How do we "fix" science-fiction?

How do we "fix" science-fiction?

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Remove aliens
Remove magic
Remove teleports
Remove FTL
Remove AI

Leave the utopia/dystopia stuff out, write entertainment not politics

the politics is the entertainment
all the best sci fi is politics
everythign else is just a setting to explore the politics

write some interesting politics instead of just reposting shitty modern politics, then.

Star Trek and Star Wars is infinitely more interesting than a grim re-telling of why Communism is bad and Trump is the end of mankind with such bad bigotism and how democracy is going to fail because it's shitty. In other words, futurism and trying to describe or explain a world that doesn't or that might exist, not grinding your sci-fi in modern bullshit that happens to be popular at the time.

you could try a more childish style of scifi
let players come up with their own stuff and screw the rules a bit. doing crazy fun shit with the limits of science and the infinite possibiltiies of space, then havign space adventures with cool stuff.

You...you do realize The Original Series of Star Trek was, like, 75% made up of episodes that were allegories for things happening in that moment in time, or which had happened, right? There's literally a Vietnam War episode ("A Private Little War").

Make science and technology the focus of the story. Explore how a certain fictional advanced technology would shape human civilisation as we know it.
And don't forget to set a compelling, human story against this backdrop.

maybe use new science as the base of your sci-fi concept instead of being stuck with 1960s science?

come on, the corpse of that thread is still warm

Good science ficion is not about spaceship combat and laserguns.

But that doesnt mean Spaceship combat and laser guns are bad.
Its the window dressing. Dont skip on aliens either. Sci Fi without aliens always suffers from Game of Thrones syndrome "its so realistic and believeable it only has humans" No thats not the point.


See good science fiction does one thing and it realy only need to do that thing.

>Face Humans with an issue that isnt possible today
>Look how it turns out

Thats what good science fiction is.
This can be Dune for example, face Humans with an exceptional substance that can prolong life almost indefinitly and is also required for space flight.
Now let them bicker about it.

Or Bladerunner: Imagine a synthetic Human, is that a Human now? How would it be treated by society if it acquired free will?

Even Star Trek counts to some degree: Humanity has ascended to a state of an actual Utopia.

Now see how they interact with societies that are not, how would humanity solve the problems of radically different species they encounter

Ultimatley thats what good sci fi is. its about "What if" questions.

All the other stuff, space ships, aliens, lasers and whatnot.
Thats all just fancy windowdressing.

Kick out all the liberals. Focus on the pulp roots of science fiction, and the pure joy of sword and planet. Don't let the SJW infestation hollow it out.

We need more stories like John Carter, Starship Troopers and Star Wars, and less like anything the Hugos have recently granted awards to.

eh..not a physicist/mathematician/computerscientist (biofag); but the important discoveries haven't changed that much from a sci-fi writing standpoint

>interstellar travel: in the 60s it was nuclear propulsion, solar sails and warp drives; today it's antimatter propulsion, laser assisted solar sails and warp drives
>robots: 60s: Robots; today: Robots
>AI: same as with robots
>cyborgs: same shit, just with more detail now?
>mutants etc: 60s it was gene therapy and in vitro genetic engineering; today its CRISPR/Cas9
>terraforming/huge stellar structures: ....we haven't made any advances towards that

what did we discover that would be cool for sci-fi since the 60s? I know we have discovered a lot, but it was never something that would completely change the stuff we are even able to imagine, really.

The only thing i can think of is Hawking radiation, that opens the concept of black holes disappearing and their radiated energy being "harvested". Sure we discovered the Higgs boson, but that just made some sci-fi stories (and of course a huge many of scientific theories) more plausible; but it didn't change the dream (same thing with the discovery of the interlocked photons, which made "hard light" like lightsabers more plausible, but it wasn't a new concept for sci-fi)

Translation: "Remove everything I personally don't like."

>Remove AI
Why?

Retro sci-fi was the pinnicle of the settings.

Very carefully

Stop watching sci-fi movies and tv.

Read more sci-fi. Especially short fiction, most of the coolest shit is happening there. All your favorite sci-fi authors started with short stories.
Read their short stories if you haven't already!

Sci-fi doesn't need fixing, you're just looking in the wrong place.

