much of western society turning back to Dark Ages-style fundamentalist religion.

What? No it hasn't. A small but noisy part of US society has gotten more vocal about its beliefs, but the rest of western society is doing just fine thanks. I think Neal is way off base in his asessment though, the vast majority of mainstream sci-fi is still two fisted light optimistic Saturday morning pulp, thankfully. The only real exception would have been BSG, and I don't think history will look kindly on that series.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

As I told someone else, you're wrong. The number of fundamentalists in the US is at an all-time high, and they outnumber all the mainline Protestant denominations now. They're not more vocal, they're much more numerous. "Megachurches" didn't exist 50 years ago.

And BSG wasn't about the future, it was about the past. And where are you seeing this optimistic "morning pulp"? I sure haven't seen any in the last 5 years. I can only think of one movie that was about humans in space: Avatar. All the other sci-fi has been about post-apocalyptic zombies.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[niftydude]

And yet these days you can't go anywhere without hearing people who've been influenced by the Hunger Games. The next time I hear someone talking about bread and circus, only knowing what it is because of the hunger games, I'm going to puke.

Interestingly enough, those are probably exactly the kind of people I'd prefer to keep away from science and engineering disciplines.

Maybe Neal should keep writing about dystopian futures, if only to keep these disciplines clear of weak-minded fools...

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Yvanhoe]

I was interested in electronics before reading SF. Though, when thinking about the consequences of robots and workforce automation, I was reaching what I thought was crazy conclusions. Thanks to SF, I saw that post-scarcity economies are not that a crazy theory. Motivated me to learn more about robotics and to focus on programming (it is more about the AI than about the robot, actually)

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[niftydude]

Some people can't handle epics. Some can. I would recommend never even acknowledging the existence of the Wheel of Time.

Dude, GP here: I love the Wheel of Time, I've read all the books so far at least twice, and I'll probably run through them again before the final novel is released next year. I'm also a fan of many other epics - such as Stephen Donaldson's Gap Sequence (imho the best space opera ever written).

It is not that I can't handle epics, it is just that I think that the Baroque Cycle is incredibly poorly written.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[VoidCrow]

On the rare occasions when I allowed my dad to browbeat me into reading Dan Brown, I always felt cheap and used. I think this offers some kind of dark psychological parable which I wouldn't touch with a pair of tongs.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[VoidCrow]

I'll have to try that. I can see why The Baroque Cycle came under fire, but personally I rather enjoyed it.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

That's better than the alternative, which is that it entered his mind and did some damage.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[niftydude]

If you find the Baroque cycle self-indulgent drivel, then you are the problem.

Put the book down and go read something from the children's section.

Instead of sniping from behind an AC facade, why don't you point out some of the strengths of the work. I believe I clearly pointed out some of what I consider to be the many weaknesses.

Then we can have an adult-level discussion in the manner you are pretending to desire.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[dgatwood]

If you want to know the details, the moderator asked him why people were pessimistic about technology, and whether science fiction authors had any role to play in shaping this viewpoint. Naturally, he said that science fiction (as a whole) could write optimistic futures to help inspire scientists and engineers.

Which is interesting, but wrong, because it incorrectly assumes that the pessimism is misplaced, that the fault therefore lies with the public, and that the science fiction affected the public as a whole. In reality, people are pessimistic about technology in large part because it is so frequently misused and abused, which is largely because the @$^@#$& science fiction writers keep giving world governments ideas. 1984? TVs with webcams. Fahrenheit 451? Book burnings. Brave New World? Witness a public education system that no longer teaches us to question, a drug war resulting in huge subcultures that are shunned from society as a whole, or the mass high fructose corn syrup addiction that addles much of the public. The governments don't read these books and think, "It would suck if society were ruled in a draconian manner," but rather, "Society is going to be ruled in a draconian manner eventually, so I'd better take steps to secure my place at the helm." And this is why science fiction causes the public to become pessimistic about technology.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[TheRaven64]

I have a lot of science fiction from the '60s and the themes that run through pretty much all of it include:

• Space travel will become cheap
• Computers? What are they? Occasionally you get robots (basically human slaves, but made using technology) or mechanical brains. The few times you do get computers, they're massive things serving a whole continent or planet.
• Nuclear war is inevitable.

The last point is the most important. Science fiction writers in the '60s had two preferred settings, a post apocalyptic world, or a world that has recovered from the aftermath of nuclear war and learned from the experience.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[TheRaven64]

Some people can't handle epics.

I agree. Neal Stephenson seems to be one of them.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Intrepid imaginaut]

The Stargate series still gets plenty of airtime. Star Trek even, B5, Firefly, even Farscape to a certain extent. Battleship, only recently released, is pure Saturday morning pulp. There's a lot more cheery stuff out there than otherwise. And please, if you want to talk about BSG being in the past you may as well talk about Star Wars being in the past as well. Incidentally why did Adama have a Luger on his wall? Subliminal neonazi messages? I didn't like that show, it could have been awesome but just descended into religious-military wank.

Have you got figures or sources to support your assertion on fundamentalist religions? Also I'd like to mention that the US isn't all of, or even the majority of, western culture.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Dr_Barnowl]

My favourite Stephenson is "The Diamond Age", mostly for the hope it engenders for our future - a future with a mature nanotechnology might have it's own problems, but it will certainly provide for more possible solutions to the problems we have right now.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[dbIII]

It's deliberately not quite accurate history so you can't get any "history lessons" out of it - it's entertainment.
I'd say the setting of Cryptonomicon interested you but not the Baroque setting because the style is fairly similar in both.

Message to Neal: You ain't that influential.

Notice above that he's writing about an entire genre and not just himself. I'd blame Micheal "doctors should have nukes" Crichton for an endless series of "smart people will kill you so stop science dead in it's tracks now" plots before anyone else. That's where the influence lies.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[dbIII]

Actually it had a lot to do with the San Francisco earthquake and a war or two. "Always" is a very long time.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[lxs]

Snow Crash was almost a parody of '80s cyberpunk. A good read, but not all that original. For me the best Stephenson writings are the Diamond Age and that article he did on that undersea fibre optic cable, although I must admit that I haven't read anything of his past Cryptonomicon which IMO could use a more assertive editor. Rumors that his later books are even more long winded turned me off of his writing. (That and reading The Big U, boy that one was bad, even for a debut novel.)

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[arth1]

Anathem is another recent book that is pretty good though it is, like most of his book, too long.

It's also (to say the least) "heavily inspired by" Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" series. And nowhere near as good.

Neil Stephenson committed a couple of brilliant works early on, but then took a turn for the worse, into tedium and self-importance. But much like Guns N' Roses and Metallica, he will continue to sell until the end, no matter how bad the new stuff is. The hardcore fans are in denial, and many others hope for a reversal that just isn't going to happen. But he no longer respects his audience, and is therefore irrelevant.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[yanyan]

Hi Neal! :-D

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not that the brand of Latin American Roman Catholicism that is more conservative. Modern Roman Catholicism, in general, is more conservative today than it was 20 years ago. John Paul II began moving the Vatican more to the right. Once the current pope got into power, what was a subtle move became an outright push towards the right. Add to this the result of the child molesting scandals. Most liberal and moderate Roman Catholics became angry and just stop going to church. Most of the ones left would be the more fundamentalist who buy into the ridiculous excuses for their criminal behavior.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[bickerdyke]

Anathem is another recent book that is pretty good though it is, like most of his book, too long.

It's fun to read in a kind of puzzle-way-of fun. It was like taking a bunch of philosophy and science textbooks, and remove every name in and the goal of the puzzle is to fill in the blanks. The blanks in Anathem of course were some made up mediaval science-fiction names, so you also had to find out where the blanks actually are to increase the fun.

Ok, a twisted kind of fun perhaps... but similar to the fun in trivia games and other brain teasers.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[GameboyRMH]

The next time I hear someone talking about bread and circus, only knowing what it is because of the hunger games, I'm going to puke.

Great now I can't un-know this T_T

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Dr. Spork]

Say what? Sending the Navy into space and administering an empire that's apparently not subject to any kind of civilian authority? There's a rigid military chain of command, people obey their superiors and the captain has to say "at ease" before you can so much as slouch. Seriously, is there even a civilian government that has any kind of check on the Navy/Starfleet? I know that there's a civilian United Federation of Planets, but in terms of real executive power, they're basically as impotent as the UN. As far as I can tell, all the high-level negotiations with Romulans, etc. were conducted by admirals, not prime ministers or presidents. Isn't this exactly what right-wingers like?

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Brian Feldman]

Zing! I don't see anything whatsoever wrong with weaving in historic aspects. It is the hallmark of speculative fiction, not science fiction or fantasy.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Dr. Spork]

I totally agree, and I think the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" is the best piece of sci-fi inspiration that anyone could have. If I were to complain about our slowness of progress, I wouldn't blame science. I'd blame the entrenched interests of our civil authorities. One glaring mistake we know we make is in how we educate young people. Everyone who knows anything about this stuff understands just how much better we can do, and there's aren't even technological impediments holding us back. It's just that we can't get up off our asses and actually do it. That's the perfect situation in which a little inspiration might go a long way, and I certainly find the technology in "The Diamond Age" to be the most inspiring educational invention ever. Also, Stephenson has the wisdom to explore what it is that we really want from an education, and how the right use of technology could help us realize it.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Book burnings predate Ray Bradbury by about six thousand years.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember thinking how that steaming pile of shit was not only craptastic, but read like a comic book. Then I found out it was intended to be one. Oh, sorry, a 'graphic novel'. It should have remained so and maybe I would have a few hours of my life back.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[MartinSchou]

I sure haven't seen any in the last 5 years. I can only think of one movie that was about humans in space: Avatar

Off the top of my head:
Star Trek. Seriously - how did you not know about this movie? (Number of Zombies: 0)
Prometheus. Granted, it's not released yet, but it's opening in June this year. (Number of Zombies: 0, is my guess)
John Carter. Technically that's about A human going into space. 150 or so years ago. (Number of Zombies: I haven't seen it, but I don't think it has any)
Iron Sky. Opened two days ago. And it's about Nazis on the Moon. (Number of Zombies: I haven't seen it, but it's Nazis, so you can't ever be sure)
Moon. Granted, it's A human on the Moon, but considering the story, I'd say it qualifies. (Number of Zombies: 0)
Apollo 18. Horror story based on the cancelled Moon mission. (Number of Zombies: 0)
Predators. Granted, it's not humanity travelling into space, but it is about humans in space. (Number of Zombies: 0)
Planet 51. Animated comedy. Surprisingly entertaining and endearing view of humanity. (Number of Zombies: 0)
Sunshine. Humanity has to reignite the Sun. Definitely not something you can do from your backyard. (Number of Zombies: 0)

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[voss]

Your missing the point "Space the final frontier" . What was shown in TOS was the "Frontier" where the federation civilian government wasnt as present. Starfleet in that respect was like "Space Cavalry" protecting the homesteaders,etc. The high level negotations were done between admirals because UFP and Romulus never established a formal peace, they had a ceasefire and a neutral zone(think Korea DMZ). Episodes like "Journey to Babel" and "Metamorphosis" showed federation diplomats often bossing around starfleet . Generally Kirk would get his orders from his superior at a starbase (some Admiral) which is like a cavalry captain getting his orders from the general at the fort. TOS can really be only truly understood as a western set in space.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[jythie]

Islam as been part of the American fabric from day one too.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[CaptSlaq]

How can we get our kids interested in science, which revolves around a lot of diligent work searching for truth, only to find the rewards start out with being called the teacher's pet, progressing through "being a Boy Scout", "not a 'team player'", then forcible unemployment because one feels obligated to "do that which is right"?

To quote (of all people) Indiana Jones: [science] is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.

