We can start looking towards some of the more modern-day sci-fi for inspiration for the next 20 years: Neal Stephenson's matter replicators and immersive realities, Alastair Reynolds' conjoiners and AI, Kim Stanley Robinson's life-extension and colonization, and (hopefully) Iain M Banks' carefree culture.
I just hope medical technology advances fast enough that we can all live long enough to experience all of this.
How are Neal Stephenson's matter replicators any more inspiring than, say, those of Star Trek? Or non-fictional essays like Feyman's "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" or Drexler's "Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology"?
In the 1990s it seemed that Drexler's book made many dream about the nanotech wonders just around the corner. I don't get the sense that "Diamond Age" had the same specific impact or inspired similar dreams.
Is there any other author that creates such a happy, positive, future like the Culture? Everytime I read one, I just feel better. The Culture is pretty much exactly what I imagine, assuming friendly AI and scarcity are dealt with. It really enables "the meaning of life is whatever you want it to be".
Huh. I only read the first book and a half of the Culture, but I didn't find it enormously positive. The basic message seemed to be "You can fix every one of humanity's problems, and people will just invent new and exciting ways to be horrible to each other."
Only if you focus too much at the edges. The first book is almost completely outside the Culture. Much of the other books deal with "Special Circumstances". But the underlying society is one that sounds rather blissful. Do anything, anytime. Become anything as you wish. A hyperintelligent AI at your call every minute.
I imagine stories of endless parties, people switching genders, getting high and playing a myriad of amazing games, pursuing arts of any form, screwing aliens or AI avatars -- it just wouldn't make terribly interesting reading, for the most part. Hence you've gotta add tension and some nastiness to make it a fun space opera, despite such things happening to less than a billionth of your citizens. Sorta like ST:TNG - sure a lot of the universe sucks, but for the most part, life seems pretty rosy if you're not the subject of an episode. TNG also provided that positive feeling in me, apart from hating the Prime Directive.
Oh, sure, it sounds like most of the people in the Culture live really wonderful, fulfilling lives. But the books I read were never about those people. And, yes, you need some conflict and unpleasantness to make the plot go; but Banks, in everything of his that I've read, really enjoys writing these intricately, lovingly detailed scenes of baroque cruelty and grotesquerie that (it seems to me) are very much intended to provoke a sense of horror, revulsion, and alienation in the reader. He's a great, skilled writer, but uplifting he definitely is not.
I always viewed those parts as demonstrating why The Culture / SC needs to get involved and fuck stuff up. That is, why the Prime Directive and non-interference are bunk, why we should get involved. The world/universe is a shitty place, so we need to make it better. And most of the protagonists have a stop on a GSV for fun, so they could choose to nod off into bliss if they wanted. (And probably, most civilizations could decide to be wholesale brought into the Culture on a per-person basis (i.e. giving up all their local government, culture, etc.)). It's like saying that, at the end of the day, when shit calms down, you're gonna be OK. (Unless you happen to be an unfortunate pawn... but hey, can't save everybody for some reason.)
Maybe I'm just projecting how I'd live in such a universe and that's why it makes me so happy. :\
>I imagine stories of endless parties, people switching genders, getting high and playing a myriad of amazing games, pursuing arts of any form, screwing aliens or AI avatars -- it just wouldn't make terribly interesting reading, for the most part.
Agreed. Banks was basically writing fantasy-horror, and while beautifully written the Culture novels I've read are one long litany of awfullness, despite the essentially utopian setting.
I like niven's known space series for that - not post-scarcity, but there is the feeling that life is a playground filled with fun toys and adventures.
I've been reading Player of Games, and I can't help but find it... boring? Like, I get that the people in the setting clearly got almost everything right, and also managed to dramatically fuck up nothing about their civilization, but the author writes as if he can't show me what it is like to be there. It all comes off as kinda soulless.
I just hope medical technology advances fast enough that we can all live long enough to experience all of this.