

Six scientists tell us about the most accurate science fiction in their fields - te_platt
http://io9.com/5644435/five-scientists-tell-us-about-the-most-accurate-science-fiction-in-their-fields

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CWuestefeld
I nominate Vernor Vinge's _Rainbows End_. In particular, his theme of
ubiquitous connectivity and access to information struck me as remarkable
realistic. Of course, Vinge is a Comp Sci professor, so I would expect his
treatment of related concepts to be well done.

~~~
Dylanlacey
And how. I thought this book was even _more_ entertaining because of how '5
minutes from now' it felt. He strikes me as someone with their finger on the
pulse (god I hate that phrase) of the internet and it's various subcultures,
as well.

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CulturalNgineer
Here's a vote for David Brin's novel "Earth"... full of amazingly prescient
ideas regarding the social effects of communication technology,
transparency... and especially his Helvetian War* as part of the backstory,
though presented as metaphor... it's beginning to look entirely too possible!

* A 'financial war' when transparency results in the world population finding out that a lot of crooks have a lot of the world's wealth!

~~~
torial
For anyone that picks up the book, it is worth slogging through the boring
first quarter of the book. After that point, each chapter gets better than the
previous.

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plnewman
From the article:

 _"My favorite along these lines is a classic, Cyril Kornbluth's "The Marching
Morons." It's the original version of "Idiocracy" — the basic idea is that
selection now favors the stupid, and so if we go forward in time, that's what
we'll see. The concept is simple and well-drawn; the consequences
unexpected."_

I would say the current state of American politics is a warning sign for this
condition.

edit: quote was taken from John Hawks, Paleoanthropologist, University of
Wisconsin, Madison:

~~~
lukifer
The hidden assumption of "Idiocracy" is that survival of the fittest is the
only selection mechanism. Even if survival and breeding become trivial, sexual
selection will continue, and many intelligent people will only want to mate
with others of their kind, even if they become overwhelmed numbers-wise.

I understand, though, that the film is an allegory, and as such it succeeds
admirably. In terms of the downward trajectory of our political and cultural
discourse, it is disturbingly spot-on. Reminds me a little of the prescience
of "Network": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_%28film%29>

~~~
barrkel
You only need a small difference in relative fitness for an allele to
completely wipe out another over a relatively short timespan; the only
counteracting agent I think is the increased global mobility of intelligent
people such that it's reasonable for them to cover vast distances to still
find one another, so we may instead end up with a two-class strain.

On the other hand, religious zealots opposed to birth control may get the
upper hand. I don't think there's a necessary intrinsic correlation between
religious zealotry and intelligence. Religion by itself is largely about
ingroup / outgroup dynamics and power structures, which don't seem to have
_necessary_ positive or negative relationships with intelligence.

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artied
This is oxymoronic - the point of 'sci-fi' is not to be accurate. If it has a
single 'point of reference' it is to inform our thinking about this world by
depicting alternative realities that illuminate our awareness of this
reality....IMHO

~~~
TGJ
I've always found sci-fi to be examples of upcoming technology and their
possible implications on humanity.

~~~
CWuestefeld
That's one purpose. My own suggestion elsewhere in this thread, _Rainbows End_
, fits into this category.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that George Lucas never meant to tell us
that we'd be playing with light sabers. Frequently, the futuristic technology
of sci-fi is nothing more than a literary device allowing the author to
contrive a situation or theme that wouldn't be possible with more mundane
environments.

~~~
barrkel
George Lucas never made any sci-fi after THX-1138, and that itself was pretty
derivative. Star Wars is a medieval swords and sorcery fantasy, only set in
space.

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pjscott
In the field of computers, James Schmitz wrote some surprisingly prescient
stuff. He sometimes mentioned a device called a ComWeb, which looks and acts a
lot like a modern computer with Internet access. You can make phone calls with
them, or look up information, or read email, or play online board-games, or do
various other things. They're not a major part of any of his plots; he just
mentions them, as casually as someone today might mention sending an email.

He wrote this in the 60s and 70s.

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eqdw
"...great reading on dystopian robotics include Brian Herbert and Kevin
Anderson's Dune prequel trilogy on the Butlerian Jihad"

Clearly you didn't read the same books I did? "Great"? REALLY?

~~~
kujawa
I really don't know why this is being downvoted so harshly.

Kevin J. Anderson's writing is horrific. He's an absolute hack. Brian Herbert
should be ashamed at what he's doing to his father's good name, allowing this
incompetent fuckwit to befoul his legacy.

I bought the first of the Butlerian Jihad books, even knowing how horrible a
writer KJA is, because the topic interested me so. I couldn't make it more
than about 15 pages.

It's a minor literary tragedy.

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jancona
Brave New Work doesn't assume genetic determinism at all. All the
manipulations to produce the different castes are environmental, either
prenatal (exposing the fetus to radiation, chemicals, etc.) or as the result
of behavioral conditioning.

~~~
hugh3
(I'm going to assume you meant Brave New World rather than some other thing I
haven't heard of...)

You're right, though; I just went back and re-read the first chapter, there's
no mention of the different castes being differentiated until after
fertilization. Of course there's much we know now that Huxley didn't know
about genetics, so if you _were_ to try to start up a Brave New World society
then genetics would be the right place to start.

Other technological problems with BNW include the attempts to teach values by
subliminal messages during sleep, which afaik have now been pretty much proven
to be a bunch of hooey.

The main problem, I think, is that you'd almost certainly always wind up with
an overlap between your castes -- your smartest gammas would be smarter than
your dumbest betas. That's not necessarily a big problem, though.