Pedantic? Perhaps. Science should be.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Lluc]

If only I had mod points... I completely agree with you on that review for The Baroque Cycle. I read about 1/2 the first book because of a couple long flights and was never motivated to pick it up after I got off the airplane. About 6 months later I read the 2nd half. Two years down the road, I still haven't bought the next book. It has a few enjoyable moments mixed into layers and layers of muck, all begging for an editor.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Sloppy]

Go watch Star Trek TOS. If that isn't "leftist", I don't know what is: a utopian society with a big government where there's no poverty, no real use of money, etc. It basically seemed to show the supposed end-state of Marxism.

Huh, that's funny. I always took it as the supposed begin-state of .. maybe Marxism, or maybe something else. (It's not actually clear!) Tech appears to have wiped out poverty, and the resulting abundance has wiped out money and all the other things necessary in scarce-resource economic systems. How they got there (tech as opposed to proletariat seizing the means of production) is only implied (Star Trek rarely talks about its own history, except for throw-away references to a few past events) but nevertheless I felt it was implied. But hey, eye of the beholder and all that...

Now you've just given me an excuse to re-watch all of TOS yet again, imagining (or looking for clues) that the state of high tech and abundance was reached because the society had gone commie, rather than finally being able to go commie because of the abundance created by tech.

I still think you're wrong but am grateful for the pretense. ("Honey, we're watching this again to look for signs of Marxist causation.")

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

And what innovation failure? I and the people around me have been innovating our asses off. I'm not going to self promote, but anyone in the world can go to http://scholar.google.com/ and see all the incredible research that is going on if they want to.

Message to Neal: You ain't that influential.

Actually there are good reasons to think that technological innovation has stagnated. Between 1900 and 1960, almost every area of life was completely revolutionised. Since 1960, with the exception of information technology (a big exception, to be sure), there have only been incremental improvements.

If you're interested, read 'the shock of the old'. It's a brilliant academic history of 20th century technology.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[minderaser]

This. Especially not bad books. I quite enjoyed Cryptonomicon, and so right now I'm trying to read The Baroque Cycle.

What self-indulgent drivel it is...

His recent work is horrible...

Though I do have to (mostly) agree with you about The Baroque Cycle, I do have to recommend a book of his that came later: Anathem. I enjoyed that one about as much as Cryptonomicon (which is to say, a LOT)

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[geekoid]

"Nope, I just ain't gonna be influenced by a book"
Of course you will. You can't experience something and not have it impact your person bias in some way.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[frank_adrian314159]

If there is anything discouraging STEM, its not Neal. He's not even on the radar screen.

No, it's not Neal. It's pessimistic asshats like you who whine about how "society/government/da man is out to get me" and make themselves victims, rather than taking responsibility for their own lives and doing interesting things. The bottom line is that government never takes more than you make; the lawsuits may make things unprofitable, but the things and the ideas for things are out in the world rather than locked away in your head; and being "canned for standing up for what I thought was right" is a badge of honor, if you wear it that way (of course, from your demeanor, I have the feeling that you were the only one who thought it was right and you were just generally being an asshat who decided his opinions were facts). In summary, the only person who can knock you down this hard is you. Stop whining, pull up your socks, and get back to work.

Just because you want to play victim doesn't mean we're making you one.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the book that has as a main charachter in "The Diamond Age". Awesome idea....

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

humans went from riding horses to walking on the moon in less than a century

Indeed; I have a photo taken in 1917 of the types of non-foot road transport then. My grandfather is on a horse, there's a horse and wagon in the picture, and an automobile.

My grandmother was born in 1903 and was an infant when the Wright Brothers first flew. She'd flown on a commercial airline before I was born, and just like everybody else on July 20, 1969 she watched Niel and Buzz walk on the moon.

I don't understand why SF is so dystopian these days. I would have thought that the fifties before Sputnik, when everyone was terrified of nuclear war, would have been a period of dystopian SF. With the exception of nuclear bombs and power plant accidents, every bit of new science and tech has helped mankind and none of it has ever brought disaster that I can think of.

When I was 12 I got to see and use a real computer! There was a tech fair of some sort that my parents took us kids to. I remember joking "I want one of those!" Of course, it was a giant monstrosity that ran on tubes and was worth millions of dollars. Nobody would have guessed that by today I'd own one the size of a hardback book that was orders of magnitude more powerful than the giant at the tech fair.

My SF (hobby) writing has a utopian future (well, except this one and the latest one has the protagonists in a bit of a mess)

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Shadow99_1]

For me, as a writer of science fiction, my works tend more towards dystopias because the world seem bound and determined to become a giant thought police state run by and for corporations. I simply write an extrapolation of what I see. What I see is not fairie land with unicorns and rainbows in the future. Their was far more optisim about the future even 30 years ago as the world goes more and more to shit.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[chispito]

As I told someone else, you're wrong. The number of fundamentalists in the US is at an all-time high, and they outnumber all the mainline Protestant denominations now. They're not more vocal, they're much more numerous. "Megachurches" didn't exist 50 years ago.

Wait. What do you mean by "fundamentalist?" Do you just mean evangelical?

And BSG wasn't about the future, it was about the past. And where are you seeing this optimistic "morning pulp"? I sure haven't seen any in the last 5 years. I can only think of one movie that was about humans in space: Avatar. All the other sci-fi has been about post-apocalyptic zombies.

I agree. Star Trek came out in 2009, but it's a remake of a 1960s franchise, and ST has always been exceptional in its optimism.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[DavidTC]

Uh, that depends on what you mean by revolutionized. There are very few inventions that are not incremental improvements on things we were always doing.

And most of the actual changes, the ones that people from 1899 would have no idea of, are informational.

You show a person from 1899 a microwave, he'd understand it, it's just a faster stove with a timer. You show him an automobile, it's just a smaller train not confined to the tracks, or a buggy without a horse. (Actually, someone from 1899 would know what an automobile was anyway, even if they'd never seen one.)

The only things he wouldn't understand would be things like telephones and computers. Well, he would understand the concept of telephones, but he wouldn't understand what changes had happened because of them, and he wouldn't understand what we use computers for at all.

Saying 'Everything from 1960 has just been incremental except for information technology' is sorta missing the point that pretty much all developments since 1900 except for information technology have been incremental. (At least, if you include 'analog things like radio and television' under 'information technology'.) The last major invention before that was 'steam power', which allowed both shipping and factories, and that was pre-1900.

And if we're recommending books, you need to read 'The Third Wave'.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Go back a few centuries and you'll find a couple of Popes who were OK with abortion, as long as it was performed before the quickening (fetus's first "kick").

But these days we have Pope Rottweiler, and Santorum shoved in our faces.

- T

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[dgatwood]

Yeah, but there has been a rash of it lately.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I still disagree. If you look at non-information technology areas of life, we have conspicuously failed to improve since about 1960. We've even stopped getting places any faster:

Look at av kitchen. Between 1880 say and 1960, it was completely revolutionised. We moved from cooking with fire to electric or gas, and we got things like microwave ovens. Have there been any comparable improvements since then?

> Saying 'Everything from 1960 has just been incremental except for information technology' is sorta missing the point that pretty much all developments since 1900 except for information technology have been incremental.

I wouldn't call atomic weapons, modern antibiotics, heavier than air flight incremental.

I think David Brooks summed it up best. If you met a time traveller from 1960, and wanted to wow her, you could show her your iphone. Absolutely amazing. She would then wonder, what other wonders does this future hold? But would you have much else to show her that isn't just a slicker version of something she already has?

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[garyisabusyguy]

Read the series years ago and actually enjoyed it

I was working on an MBA and the combination of transitioning my thought processes from technical (as a software developer for financial systems) to a business frame was aided somewhat by enjoying a story-line that spoke to the origins of modern monetary systems and the interactions of the age of enlightenment.

May just be me, but I found it useful

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[maple_shaft]

Implying that TOS was inherently Marxist is completely wrong, especially considering how it was a network television show airing in the 60's during the height of the red scare. If anybody had any inclination that it glorified communism or marxism in any way it would have never gotten past the pilot.

TOS had a few throwaway references to how the nations of Earth had united and threw away their differences, formed a better society and the Federation. It wasn't until the movies came out in the 80's where references existed to their not existing money or currency, and that their society was based around work for personal growth and glory in light of eradication of all poverty. TNG, Deep Space Nince, et. al expanded upon this notion in the subsequent series.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Reamde was great up until the point the heroes hooked up with the gold farmers. It should have stopped there.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[garyisabusyguy]

Dan Brown books make me feel really smart because I can guess the ending in the first few chapters, I cannot read them any more because they give me irritable bowl syndrome

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[garyisabusyguy]

Actually nifty, you have illustrated that you are pretty keen on how awesome you are and that nothing gets even remotely close to your awesomeness...

Don't feel too bad, you probably push around a single piece of technology in a group of people who who have no understanding but are really appreciative, it tends to give individuals an overrated sense of importance, but a need to be very critical of anything else that is actually awesome

Oh, wait! I was supposed to critic the Stephenson novel, not you... sorry

So, the Baroque cycle held my interest because it managed to bring together many different historical elements that preceded the Enlightenment Era. I had passing knowledge of many elements of it, but to have it all laid out in a palatable storyline with the occasional Neil-ism (bloody awful puns blown up as big as a building but still invisible to a large portion of the audience) was truly enjoyable. Amongst the high-points... Ottoman-European interactions, pirate trade in Trinidad, European recovery from the black death, transition of money from weight in minted silver to representational value... Only minor complaint was the sex scenes got a little repetitive and I could not figure out if he held himself back or was just embarrassed

So, yeah in my mind Neil managed to demonstrate that he cannot only make deep technical manuals interesting , but can make economics and history texts enjoyable, not an easy task and apparently not appreciated by self-absorbed know-it-alls

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

Go watch Star Trek TOS. If that isn't "leftist", I don't know what is: a utopian society with a big government where there's no poverty, no real use of money, etc. It basically seemed to show the supposed end-state of Marxism.

No, it's the end-state of matter replictors. If we had such a thing there would be no poverty, because anybody could just replicate anything they needed, including a new replicator. If replicators existed, there would be no more need or use for money or capitalism.

Not any more. Now, the "mainstream" Protestant denominations are a minority and shrinking fast, while fundamentalist churches are growing quickly nationwide

As far as I can tell, it isn't the fundamentalist churches that are growing so fast, it's the nondenominal churches. The one I go to is huge, with a congregation of thousands, most of its members are young to middle aged. And it isn't one of the "the earth is 4000 years old and God hates fags and evolution doesn't exist and you're going to hell if you screw up" churches, it's a "yes, evolution exists and is how God went about creating us and God loves every one of us, even terrorists, gays, hookers, atheists, and even politicians, and you are forgiven your sins as long as you repent because the price for your sins has been paid" kind of church.

And again, most of the congregation is young.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

You think Fahrenheit 451 invented book burning.

You think Brave New World is responsible for the drug war.

You should probably read a few more books.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Cryptonomicon

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[geminidomino]

Now you've just given me an excuse to re-watch all of TOS yet again, imagining (or looking for clues) that the state of high tech and abundance was reached because the society had gone commie, rather than finally being able to go commie because of the abundance created by tech.

From canon (such as it is), it hadn't been the case when Cochrane developed warp flight. He was in it for the money. (First Contact)

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

No, it's the end-state of matter replictors. If we had such a thing there would be no poverty, because anybody could just replicate anything they needed, including a new replicator. If replicators existed, there would be no more need or use for money or capitalism.

