#sci-fi in society

[tygerland]

Fantastic Planet (1973)

[oldschoolfrp]

Out to the black (William H Keith Jr cover for The Best of the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society Vol 3, 1982)

[vizual-demon]

Jurassic Park art by Vector That Fox

for Folio Society’s illustrated edition of Michael Crichton’s novel

[partiallithopseffect]

Some notes from the first episode of Dark Gallifrey:

Morbius was from an “unnamed House”

Morbius fought Rassilon’s successor, a President whose name is lost to time

Time Lords destroyed civilisations by dropping shards of their own future on them from orbit

Old Gallifreyans travelled through the Vortex in wooden ships manned by hundreds of people

These ships could twist and morph during travel, crushing crew below decks

Earth crows were once creatures of the Vortex. They settled on many different worlds during Morbius’ War

Time Lords could bestow regenerations on Outsider Gallifreyans as medals of honour. They said those regenerations could give one an extra heart…

[elbiotipo]

Hard Sci-Fi is when you have megacorporations and aliens wanting to kill each other with railguns and our society has not changed centuries in the future, you can tell it's hard sci-fi because we have calculated both the power of railguns and that aliens would want to kill us so we need to have megacorporations to build railguns, it's just more (capitalist) realism.

[phantomoftheshoppera]

how am I supposed to take your review seriously when you so obviously missed the point of the book

[envy-stims]

⚙️ • 🏙️ •🐬 • 💿 • 📬

“Society if…”

society if stimboard

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Iron Maiden - Alexander the Great

[lovescaryhorror]

"A Clockwork Orange" (1971).

[strawberri-draws]

Finally made a lineup of the four main characters of Astra, a video game me and @famulusmox are developing— You play as Astra, the newly appointed royal jester, in a medieval sci-fi world. Your goal is to kill the king in revenge for the execution of Astra’s mentor in about one week (and steal his girl) (and man) in the process!

[whereserpentswalk]

Human space has always been large. Generations ago when ftl was first invented humans used it to create far off colonies, but then those colonies created colonies, and so on and so fourth, until nobody even knew where human space ends.

You were on an exploratory mission, and your ship ended up flung way further and faster out into the universe than you thought you could go, and ended up way past what you wanted to explore. You were lucky to still be in human space, but the culture was entirely unknown.

The first system you went to was filled with humans wearing hoods and masks, and clothing that covered their entire bodies. When they met you they made you wear the same clothing as them, and you quickly learned that in the local cluster of planets any skin being shown was completely taboo, even the smallest inch on any part of the body. The closest they had to revealing clothing were tighter fitting garments, and more humanoid masks. They started helping you repair your ship, but it would take a few years.

And while you were there it seemed strange at first. You felt sad for the mask wearers, knowing that people would never know the appearance of their closest freinds, their siblings, their parents. Even eating was strange, being done with the same privacy as a shower would be on your planet. It felt as if the masked people had lost some element of humanity.

As time went on, and as you got used to wearing their clothing it stopped feeling that way though. You had close freinds on those planets now, and you found it weird to want to see their faces, it would be weird to, perhaps it was better with them choosing how they looked. And soon the idea of someone having an exposed face seemed weird, at least it was when you left. Part of you wished they hadn't fixed your ship, you had a life there. But they did, and you left.

When you got to your ship again you spent months avoiding pirates and androids before getting to your next safe planet. When you got there the people looked strange, most of them had prosthetic body parts, many of them looking so cut up that they didnt even look human. You learned that it was the custom there in those local systems, to slowly remove body parts as people aged, until they completely lacked biological forms, and were purely mechanical beings.

The custom was horrifying to you for your first few weeks there. And you knew it would be awhile since your ship needed fuel. People celebrated their first amputation, discarded limbs would be preserved like baby teeth, and it was all so casual a mutilation. You knew a young woman there who would talk so cheerfully about how they were going to remove the bottom part of her face, and how excited she was. You couldn't bare to look at anyone.

But as months became years, and you had a job as a professor of far off cultures, you began to understand. Not agree but understand. They could live forever, and never be disabled by old age. Children could visit their great great grandparents. And soon the amputations that disgusted you became commonplace enough to ignore. You even agreed to have a broken arm replaced, as so few doctors knew how to mend one. But you left, and you wept as you left, for all the people you'd never see again.

It took you awhile to find a habitable planet again. You were lonely for a time. And when you found one again it was like a drowning person finding water. The people in the new planet you found looked strange, they were hairless and androgynous, many of them either underweight or chubby, or somehow both, and all with a softness to them. Pretty soon you found out that their civilization reproduced using machines, and removed their children's testicles or ovaries as soon as possible, never letting them go through puberty.

Even having seen many worlds these people disturbed you. Their bodies were so broken looking, being so obviously incomplete to you. They thought of you as an oddity but they didn't even know what was taken from them. None of them had or desired sex, their genitals remaining childlike and useless, and because of that they were naïve to any hint of sexuality, they'd shadow publicly, and it was normal for friends to kiss and cuddle naked. It felt as if they had lost so much of what made someone human, and like you had no way of telling them.

But as time went on it too became normal. Even though you told yourself it wasn't. Sex seemed weird and useless when nobody had it, and bodies seemed normal when they were the only kind around. You thought they were missing something at first but they just weren't, they were as human as you, they could still live full lives. And in time it was all ok. After spending years there you ended up with a wife there, and though you never were allowed to have sex you loved eachother. But you eventually left, you had to, even though your wife wept as you said goodbye, it was in your nature to leave after years as it was in their nature to castrate children.

You've come to your next planet now, and they seemed to be serving human flesh alongside all the normal meats like pig and cow. It's disturbing to your right now but your sure it'll all be normal in time. Everything is normal in time.

[tygerland]

Author Samuel R. Delany, photographed by Laurie Toby Edison at his Upper West Side apartment in New York City, 2003.

[oldschoolfrp]

The War Issue -- The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society No. 9, 1981, William H Keith Jr cover

[corrodedbisexual]

Diving into published fiction, especially 20th century fiction, after consuming nothing but fanfic for several months: holy fuck why is everyone so straight

[therottenkingsreckoning]

Ok yea, All Tomorrows is pretty fucking cool. Feels like Kosemen looked at the sci fi trope of "all the aliens are just Humans but Weird" and went "wait but what if we do that unironically"

[elbiotipo]

Even though I'm a bit guilty of it myself with my own space opera setting (it's supposed to have a retro aesthetic), it's surprising how science fiction has been so permeated by cynicism and what I can best define as "End of History" thinking that the only thing pop sci fi seems able to imagine is "the future will be the same as today (or even worse), but there will be Cool Laser Guns"

(lately even the lasers have been replaced by regular bullets)

What I mean is that much like it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, it's easier to imagine our current capitalist system extending indefinitely but now In Space rather than imagine societal changes. Like, this it guys? We're gonna have to pay rent and fight pointless wars and be ruled by corporate suits forever? are we actually gonna have fucking CEOs as we explore the galaxy?

This is it? You can't imagine a better world than this?

Even when sci-fi authors talk about realism, it's usually about how to make ships pound each other harder with missiles, not how about society will evolve in the future, what changes might technology bring to society (the whole point of science fiction in my opinion). It's just Today, But With Lasers. We will still have corporations, nation-states, cops, war, the same society we have now. But Now With Lasers.

anyways, for a good start, read Banks and LeGuin, but there are others, lots more, who dare to imagine what actual futures might look like, they just aren't as well known