Future Sci-Fi

[Nolgroth]

So, as I was thinking just now of my campaign setting, a curious question popped into my head. What would "science fiction literature" encompass when we have left Earth and settled on worlds separated by light years, have developed (assuming it's even possible) FTL travel, and use energy weapons in warfare? Would there even be a science fiction genre as we amass more knowledge and would sci-fi novels like we read today become more like techno-thrillers? Would we revert to other genres or would there remain some mystery left in the universe that we could explore through sci-fi literature?

 

You know, I can't recall a single "science fiction" holodeck program from ST:tNG. Sherlock Holmes, Jungle Safari, medieval romance, pulp era Detective Stories, but not one "sci-fi" program that wasn't for training. The metaplot is obvious; we're watching a sci-fi show, so we are treated to how sci-fi characters deal with the classics of other genres. No surprise there. Isn't it strange though that "speculative fiction" seems so neglected? I will admit that Star Trek would be pretty high on the ATRI scale from Terran Empire, so maybe they wouldn't need to speculate on what may be. What comes next may well fall into the "indistinguishable from magic" law so sci-fi may well loop reasonably back into what we now call fantasy.

 

Thoughts?

[Dale A. Ward]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

You know' date=' I can't recall a single "science fiction" holodeck program from ST:tNG. Sherlock Holmes, Jungle Safari, medieval romance, pulp era Detective Stories, but not one "sci-fi" program that wasn't for training. [/quote']

 

What about Tom Paris's interpretation of "Captain Proton"?!?

 

Okay... okay... so it wasn't TNG... it was Voyager. And, it was technically "Pulp Era Sci Fi".

 

I say it still counts!

 

 

 

As for looping around to the Fantasy genre... an interesting prospect. You're probably right!

[austenandrews]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

I firmly believe there will always be frontiers.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

The problem is trying to look two steps ahead. Today's science fiction is quite different from the science fiction of the fifties, which is in turn different from the science fiction of the Victorian era. Why? Because sci-fi authors work with the ideas generated by the scientific community, writing stories about "how would you feel, and what might not happen to you" if some of the speculative science came to pass.

 

For example, there are no Victorian nanotech-related stories. Why? Because none of the authors of that time had ever heard of the concept of nanotechnology.

 

The further into the future we look, the more of the sci-fi writers' ideas are things that we haven't developed yet, even as ideas.

 

From the perspective of trying to depict the science fiction of the future, it's rather pointless--all we would be doing would be having characters from a near-future setting reading about a far-future setting.

 

Hmm. I feel like I'm dancing around the point I'm trying to make. Try this: at any given point in time, science fiction authors are creating works exploring the future--near, intermediate, and far--to the best of their ability to see it from that point in time.

 

Hmm again. Let me come at this from another angle: consider speculative fiction set in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Such works have changed dramatically over the past hundred years. Some imagined possibilties have become fact. Some have become impossible. Also, things not imagined in the early days have come to pass. The same thing will happen to speculative fiction set in, say, the 2300's.

 

I think I've lost track of what I was trying to say.

 

Zeropoint

[DEFCON Clown]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

Don't worry it came across anyway.

[Yansuf]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

What we now call "technothrillers", which are usually novels about hypothetical future wars, were once considered science fiction.

I still do.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

What about Tom Paris's interpretation of "Captain Proton"?!?

 

Okay... okay... so it wasn't TNG... it was Voyager. And, it was technically "Pulp Era Sci Fi".

 

I say it still counts!

Only watched the pilot of v'ger and was totally not impressed. Never went beyond that. I will say that the video game "Elite Force" was rather fun until they dropped the big boss monster at the end. "Yup, we've run out of story development ideas, drop the boss monster in.'

 

As for looping around to the Fantasy genre... an interesting prospect. You're probably right!

Hmmmn. I don't know. Escpecially since I read the entire thread before responding. I think that the fantasy loop is certainly a possibility, but is it the only one.