I completely disagree. Replicators can't replicate everything. For one thing: real estate. Real estate will always be a scarce commodity, unless you can figure out how to replicate entire planets (which they can't do in ST). Everyone wants a nice house on the beach in Hawaii or wherever, and they don't want neighbors. Replicators won't give you that; they'll give you an ugly, cookie-cutter apartment in a giant high-rise in the desert maybe. Secondly, even with replicators, there's still jobs that have to be done by humans. Someone has to get the energy for all those replicators, for one: either by mining tritium somewhere, or maintaining solar collectors, etc. Someone has to build those starships (I didn't see any Starship replicators in ST, but rather orbital construction facilities). Someone has to maintain all this technology. Someone has to design the next generation of the technology. And then someone has to man the starships; why on earth would anyone volunteer to be a redshirt without being compensated for it somehow, or because they didn't have a choice? You'd have to be a moron to pick that job, with its ridiculous fatality rate. Don't forget, even in ST, they had dilithium miners, who had a pretty poor standard of living, but they were necessary for the starships to operate as dilithium couldn't be replicated. Even with the replicators, someone has to design stuff to be replicated.

As far as I can tell, it isn't the fundamentalist churches that are growing so fast, it's the nondenominal churches. The one I go to is huge, with a congregation of thousands, most of its members are young to middle aged. And it isn't one of the "the earth is 4000 years old and God hates fags and evolution doesn't exist and you're going to hell if you screw up" churches, it's a "yes, evolution exists and is how God went about creating us and God loves every one of us, even terrorists, gays, hookers, atheists, and even politicians, and you are forgiven your sins as long as you repent because the price for your sins has been paid" kind of church.

I got dragged to some of those "non-denominational" megachurches, and that's not what they were like at all: they were all about brainwashing people about how necessary oil wars are, how we need to give up our rights because of "terrorists", how we need to support Prop 8 or other anti-gay-marriage legislation, how horrible gay marriage is, etc. True, they put a warm-and-fuzzy coating on it all, and dressed it up with a bunch of rock music that appeals to younger people, but underneath the stuff they taught was the same fundamentalist evangelical crap not unlike what the Westboro people teach.

One of those churches I got dragged to, for only one service, seemed pretty benign in their message, but the fact that they had a Starbucks in the lobby and coffee cup holders built into every seat was extremely disturbing.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

Your missing the point.

And you're missing an apostrophe and an e.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Shotgun]

Dude, you left out Charleston Heston's "It's PEOPLE!!".

Shame on you.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[DamnStupidElf]

"yes, evolution exists and is how God went about creating us and God loves every one of us, even terrorists, gays, hookers, atheists, and even politicians, and you are forgiven your sins as long as you repent because the price for your sins has been paid" kind of church.

So when did god get around to permanently pardoning all the usurers and pork-eaters and contraceptive-users and Sabbath-workers but forgot to do the same for the gays and prostitutes?

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Shotgun]

You also have atheist groups mocking people of faith, and protesting prayers at national events. Go back ten years and you wouldn't see that.

Are the fundamentalist louder, or is there more debate in general?

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[PCM2]

It was like taking a bunch of philosophy and science textbooks, and remove every name in and the goal of the puzzle is to fill in the blanks.

But the thing is, you can fill in the blanks, because the ideas Stephenson is dealing with really aren't that complex or hard to grasp. Only it seems Neal thinks they are... so he's going to explain them to you, in elaborate, overwritten, self-important tedium, using an analogy here, a clever misdirection there, and a few distortions there, for page after page. Then, for the next bundle of pages, he'll sit back, tell little jokes, and congratulate himself for being the most clever and inventive fiction writer since Thomas Pynchon. I'm sorry, his books just aren't that smart or clever, yet every page you're being pounded in the face with how smart and clever Stephenson fancies himself to be. It gets painful.

Quicksilver was the first book I ever actually considered burning after I finished it, as catharsis. I never bothered with the rest. I did read Anathem, though. Now I'm done.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[DamnStupidElf]

Wait. What do you mean by "fundamentalist?" Do you just mean evangelical?

Fundamentalism means ignoring reason and science if faith gets in the way. E.g. believing things that are Wrong.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Shotgun]

An interesting episode to research: In DS9, the doctors parents exposed themselves to criminal prosecution to purchase genetic enhancements for him. It seems that poverty did exist.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[DamnStupidElf]

Flunitrazepam to the rescue!

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[justin12345]

It's interesting how The Wheel of Time has become the yardstick by which you measure your patience as a reader. Jordan's story is very entertaining, but his prose is extremely redundant and tedious, and his pacing is terrible. It takes a lot of effort to slosh through it and get to the good parts (and I say this as a huge fan).

I feel it's a pretty good unit of measure, or at least it will be once Sanderson finishes it. Let's formalize it. For now a "WoT" is the amount of patience required to read all the Wheel books Robert Jordan wrote before he died.

So having given up on The Baroque Cycle halfway through book 3, for me those books require at least 2.5 WoT to enjoy.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[SkimTony]

For one thing: real estate. Real estate will always be a scarce commodity,

I would imagine that warp-driven spaceflight solves this problem. You don't have to replicate whole planets, just terraform a few (that tech was mentioned at least once). Add in the "holodeck" option for vacations, the presence of neighbors is less of an issue.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mjwalshe]

really what about War of the Worlds and lots of Vern's books are not set in utopias. As Ian banks says " Stories set in utopias tend to be boring "

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

Terraforming takes a lot of time and energy, and you have to go find a suitable planet (assuming you haven't invented the Genesis Device, or its invention/use is prohibited by diplomatic concerns with Klingons). Who's going to go on the starships to find and terraform these planets without some kind of incentive. No, getting their own nice beach house isn't an incentive, because why shouldn't they get one on Earth instead, which someone else is living in? What gives the former inhabitant the right to stay there, and not someone else? In modern times, that's easy: if someone new wants a place, they can buy it from the former owner if they have enough money, but with no money, how will it work out that some people get the luxury beach house and others get the shitty apartment in a crowded city? Either there has to be a monetary economy at work to give people different privileges, or there has to be some kind of autocratic government in place to give special privileges to certain people in society, or worse there has to be some sort of government to force everyone to live at the lowest common denominator (i.e., no one gets a beach house because that's classist, and everyone gets a shitty apartment in a high-rise; this is pretty much how it was in Soviet times except of course for the Party leaders).

Even without these concerns, with trillions of people, there simply aren't enough planets out there for everyone to have their own beach home; it's really quite preposterous. It's not like you're going to terraform a planet to look like the Dubai Palm islands, with strips of land alternating with strips of water over the entire planet, and even if you did, I don't want to live like that, I want a real beach house on my own island on a real beach with a view of the ocean and no neighbors, not a narrow strip of water with a long row of houses on the other side, and neighbors on both sides of me, and other unwelcome people playing in the water and driving their boats around; I want it all to myself. There's no way to give that to everyone.

Warp-driven spaceflight requires someone to build starships, someone to mine energy (like by creating antimatter from other energy sources), someone to design and engineer the thing, and people to run it.

And unless you're somehow going to stick your apartment inside a 24/7 holodeck, neighbors are always going to be a problem. Who really wants to live in a shitty neighborhood with a bunch of ghetto neighbors all around you making a lot of noise and dogs barking at all hours (except other ghetto people with barking dogs of course)?

The only way to really give everyone what they want is to put them in the Matrix and let them live their lives in a virtual reality of their own choosing. That really doesn't sound that appealing. And who's going to run and maintain the Matrix anyway?

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Sabbath-workers

i love when church-goers go to a restaurant after service. isn't aiding and abetting the sin, also a sin. fools.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Translation Error]

Incidentally why did Adama have a Luger on his wall? Subliminal neonazi messages?

Chekhov's gun. It was an homage to Star Trek.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[erik.erikson]

Anubi makes some good points. We do have some social patterns that make trying to do the right thing or start something new problematic.

Of course, you are correct too. The only rational response is to stand up and figure out how to work with the world as it exists.

I don't know that you can assume Anubi hasn't pulled up her/his socks and gotten to work. I have for myself pulled myself up from the gutter. Further, the "stop accepting your position as victim and change it" message is one I share with many people as appropriate. It still doesn't change the fact that the world as we create it couldn't be more conducive to doing awesome stuff. It doesn't mean that existence couldn't be a better place than it is or that we couldn't be better to one another. Actually, I'd go further to claim that if we were able to improve the state of existence that we'd all be the better off for it. Mindsets that stop with the "get over it" and "it's good enough" message seem a barrier to achieving a better state for ourselves and seem an acceptance of the victim position, only slightly evolved. I won't presume your position but maybe you should ask: does that description fit your understanding of yourself? And yes, stepping up will cost you some but the dividends will be higher over the long term.

Actually, that is where I'll agree with the sentiment of Stephenson's assertions. A lot of Sci-Fi has focused on the dangers and risks of the future and it has, by this, failed to develop creative imaginings of the positive possibilities and potentials of existence that we could attempt to manifest. While it is important to understand how we could enslave or destroy ourselves in order to understand how to avoid doing so, it is also important not just to poke holes, not only to critique but also to provide solutions and an understanding of what configurations of reality might be plausible improvements over the current state.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[flaming error]

> I simply write an extrapolation of what I see.

Well, if you ever feel like shaking things up a bit, maybe imagine an optimistic future, and tell the struggle of how we get there.

Personally, I think the stories of dystopia are far more helpful than the benetopias. As long as the future is bright, we can sit back and wait for the powers that be to take us there. While it looks like merde, we have to get off our butts and figure out how we'll deal with or prevent it.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

If your experience of the US was entirely from the point of view of the crew of an aircraft carrier, you'd probably think the same thing about the US.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[niftydude]

Actually nifty, you have illustrated that you are pretty keen on how awesome you are and that nothing gets even remotely close to your awesomeness...

Don't feel too bad, you probably push around a single piece of technology in a group of people who who have no understanding but are really appreciative, it tends to give individuals an overrated sense of importance, but a need to be very critical of anything else that is actually awesome

Oh, wait! I was supposed to critic the Stephenson novel, not you... sorry

Bit of a swing and a miss there gary. I make no bones about the fact that I have the honour to work with some engineers and physicists who are absolute geniuses in every sense of the word. I'm lucky to be in the same room as them. Also, no-one has bought the technology we work on yet, we are still several years away from even attempting to find people to sell it to. Definitely no overrated sense of importance here.

I find it interesting that you start your response to my request for an adult discussion about the book with a (clumsy attempt at a) personal attack. You are clearly the type of developer transitioned to business guy (probably a BA or a PM now?) that develops an inferiority complex because he isn't working in tech any more. I can spot your kind a mile off, even though I haven't worked in IT or an IT-related field since the turn of the century.

Now that we've gotten the mutual abuse out of the way...

So, the Baroque cycle held my interest because it managed to bring together many different historical elements that preceded the Enlightenment Era. I had passing knowledge of many elements of it, but to have it all laid out in a palatable storyline with the occasional Neil-ism (bloody awful puns blown up as big as a building but still invisible to a large portion of the audience) was truly enjoyable. Amongst the high-points... Ottoman-European interactions, pirate trade in Trinidad, European recovery from the black death, transition of money from weight in minted silver to representational value... Only minor complaint was the sex scenes got a little repetitive and I could not figure out if he held himself back or was just embarrassed

You think the storyline was palatable??? My core criticism is that the overly detailed historical backdrop you describe almost completely overwhelmed the thin thread of a story running through these novels.

You might not have read it, but someone earlier in this thread compared the Baroque cycle to Les Miserables. I was stunned. All that this book has in common with the Baroque cycle is that they are both set in the past. Victor Hugo's complex and emotionally driven characters shine in comparison to the cardboard cut-outs that wander around the Baroque cycle looking for something to do. I suggest you have a read of Les Mis in order to see how this sort of historical fiction should be written.

Or, if you don't want to invest that much time in a book recommended to you by some guy on the internet that you clearly dislike, and you want to try something shorter (after all, it seems that gary is a busy guy) take a look at Connie Willis - either "Doomsday Book", or "To Say Nothing of the Dog" for shorter examples of novels where the balance between the historical backdrop and story is managed substantially better that the Baroque Cycle was.