It shouldn't surprise you that the Hugo Awards are disappointing. The nomination system is rigged on a large scale, and it's quite easy to get your books into every category if you have a network of willing participants.

get rid of the blight known as scifi short story anthologies

>a grim re-telling of why Communism is bad and Trump is the end of mankind with such bad bigotism and how democracy is going to fail because it's shitty. In other words, futurism and trying to describe or explain a world that doesn't or that might exist, not grinding your sci-fi in modern bullshit that happens to be popular at the time.
What sci-fi is currently doing this?

The best thing that ever happened to Starship Troopers was turning it into satire.

i have a some editions of isaac asimovs science fiction magazine at home
1/10th is just great stuff. Most of it is just wierd or goofy shit, worse than anything /tg comes up with (in therms of self insertion, crassness, sillyness....)
i love it

>Remove AI
Remove Evil Killer AI and Omnipotent Super AI.

I know it was meant to be satire, but as I grow older I enjoy it more perfectly straight.

agreed. I love the movie and it actually made me read the book
now i prefer the book

>short stories are good
>short stories are bad

HMMMM

make more stuff like this

We need more Dyson Spheres (swarms).

>I like it more as a full throated endorsement of military brainwashing and totalitarian propaganda
wew lad just wait until you hear about the book.

>there's only one person on /tg

Well, yeah. It's the same reason I really like 40K.

No terraforming. It takes too long.

Star Wars isn't sci-fi, it's a high fantasy story with science fiction trappings. The story plays out a very traditionalist, conservative farmer boy into a hero arc, and doesn't contain speculative elements that are central to sci-fi.

SciFi at it's core is the study of the application of radially extreme ideology taken to it's logical conclusion.
1984

Star Wars feels too small for a truly galactic empire. Actually no scifi depiction of a galactic empire, with few exceptions, gets even close to the scale of a true galactic empire.

I'm all for enjoying dystopian fiction but I just can't tell if people enjoy these settings because they portray something horrible or if they fantasize about it anymore.

Chuck Tingle was nominated for a Hugo, after all.

>>I like it more as a full throated endorsement of military brainwashing and totalitarian propaganda
>wew lad just wait until you hear about the book.

i honestly thought there was more nuance in the book compared to the film when it comes to that. Sure humans are monsters and they genocide a whole fucking city of humanoid aliens in the first scene with nuclear grenades and flamethrowers; but the ideology is just more fleshed out and their society makes a lot more sense given the context.

take this scene for example: youtube.com/watch?v=FoPTPe33PQY
it's a neat reference to the book as well as a subtle punch in the gut for a satire. In the book the whole reason of the guy being there, greating new recruits is fleshed out and is quite reasonable. If you can't stomach the prospect of ending up like that guy or worse you have no place being here

>How do we "fix" science-fiction?

For me the answer is simple
Less focus on aliens and traveling to far off places,
More focus on cyberpunk and what humans will do to themselves in the next 100 years.

Seriously. This is fucking fascinating stuff. In the next 50-60 years we should hit a point where cybernetics and artificial enhancement starts to hit the mass market. First it will be like iPhones and only the rich will have it. But 10-20 years after we should see it trickle down. And even if you want to resist cybernetics and artificial enhancements, how do you resist it when everyone around you has it and it basically becomes mandatory to be competitive in the workforce?
We have no idea what aliens and space travel will really be like. So rather than making space fantasy, why not write stories about this actual thing will will see happen

Defining what you think the "problem" is sounds like a good start.

Chuck Tingle is a national treasure though

that's not all of sciFi, but a section of it i really like

i just recently read 1984, after so long avoiding it and it's one of the most horrifying things i've ever read

Such an underrated post.

really? i felt that it has that feel. Just the mere existence of the death star and the construction of a fucking second one in such a short amount of time made me feel that the empire is a giant fucking colossus of an empire we only see a part of

>Dont skip on aliens either. Sci Fi without aliens always suffers from Game of Thrones syndrome "its so realistic and believeable it only has humans" No thats not the point
>Game of Thrones syndrome

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

You dumb nigger.

The death star is a joke compared to what a truly galactic empire would be able to do. Our galaxy is an enormous place with billions of stars and doubtlessly billions of habitable planets. Yet few galactic empires dare to even get close to the million-strong system.

Why not both? What's wrong with going "That society would be morally bankrupt, but I would love to be part of it."?

