Retrospectively, wasn’t a lot of the space-exploration-based SciFi from the 50s 60s 70s serving the purpose of justifying massive government spendings in big rockets, mainly used to build ICBMs, to justify imperialist policies and the cold war?
were we (the scifi afficionados) the useful idiots of this missile race?
As someone who lived through those decades, I don’t think it was so much being useful stooges, but rather each decade was very different in social tone and was a reaction to the current events.
The 1950’s was about the successful end of WW2 and the bright future ahead of humanity. Good always wins over evil. We were going to have unlimited nuclear power and powerful computers to supply all our wants and needs. And rockets? Well, they were new and exciting. The future looked bright.
The 1960s brought real fear of nuclear Armageddon to everyone. If you think the world political situation is bad today, we all thought we were going to die at any moment. I can remember doing nuclear blast drills as a 5 year old in school. We invented the nuclear clock… And the Cuban Missile Crisis was on. But, we were going to land a man on the moon before it was all over. But for SciFi, the Plucky Human arrived. Star Trek exemplified that. Captain Kirk foiled Evil Aliens™ while screwing every hot green or blue chick with two legs in a short skirt or skimpy furs across the (Un)known Galaxy.
The 1970’s were simply more of the same. SciFi had expanded on the “Plucky Human” schitick with Battle Star Galactia. But Buck Rogers made a brief return also. But if you look closer, government has become more authoritarian yet somehow benevolent. Big Brother™ knows best was the unspoken motto. And a SciFi darkness started to show. Logan’s Run, A Clockwork Orange, Roller Ball, and Soylant Green are just a few of the darker tend.
Which is kind of the path we are still following today I think. A strange mixture of r/HFA! and the dark ambiguity of Batman.
And for fun. I will leave you with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio
Philip K. Dick was writing stories about nuclear armageddon in the late 1940s-early 1950s. Even the few stories he did about humans inventing space travels usually involved humans meeting an alien race that is more advanced than us, and eventually defeating us.
I can beat that. “Atomic Weight 500” is a book of nuclear power written in 1925 by a guy born 1870 about nuclear power - and nuclear war. Though his nuclear war was “different”. Even Hans Dominik didn’t expect Chain Reactions being so quick as they really were. But the basic idea of creating a critical mass to generate uncontrollable amounts of energy was implemented perfectly.
Make no mistake, that is the future that we were entitled to, but which was stolen from us by capitalists and despots.
The old sci-fi writers weren’t wrong in their aspirations for us, we were wrong for letting our futures be taken away from us.
Let’s look at which legislators have held progress back since we landed on the moon and it’s almost exclusively one party…
Democrats would rather lose to Republicans than risk a third party gaining traction. Make no mistake, there’s a mustache-twirling villain capitalist party, and a “I swear I’m trying, please vote for me on this most important election evar” capitalist party.
Our most recent chance at lasting real change was the rail strike. Before that it was Bernie Sanders. They’re doing it on purpose and playing leftists for fools.
This both sides are the same shit is so old now
If you truly can’t tell the difference between them, I don’t know what will help you now.
I wish we were exploring space more!
The monkey paw curls. We get entitled pricks, destroying labor protections to build so much wealth they’ve bought everything worth owning on the planet and still yearn for more.
I wish we had robots to do our work!
Another finger curls. Wealth inequality cripples the working class. Corporations consolidate to the point that everything is profit driven… locked behind paywalls or subscriptions. The only publicly available art and literature are made by robots.
I wish we could all communicate with each other!
The last finger curls, and paw crumbles to dust. Democracies around the world flounder as their populations are brainwashed by greedy CEOs in the news and media…taught to fear their neighbors and mistrust those politicians who haven’t been bought and paid for. Online, they’re bombarded by misinformation campaigns on every topic until they live in different realities. Diseases and pestilence once vanquished through science and cooperation return when science isn’t trusted and cooperation with your fellow citizens is viewed as betrayal to your tribe. The world now burns, and it, too, crumbles to dust.
This timeline sucks, yo.
Oooh oooh do conservatism next!!! It’s gotta be something along the lines of “nothing but jacking off, usually in seclusion with other men since 1848” I’m sure you’ve got something spicier in store though
They thought automation would drastically reduce the amount of work someone needs to do to survive, instead of just increasing corporate profit and leading to layoffs.
and it should have reduced the work as predicted
The only reason we aren’t approaching Star Trek utopia is because of the unchecked greed fostered by our systems of capitalism.
There is no reason that, in a world of finite necessary work, increased automation shouldn’t have freed us from the constraints of some of that work.
The fact that it hasn’t isn’t indictment of automation, it’s indictment of unchecked capitalism.
Star Trek’s utopia came after economic collapse and a third World War, in that order. So we actually seem to be on track so far.
Yep. Kill your masters, or youre killing yourself (and also literally every other living thing becauae climate change)
There is no third option. I mean, you could ask shitty Jeff to give it all up and srop, just fucking stop, and be an aging beach himbo and fuckerberg to just run a cringe mma gym and maybe contribute to an obscure Linux GUI a couple times a year. But they won’t. Don’t think they can.
It is not so much about the year the story plays at but also about shying away from some stories nowadays.
A story where humans are Cool Bastards and the Aliens just Plain Evil?
Can’t have that. It wouldn’t be social critic enough.
Humans being smart and solving problems without crying and discussing their feelings in face of impending doom?
Naaah… would alienate the audience.
c/HFY and r/HFY show how to do it different… (shameless self propaganda, noteworthy The Typo which saved humanity, Day of the Fat Man, Deterrence)
Humans being smart and solving problems without crying and discussing their feelings in face of impending doom?
We Need More Mary Sue Protagonists!
I would be good if at least not every single lead protagonist was either an asshole, an idiot or an obvious traitor.
Idiocracy sadly was the only futuristic story to get it right. Wall-ee probably a pretty safe bet too. At this point, any “blue future” sci-fi writers still out there are disillusioned dreamers.
‘Ministry of the future’ wasnt bad, by a typically Utopian writer. Parts of it felt plausible.
