Forum - View topicScience Fiction & Anime (Letter from Popular Science)
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10539 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Hotaru sent this in to us, and while it's rather interesting, it's not newsworthy. But since I found it interesting, and I suspect some of you might as well, I decided to post it here...
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king_micah
 Posts: 994 Location: OSU |
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The singularity is interesting, but I don't buy it. We don't know that AI is possible, nor what shape it might take if it isn't. As for guessing how the world will be in the near future, plenty of good SciFi still does this. It's just not as popular as cyberpunk and far future/fantasy right now. Read the McAndrew stories for some recent good hard scifi.
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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Who are the two writers in the profile?
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4663 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I thought the "hard" sci-fi purist anime fans liked Planetes best, at least in terms of realism and feasability (no warp speed travel, and the farthest manned missions seem to be able to go is Jupiter, which takes a couple of years to get to).
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abunai
Old Regular
 Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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Speaking as one of those hard-SF purists, I'd like to say that although I also loved Planetes for its character development, I was thrilled to see that someone had finally done space right. No rocket noise in empty space (except where a sound-conducting medium existed), and the zero-G maneuvers were perfectly rendered. They had a bit of trouble with the orbital mechanics - but that is understandable, since everybody has trouble with that. But make no mistake: good science may support good SF, but it doesn't necessarily make for a good story. That takes human insight. - abunai |
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Haiseikoh 1973
 Posts: 1590 Location: Waiting for the Japanese 1000 Gunieas. |
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Just ask Ben Bova. A good number of his stuff has come true (or somewhat true).
Shirows stuff.....thats kinda tough. Thought Intron Depot 3 seems to have a few viable ideas for Military Applications. |
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jfrog
 Posts: 925 Location: Seattle |
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Uh...has that guy read any cyberpunk outside of Neuromancer and Snow Crash? I thought William Gibson's Idoru was a far more accurate portayal of the near future than anything I've in anime.
And besides, I didn't know the point of science fiction was to predict the future. I thought it was to tell a good story, but I guess all those years of reading sci-fi were a complete waste. |
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Guilhem
 Posts: 181 |
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No, they weren't
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Haiseikoh 1973
Posts: 1590 Location: Waiting for the Japanese 1000 Gunieas. |
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Not really, but it's kinda funny when something you read back then, "came true" in the future. Of course, the jury is still out on whether or not we've now lived to the requirements of George Orwell's 1984. |
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ShellBullet
 Posts: 1051 Location: I hit things, with my fist. |
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Nani?
 Posts: 632 |
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Rather then just say no, say why. Now, the question as to whether the Japanese are currently better at at predicting the future. I suspect yes and I believe it is cultural phenoneon with many levels. For example, Shinto, with an animistic world view combined with living on an island with limited resources helps the Japanese grasp the enviromental problems fairly honestly. Americans, with a legacy of 400 years of essentially a virgin continent for the taking seem to have a harder time grasping such worries. Also, the Japanese have a cultural history of losing a war, constant, quick cultural change over the last 140 years, and a government that is democratic in form but essentially a one party state for the last 44 years(since the 1960 anti AMPO riots and the assaination of the leading opposition politicans) with many soft enforcement mechinisms (Gee, we can't give you that promotion, how did you vote last electon.) and not nessasarily concerned with the care of it's people make the Japanese rightly cynical about rosy predictions. In contrast, Americans have had more or less, 60 or so years of basic stablity and comfort, which tends to encourage lazy thinking that even the best minds can't always get around. I would also point out that at some points the world is easier to predict. 1960 and 1980 both looked fairly simular. In contrast, if you were predicting things in 1941 or 1917 you would have a much harder time. I personally think we are closer to 1941 then 1960. Right now, things are very up in the air. Conseqently, I'd go easy on the SF types. But if I were to make a bet, it would be something akin to David Brin's novel (not the Kevin Costner movie) The Postman. But, Ghost in the Shell or Snow Crash is by no means out of the running. All the Best, Nani? |
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Guilhem
Posts: 181 |
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And who are you to order me anything? |
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Nani?
Posts: 632 |
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Gee, I'm a person who added an opinion, followed by either an explaination or a link, just like everyone else (other then you) on this thread. I also gave you a politely intended suggestion that you might like to do the same. Apparently, I was mistaken. I've have noted that they sometimes encourage meaningful, mature, conversation on these boards. All the best, Nani? P.S. I have wondered in the past whether I've been rude (something I've tried to correct). If you have an opinion please PM me (especially if it is constructive, be tough, I can take it). |
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Guilhem
Posts: 181 |
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Rude isn't exactly the word, but polite isn't either IMO: let's say that a 'please' would have been welcome to soften the whole sentence...
Also, my previous post was supposed to mean that reading is always a 'good' thing and I don't think this statement requires any explanation or argument of any sort, doesn't it? Best regards 
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Ohoni
Posts: 3421 |
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I get the point of the article though. The future, up to a point, might be rocket ships and ray guns like they predicted in the 50's. At some point though (possibly) we'll be able to digitize the human brain. That would be a huge shift in life as we know it, quite possibly well beyond what GitS proposes, possibly quite a bit less.
The point is that it becomes VERY hard to predict. It's like those hurricanes that have been hitting the southeast lately. When they track the storm, they know where it might go, but the bigger the storm, the more off track it could get. This is one mother of a sociological storm. The other concern is that we have no clue when this development will make "landfall". It could be in five centuries, it could be next year. We have no way of predicting how much time we have before this happens, nor do we have any way of knowing where the planet is, developmentally, when it gets here. There is a whole lot of chaos in that. |
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