>send out self replicating, terraforming von Neumann probes/seeder ships
>have the whole galaxy filled with probes in a few millennia
>the first planets (near to the start with perfect conditions) are ready after about a 1000years
>send out generation ships to said planets waiting for you

While 1984 is soul crushing and bleak, I still think Huxley's Brave New World is more terrifying. In Orwell's novel state controls people by fear, but in BNW they are lured to want that control which is much more insidious. Fear and violence makes you want to rattle your cage while living in a gilded one makes you soft, fat and complacent.

Wait, was he really?

>"That society would be morally bankrupt, but I would love to be part of it."

just like our current society?

There's this sci-fi book about this exact thing going really badly with these nanomachines converting every bit of matter in the universe into habitats.

Reminder that we're basically living in the future 80's movies predicted.

That's because the galactic empire is just a backdrop for a story about plucky rag-tag team of freedom fighters. The entire story could be transplanted into nazi occupied France without having to change a thing.

sounds fun
do you know the name?

(of course it could be wrong. You are creating a technovirus infecting and changing planets. You need to create the AI/robot equivalent of a strong immune system erradicating/reprogramming all dissent machines; which is a huge task on its own)

Yep. Space Raptor Butt Invasion was Hugo nominated.

The Hugos deserve it after the HP Lovecraft debacle.

>after the HP Lovecraft debacle.
?

Reminder that the Galactic Empire in Star Wars, the Federation from Star Trek, the Padishah Empire in Dune, Asimov's Gactic Empire in The Foundation, The Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40k, etc. don't even reach type II.

Reminder that a single Dyson Sphere would crush any of these empires single-handedly without breaking a sweat.

B-b-b-but muh EU. B-b-b-but muh clones. Muh Rogue Squadron.

No one predicted social media. Even Huxley's nightmare vision pales in comparison to where it looks like we're going.

The Empire in Dune is hinted at stretching across multiple galaxies. Get better bait.

Who the fuck cares? Jacking off to power levels is stupid, especially when you start comparing franchises. Will you now start debating if Goku can beat Superman?

>Fear and violence makes you want to rattle your cage

well, that's kind of the/a point of 1984. You may try to rebell and rattle the cage, but the world as described by the book is so far gone that the crushing of the human mind is absolute and complete. The protagonist hasn't even a chance at rebellion from the very start of the book as we see in the end. They purposefully let him continue on his path of "rebellion" until they lifted the veil of illusion of freedom. When he is then finally crushed and he has betrayed everything he ever loved (the girl and his ideal of truth) they even get him to love the regime.

he accepts that 2+2=5 and finally understands and loves the knowing and stern look of the big brother

Brave new world is quite similar in its hopelesness, i agree, but just personally i felt absolute hopeless totalitarian dictatorship worse than socially engineered decadence and hedonism (mostly because of soma and orgies or lack of brain i just wouldn't care about how fucked and meaningless society is)

Pretty much.

That one Black Mirror episode with the app where you rate social interactions with other people is both
A) pure nightmare fuel
&
B) a miracle the app doesn't actually exist yet

the death star produces a laser which has the total energy output of the sun
i don't think they need a dyson sphere with their gay exotic matter

Actually the New Order in Episode 7 is technically a Type II under the constraints set by that chart.

Still doesn't make a fantasy story sci-fi. Sci-fi is inherently political, it takes a current trend and speculates how it might look in the future. Star Wars does none of that, it is entirely backwards looking story that reminisces about the Good Old Times in the nostalgic golden age (and hopes for the return of the king that sets everything right again).

It just an observation that most scifi doesn't dare to even think of a type II civilization. It is even scared of showing planets with anything more than a single settlement, let alone whole cities, or colonies with populations in the billions. The few attempts are shy and timid which is even weirder given the age of many of these so-called galactic empires.

They DID drain a star to nothing, that likely counts.

Reminder newspeak is described in past tense in a in-universe framing device. Reminder that everything we know about the scary world of 1984 is what's told to the protagonist.
Reminder that we only can be sure of Airstrip One existing, and basically nothing else about the outside world. The entire country can be the size of North Korea, for all we know.

>That one Black Mirror episode with the app where you rate social interactions with other people is both

so, just like the community episode but dark and edgy?

>B) a miracle the app doesn't actually exist yet

You mean peeple? I think everyone who heard about that app when it was announced was full on 'Jesus God No, Why Would You?'