Those are books that are actually awesome. The Baroque Cycle, unfortunately, wasn't.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not completely off-base. If you've read any science fiction, you'll definitely notice the trend towards dystopias with pandemics, genetic engineering, energy crises, and overpopulation, especially in comparison to earlier sci-fi

What they MISSED, was the dystopian trend in the "science" of Economics, to where the spreadsheet jockeys somehow came to rule everything that we did, to the point that our highest moral value is an imaginary monetary unit, or dollar, which can be represented as a bit, flipped in the memory of a bank's computer - and we value these higher than that of human life. We really do, at almost every level of our civilization, when it comes down to it. We abandoned fact, and science, and reason, when let the Invisible Hand reach down our pants, and fondle our balls. Now it has taken a firm grasp. It is no longer squeezing just to threaten and control. It is squeezing to destroy us.

I'm sure that many other scifi authors probably HAVE written works about this topic. But, I highly doubt a for-profit publishing house is going to print it.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW; there are two branches of Lutherans; ELCA are the "liberals" who ordain women and accept gays. Missouri Synod, are about as Conservative as the most Conservative Southern Baptists.

Lutherans were among the first to ordain women, but this caused a split. And now, there are several churches who have grouped together on common principals, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and ELCA Lutherans, and, I think, the Anglicans, and maybe a few other smaller denominations. But I think that all of these denominations split over that common-communion issue, because of the vote for accepting gays.

A lot of American Liberals actually have no idea about this, and close their minds in hatred to all Christians, and all Religion. Well, that's their right, and if that's their conscience, then so be it, but just not let them be misinformed about the entire body of the Church.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Savantissimo]

Agreed. The Baroque Cycle was entertaining and well-written all the way through. Those that don't like it should stick to their novelizations, vampire series, star-war-gate-trek-teletubby-hentai or whatever other kind of drivel it is they do like.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Savantissimo]

You're a mediocre, boot-licking hack.
If you go out of your way to spit that kind of witless babbitry at someone you think you have pegged as an outsider, it shows you up as a conformist bully toward your intellectual and moral betters, a sad little wanna-be who thinks he's part of the gang. On your own, or in person, I'll bet you're a quivering coward.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

TOS wasn't Marxist, it was projecting the end of limited power and resources. When you have infinite free energy and nearly infinite resources (because your infinite energy lets you mine other planets with robots) a lot of societal patterns shift. Marxism vs Capitalism just doesn't matter at that point.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[DavidTC]

So, you said that between 1900 and 1960 we had a lot of revolutionary inventions...I point out that there's been no actual revolutionary inventions since 1900, and you point out gas stoves, something that was...invented in 1820, commercialized by 1880, and everyone had them by 1900?

And if you're trying to demonstrate the lack of revolutionary tech since 1960, you probably shouldn't throw in microwave ovens, which were indeed invented in 1955, but no one had until they were finally fit into a countertop version in 1967. (Not that microwaves are actually revolutionary.)

I wouldn't call atomic weapons, modern antibiotics, heavier than air flight incremental.

But you would, apparently, call unmanned drones, gene therapy, and highways 'incremental', which makes me think you've picked a rather random definition of 'incremental'.

And speaking of higways, the idea that ' We've even stopped getting places any faster' is completely and utterly wrong. Apparently, you have no idea how shitty the early roads were, and how completely impossible it was to actually get from place to place. Cities connected to cities, often via poorly paved roads or just dirt. No one actually bothered to make roads that people could drive long distances on, or that went anywhere but one town over. Hence, for example, the US interstate highway system, started in 1956, although before you get too happy about that date I will point out that almost none of it was finished by 1960. This eventually cut travel time by half or more over long distances. (And, of course, airplanes have gotten faster, too.)

Of course, in my universe, doing things 'faster' is by definition an incremental improvement, but whatever.

If you met a time traveller from 1960, and wanted to wow her, you could show her your iphone. Absolutely amazing. She would then wonder, what other wonders does this future hold? But would you have much else to show her that isn't just a slicker version of something she already has?

Yes, but that wasn't your premise. I agree with that...and I said it was also true from 1900 to 1960. (Or 1900 to now, in fact.)

If someone in 1960 met a time traveller from 1900, what tech development(1) would they show her that she would find amazing? Besides, that is, a television.

And, FYI, if you show someone from 1900 an airplane, they indeed never will have seen one before...and be happy that someone finally finished what everyone already knew was possible. (Think of airplanes in 1900 as voice recognition now. It's just barely not really working that well, and if we go into the future 60 years and see people talking to computers we'll hardly be startled or amazed.)

1) Now, someone from 1900 would find a lot of social developments amazing, but that's not the point.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mongoliliad?

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Your missing the point

"You're".

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

dead in it's tracks

"its".

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

The gays and prostitutes are pardoned as well. John 8:3-11 has Jesus forgiving a hooker who'd been caught in the act of adultery. You did notice that gays and hookers were in the above sample of people God loves, didn't you?

Again, any church that says "God hates fags" or "God hates" anybody isn't following Christ's teachings.

So when did god get around to permanently pardoning all the usurers and pork-eaters and contraceptive-users and Sabbath-workers? When an innocent man volunteered to pay the price for your wrongdoings, and was executed in the most painful way possible, for the rotten shit you and I have done..

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

Someone has to get the energy for all those replicators, for one: either by mining tritium somewhere, or maintaining solar collectors, etc.

Robots.

Someone has to build those starships

Stallman, Torvalds, and the army of open source geeks will do it just for the sake of doing it. I would. Same for the red shirts; some prople (especially young people) enjoy danger. Why do some towns have volunteer fire departments? Not everyone goes to college for a job, some go because they love learning. I pity people who think that money is the most important thing in the world.

I got dragged to some of those "non-denominational" megachurches, and that's not what they were like at all: they were all about brainwashing people about how necessary oil wars are, how we need to give up our rights because of "terrorists", how we need to support Prop 8 or other anti-gay-marriage legislation, how horrible gay marriage is, etc.

I wouldn't like that church at all. It's nothing like the one I attend. Several years ago I attended a Methodist church, and the last time I stepped into the place was when the preacher prayed for President Bush to have "continued wisdom". That's like praying for the ocean to have continued dryness.

One of those churches I got dragged to, for only one service, seemed pretty benign in their message, but the fact that they had a Starbucks in the lobby and coffee cup holders built into every seat was extremely disturbing.

Having a Starbucks was a dead giveaway that it was really just a money-making operation. "Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing." They recently built a coffeeshop in my church, but it's not a Starbucks or any other brand, and the proceeds go to feeding hungry people. No cupholders in the pews, either.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

Who's going to go on the starships to find and terraform these planets without some kind of incentive.

You seem to think that money is the only incentive to do anything. That's a sad and foolish belief. You're missing the best things in life in your greedy race for acquisition.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

Sure, people will do some things for the fun of it. Just look at many open-source projects. However, if you rely on volunteerism to get things done, you'll find that people only volunteer for things they like to do, and avoid all the things they don't want to do. The tasks that are really hard and not much fun aren't going to get enough volunteers, just like there's no open-source projects to make a product that replaces TurboTax, while there's no shortage of open-source text editors. Relying on volunteers usually leaves you understaffed at critical times, because you're allowing people to work when they want to, not when you really need them to keep the operation running smoothly. This works fine with many open-source projects because of the nature of software development, but there's a reason large cities don't have volunteer fire departments, and I've certainly never heard of volunteer police departments (we have the sheriff's Posse here in Phoenix, but they're mainly retired people who do search and rescue when some kid gets lost in the desert, not chasing dangerous criminals).

Where are you going to find enough dilithium miners to keep the starships running? Maybe robots can be used for that, but surely there's going to be some job or jobs that aren't any fun, can't be done by robots, and won't have enough volunteers.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

to be fair, starfleet doesn't control what goes on planetside. They also don't control trade or commerce. They are strictly diplomacy, military, and science. When it comes to interstellar relations, you can't pussyfoot around with diplomacy. That was my take why the enterprise was decked out like a fancy hotel, but had enough security personell and weapons to interdict a star system. Also, starfleet goes far far out into the galaxy, where a dedicated military and diplomatic corps would be inneffectual at best and counterproductive at worst.

TL:DR version, Space is a hostile environment full of hostile things. Even a Kardenshev type 2 Civilization like the Federation needs every last piece of resources and energy it can muster. If starfleet had to deal with public oversight committees and and budgetary brohahas like we do currently, then humanity would be inslaved and brains would be sucked out with crazy straws.

humanity will never get its act together until an external threat binds us together.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

However, if you rely on volunteerism to get things done, you'll find that people only volunteer for things they like to do, and avoid all the things they don't want to do.

But you're missing the point that with replicators, there is nothing that needs to be done. If everyone has plenty of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, what more does anyone need? People with curiosity will still do science, musicians will still play, painters will still paint, authors will still write, inventors will still invent. You discount human creativity and boredom way too much.

Tell me, why does a multibillionaire start new ventures? Why is Virgin Galactic going into space? It isn't like Paul Allen doesn't already have way more than he needs of everything -- except a purpose.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

As I said before, replicators won't build starships, or serve as security personnel with a short lifespan. I just don't buy the idea that, at least for a very long time after even the invention of replicators, that there won't be any jobs that people won't want to do unless they're getting something in exchange for it. Multibillionaires start new ventures because they like to; they like the power and prestige. The people down in the trenches doing the grunt work to make it happen aren't doing it for the fun of it, they're working for the billionaire for a paycheck. You think anyone would really want to be a Lotus Notes developer if they weren't getting paid for it? Lots of people want to be at the top of some prestigious project; not as many people want to work on someone else's project, and do everything exactly as they're told and not have any creative input into it.

People with curiosity will still do science, musicians will still play, painters will still paint, authors will still write, inventors will still invent. You discount human creativity and boredom way too much.

You give too much credit to human volunteerism. Musicians, painters, and authors don't need other people to assist them in their quests; they just sit down with some paper or canvas and do it, all by themselves. Science, however, requires resources; the days of a scientist working in his chemistry lab either alone or with a single assistant are over. How are you going to build a giant particle collider if you don't have any help? Where are you going to get the resources for that. Don't say replicators; you can't replicate something that's bigger than many countries (and probably bigger than a starship). What if you want to build a Dyson Sphere? You're not going to replicate that. And inventors these days usually need help too. If it's a small-scale invention, you can probably find some volunteers. For something giant, like a new space elevator, a handful of volunteers isn't going to get it done.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[DamnStupidElf]

Sadly, my point was lost. The key question is why it's now perfectly sinless to charge interest for loans, to eat pork, to work on Saturday, and to wear condoms (unless you're Catholic), but it's still sinful to commit adultery, charge for it, or do it with a member of the same sex. Also, why can't we still slaughter heathens and salt their fields?

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

> If someone in 1960 met a time traveller from 1900, what tech development(1) would they show her that she would find amazing? Besides, that is, a television.

You could show her a microwave oven, a boeing aeroplane, a hydrogen bomb, and a radar installation. maybe also a military submarine and an aircraft carrier. (I might have my dates a little off). besides television, you could show her instant global television transmission via satellite.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

The ten commandments were distilled down to two: Love God above all else, and love your fellow man as much as you love yourself.

Charging interest for loans to fellow Jews was forbidden by Jewish law (but it was legal to charge interest to Gentiles). The law against eating pork and working on Saturday was also Jewish law. Most of the old Jewish laws were about health; eating pork was dangerous back then (trichinosis).

If you have ever been the victim of an adulterous wife you know why adultery is a sin. There's little worse you can do to a man than fuck his wife. Well, except maybe slaughtering him and salting his fields. But even these are forgiven, if the evildoer repents.

I discovered why fornication is frowned on -- you can commit adultery unknowingly if she lies about her marital status.

