speculative fiction that attempts to feel out how something that fits the exact use of the modern internet might work (I remember reading a Stanislaw Lem book that went on & on about the internet but made out of cassette tapes) because they were written half a century ago or books that get starried-eyed about what the internet might turn out to be used for (wHaT iF yOu HaVe To BuY aIr OnLiNe. Id even r what book this was) to be incredibly tedious.
It's gotten to the point that when looking for books to read, if a book is scifi & written before y2k I just straight up skip it. I have no tolerance anymore for people from the 60's speculating on what the internet might be. Anyone else get this?
dude i don't even know how to respond to this. does every sci-fi book you read happen to have proto-internet in it? and do you not enjoying thinking about how things could be different? Like, what if the internet was actually a net benefit to humanity? (remember when we thought people were idiots because of a lack of access to information?) There are so many good books and stories pre-2000 I cannot possible understand how you can write them all off
ps what lem book was it
does every sci-fi book you read happen to have proto-internet in it
I never said that it does, not sure where you'd get the impression that I think that they all do aside from you just making stuff up for me to believe in so you can be more right than me without engaging in what I'm actually saying, in which case, why bother actually commenting on the post? Just go be smugger than the people you imagine in your head elsewhere
if a book is scifi & written before y2k I just straight up skip it. I have no tolerance anymore for people from the 60’s speculating on what the internet might be.
I can see where they got the impression
rrright, I'm not saying they shouldn't do them, I'm saying this specific exact kind of them makes books unreadable for me. Like, as a personal taste thing
I dunno.. I like old Sci Fi in the same way raygun gothic is kind of charming. It's kinda like peeking into an impossible future that never was. You can tell a lot about a culture by the things they look forward to, or their apprehensions towards future... (i believe the quote was: "The past is imaginary, the future is symbolic")
In this sense i get the feeling this current generation of readers is very invested in the accuracy of speculative fiction, because the balance of capitalistic value leans heavily towards chasing the ghost of "innovation." So sci fi has become the gospel for the innovation industry that drives capital these days. But in the same sense i feel current sci fi has lost a lot of the "spirituality" of old sci fi; Dunno must be the lack of psychedelic drugs, but i am finding it hard to find contemporary sci fi novels about spiritual or mental revolutions; even in stories where there is some spiritual aspects handled as technology it feels like spiritual life becomes instrumentalized or commodified. That Psychedelic mystery is rare on current sci fi.
I dunno… I like old Sci Fi in the same way raygun gothic is kind of charming. It’s kinda like peeking into an impossible future that never was.
Same, especially when you can see little bits of that future people were certain was going to happen, like an integral part of Snowcrash and others is an internet where the only way to access content is via a Second-Life style video game, and there's Second Life, webVR, and any of the like dozen other attempts to make the internet resemble a physical space full of people.
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge is nice imo. Part of it's spent witnessing the development of a civilization as it transitions from a sort of feudalism to industrial revolution. And the other part is relating to a cobbled space station of two human civilizations marooned in a solar system together because of sabotage disguised as as an accident.
It's interesting since it both focuses heavily on characters, how the material conditions civilization finds itself in will guide how it develops, and what space travel would most likely be like without methods of traveling vast distances FTL. Hell it even discusses space mercantilism in a similar analogous way to old sailing where it takes for fucking ever to get to your destination with the goods you're selling and there's the possibility that everything can change when you get there and have to either hope whoever there will want to deal with you or whatever.
Another nice thing is there's no galactic empire or multi-system spanning imperialism because of how devastatingly hard it is to maintain any kind of communication beyond your own solar system. It always bugs the fuck out of me when sci-fi writers write monarchist and feudalist apologia into their stories. It happens so fucking many times I want to write a book where a galactic empire gets fucking torched with it's nobility launched into a star because dumb fuck sci-fi writers seem incapable to write anything other than "space imperialism good"
tbf in later series it's revealed most people only pretend to read his essays and are just into his aesthetic which has become commercialized(magical truth saying bastard spider anime, his glasses for sale, etc)
this was something I found funny about Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep
fully-immersive VR technology is commonplace and even part of the dominant religion's rituals, but the media is still primarily TV and radio
Are you suggesting that the internet replaced TV and radio or that VR will eventually replace TV and radio? Because I gotta say that most people (and a lot of people online) predominantly interact with others around strictly linear, fictional media pieces like GoT, the Mandolorean, whatever superhero fantasy movie du jour is currently predominant in the world today.
