Dystopias on the other hand, were way too optimistic about how long it would take for everything to turn to shit.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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But their computers are still the size of a room and everyone smokes
You jest! Asimov’s computers are the size of planets.
The ones that aren't people, at least.
Their computers have AGI already. Our computers consume more energy than entire countries to make studio Ghibli fakes and autocomplete on steroids.
"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" is one of the best self-aware computer novels.
I love that in the novel the computer has already become self aware before it attempts something really difficult - creating a CGI face for itself
Don't forget the reels of tape lmao
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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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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.
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?
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The rapid progress and then stalling is not caused by lack of investment, it's the harsh reality of physics.
We cracked how to have machines fly like birds and then it's low hanging fruit to achieve amazing things in atmosphere.
While exploring that, rocketry makes nearby space possible, and the moon is "right there".
But then things are exponentially farther away, and many of them bigger gravity wells, making the trips too long and difficult to make two way trips.
In a very very short time we got heavier than air flight, rocketry, fission, mass production, and all sorts of robotics and computing. But reach breakthrough has a point where we scratch our heads trying to do better. A ton has been spent and will continue to be spent trying to crack controlled fusion. Someone that lived through us managing to split an atom for the first time to fairly widespread deployment naturally assumed fusion would be next and maybe not too long after something that would extract energy directly according to Einstein's most famous formula.
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.
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Plenty of things could have been done with proper investment even before going to Mars. Reusable rockets, cheaper launch systems, more flights to the moon, moon bases, space stations. Yes, Mars is difficult but it would be easier with well established presence in the orbit and on the moon. All of this happened way too late (or never) because no one wanted to invest in it.
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Meanwhile, Asimov: We'll have robots that will help us accomplish crazy shit but stupid zealots will keep whining about it and holding them back
This is in no way relevant to anything that's happening today.
now take that and replace "robots" with "shareholders". perspective of every single big shareholder today.
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Technology had been advancing at a breakneck pace for over a century. It’s not crazy for them to think that would keep happening.
Isn’t it though? Each age has had its technological advance that defines that age. But at no time did the next age come immediately. It was always reasonable to assume that after electricity there would be yet another lull before the next paradigm shifting innovation. It seems to me that the great lie of capitalism has been convincing people that every new product is that next great innovation.
Steam power gave way almost immediately to electricity, which gave way to nuclear technologies, which gave way to information technology, all building on what came before.
And then there’s all the various transportation technologies that happened at the same time. Going from the first flight to the Moon in under 70 years it’s no wonder, to me at least, that people thought we’d be on Mars by now.
Especially with Walt Disney putting a Nazi rocket scientist on TV a bunch of times.
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We went from the first flight, to the first spaceflight in 58 years. 8 years after that, we put humans on the moon. I don't think it was unreasonable for scifi writers in the 70s and early 80s to have glorious ideas about what we would accomplish in another 20-30 years.
I used to wonder if I would ever walk on the moon or Mars during my lifetime when I was a kid. I miss that
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.
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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To be fair; the less commercial stuff was better at that.
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Realistically speaking I’d rewrite those numbers to 202003 (in accordance to Gregorian calendar)
Are there any particularly good sci-fi novels with wild and imaginative ideas? I love trying to visualize and recreate the scenes in my mind after reading a novel.
No please don't.
There's nothing inherently wrong with enjoying fiction in this mode, but doing that to old scifi without trying to figure out the moral valence of shit/editorial position of the writer is kind of how we got here.
The industrial and technological revolutions were a cause of radical change in human civilization. It was inspiring to think we would continue to grow instead of monetizing every last vestige of this world and our psyches?!
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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
If there is anything about the 90s that I always found fun is just how everyone and everything anticipated the year 2000.
The night is 2000. I am walking around central london with my dad and his friends, drinking champagne from a bottle despite being underage. We are not near the place we are meant to be to see the fireworks display. The sky fills with coloured lights as giant fireworks are being let off and illuminating the entire heavens with one artificial colour at a time.
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The year is 2025 And humanity is once again trying to reinvent the wheel
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PK Dick: Everything's been nuked and there are feral psychics roaming the wasteland stealing people's emotions.
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.
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One of the defining characteristics of that eras literature, not just sci-fi, is a reflection of the cultural belief in a narrative history.
The belief that society will advance, and that there's an inevitable direction that things will go even if there are setbacks.
In my teens, the year 2000 was unreal. It embodied THE FUTURE - it was so far away.
Edit: centuries even.
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