I can't think of any New Testament passages about homosexuality, but then being hetero I never had cause to look for them. But just as I'm forgiven if I screw up and take a women home, so is the gay man forgiven if he screws up and takes a man home.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

As I said before, replicators won't build starships

If I had the materials and knowledge to build a starship I'd certainly build one, and nobody would have to pay me to do it. And I'm certain I'd find an army of space-happy nerds to chip in.

You think anyone would really want to be a Lotus Notes developer if they weren't getting paid for it?

Why do we need Lotus Notes developers? Now, if you needed Lotus Notes, you would simply write it yourself.

Multibillionaires start new ventures because they like to

Exactly. There are two kinds of techies: those who studied in a technological field for the money, and those who simply love tinkering. I find it odd that there would be anyone at slashdot who would ask "why write Lotus Notes if you're not being paid to." Why write Open Source software? You seem to be discounting the existance of Linux.

Lots of people want to be at the top of some prestigious project; not as many people want to work on someone else's project, and do everything exactly as they're told and not have any creative input into it.

If we had replicators, heirarchies would be one of the many things that would become obsolete, because nobody would do anything they didn't want to.

How are you going to build a giant particle collider if you don't have any help?

You seem to not understand nerds at all. Nobody gets a PhD in high energy particle physics for the money, if they wanted money they would have studied for an MBA. They would replicate the parts and build it themselves. I'll bet damned near anybody at slashdot would love to work on the LHC.

For something giant, like a new space elevator, a handful of volunteers isn't going to get it done.

No, but you would have an army of volunteers. Do you think any of the nerds tinkering on Altairs were doing it for a monetary payback? There's that Qu8k guy shooting rockets into space, nobody's paying him to do it.

You greatly underestimate the creative spirit.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

I find it odd that there would be anyone at slashdot who would ask "why write Lotus Notes if you're not being paid to." Why write Open Source software? You seem to be discounting the existance of Linux.

No, I'm discounting the existence of really boring business software that's open source. Please point me to the open-source equivalent of TurboTax. Of course, in your hypothetical future there won't be any taxes, but there's going to be something else similarly boring. Software developers won't have any interest in doing that for free; they'd rather work on something interesting, like OS kernels or games.

How are you going to build a giant particle collider if you don't have any help?

You seem to not understand nerds at all. Nobody gets a PhD in high energy particle physics for the money, if they wanted money they would have studied for an MBA. They would replicate the parts and build it themselves. I'll bet damned near anybody at slashdot would love to work on the LHC.

Where are they going to put it? Today, I'm sure plenty of people would like to work on the LHC. However, that doesn't help the LHC get built: it needs lots of money from taxes, because it requires massive resources to build. It's not something you can build in a personal replicator. And it requires a big space to put it. Maybe you could put it on Mars, but what if some other groups want that land instead? There's only so much real estate. FTL ships would change this equation, but they're only hypothetical at this point.

You greatly underestimate the creative spirit.

You greatly overestimate the willingness of people to boring jobs for free. You point to open-source software, yet open-source software is infamous for poor documentation, because no one wants to do that job. The software developers all want to do the fun work of coding up something new and great; they want someone else to do the documentation for them because that's too boring. A few high-profile projects get lucky and find a few people willing to do it, but most of them don't, and consequently the documentation is poor, obsolete, or non-existent. Your space elevator project (or any big project) is going to have crappy jobs there somewhere which volunteers won't want to do. You try building a starship with this process and you'll wind up with a ship with great engines, great weapons, a nice bridge, and no crew quarters or restrooms. People have very limited time, and they'd rather do things they find interesting or fun, and leave the crappy jobs to someone else.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

I forgot to add: the open-source software that does get better documentation is usually that which has received funding from corporate entities and has hired people specifically to do the job. The totally free projects with no support don't get good documentation.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[DavidTC]

I shall pretend to be from 1900, and I will tell you exactly what I think of each of your inventions:

a microwave oven

This appears to be an oven. It's right there in the name. It seems to cook much faster than a gas oven, so it's good you're improving those. But it's not that astonishing.

The buttons on the front where you can set the time and stuff so you don't have to watch it, now, that is astonishing...and that's 'information technology', which we all agree has indeed made advancements. You can't strap a computer to an oven and claim the oven is revolutionary.

(Also, how are you showing me a household microwave in 1960 when they did not really exist until 1967? Is this one of those 'house of the future' demonstrations?)

a boeing aeroplane

Hey, cool, you got heavier-than-air crafts to work. Finally. We had to use lighter-than-air.

Of course, commercial air travel is still a decade and a half away.

a hydrogen bomb

Wow, a bomb. Never heard of things blowing up before.

and a radar installation.

maybe also a military submarine and an aircraft carrier.

At some point I'm going to mention that all this 'revolutionary' stuff you keep showing me seems to have nothing to do with 'improving life', which was the original premise of this, and seems to merely a better way to wage war.

besides television, you could show her instant global television transmission via satellite.

And, again, you missed the original premise of this, in that everyone agrees information technology has improved.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[mcgrew]

Please point me to the open-source equivalent of TurboTax

Without the need for money, there is no need for boring business software.

You greatly overestimate the willingness of people to boring jobs for free.

One man's boring job is another man's hobby.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Noren]

Soylent Green opened in the 1970s, while the question was specific to the 60s. I did cite the novel that movie was based on (Make Room, Make Room), though cannibalism wasn't referenced in the original book.

I miss cyberpunk.

[netsavior]

Dystopian or not, it always struck me as starkly pro-technology.

Re:I miss cyberpunk.

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Turn on the news, its all around you.

I'd say religion more to blame

[Grayhand]

When I was growing up in the 60s the only ones in the school that didn't believe in evolution and the Earth being billions of years old were the couple of jehovah witness kids. Now we have members of Congress proudly proclaiming they are Creationists. Roughly a quarter to a third of the country is anti science which is a huge number of potential scientists and futurists. I'm sure many will pointy out that they aren't the mostly likely candidates for scientists but that's not entirely true because some scientists are calling themselves Creationists. Add to this the end of the world belief a lot of religious extremists have and it no wonder many see a bleak future. I'm not blaming it all on religion there's a lot of doom in gloom in most of the likely future predictions. I'm saying that I think religion is having a bigger impact than bleak scifi stories.

Re:I'd say religion more to blame

[lightknight]

The Congress critters can believe whatever they want. It's the part where they think about cutting out science that will f*ck us later. All the faith in the world won't save the people from nuclear weapons if there aren't enough engineers to make that missile shield work.

On a conspiratorial note, you will notice that many a church is built to withstand a nuclear strike (those stone churches are probably shielded to withstand a gamma blast, and the lead windows aren't lost on me). Perhaps someone has a plan.

Re:I'd say religion more to blame

[geekoid]

There anti evolution.
When you say they are anti-science, they will point to all the things they are for and it's science, and show that you are wrong.
You need to attack the specific points.

Also, remember that when you talk to these people, It is the people observing that you are talking to.

Re:I'd say religion more to blame

[geekoid]

Some Churchs are strongly built. Mom can withstand a nuclear blast, and there isn't near enough material to protect them from a Gamma Ray burst. There more likely to turn into the Hulk then survive.

And yes, there are people with a plan. A plan to bring a holocaust to the world so Jesus will arrive. And some of those people are in the government. Hell Rick Perry is one of those people.

Re:I'd say religion more to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

Mom can withstand a nuclear blast

Wow, your mom is tough!

agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

Optimistic scientist-inspiring fiction, if it does inspire anyone to pick that career path, will only set them up for a very unpleasant encounter with reality. As they vainly struggle for grant money while living of the pittance they can pull from what funding lingers form their last project, they will look with envy at all the far-less-intelligent people who are walking down the street in nice suits with hot wives and a child or two, and their spirit will eventually break.

Snow Crash = Google Earth

[netsavior]

Nevermind the fact that Snow Crash inspired Google Earth
It's not like that software is used by anyone.

Previously on Star Trek: The Next Generation

[atari2600a]

BAARGH I HATE THE FUTURE! *future* This place is fucking AWESOME!

1984

[Anonymous Coward]

Was probably just another government project, designed to help us become familiar/at-ease with the future to come, huh?

Re:1984

[Alex Belits]

No, but it worked very well as a distraction that made people concentrate on government and not notice greater harm caused by businesses.
Dystopian fiction from 80's to this time tried to fix that, but ended up instilling the feeling of inevitability instead of protest.

Phillip Jecty

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea what he is talking about.

As you can tell from my moniker...

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

I am a fan of some of his works. Actually, I'm a fan of good sci fi literature in general but "Snow Crash" is among my favorites. I have yet to read the sequel. Anyway, I think its noble but misguided for him to foot some of the blame because I don't see how it could in any way shape or form be his fault. His novels are often dark and distopian but I never came away thinking his novels convey a message to eschew science and technology.

dystopian sells

[Khashishi]

A good story needs some source of conflict; otherwise, there's just nothing to talk about. For hard science fiction, generally, the science and technology is going to be a primary focus of the novel; the author invents a setting and visualizes how real actors would respond in such a setting. Thus, the setting drives the plot. Therefore, it's only natural that the technology is going to be a source of tension. If you look for other sources of tension, like interpersonal problems, then you might just end up with a space opera.

Re:dystopian sells

[Anonymous Coward]

I really liked Issac Asimov's work as a kid, it was always very optimistic.

Re:dystopian sells

[interval1066]

Dark outlooks and gloomy dystopian futures sell right now. That's all there is to it.

I think it is more like horror.

[khasim]

Horror works by capturing the fears of the majority at that point in time.

Afraid of losing your job to a machine?
Robot horror fiction.

Afraid of being nuked by an enemy country?
Radiation mutant horror fiction.

Afraid of losing your middle class status?
Dystopian future horror fiction.

To correct the horror fiction you need to "fix" the underlying fear that is feeding it.

Re:I think it is more like horror.

[dpilot]

Don't argue, but I see the role of Utopian fiction as injecting some hope.

Re:I think it is more like horror.

[Intropy]

Overcrowding?
Zombies.

Re:I think it is more like horror.

[ozmanjusri]

"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."

Re:I think it is more like horror.

[Grishnakh]

Yes, but people don't have any hope any more. So sci-fi authors don't bother to write much Utopian fiction, since no one's going to buy it.

Just look at sci-fi movies and TV: the only Utopian stuff out there is Star Trek: Phase II, which is an extremely low-budget recreation of the 60s Star Trek show, and releases a new episode every 2-3 years.

Re:I think it is more like horror.

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you have never witnessed a scifi convention.

Re:I think it is more like horror.

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you've never Googled a phrase.

Re:I think it is more like horror.

[painandgreed]

Don't argue, but I see the role of Utopian fiction as injecting some hope.

One man's Utopia is another's Dystopia.

Re:I think it is more like horror.

[dpilot]

A sadist's Utopia is Dystopia for anything other than a masochist.

There are simply degrees and forms of both sadism and masochism.

Is the diamond age really so dystopian?

[Qbertino]

Sorry, but, the over-the-top story aside, I find the diamond age to be rather an utopia than anything else.
I wouldn't care to much if the world went that way.
Just give me my matter compiler. :-)

A post copyright world looks bright

[bzipitidoo]

Dystopian pessimistic works of sci-fi? There are warnings, and then there's just plain unwarranted slasher sci-fi. The Cold War saw a lot of post nuclear apocalypse settings. While some of the ideas (fish and boulders still raining down from a turbulent sky years later on the pitiful remnants of humanity) didn't hold up if indeed they ever made any sense back then, on the whole, these warnings were of incalculable value if they in any way helped persuade politicians not to turn the Cold War hot. For the latter, there are things like the Jupiter Effect, devastatingly destructive comet dust, and, dare I suggest, Snow Crash. Independence Day had a feel good element to it, but was a turkey. I haven't read Cat's Cradle, but from what I know of Vonnegut, I'm supposing Ice 9 is satire about the very thing I'm complaining about. Clarke regretted using psychic phenomena in Childhood's End. The trouble with a Mathusian novel such as The Mote in God's Eye is that it makes a big deal out of a problem that nature solved billions of years ago. However, it may be that our unprecedented advances have reopened this problem. Many of the natural mechanisms that prevent such catastrophic collapses, such as isolation and predation, don't seem to apply to us. Today, the idea of falling off the edge of the world is quaint and not taken seriously because (excepting a few cretins) we know worlds are not flat. Malthusian ideas may fall into that category in the future as we discover more mechanisms that prevent that. Grey goo and Jurassic Park are more plausible, but they get dramatic and push the idea to extremes that are ludicrous. If a single T. Rex somehow got loose, it wouldn't last an hour. Soon as modern weapons can be brought to bear, it's dead.

