I love old sci-fi
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What's this from?
"Journey to the Moon", I believe - a silent movie from the 20s (?).
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What's this from?
A trip to the moon. 1902
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PK Dick: Everything's been nuked and there are feral psychics roaming the wasteland stealing people's emotions.
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The people writing science fiction were trying to make a living.
They wrote for magazines and TV shows that depended on advertising. A bunch of midcentury advertisers weren't going to have a Black wom,an President.
Another thing to consider is how much change you can put into a story and still expect the average reader to keep up.
There was an article about an early Star Trek episode. One scene involved a couple of lines about a salt shaker. The production team went out and brought a bunch of wild looking salt shakers. [1960's, remember?] None of the 'futuristic' looking salt shakers was any good for the scene, because they realized the TV audience wouldn't understand what that funny looking thing was. In the end they used an ordinary looking shaker.
And then they repurposed the weird-looking salt shakers as medical instruments.
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"Journey to the Moon", I believe - a silent movie from the 20s (?).
It’s the 20s right now. Need the 19-
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It's the future we could have had; if line didn't have to go up.
wrote last edited by [email protected]But line has to go up.
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Me too. My dream home would be inspired by Forbidden Planet
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The year is 2025
And humanity is once again trying to reinvent the wheel -
Nuclear energy was subsidized to make atom bombs seem less threatening.
If we'd spent as much on renewables and improving the power grid we'd have been off the fossil fuel addiction years ago.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Nuclear energy is both sustainable and safe. It was given a bad reputation by the fossil fuel industry to keep us buying oil.
Well here we are. We could have eliminated the vast majority of fossil fuel use by the 1960s when solar and wind energy were in their infancy.
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Even Superman had hover taxis by 1990.
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The year is 2025
And humanity is once again trying to reinvent the wheelAnd failing, but we can't use the old obes anymore. Maintaning them is a crime. So we just gave to roll around on little cubes listening to the axles creak until that heavy smack...
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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.
To be fair; the less commercial stuff was better at that.
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Naomi Klein wrote about how older sci fi was so optimistic and how she thinks the current trend of depressing dystopian sci fi is bad for society, which was an interesting take I thought.
Herzog said 'we are running out if images' and that shit's real.
Both are saying the fire of our imaginations is dead, and strongly implying that we have forgotten how to even hope.
And, like... We have. We have forgotten how to imagine better, to want better, to build a tomorrow, because tomorrow is on the far side on this raging river of blood that is rapidly flooding, and the time we could have built a bridge is so very long past.
And proposing we switch the terror from white to red for five seconds is a thing you're not allowed to say.
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But their computers are still the size of a room and everyone smokes
Everyone still smokes. Our computers are the size of an apartment block; they make you not xall customer service and have wild new mental illness instead.
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I agree.
you can see it in stories as simple as Star trek.
the after TNG it was about world building and character development.
then the reboot movie happened and it was about booms, zooms, and dooms after that.
the only thing that was remotely similar was season 2 of Picard. I haven't watched 3 yet so IDK about it.
discovery is(and I mean this in the most platonic way), common TV garbage. I get the same feeling from it as I get from any other modern "syfy" show.
wrote last edited by [email protected]What about SNW?
The vibe I'm getting is "we're eager and optimistic, but also, things get bad, the larger landscape is kinda bad and we are trying to hold straight faces?"
It feels very 2020s.
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The people writing science fiction were trying to make a living.
They wrote for magazines and TV shows that depended on advertising. A bunch of midcentury advertisers weren't going to have a Black wom,an President.
Another thing to consider is how much change you can put into a story and still expect the average reader to keep up.
There was an article about an early Star Trek episode. One scene involved a couple of lines about a salt shaker. The production team went out and brought a bunch of wild looking salt shakers. [1960's, remember?] None of the 'futuristic' looking salt shakers was any good for the scene, because they realized the TV audience wouldn't understand what that funny looking thing was. In the end they used an ordinary looking shaker.
A bunch of midcentury advertisers weren't going to have a Black wom,an President.
And neither did 21st century American voters.
Ba-dum tssssss
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I mean... the one first 1950s sci-fi story I ever read as a kid was The Sound of Thunder. It is and will always be the first thing I think about when it comes to 50s sci-fi. And that story isn't exactly happy or optimistic about humanity fucking around with tech and time, lol.
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The more I learn about our modern age, the more I start to feel that the premise of the Matrix isn't such a bad deal at all. Normally, we should be there by now, the machine war ended decades ago.
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Naomi Klein wrote about how older sci fi was so optimistic and how she thinks the current trend of depressing dystopian sci fi is bad for society, which was an interesting take I thought.
I think she's right. There is certainly a space in fiction for depressing dystopias, but personally, I think that it is also important to make space for hopeful stories about the future. Else it's just too dark. Our news are depressing, our lives are depressing. Our fiction is depressing. If there isn't much positive stuff to look forward to, then what's the point? In the 1930s, 40s and 50s where war and crisis and recovery was on the menu, fiction tended to be more comforting and hopeful.
That's why Disney's Snow White was such a massive success in 1937. It gave people a break from their lives and allowed them to dream themselves away to a different world where everything was a bit simpler, where the downtrodden, yet hardworking and kind herione is rewarded for her efforts in the end. Many people may nor have had that happy ending themselves, but it must have given them some hope to watch a film about someone just like them who managed to pull through in the end and have her worth validated.
