Scientific and Technological Breakthroughs Created a New Kind of Fiction | Hacker News Reader

Scientific and Technological Breakthroughs Created a New Kind of Fiction

lithub.com

29 pointsHooke10 comments

Most of Jules Verne's work was unambiguously Science Fiction in the modern sense, including books that were hugely popular in English translation (e.g., 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with its "electric" submarine) -- and this in the 19th century, decades before anything discussed in this essay. I think it's missing some stuff.

"Paris in the Twentieth Century" was not published until 1994, which only made it more interesting!

It looks like this article is an excerpt from 'More Voices from the Radium Age', which focuses on 1900 to 1935, so in that context it makes sense to not include Verne. They would've needed to include Mary Shelley, too.

Has anybody read modern[^1] science fiction that uses "scientific and technological breakthroughs"? Or, something close in thoroughness to Jules Verne "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" or "The Mysterious Island"? Is it just me, or modern writers are terrified of getting wet with that sort of scientific level, or the general public that buys and reads fiction is not up for reading that type of work?

[^1] Like, published in the last twenty years or so.

Personally, I feel like that 'gap' comes from most SF writers having a physics/maths backgrounds while the really 'cool' stuff is happening in biology. Hard SF generally focuses on physics, not biology.

Greg Bear had some interesting novels around retroviruses in the 90s, Darwin's Radio, and I've read some solarpunk stories that went into the right direction. Peter Watts has a PhD in Zoology which is maybe why Blindsight is so good.

I tend to agree. But physics, humanities and biology could give a really good background for top hard SF.

Paolo Bacigalupi is an excellent example of someone with a focus on biology. Windup Girl in particular is excellent, although I love his short story collections as well.

Jeff VanderMeer popularly uses sci-fi biology. Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam does as well (content/themes warning as always with Margaret Atwood)

Both are dramatically better writers than the vast majority of sci-fi authors I come across these days.

I would add:

The Machine Stops (1909,1928)

A rare sci-fi story from E. M. Forster, more famous for period dramas - A Room with a View, A Passage to India, Howard's End.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

The text, to save some scrolling and clicking: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

Reply on news.ycombinator.com