There's also too-good-to-be-true sci-fi. The ramifications of the Star Trek transporter is one of those things that the story writers mostly refused to pursue because its powers would wreck havoc on the entire setting, to say nothing of the plots. Who needs a doctor when you can just beam from one pad to an adjacent pad, leaving behind any infectious agents and repairing any bodily damage, including aging?

I've noticed that one thing sci-fi is out of touch with is copyright, and it seems deliberate. I suspect traditional publishers take a real dim view of any futuristic novel that has free copying as part of the setting. Star Trek con man Mudd is chastised for ignoring patents and copyrights. In Hyperion, which won SF awards, one of the characters is an author who wrote a work that was a big hit with AI computers. In the story, the computers paid for just 1 copy and handled distribution themselves. His publisher comments that copyright doesn't mean shit when dealing with AI. I don't know of any serious work that attempts to paint a dystopian future caused by the breakdown of copyright. If there was such a work, it'd make a fine example of stupidly dark sci-fi.

Re:A post copyright world looks bright

[Noren]

"Melancholy Elephants" is a 1983 short story that attempts to paint a dystopian future caused by the success and extension of copyright.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's certainly one POSSIBILITY that dark sci-fi makes people not want to go into science... but a more realistic reason is seeing how anything you make can be stolen by patent trolls or big companies who will bankrupt you in court after taking your idea and refusing to pay you. There's not a bright future for making things, those who do will be (and are now largely) an exploited class, while the opportunity is to be part of the big companies doing so.

The legal system won't look out for the little guy, THAT's why science will go downhill, theft is the new, easy "R&D".

Re: Neal Stephenson?

[qubezz]

I didn't know who he is, but from the "discouraging budding scientists and engineers" quote, I figured he was probably the creator of Jersey Shore or 16 and Pregnant, or a basketball commissioner.

reading the news is what makes one a pessimist

[jdogalt]

Pessimistic Sci-Fi IMHO is an attempt, through social communication of complex ideas, to effect changes within society, that would have the result of turning the pessimistic author into a more optimistic person.

On the other hand...

[Leuf]

George RR Martin is doing a good job of making us not want to let the world go back to a feudal society. Or have dragons. Apparently before you can take over the world with them first you have to raise them and send them to college and 8000 pages later you still haven't done anything with them.

I'll tell you what discourages me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of assistantships to fund graduate school, and lack of scientist jobs after getting a PhD. That's what discourages me from becoming a scientist!

And I really fucking want to, too!

Some kind of god complex?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, I never much cared for this guy's works in the past, thought that his overblown prose was more than likely the mark of a class one egotist who couldn't be bothered to listen to an editor. He writes every idea that comes to him as if each one is precious, unique, and certainly worthy of pages and pages of endless drivel. How dare a lowly editor suggest cutting away his precious words?

And now, to take even partial 'responsibility' for a societal trend? Just, wow. That takes a special kind of egotistical mindset.

Thank you, Mr. Stephenson, for solidifying my opinion of you.

Stepheson the Philospher

[shastamonk]

I'm always curious about what audience Stephenson thinks he's writing for. Snow Crash and Diamond Age are pretty accessible and obviously have had a large influence, but starting with Crytopnomicon, into the Baroque Cycle and culminating in Anathem, his books seem to have become more and more an obscure fusion of modern sci-fi and western philosophy that I can't imagine caring about without a background in ancient Greek through renaissance period natural philosophy and mathematics, and there are very few schools catering to this kind of education anymore. I hope he has inspired other geeks like myself with an interest in these subjects. His books have interested me in reading the classics like Aristotle, Apollonius and Euclid, Newton, Galileo, Huygenz, Leibniz, Descartes etc.

I can't speak to his ability to inspire or dissuade young people from an interest in engineering and science, but they engendered in me a love for classic western thought that I probably would never have even been aware of otherwise.

Whose writing do you expect him to change?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he sees a problem, he can only control what one person does.

Please don't

[Tough Love]

I'm an optimist but I still appreciate the occasional dose of good literary pessimism just for the sake of balance.

Re:Please don't

[Tough Love]

...and happy endings bore me to tears.

intellectuals and churches

[khipu]

The doom and gloom scenarios of many science fiction writers just reflect the negative outlook of many intellectuals and of the churches. For intellectuals, it's global ecological catastrophes of some sort, war, hunger, etc. that's going to do us in. And when they don't paint end-of-the-world scenarios, they are trying to convince people that they are getting poorer and "the rich" are stealing their money. And churches love to talk about Armageddon, the second coming, and instill a general sense that the world is going to end and end badly. Churches, too, love to instill a sense of poverty, injustice and entitlement in people. All of this serves the political and financial interests of both the left and the right.

There is a way out of this: stop believing the bullshit these people are preaching and get the facts yourself.

the news is wrong

[khipu]

The problem is that the news is wrong and its negative outlook is totally unjustified. Americans and most of the rest of the world are better off than ever before: healthier, richer, and safer. People are less violent, more educated, and have more liberty and economic freedom. But instead of transforming all these positive developments into something good, people fret about the future and increasingly get sucked into irrational and destructive ideologies.

I don't understand why people have so much trust in the news. Would you trust some random 30 year old college grad who has never held a real job in a political argument? Would you vote for them? So why do you take their opinion of the world as gospel truth when they write a newspaper column?

Remember that the purpose of journalism isn't to inform, it's to sell newspapers. You don't sell newspapers by saying "everything's fine, be happy", you sell newspapers through scaring people and creating controversy.

Who needs to read about technological dystopia?

[istartedi]

Who needs to read about technological dystopia anyway? We're too busy living in it.

Re:Who needs to read about technological dystopia?

[geekoid]

yes, its so distopian right now~

With all this available data, global communication, games, high mileage cars, etc...

Man it just sucks~

Dumb

[Brian Feldman]

We don't need more technology. We need less.

Re:Dumb

[geekoid]

Bullshit, we need more.

There is no good argument for less technology.

Re:Not necessarily

[thomst]

dpilot mused:

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

to which ozmanjusri responded:

Earlier than that.

Try Philip K Dick or Harlan Ellison for size.

Earlier than that.

Try H. G. Wells for size.

Obligatory David Szondy link

[muecksteiner]

"Tales of a Future Past":

http://davidszondy.com/future/futurepast.htm

This is probably what he was thinking of in comparison. Go, take a look at that site, it's really worthwhile - and no, I'm not related to the author. And compared to that sort of Sci-Fi, his stuff *is* gloomy. But still. :-)

Verily

[matunos]

Cause monks dedicated to knowledge and logic fighting in outer space to save the world and bring about interdimensional peace is totally depressing.

Re:I went into academia to help the world help its

[ChrisMaple]

So you went into academia, which works to destroy the world (hard science excepted); and left it because you can't see that self interest is in the world's best interest, and requires freedom.

If it an't baroque, don't fix it

[TiggertheMad]

This. Especially not bad books. I quite enjoyed Cryptonomicon, and so right now I'm trying to read The Baroque Cycle.

What self-indulgent drivel it is. Pages and pages of History lessons than don't advance the plot at all, or even serve to improve the historical context. It is a case of: Neal read something interesting in a history book, and so is going to jam the detail into his prose regardless of whether it is relevant or useful.

I rather enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of Les Miserables, in that the story immersed you in the history of what was happening at the time. It is the very opposite of trying to tell a 'timeless tale', and it is very detailed about the period as a result. While I can understand why most people wouldn't like having to invest a lot of effort into a book, I found that after the first few chapters I got the feel of the style and quite enjoyed it.

Neal has bought into his own celebrity and lost all sense of what made him a decent author. I bet the dude thinks each of his individual farts has a unique and pleasant aroma, and so is worth preserving for posterity.

You know, I think that you just invalidated any opinion I had for you prior critique. Do you actually believe this, or are you just talking because you think you are clever and witty? You are probably right though, Neal sat at his computer typing away merrily and thought to himself,' Right! Those stupid wankers are almost paying me by the word! I'll really cash in in their willingness to read any drivel I toss off! Say, I wonder if I can make audio recordings of my Farts...?'

Re:If it an't baroque, don't fix it

[niftydude]

I rather enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of Les Miserables, in that the story immersed you in the history of what was happening at the time.

I felt Baroque Cycle was nothing like Les Mis. Victor Hugo was a masterful author, and his prose always had a point.

As an example, take the priest who gave Jean Valjean his silver. Leading up to this point, there is a long digression about the priest, what he had done in the past, and his back-story. It is important, because the priest's interaction with Valjean is pivotal to the entire way Valjean sees the world, and has a very strong effect on Valjean's personality going forward. The reasons why the priest does what he does is important, which is why Victor Hugo goes into it. It is good storytelling.

On the other hand, when Neal does a long digression on a historical character in Baroque Cycle it is generally just because the character is important historically, not because the character is important to the story. Neal is just name-dropping. It is annoying, and for those who are familiar with history around that time, it is also quite boring.

I bet the dude thinks each of his individual farts has a unique and pleasant aroma, and so is worth preserving for posterity.

You know, I think that you just invalidated any opinion I had for you prior critique. Do you actually believe this, or are you just talking because you think you are clever and witty?

Ok, you got me, I don't actually believe Neal bottles his own farts.

I think the real problem with Baroque Cycle was simply an escalation of commitment. Neal had spent so much time studying various historical characters, he felt that it was a waste of time not to include what he had learnt. But for me, this made for a fairly unenjoyable book.

Re:If it an't baroque, don't fix it

[dbIII]

See also Cryptonomicon for any of that criticism. I suspect that in one you just find the "name dropping" of the minor characters interesting and in the other you don't. I find both interesting, but think you are correct that footnotes asides get wedged into the main story without adding to it. Personally I like it even though it doesn't really add to the story.

Re:If it an't baroque, don't fix it

[niftydude]

See also Cryptonomicon for any of that criticism. I suspect that in one you just find the "name dropping" of the minor characters interesting and in the other you don't.

I think that for me it is more about the ratio, than the period. The ratio of story to "name dropping" was ok in Crytonomicon, whereas in Baroque Cycle I felt it got out of control. The entire Baroque cycle is at least three times the length of Crytonomicon, and seems to digress more often.

Re:If it an't baroque, don't fix it

[bickerdyke]

when Neal does a long digression on a historical character in Baroque Cycle it is generally just because the character is important historically, not because the character is important to the story. Neal is just name-dropping. It is annoying, and for those who are familiar with history around that time, it is also quite boring.

I consider every work I read from him to be a textbook woven into a good story. That makes it harder to read, but gives the bonus of... well.. getting a textbook along with the novel.

He claims facts to me made up as part of the novels... That's exactly the opposite Dan Brown does :-)

Yet another summary fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know who this "Neal Stephenson" cunt is. Summaries are there for a reason.

Turns out he's a science-fiction writer who takes the blame for stopping people being scientists (?) because science-fiction has grown too dark (???). Christ, I thought it was only Hollywood lived in a bubble.