Hey, Al's a great guy, what did he do to you?

What does that have to do with traditional games?

Never watched community, wouldn't know.

Can you link a synopsis?

>1.2 million clone troopers.

College introduces social media app to rate everything, including other people at the college. College collapses into dystopia as the sole 5-star person and handful of 4-star elites rule everyone in the building.

Who is in image

That's why galaxy spanning scifi is stupid. You could fit every single scene in your book in a different location on a single planet and not run out of them ever.

Actually they would be type IIs. Remember the Kardashev scale is one of energy consumption not energy acquisition.

A type II could be anything from a civilization that can acquire 100% of a single star to .0001% of a million stars.

Asuka.

Odd thing is that nobody seems to even bother applying scale to planets even when we do see stuff like that. Lucius in 40k is a hollow planet with a reactor with the output of a "small sun" inside it, which should mean that they've managed to get at least close to K2 since they're explicitly using all that power for making horrendously OP weapons. Even without that a Forge World is entirely covered in factory skyscrapers and factory bunkers, with the energy generation to match and a population of tens of billions and they're rolled by a mere million bad guys, sometimes offscreen. I know it's a "heroic setting", but I think sometimes the writers don't bother to think about what they're actually writing.

Why do they waste times with superweapons like this when they could accomplish the same with million-strong armadas?

>No one predicted social media.

eh.. kinda
enders game had something like a discussion board and there were other concepts of exchanging ideas via the internet before.

Sure, it was a blue eyed idea what the internet would be used for: expansion of ones knowledge and discussion with others

Just like at the beginning of TV: they really thought it would help educate the masses

nobody expected memes..

Well, apparently their fleets are so small that two hundred capital ships is a significant advantage, so maybe Star Wars military ships pay for those gigaton-range lasers and capacitors and only have the crappy ones installed, leaving them with ships that are massively overengineered and small in number?

The First Order is a podunk tyranny. They probably don't have the people.

That doesn't explain how they acquired the resources to turn a planet into a gun but there you go.

A superweapon looks imposing on a cinema screen.

A massive fleet turns into a blur of little dots.

I do remember a few stories from my childhood predicting the internet fairly okay, but these things fell into obscurity because they were honestly kinda shit and unmemorable.
I think the phrase one of them used was "data graffiti"

I think it's stated in one of the books that they are funded by the old Empire. By the terms of the peace between them and the New Republic, the Empire is demilitarized, and gets around that by arming the First Order.

start of the episode
youtube.com/watch?v=CI4kiPaKfAE

middle to end of the episode
content.jwplatform.com/previews/ah6rk6KN?exp=1505998320&sig=641f714dbae4608c4546a4b35c02fe73

I wouldn't really call Dune speculative. What you suggested is a sepcenario identical to "Take humans and add an extremely valuable resource to their lives."

Take humans who have undergone extreme cultural evolution without much evolution of their own physiologies, except to be able to be literally psychics and computers. Then ad a fantasy drug that gives the main character a lot of superpowers.

It goes on. What I'm trying to say is that the setting is too divorced from reality for any of it to qualify as good speculative sci fi. Dune is about spaceship and laser guns.

>Just like at the beginning of TV: they really thought it would help educate the masses
>same with the internet

just imagine what happens ones we have perfect computer-brain/neuron connections and we have brian implants

sure you'll use some of the space to save school/work related documents, but most will be used for porn, pop music, social media and memes

>having 30GB of rare pepes saved directly into your brain

Get you sum "Songs from Distant Earth"

By stop filling up Veeky Forums with shitty "how do we fix ____?" threads.

Seriously, fuck off.

how do we fix /tg?

WARNING: CRUDE AND RUDE LANGUAGE AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

By fucking your mom so deep in her ass it blows out her rectal sphincter and tears asunder the space-time continuum which results in her deciding to take the pill that one morning she forgot it, thus preventing you from ever being born and butterfly effecting the time stream to stop any and all "how do we fix ____?" threads from ever occurring.

>he thinks fantasy shit like mind and memory uploads will ever happen

that makes no sense at all
i think you need to read more good SciFi stories, which is exactly what this thread is for :^)

Take it out of outer space and back into the inner space, like they did in the 60s. More contemplation what it means to be human, less space ships and lasers.