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

[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.