I love old sci-fi
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high praise, thank you.
I might have to steal it for a novel.
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... That's what you got from Asimov?
I mostly picked up on the incest, but I was like 12 when I read that series
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Cyberpunk like Blade Runner was a direct response to the optimism of the golden age of SF. They said there wasn't enough sin in those stories. So they had protagonists who were heavy drug users taking out assassination contracts on big corpo CEOs and banging a prostitute in a back alley after they're done. They have high technology compared to the time it was written, but it doesn't help the common people make their lives any better. The Earth is a polluted wasteland, and the cities are stuffed full of people with trash all over the place.
Guess which approach is closer to what actually happened?
Don't worry, they're banning the sins of the poor and cracking down on the dregs of society, just in time for you to be part of that
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In fairness to the Sci-Fi writers, we've launched so many probes into deep space since then.
We've sent satellites to Jupiter and diving bells below the clouds of Venus. We've retrieved soil from Mars and sent signals from beyond the Ort Cloud. We've recorded Gravity Waves and captured light off the edge of Black Holes and recorded the touch of Neutrinos.
We don't have six guys drinking coffee and staring out a window overlooking the moon of Titan. But that is largely because our signaling and robotics has made automated exploration more practical than manned missions.
And also because SciFi writers of the 1950s didn't understand how much radiation humans would need to shield themselves against once they left the Earth's magnetosphere.
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as a kid i was so convinced, near the end of 90s i thought "maybe there are huge advancements made but they're saving it for the year 2000 so it'll be bombastic like people have expected."
instead we got fucking segway lol
I would love to live in a world where every Hummer H2 was replaced by a Segway.
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People are confusing optimism with naiveté. The old sci-fi assumed the rate of progress with be constant or even accelerate. They saw people got to space and moon in what? 20 years? So they thought we will get to Mars by the end of century and beyond our solar system some time after that. They didn't predict the end of Cold War and massive disinvestment from space exploration. But there were plenty of pessimistic takes on the future. In Bladerunner all the animals are dead, in Alien everything is run by evil corporations, in Battlestar Galactica everyone dies, in Star Wars whole worlds are destroyed, apocalyptic visions are common. Getting the dates wrong is not the same as being optimistic.
Star Wars whole worlds are destroyed
Sure. But that happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Folks make it sound like it was some kind of analogy to Vietnam, with the Vietcong being the good guys. Which is just absurd. Get your politics out of my SciFi!
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... That's what you got from Asimov?
Yep. You have something to add?
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now take that and replace "robots" with "shareholders". perspective of every single big shareholder today.
I'd rather replace zealots with shareholders.
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Alien nailed it
Their decision to trap the physical hardware in the 1980s is very evocative.
The whole setting feels like a crystalized moment in US history.
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Yep. You have something to add?
You are absolutely correct that is a major theme, especially in the Foundation books. To be fair, Asimov also buried that point in ponderous prose and scattered it across centuries of book-time.
I think Goyer did the best one could do in adapting Foundation to visual media. He had to invent and re-imagine a lot in order to give continuity and cohesion to a sprawling story. If he had stayed more true to the books, it would have flopped instantly.
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Nuclear rockets could have easily made space relatively cheap. The tech was actively tested by NASA, and it worked pretty well. Nixon canceled that program and saddled NASA with a mandate for a Shuttle without the proper funding.
The USSR's manned program, OTOH, was built mostly to hit a number of firsts (first dog in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first space walk, etc.), but do it as quickly as possible. This resulted in a series of "get it done right the fuck now" decisions. NASA did it the slow way, with each technical advancement building on the last, which is better in the long run (if you fund it, mind you). Russia did enough to build Soyuz and then ran that for decades.
The tech did not hit physical limits. The two major approaches to space flight hit different bureaucratic limits first.
Relevant article regarding NASA's current bureaucratic limits: https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm
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Dystopias on the other hand, were way too optimistic about how long it would take for everything to turn to shit.
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I saw Back to the Future 2 last night.
Ah, the distant future of 10 years ago!
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If there is anything about the 90s that I always found fun is just how everyone and everything anticipated the year 2000.
Spoilers, it all starts going to shit in November when the Supreme Court selects Bush as president along party lines.
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Old sci-fi be like
We've discovered a technology that explores the fundamental truths of human nature, gaze into the black mirror and reflect upon your modern folly.
...Also all the scientists are straight white men and we invented new ways for our women to cook dinner.
Edit: To be clear, old sci-fi is genuinely great. Merely pointing out the funny juxtaposition of nerdy white guys not fathoming any social change in their generally progressive and thought provoking works.
Fallout was the future to them. Before the bombs dropped.
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Spoilers, it all starts going to shit in November when the Supreme Court selects Bush as president along party lines.
Kindly do not remind me of that...
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Yep. You have something to add?
Seems a little reductive, especially when some of the whiny zealots are the robots themselves
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I have a copy of Popular Science from May of 1958, and they talk about nuking the moon twice, then building a missile base on it. That seems way more realistic.
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Lost in space took place in 1999!
Not forgetting our permanent Moonbase!
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Not forgetting our permanent Moonbase!
Dear God...