Gibson and cyberpunk aren't dystopian

[Geof]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

At least not in my opinion. In classic dystopias like 1984 or Brave New World, there is virtually no space left for individual freedom and choice. Cyberpunk, however, is all about the spaces in between in which individuals can make choices and possibly change things. Philosopher Andrew Feenberg agrees:

The world Gibson describes is grim but not strictly speaking dystopian. It is true that elites rule it with immensely powerful means, but those means are so complex that they give rise to all sorts of phenomena over which no one really has control. There are many small openings through which a clever hacker can enter the system and commit a variety of unprogrammed deeds. The future is not clear but may yet be altered by human action on the network. (Alternative Modernity: The Technical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory, 1995, p. 140)

The happy happy, joy joy world of Star Trek: The Next Generation, on the other hand, strikes me as truly static and dystopian. Nearly all cultural expression is centuries old. Every conflict can be solved through reason: there are no genuinely intractable differences of opinion or incompatible values among honest people. Only a totalitarian society could so thoroughly crush dissent and eliminate difference. I think I would go stark raving mad.

I believe a better future is possible and worth fighting for, but compared to ST:NG I'd rather have Gibson's grungy cyberpunk any day. It is dirty, flawed, corrupt - but also iredeemably human. Its diversity and vigor are resistant to the totalitarian disease. The tragedy is that cyberpunk came true: but now we seem to be passing out the other side. A cyberpunk world might be a let-down beside visions of the future we once thought we would enjoy, but compared to many genuine possibilities it's possitively upbeat. Take a look at the world of Paulo Bacigalupi's Windup Girl, for example (which despite its fantastic elements feels right in the same way that Neuromancer once did) - though even he leaves a small space for hope.

While I agree about the worth of utopian visians, I do not agree with the criticism of dystopian science fiction. The scholars of the Frankfurt School struggled to find an alternative to what they saw as a damaged society. When the human imagination limits itself to the realistic limitations of the world we live in, it serves to accept and conceal that world's flaws. Between the horrors of Stalinism and the alienation of capitalism, the Frankfurt scholars could not imagine an plausible alternative. So to find hope, they were deliberately negative. The injustices of the existing order pointed to the possibility of something better. Herbert Marcuse writes:

The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative. Thus it wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Refusal. At the beginning of the fascist era, Walter Benjamin wrote: It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us. (One Dimensional Man, 1964, p. 257)

Re:Gibson and cyberpunk aren't dystopian

[dbIII]

The happy happy, joy joy world of Star Trek: The Next Generation, on the other hand, strikes me as truly static and dystopian.

Hence "Blakes 7" based around a Trek style universe by some writers that saw it the same sort of way.

Re:Gibson and cyberpunk aren't dystopian

[HeckRuler]

Cyberpunk, however, is all about the spaces in between in which individuals can make choices and possibly change things.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, on the other hand, strikes me as truly static and dystopian. ... Only a totalitarian society could so thoroughly crush dissent and eliminate difference.

The dystopian society that Cyberpunk portrays is not an environment in which individuals can impact the system, despite the protagonists often setting off nukes or digital equivalents. People can make changes to their own lives, but the system as a whole is uncaring, cruel, and expects you to be a terrorist. Sorry, but cyberpunk is not a libertarian utopia in the least. The megaCorps have an entirely one-sided struggle against the masses. They set the laws to protect themselves, and yet can wantonly abuse, arrest, assassinate whoever they wish. They are above the law. It's the epitome of a stacked deck.

The only "free choice"/"libertarian utopia" aspect comes from the underworld criminal elements which the protagonists often portray. Yeah, if you think of it that way, criminals are free to do whatever they want.

On the flip side, in Roddenberry's leftist StarTrek utopia, and the more sterile ST:tNG, we have the rule of law. People aren't starving in the street. They have rights. Society works. And people can argue, fight, and rebel. There's still conflict in the Star Trek universe, it just doesn't destroy swaths of humanity in the process. And there's reason for this: By and far, people don't abuse each other because they don't have to. Life is simply better. The massive federation is overall peaceful because times are good and people don't have a reason to stir up shit. They aren't dissenting because their leaders are doing a good job. If you see that as impeding your personally freedom... Dude, you're straying into evil supervillian level ranting.

And there are those SAME criminal elements in Star Trek and Cyberpunk. It's just that in Cyberpunk, they're justified in their actions. It's the best/only way out. Their targets are horrible people. And there's little reason to love an unloving world. In Star Trek, criminals are the bad guys. Their motivators are usually negative aspects like greed and hate.

So, long story short, I disagree. Star Trek's Federation is a utopia and Cyberpunk's vision is a distopia.

Re:Gibson and cyberpunk aren't dystopian

[Geof]

cyberpunk is not a libertarian utopia in the least

Oh, I agree! Utopia is not the only other choice (and I agree that cyberpunk has dystopian tendencies). In many ways it is very much like the world we live in. I'm not sure where your reference to libertarianism comes from. I would expect a libertarian "utopia" to be cruelly controlled by corporate elites - in that way I suppose cyberpunk fits the bill. Perhaps I was wrong to use the word "choice" given its association to rational choice theory and neoclassical economics. Libertarianism was certainly not in my mind. In Marcuse and Benjamin I'm quoting Marxists, after all. I could just as well have talked about action as Hannah Arendt uses the term, as a form of public citizenship through which we reveal and discover our differences.

The massive federation is overall peaceful because times are good and people don't have a reason to stir up shit. They aren't dissenting because their leaders are doing a good job. If you see that as impeding your personally freedom... Dude, you're straying into evil supervillian level ranting.

You have me chuckling pretty hard at the thought of me as a supervillain. Best insult evar. But I guess I'm not being clear. I think that people hold fundamentally different values that are valid but that can never be reconciled. Christian vs atheist, pro-life vs pro-choice, the pursuit of excellence vs the pursuit of equality. These can all be reasoned and honorable positions. Although I prefer the latter of each category, and believe it necessary to pursue such values vigorously through politics, I can respect the integrity and decency of many of those with whom I disagree (while also acknowledging the craven selfishness of many who are of like mind).

A free and democratic society will always have to deal with the tension and conflict between such sources of fundamental disagreement. Dissent is not something to be overcome: it is the condition of a healthy democratic society. A society without dissent is a society without democracy. This is actually the meaning of the word totalitarian. It does not simply mean dictatorship; it refers to a society that is like a unified organism, into which individual people fit like cells or organs, united in thought and purpose. Such a society might be peaceful, happy, wealthy, and well-governed (a possibility I sincerely doubt) - by restricting the ways in which its members could think, it might even have the appearance of democracy. But it could not be truly democratic or free.

Re:Gibson and cyberpunk aren't dystopian

[HeckRuler]

I think that people hold fundamentally different values that are valid but that can never be reconciled.

Hmmm. That gave me pause. It's somewhat depressing, but I'd have to agree that's probably true. So a more realistic Federation would have more.... bickering? I dunno though, I kind of have hope that there's a happy middle point where rationality wins and everyone can play nice.

Your view of "totalitarian" is also interesting. There is always dissent. What makes a place totalitarian is if that dissent is allowed to be voiced. Under your definition I think you technically could have a totalitarian democracy, you'd just need everyone to freely choose the same thing. Which is kind of silly, but bear with me a second. A utopia is one where a society/government/economy/whatnot is set up "the right way" so that no-one has any qualm. And while that perfect state is impossible it's certainly possible to get close. The whole whole "fundamentally different values" thing isn't guaranteed to be true. It's just got an overwhelming amount of historical proof behind it.

FFS

[Big Hairy Ian]

"Neal Stephenson worried that the gloomy outlook prevalent in modern science fiction may be undermining the genre's ability to inspire engineers and scientists." Wow I didn't realise the idea of dystopia was so recent well I guess that lets H. G. Wells & Philip K. Dick off the hook!

Science FICTION ?

[Anonymousslashdot]

And I thought it's the science fiction authors who predict what scientists have in store for the future and not the other way around (which is: a scientist needs to read a science fiction novel first for clues on what is possible to invent). Now it seems that sf writers are indespensable to science and they do half of the work needed to accomplish an invention - they to the design work, while the scientists do the implementation part.

SO, maybe it's about time to consider changing the genre's moniker ?

Is he right?

[Lisias]

No?

So why all this fuss?

broken clock

[Hognoxious]

It's guaranteed to be right. The question is, when?

Never go full Utopia

[dbIII]

As the Salem witch trials and a pile of other examples showed, utopias really suck for people that are not the vision of a perfect citizen.

There's a very wide scale between the extremes of full dystopia and full utopia and a lot of fiction set in between. Like today only better doesn't have to be like today only perfect - or even better something that is not like today at all and gets some interesting ideas across.

Slightly overstating the case just a tiny bit

[Hognoxious]

Go back 83 years, s/Neal Stephenson/Erich Maria Remarque/ and s/Science/German Militarism/ .

That'll tell you how much influence fiction writers have.

Also, anyone who doesn't know that fiction is, well, fictional shouldn't be in science to start with.

Re:I went into academia to help the world help its

[lightknight]

Unfortunately, I have to agree here. Free market seems to imply, sadly, that anything goes, as opposed to a marketplace that is free to enter, leave, and conduct business therein, with the general rules against theft, fraud, etc. still in play.

Raving socialists?

[dbIII]

I don't think that describes Michael Crichton and a pile of others very well at all. There is a range.

Civics lesson on Judges for you

[SuperKendall]

seriously america, you need to get rid of voting for your judges

Well America is here to please!

As it turns out we DO NOT vote for judges.

The judges on ballots are there only to say if we should retain the judges or not, so the very worst can be removed. And that's at a local, not federal, level.

Judges are appointed at all levels.

Unless you meant to stop the trend that some people are trying to argue we should start voting for judges?

I think however, SCI-FI authors *should* write about distopias

Of course but there needs to be balance. In the real world not everything is bad, even large corporations. Someone needs to show the other side of that coin so people can work towards building large entities that work, by knowing both dangers and potential benefits.

Re:Civics lesson on Judges for you

[Walkingshark]

In Texas judges are elected.

Re:Civics lesson on Judges for you

[SuperKendall]

Ok, good to know...

But at the federal level (where it really matters and starts to mean more if a judge leans ) that's not the case.

Re:Civics lesson on Judges for you

[Thing 1]

As it turns out we DO NOT vote for judges.

Exactly! In idle America, Judges vote for the singers.

I think however, SCI-FI authors *should* write about distopias

Of course but there needs to be balance.

I like to think of it in terms of the brain as a planning machine: it evaluates both positive and negative plans, and chooses accordingly. Thus, thinking about suicide is not a sign that you need therapy -- the sign is the thought, "that seems like a good idea" following a thought about ending it.

Which is something every parent should teach their children. I have an ultra-religious aunt who yelled at me to "stop playing my daughter that suicide music!" when I tried to introduce my cousin, who played flute, to the beautiful melodies in Jethro Tull's "Moths", which starts with the (innocent, I thought) lyrics "Oh the leaded window opened, to move the dancing candle flame, and the first moths of summer, suicidal came." It very neatly describes a pattern in nature, that of moths seeking light and being destroyed by their quest. This aunt also destroyed property, burning an audio tape that my sister had given her daughter. To me, this is horrific; she was terrorizing her child, instead of teaching her.

We should be prepared for all eventualities, or at least as many of them as we can adequately prepare for, given time and resources. Thinking about danger, and ways to mitigate the danger, seems like a good use of our societal time left to think. (Last four words from a They Might Be Giants song, "It's not My Birthday", "As I walk I think about a new way to walk, as I think I'm using up the time left to think.")

Re:Civics lesson on Judges for you

[Savantissimo]

No, in some states judges are voted for. "Justices of the Peace" in Texas and state Supreme Court justices in West Virginia, just off the top of my head.

Re:Civics lesson on Judges for you

[sg_oneill]

You do in quite a few states, and it should be no surprise that its those states with the worst judicial corruption or plain out "wtf" judgement making.

