Yeah I guess there’s two different categories of sci-fi in this regard. Personally, I think stuff that’s as far ahead in the future as Star Trek is pretty close to fantasy. But then there’s also the Philip K. Dick style near future dystopian sci-fi that serves more as a warning about the future we’re headed to (or instruction manual if you’re a techbro CEO).
Fantasy is probably the same actually. I usually think happy thoughts if I think about fantasy as a genre but then there’s also stuff like Game of Thrones.
At this point in our development, we are like new born babies … in a few hundred or even a thousand years, we’ll be like toddlers.
When you look back on our human evolution as a species, our first ancestors came about two million years ago, the ancestors that look like humans are about 100,000 years ago and the ones that would most closely resemble us and our way of thinking is about 50,000 years ago. We’ve only been technologically capable for the past 150 years. When you think about it, we are closer to our frightened, superstitious, ignorant prehistoric ancestors than to any futuristic culture we would like to emulate.
It’s going to take us generations and centuries to get to the point of being a contributing participant in a galactic community. IF we can survive that long.
“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Isaac Newton
… but saying all that, I don’t mean to be disparaging or negative … just realistic. In the long run of human history, it will be through people like you and this community of hopeful people that enjoy playing in these ideas and possibilities that will take us one step towards a more hopeful future.
For me, Sci-Fi is about the hope of a better future. In those stories, people explore beyond our petty problems of the past.
Yeah I guess there’s two different categories of sci-fi in this regard. Personally, I think stuff that’s as far ahead in the future as Star Trek is pretty close to fantasy. But then there’s also the Philip K. Dick style near future dystopian sci-fi that serves more as a warning about the future we’re headed to (or instruction manual if you’re a techbro CEO).
Fantasy is probably the same actually. I usually think happy thoughts if I think about fantasy as a genre but then there’s also stuff like Game of Thrones.
Not much of that utopian sci fi around though.
There’s some hopeful sci-fi on it’s way soon with Starfleet Academy.
Mostly looking forward to the return of The Doc.
At this point in our development, we are like new born babies … in a few hundred or even a thousand years, we’ll be like toddlers.
When you look back on our human evolution as a species, our first ancestors came about two million years ago, the ancestors that look like humans are about 100,000 years ago and the ones that would most closely resemble us and our way of thinking is about 50,000 years ago. We’ve only been technologically capable for the past 150 years. When you think about it, we are closer to our frightened, superstitious, ignorant prehistoric ancestors than to any futuristic culture we would like to emulate.
It’s going to take us generations and centuries to get to the point of being a contributing participant in a galactic community. IF we can survive that long.
“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
… but saying all that, I don’t mean to be disparaging or negative … just realistic. In the long run of human history, it will be through people like you and this community of hopeful people that enjoy playing in these ideas and possibilities that will take us one step towards a more hopeful future.
'O brave new world, that has such people in ‘t!’