Hacker News Reader

Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

I'm looking for this kind of book: an author studies current trends, technology, culture, religion, history, etc. deeply, not shallowly. They study how the Printing Press/Industrial Revolution/computer/Internet/etc. changed society, culture, and politics.

Then the author uses this knowledge to write a story about how the world will be in 2050, 2100, or 2500. Sci-fi that is merely fantasy with a veneer of spaceships and robots isn't what I'm looking for.

I didn't say anything about it being optimistic or pessimistic, just that most writers seem to inject their personal politics into their writing, which is a real distraction from the worldbuilding. Children of Men is particularly pessimistic, and I think anyone reading it would agree.

View on HN

This work is intrinsically political. There is no unbiased way to analyse centuries of history. When you study history and come to conclusions and devise a system to describe present society then what you’ve created is a political ideology.

What you’re asking is for someone to create an ideology and extrapolate that into the future, but to somehow do it apolitically. It’s not possible.

You can write something and say it’s facts and logic all the way down, but the choice of facts, how they’re interpreted, how they’re prioritised, what conclusions you draw - these decisions are all ideological.

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge might meet those requirements:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End_(novel)

Edit: Also For All Mankind on Apple TV+

I love Rainbows End, but I'm less confident it's what GP is after. If it is, that leads into areas inhabited by the likes of Neal Stephenson or Richard Morgan or Daniel Suarez.

Perhaps 'Oryx and Crake' by Margaret Atwood? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake). She calls it 'speculative fiction' so ...

I'll re-recommend KSR's Mars trilogy. It's not a high-concept space opera so you don't have borderline-fantasy elements popping up. It not apolitical, but nothing is.

You might like Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series.

You might like Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series.

They're both history PhDs, which gives them a better perspective on some things, but I don't think it helps the plausibility of their scifi.

Is Dune too close to fantasy with a veneer of spaceships?

If you're vehemently political, whether libertarian or progressive, even if it's just on some issues, that severely limits what scifi you'll be able to tolerate.

FWIW, I've read the Mars trilogy two or three times over the years and still enjoy it, although the near future it's set in hasn't aged well. There's a fair amount of 'active' politics in it, in the sense of the political discussions and acts of the characters as they go about life on Mars. These are key to the plot as the characters explore and trial various options for living on, colonising and terraforming Mars - and dealing with Earth - and there are several chapters across the whole trilogy that are essentially Mars-specific political debates. KSR sets up a profound conflict between the Red and the Green factions, neither of which are anything like the current Earth movements their names suggest at a glance. There is some good hard SF but it is 'mundane' in nature (no FTL drives, etc).

I really loved Arkady Martine's first book - A Memory Called Empire - (Teixcalaan #1) and liked A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan #2). These are much more speculative and far-future in nature, although the author's background as a historian gives real depth to the world she builds.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com