Re:I went into academia to help the world help its

[xhrit]

Hard science has the most chance of destroying the world. Einstein was great, his inventions gave us an entire genre of science fiction... "post apocalyptic survivalism".

It's more interesting when bad shit happens

[Hognoxious]

If you've read any science fiction, you'll definitely notice the trend towards dystopias with pandemics, genetic engineering, energy crises, and overpopulation, especially in comparison to earlier sci-fi

Lady M: Hi honey!

M: Hi! Good news, got a promotion! I'm taking over the Cawdor office!

Lady M: I always wanted a bigger hovel.

M: Now, now, don't go spending it yet! But yes, maybe even a second horse...

Sort of lacks, ummm, tension, doesn't it?

Sorry Neal.

[argStyopa]

Burgess, Heinlen, Dick, even Ray Bradbury were all writing dystopian science fiction before you were even born.

A slightly different theory

[RogueWarrior65]

IMHO, the problem lies with the uneducated, uninformed, and technologically ignorant believing all the doom and gloom thereby causing unnecessary government regulation and redistribution of research & development funding to social engineering (an oxymoron in and of itself).

Re:I went into academia to help the world help its

[geekoid]

Stop using science, and billions will be dead in 4 years.

What's with these accusations of inflated ego?

[Anonymous Coward]

*sarcasm on* Gee get over yourself. It's not like books ever inspired anyone. *sarcasm off* A popular science fiction author decides to think about the message he's sending. Sounds good to me. I've read a lot of science fiction over the past 30 years. There have always been dystopian and utopian messages and both are important. But there has been a trend to the negative. I'm not saying that the happy rocket pack days of the 60's need to come back but a positive spin on the near future would not be unwelcome.

Technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Has only made every state fascist with ease.
It is all only used against the citizens, as all military technology drones in war now hunting you down.
Every penny you allow spent, imprisons you to the state.

Can find a face in a stadium in milliseconds now. were all toast. That is for sure.
Orwell did not even lift the first layer of what were facing.
A million time worse than anything he imagined.

boring historical sciency fiction?

[Talennor]

Maybe he's talking about the Baroque Cycle, making a dystopian future where all fiction is way too long and boring as hell.

(disclosure: I didn't finish the first book, though I've been told it gets better right after the halfway point I quit at.)

Re:I went into academia to help the world help its

[DiscountBorg(TM)]

Mutual cooperation is in the world's best interest, that is, if we ever want to stop hitting each other with billy clubs over petty ideals and focus on our long-term survival as a species. Getting out of the gravity well would be a great first step... but it takes a significant amount of resources and cooperation to do so.

William Gibson said interesting things: 'Dystopia'

[DiscountBorg(TM)]

"We've forgotten that a whole lot of smart people used to wake up every day thinking that that day could well be the day the world ended. So when I started writing what people saw as this grisly dystopian, punky science fiction, I actually felt that I was being wildly optimistic: "Hey, look — you do have a future. It's kind of harsh, but here it is." I wasn't going the post-apocalyptic route, which, as a regular civilian walking around the world, was pretty much what I expected to happen myself." (William Gibson: The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary Interview)" And my favourite: "I’ve always been taken aback by the assumption that my vision is fundamentally dystopian. I suspect that the people who say I’m dystopian must be living completely sheltered and fortunate lives. The world is filled with much nastier places than my inventions, places that the denizens of the Sprawl would find it punishment to be relocated to, and a lot of those places seem to be steadily getting worse."

Thank you ! ! ! & 20 years of phony studies

[sgt_doom]

For chrissakes, who really reads that pathetic author, the guy stinks.....

Geez, do ya think it might be over 20 years of falsified and phony "scientific studies" --- the National Research Council announced that it would be intelligent to ignore all those studies about the death penalty and murder rates --- zero linkage proved.

And none of those breast cancer studies can be successfully replicated. And three-quarters or more of studies on pharmaceutical discoveries and vaccines are performed by their PR companies, for chrissakes! ! !

Now, might that be the reason, not some douchetard clown like Neal?

TNG? Mindless utopia? No way.

[DiscountBorg(TM)]

Really? Star Trek TNG constantly presented the crew with ethical choices that had no clear win-win scenarios, and the complexities of dealing with vastly different cultural values.. it often played with the idea of a 'utopian' world mindset versus solving problems with brute force, and where, when and how such utopian ideals would break down. The crew constantly had to make choices that might condemn entire civilizations to misery just because they felt it was a greater risk to violate the prime directive, or choices that would send crew members to their untimely deaths. It dealt with topics like gang rape in a way that kids could still watch--so if it was crippled by anything, it was that it had to be family-friendly to fit into a timeslot and appeal to a larger market. Their living in a rational mindset was a perfect foil for the world they lived in. Never mind that Star Trek was originally designed to be socially subversive--It came out in the cold war era and yet it featured men and women of vastly different ethnicities working together.

Pessimism can be as foolish as optimism.

[DiscountBorg(TM)]

1984 wasn't about the future. It was about the politics and mind games of World War II. Likely Ray Bradbury did not invent book burnings. I'm not even sure who did. The history of mainland China is full of conquests where the educated were routinely killed off and books burned. The drug wars have been occurring for centuries, look at the use and or prohibition of hashish in Eastern cultures, or the profound loss of life due to the Opium wars. As far as mind control goes, try living in a medieval village where the Church was your reality.. especially if you were an atheist. Pessimism can be easily misplaced when people are naive about history. We do not face any new problems in this era. In fact, we have it easier now than we've ever had it before in human history. A hundred and fifteen years ago your job as a male would have been to go to Africa and get pierced by some dude's spear while attempting to murder off villages, or if you were a lady you would have been prohibited from getting a higher education if you had a mindset of inquiry. Plus about half this planet lives lifespans twice to three times as long as they did in ages past. It's not that things are perfect today, caution is always in order, but claiming that the sky is falling is just fallacious and wrong, wrong, wrong. It's a recipe for throwing one's hands in the air and giving up. And this is exactly what Neal is warning against here.

Re:Pessimism can be as foolish as optimism.

[dgatwood]

The difference is that in the past, such abuses were largely unsuccessful. These days, not so much. The Opium wars didn't result in random drug testing that prevents people from getting jobs because of smoking weed in their free time. It didn't create subcultures of people arrested for sale of drugs who are permanently blackballed from holding jobs in polite society. And so on. We really do have a different set of problems this time.

And book burnings were historically common in the distant past, but most folks thought we were past that point in our cultural development. Then 9/11 happened, and suddenly there are Qur'ans ablaze.

And nobody in history has perfected manipulation of history the way governments have in the last part of the 20th and the first part of the 21st century. The news is filtered by governments to the point that dissenting voices are only allowed to continue as long as they are seen as highly biased partisans. If you get a dissenting voice that isn't obviously strongly biased, but rather evaluates things rationally, it is usually crushed quickly. It's sad that the sole remaining voices of reason and common sense in the news business are relegated to a comedy network.

Technology has significantly altered the balance of power in favor of those who wish to control others. Although it is possible for the public to use technology (encryption, for example) to protect themselves, the majority of people are not savvy enough to do so. It takes the collective effort and understanding of everyone (or nearly everyone) working together to increase freedom and reduce government abuse, whereas it takes only one or two tech-savvy government officials to push the pendulum the other way.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the sky is falling right now, but I've seen the U.S. government do an awful lot of stuff in the past thirteen years that in the prior couple of decades I would never have imagined our country could sink to. In a lot of ways, it is like we're going through McCarthyism all over again, and for those of us born after that crap ended, it comes as something of a shock. Eventually, these bad seeds will likely be uprooted from our government, but each time, it seems like it takes longer to rein in the government abuse. Unless that trend changes, there will eventually come a time when it is no longer possible to rein them in at all. The worst part is that most people won't know it is coming until the sky has fallen, and no one can hear you scream.

Re:Pessimism can be as foolish as optimism.

[DiscountBorg(TM)]

I shouldn't have said we don't have any new problems (holes in ozone layer for starters), rather, similar problems in new flavours. For example in terms of controlling what it is people believe or monitoring them, in days gone by disagreeing with the King or the Church could have you being tortured to death slowly for public amusement. Nowadays we argue over issues of separation of Church and State and the media instead without fear of the above. 150 years ago public sentiment in Western culture was tribalistic and nationalistic, now a good chunk of us understand that Africans and Asians are human beings with families who experience pain. And violent crime rates have plummeted in industrialized nations.

But yes, there is still a lot of serious problems right now as you pointed out. Two steps forward, one step back, with the danger of going back further.

This brings me to your point, "most folks thought we were past that point in our cultural development." And that's just it. We say things like that nowadays. We've the education and information at our disposal and the communicative tools to do so. In the past the average person knew little about the outside world in the way we do now. There's more opportunities to be educated and be aware. For example I grew up in a fundie community with little knowledge of the internet.. when I got the internet and read up on the real theory of evolution, it changed my life.

I think in a round about way we're agreeing somewhat in that you're subscribing to realism as opposed to being optimistic or pessimistic. By pessimism=destructive--giving up, don't bother trying, and I see this all the time, and that's kind of how I read the article. Contrast that with, if we don't bury our heads in the sand and deal with our problems, things might at least stay the same or get better, no promises--but it's worth the effort to try. I think that's more constructive..

Re:Pessimism can be as foolish as optimism.

[DiscountBorg(TM)]

Should have read 'little knowledge of the outside world'.. was typing quickly while running out the door to start my weekend!

Re:Pessimism can be as foolish as optimism.

[dgatwood]

In the past the average person knew little about the outside world in the way we do now.

In the way we do now, yes, but even now, does the average person know and care to the same degree? Therein lies the critical question, for in apathy lies the greatest threat to liberty.

Re: Neal Stephenson?

[Anonymous Coward]

and on another note - Titanic was real not just a movie!!

Love his work in general but have to disagree

[grumble_grumble]

Maybe it's more dependent on the mindset of the reader to start with. Diamond Age was pretty dystopian but what I took away from it was more focused on the innovative ways he envisioned incorporating technology into daily life and the ways that doing such affects our culture - positive/negative/neutral. I saw it as inspiring and many of the things he described there back in the early/mid 90's are just now showing up in "revolutionary ideas of the future" marketing. Same can be said of many others - Altered Carbon, Pandora's Star, Blade Runner, etc.

Silly Neal. Cyberpubk inspired me to start at

[Anonymous Coward]

least three companies, one even went IPO. I love dystopian futures. Take "Matter", if I could only figure out how to make a practical inter-galactic ship...

None of them knew they were robots

[Anonymous Coward]

He *did* inspire Mr. Bungle. . .

Re:I disagree

[BitterAndDrunk]

I thought Reamde was way better than Anathem. . . felt more like his older work (Zodiac in particular).

It was a pretty good yarn and honestly I wanted that MMO to exist pretty badly. That would be AWESOME

He's More Directly Responsible Than That, Even ...

[n8r0n]

Neal Stephenson actually worked at Blue Origin in Seattle for a while (Jeff Bezos' commercial space company). According to an engineer I knew who worked there, his presence in meetings was an utter distraction, as the real engineers would toss around reasonable technical suggestions, and Stephenson would chime in with idiotic comments from the peanut gallery. Apparently, nobody felt comfortable calling him out as an ass-clown because he was one of Bezos' favorites.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, I have no idea who "Neal Stephenson" is. Secondly, what sort of "Innovation" has been affected? The headline link tells me absolutely nothing about the story. Why would I click on it?

Why not:

Science Fiction author Neal Stephenson admits his writings may have stifled scientific innovation.

?

Bleak works for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Neal Stephenson's bleak futures are what got me interested in science. The idea that everything has to be optimistic for it to be worthwhile or inspiring is garbage.

Re:I went into academia to help the world help its

[xhrit]

If you keep using science then trillions will die over the course of the next century.
Do you really want trillions of dead on your hands!?