Comment by jaegerpicker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaegerpicker | Hacker News Reader

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Not to be offensive but this article made me feel dumber just reading it. THE MARTIAN isn't enough to inspire people to pursue science? Why? Because it uses clever ideas to "work the problem"? I'm not sure about his background but that is pretty much the only way to solve problems in the real world. Servers down you "work the problem", a researcher who doesn't understand why data looks like it does - "work the problem", trapped on Mars - "work the problem". Then he talks about reality and how Sci-Fi doesn't match up with reality!?

Including political realities is absolutely important when designing technology to solve large scale problems. Acting like SciFi (Andy Weir, Star Trek, and Neil Stephenson are all good examples) doesn't address that is a shitty shallow analysis. The Martian, is mostly an adventure story but Project Hail Mary deals with the political reality heavily and TNG talked about political reality and social issues and in fact the best episodes revolved around that. As someone that is an engineer, a life long SciFi fan, and am studying to change careers as a scientist (Biology/Data Science) this article reads seems pretty terrible as analysis/criticism of Sci-Fi like someone that has never actually built anything.

hey, I loved The Martian too (the book moreso than the film but only because the book was so great) - but it really isn't SciFi, or at least what I'd describe as SciFi. It's set in the modern day using modern day technology. That's not an insult, it's just a categorisation.

Um Science fiction is literally fiction about science. I'm not sure how ANY definition of Sci-Fi doesn't fit The Martian. It's about Scientist's using Science to do something that we literally can't do today. We believe we know how to travel and land on Mars and we are probably absolutely correct. We haven't done it yet. I don't see how The Martian doesn't qualify.

how about the Wikipedia definition?

> Science fiction (sometimes shortened to sci-fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. It has been called the "literature of ideas", and it often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations.[1][2]

That definition doesn't really fit The Martian. If your headcanon definition of SciFi does include The Martian then that's fine, but I don't really understand how you think excluding it from the category is an insult when for most common definitions it doesn't really fit well.

In my mind, SciFi is Asimov's Foundation series, or Star Trek, or Dune. It's set in the future or an alternative universe with considerably different, more advanced technology than modern-day reality. The Martian is set 13 years from now, using today's technology.

I think you have an overly restrictive understanding of science fiction.

The Martian deals with [...] advanced science and technology and space exploration and getting people alive to mars is definitely future rather than current technology.

There's also a rich tradition of near-future science fiction, e.g. [Halting state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State) was published in 2007; features such advanced technology as smart phones, augmented reality, and cloud computing; and is categorised as science fiction on wikipedia, and I assume in basically any bookseller's cataloging system.

Sure, I'm more than happy to debate if The Martian is Sci-Fi or not. I actually don't feel offended about that at all. I disagree that it's not but certainly not offended. I was offended, actually annoyed but whatever, to suggest that The Martian couldn't inspire anyone because it's was practical in it's approach. I've watched it inspire my son, I've personally been inspired. It's clearly dismissive of the work and that is frustrating and annoying to me.

Ah that's fair enough. I think The Martian is pretty inspirational, for quite a few reasons - it portrays a near future where we're preparing for a permanent Mars settlement, the characters display real engineering creativity and ingenuity, and everybody's working together towards a shared, altruistic goal.

I don't think the issue raised in the article is with that aspect - but that it doesn't paint a vision of a Jetsons or Star Trek future, and Neal Stephenson wants to see more of that.

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