 

This was just a curious thought on what would be speculative in a time where what we speculate now exists.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

I firmly believe there will always be frontiers.

I certainly hope so. I just wonder what the frontiers will look like.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

From the perspective of trying to depict the science fiction of the future' date=' it's rather pointless--all we would be doing would be having characters from a near-future setting reading about a far-future setting.[/quote']First of all, I think this paragraph sums up your point exactly. I suppose that was the point of what I was trying to say. Since we tend to understand the physical sciences moreso than even fifty years ago, we tell stories about nanotechnology and warp drives. How far can scientific progress move forward before speculative fiction, as we know it, runs out of room? How about readers from a far-future setting reading about an even further future setting? As you said, it is kind of pointless to try to predict where science is going to take us, but it may be fun to "make stuff up" to see where different people imagine where it would go.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

What we now call "technothrillers", which are usually novels about hypothetical future wars, were once considered science fiction.

I still do.

I suppose they are sci-fi in some way, except that I consider technothrillers possible with current or Real Soon Now tech. I see science fiction as taking tech that we envision, but cannot necessarily produce now or RSN and developing stories with it as a major element of the story.

[Curufea]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

Of course, science fiction can be set in any time period. Space ships do not make science fiction. We have them now.

 

Giving gun technology to the Roman Empire makes it a science fiction setting in the past, for example.

Having Leonardo Da Vinci, or Charles Babbage, build more of their inventions and create production lines would also be science fiction in past time periods.

 

We can easily imagine what their science fiction entertainments would be.

[Midas]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

I would say that, in a "hard" SF future with merely more advanced stuff that we have already, the popular reading would be higher tech SF or Space Opera.

 

For example, take the current Battlestar Galactica. In their spare time on Mudball (New Caprica) they have come up with a cycle of stories about an alterate Galactica where the Colonial Warriors had energy weapons ("They look something like this ", the Vipers were armed with lasers instead of machine guns, the Cylons were lumbering dorks with tiny energy rifles that never hit anything, whenever things got too desperate a "Ship of Lights" would show up and provide a way out, Baltar is a scheming weasel (well OK, that wasn't a stretch)...

 

Midas

[austenandrews]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

Vipers have machine guns?

 

Never mind, I don't wanna know.

[Sundog]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

Vipers have machine guns?

 

Never mind, I don't wanna know.

 

Ah, give the new BG a try. It's really well done, no disgrace to the original.

 

I suspect that whatever we DON'T find out there will be the stuff of their Sci-Fi. If we find no aliens, their speculation will be on alien possibilities. If there's no way to cheat Einstein and go ftl, they'll have stories about the possibilities of intersteller travel without using slowboats.

 

There's always something new.

[Tom Carman]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

Only watched the pilot of v'ger and was totally not impressed. Never went beyond that. I will say that the video game "Elite Force" was rather fun until they dropped the big boss monster at the end. "Yup' date=' we've run out of story development ideas, drop the boss monster in.'[/quote']

Oooh, you never got to see Captain Proton? Chaotica! Master! of the Universe!? Arachnya, Queen of the Spider People? There's a filk song by Harmony Heifers about that episode, called "Bride of Chaotica", and Captain Proton appeared in a few previous ones. The whole thing was pure 1930's Republic Studios sword and blaster serial, in thrilling black-and-white.

[Mentor]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

Maybe a high tech, space faring civilization would have Sci Fi based around the ideal Biotech absolute immunity, regen, or agelessness. Likewise, a really biologically/medically advanced culture might still use antigrav, translight speed, or miracle materials technology as their version of sci fi. I don't think people will ever stop dreaming.

[Nyrath]

Re: Future Sci-Fi

 

In E.E. "Doc" Smith's LENSMAN series, at one point our hero Kimball Kinnison goes undercover as a writer. While doing his secret agent stuff, he writes a science fiction space opera to keep his cover intact.

 

Which is amusing since the LENSMAN series is as much of a space opera as it is possible to be.