Hacker News Reader

Comment by swayvil | Hacker News Reader

Using science fiction to discuss politics is like using the Starship Enterprise to drive down to the corner grocery.

Politics is small. Exploring the edges of reality is large.

In addition to the already mentioned irony of bring up ST, what do you think of say, Starship Troopers? Sure there is some scifi that's about some mind screwy science but there's more to the genre.

Anyway I like Asimov's classification, social scifi is political: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsimovsThreeKind...

Science fiction allows us to explore the ramifications of theoretical political systems in a way that is not possible in reality except over very long timescales and with extremely cooperative citizens.

I would argue that this is not really true. You can't really understand the ramifications of theoretical political systems with thought experiments in a book or movie for because political systems are complex and ramifications thereof are harder to predict than the stock market.

A lot of sci-fi instead seems to recontextualize common human issues into an environment where existing political pre-conceptions can be avoided. Obvious examples are things like the half black/half white episode[1] of Star Trek TOS or "Measure of a Man"[2] from Star Trek TNG. These are pretty highly regarded episodes and neither really has anything to do with the Federation of Planets or its political system (in fact there are very few episodes that deal with these topics). Instead they're explorations of racism and what it means to be human/sentient.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_Battlefi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Measure_of_a_Man_(Star_Tre...

You're right that political systems are far too complex to get perfect in a thought experiment, but I would argue that thinking about it ahead of time can't possibly be worse than blindly forging ahead.

Funny you talk about the Starship Enterprise... Star Trek is super political lol

And it stinks when they go that way.

TOS went there a little. STD goes there all day.

They've been super political since season 1??

TOS went way further than you give it credit for. Different things were controversial and "of-the-moment" when the original aired.

I think it's reductive to say it's political. Trek at its best asks philosophical questions and explores the arguments. At its worst there's the "warp travel causes pollution, let's implement a speed limit" episode. Sure, you can reduce the Cardassians to being bad mid century Europeans. But you can also think of them as ruthlessly following the standards of utilitarianism. (Also bad) Saying it's just politics is lazy.

I guess it depends on the episode, and I do prefer when it's more abstract, but when do you think it's political if indirectly advocating for example gay rights or environmental protections isn't?

I wouldn't say it's about any particular issue. It's whether they have an interesting dialectic or whether issues are painted as right versus wrong with little room for interpretation.

Eh, scifi has been doing politics since the beginning. Be in America, be in the Ussr, be in Europe to denounce social issues. Tarkovsky, Orwell, Bradbury, Asimov...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com