Old SF

[woodwardiocom]

I'm currently reading David Brin's Earth which is a fine disaster novel (though it's so green and crunchy you'd think Capn' Crunch had a kid with a leprechaun). It was written around 1990, and makes a valiant effort to predict what the future of the Internet will look like. As with all such novels from around 1990, it's wrong in ways both funny and annoying.

Now, "wrong predicitions" are hardly a new thing in SF. Back prior to 1965 or so the entire future of humanity in space was a constant thing in SF, and all those spaceships-built-in-backyards and moonbases-by-1999 didn't happen. And yet, those failed predictions do not become annoying when I go back and reread them, since they're so darn optimistic. They are a future-slash-present I would like to live in.

Whereas, the false Internets, from Gibsonian cyberspace to Brin's ferret programs, are rarely optimistic, and when they are, the reality has made them trite: Yes, we have shared virtual hallucinations, but we use them to play World of Warcraft, not to do real work.

(Or it might be just me. I have a soft spot for Golden Age SF the size of an elephant's fontanel, but I judge "modern" SF more harshly.)

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

One of Vinge's novels talks about the Failed Dreams. I suppose it gains a little extra irony from the fact that Vinge is writing about interstellar merchant fleets with, apparently, hundreds of ships. . . .

[minkrose]

The first time I read SiaSL, back in 2001, the concept of making a wall out of stacks of extra mail wasn't entirely bizarre. When I re-read it a few years later, it completely pulled me out of the book. Electronic mail seems like a pretty easy concept to come up with (the ceiling e-book-reader is something I would still REALLY LIKE TO HAVE), so it surprised me that it was overlooked.

Lately, most of my sci-fi comes from Escape Pod, so this isn't an issue. But I have a pile of Asimov from Andy, since I've barely read any, and I'm curious to see what I find in there.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

E-mail was probably a lot harder to imagine back when a large, expensive mainframe had far less capacity than a lot of people's phones have now. Moore's Law was still four years in the future when Stranger came out; I don't think it was that big a blind spot for Heinlein not to anticipate the explosive growth in processing power that made the Internet workable at the consumer level.

[minkrose]

Sure, but if that's the limitation we're assuming, I feel like endless electronic BOOKS is just as inconceivable. It's a useful, everyday item, so I can see why books would be a good choice for a fancy upgrade (especially since your audience clearly likes reading). But why not mail? It's even a similar category of item. And I thought there were other information networks that existed? I don't remember; it's been too long since I read it.

My point was, the books SPECIFICALLY were the reason I found the physical mail out of place. But that's also the point of the future: we have no idea what is going to be redesigned and suddenly, magically, be totally different.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

One thing you may be gratified to find is that Asimov was down with personal computers and electronic media as early as 1951. See "The Fun They Had" and FOUNDATION's first section.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

That's one of Pham's reflective moments in DEEPNESS IN THE SKY, isn't it? The Qeng Ho might think of themselves as merchants, but they are closer to being a distributed colonial power with numerous missions of just a few separate vessels for safety. And the whole Zones of Thought background blunts the irony a bit more.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I always took those books to be something along the lines of microfilm. Basically mechanical and optical tech with maybe electronic controls. But I don't feel ambitious enough to wade through either edition of the novel to find someone reading a book so I can check. . . .

[minkrose]

We own both, but everything is packed because we're moving in 4 days (I might have a digital copy somewhere, but I don't think it's on my laptop).

It's totally possible that I imagined a more-awesome book reader than was intended! I guess there was space in the text for imagination, which makes sense. But, the mailbags niggle the back of my brain anytime I recommend the book to a new reader. On the other hand, that is part of the weird fun of reading older books. Obviously, the experience is highly memorable!

[minkrose]

I read an introduction in one of the books (I cannot recall which one) written by Asimov, talking about what he got right, and what he didn't quite get. I actually found it a million times more fascinating than whatever the first story was, and promptly lost interest! I was much more interested in his process of writing and learning about science in general. I suspect that may be one of the things you're referring to? But if not, I am at least aware of it... I just never found hard science fiction particularly compelling. Heck, I almost completely abandoned SiaSL after the second page -- I thought my new friend had made a Terrible Mistake in recommending it to me. But, I have a lot of respect for Asimov as an author, so I haven't given up yet. And I loved science in school & my dad's a scientist -- I have no idea why hard sci-fi isn't my thing.

(At the moment, all our books are in boxes because we're moving in 4 days, but I know which box my To Read books are in, so at least I know where the Asimov books are.)

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That experience is all too familiar! All our books were in boxes on June 17, when we moved into our new apartment. Now all but a few are on the shelves, and it's a great relief to have access. I can see both editions of Stranger just a bit beyond arm's reach (chorale thought we should keep both in case we ever wanted to compare them); it's just lack of time and ambition that keeps me from searching through one of them for a scene of someone reading a book . . .

no, wait a minute, I remember one such scene, when Jill is spending her first night in Jubal's house. It's Part Two, Chapter X, p. 116 in the restored edition: She found a spool of Kipling's Just So Stories and took it happily upstairs with her. . . .[she] slid the spool into the reading machine, lay back and scanned the words streaming across the ceiling. Presently the speed control slipped out of her relaxed fingers, the lights went out, and she slept.

A "spool" sounds to me like it could easily be microfilm, and that's what I took it to be in 1964, when I first read Stranger (if I recall correctly); nothing specifically evokes electronic storage to me. On the other hand, Between Planets does have a scene with a text on advanced theoretical physics stored on a nearly microscopic wire that looks to be something like magnetic data storage, so Heinlein wasn't unaware of the concept. On the other other hand, Jubal is so cranky he doesn't always answer his phone and sometimes unplugs it; he might well not have e-mail even if it were available, and he surely would not have a publicly known address!

I'm going with optical media, I think, but I have to grant the evidence is inconclusive.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

But Earth is right about enough things that there's a wiki devoted to tracking them. I've been thinking for a few years now that I should read it again.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it might just be you, because I'm the other way around. I really dislike 90 percent of Golden Age SF, to the point where it almost chased me away from the genre entirely. I cannot handle the overt sexism and sometimes racism and the disappearing of everyone else.

Its not that I blame the authors exactly, they were creatures of their times, as am I, and god knows what I'm not seeing. And as you say, wrong predictions are nothing unusual.

But the casual assumption that the straight white protestant male would rule the roost forever and ever, down to under the sea and out to the stars... well, to me they feel like dystopias that think they are utopias, which I find much creepier than worlds where the characters and author would agree with me that they're screwed up.

I would loathe to live in that future/present. I like to think I would be leading the revolution, but probably I would just be taking Valium and thinking it was my fault that I wasn't satisfied to stay home and nag while my husband herded asteroids and my son built a rocket in the backyard, and my daughter pined for a boy who could build a rocket in HIS back yard, because she wants an adventure but she's not allowed one of her own.

I know, of course, that that's not the part of it that you meant you wanted to live in at all. But I can't separate it. To me the bigotry is the taproot of the optimism, a world that lets a young white male believe he can do anything he dreams of all by himself or with a close friend or two is only possible if hidden Epsilons or house elves are doing the hard group and infrastructure work of it somewhere out of sight.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

My soft spot does not prevent me from recognizing that John Campbell's sexism and bigotry did, and is continuing to do, a lot of damage to the SF genre.

(I actually moderated a "John Campbell — Threat Or Menace?" panel at Arisia a few years back...)