Stupid Questions May 2015

Gondolinian

This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.

Has any science fiction writer ever announced that he or she has given up writing in that genre because technological progress has pretty much ended?

Because if you think about it, the idea of sending someone to the moon has gone from science fiction to a brief technological reality ~ 45 years ago back to science fiction again.

Has any science fiction writer ever announced that he or she has given up writing in that genre because technological progress has pretty much ended?

Charlie Stross has expressed disappointment that technological change hasn't been as rapid as he hoped for in the mid 1990s, but that's a very different claim. I don't think anyone has claimed that progress has stopped completely, and it would be very strange to do so. Yes, the specific technologies involved in space travel have not progressed much but even in those areas progress is still occurring: the ri... (read more)

2listic11y

Haven't heard about such an accident. Why do you ask? Can't figure how the second paragraph demonstrates that technological progress has ended (by the way, do you mean it stopped or it really reached its logical conclusion?). Rather, it illustrates its ever more rapid pace. And that might be a problem for science fiction: where formerly readers were excited to read fiction about strange new things that science could bring in the future, nowadays they are rather overwhelmed with the strange new things they already have, and afraid and unwilling to look into the future; it's not that the science fiction cannot show it. Charles Stross has written about it (don't have the exact link; sorry)

5ChristianKl11y

Science fiction is about imaging how the future would look like and not essentially about space travel. Bruce Sterling even managed to write science fiction that happens at the same year it's written with Zeitgeist. It's a quite good book. It manages to name Osama Bin Ladin as a significant player even through it's written in 1999 (and published a year later). It also features the NSA and how they manage to wiretap everything in the world. Technological progress also hasn't ended. 20 years ago flying drones bringing your packages to your door step was science fiction and today Amazon rolls out field trials where they do that. Given how technology prices change the costs of bugging equipment sinks fast. Cheap bugging that can be deployed by individuals features a role in Bruce Sterling's Distraction. The book also looks at a gene-manipulated guy who lives in a country where gene manipulation is outlawed and as a result he can't run for office. There plenty of technology and change to be written about. Apart from that the future is "Old people in cities who are afraid of the sky".