posted
If you had to choose would you prefer to read a story:
1) Where the future was all seamless tech an clean streets (aka Star Wars, I-robot etc. Just examples mind, don't get caught up on them)?
or:
2)It all got screwed up. Technology was bad, chemicals have mutated people. Most people didn't get the benefit of the techno-promise--only a few. A nasty sort of future, then?
Obviously that is not to say each story won't have conflict--they would.
If you had to choose a book on no other criteria apart from the setting...which would you choose?
posted
I don't read a not of science fiction since I'm more of a fantasy type, but for either I generally want a certain amount of dark grubbiness.
Posts: 1588 | Registered: Jul 2007
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posted
Personally, I like dark and grungy. it is rather funny though, we glorify the past (Fantasy) with Knights in shiny armor and cool magic, but the "dystopian" future is dark and dangerous. In actuality the average life span has continued to increase since the dark ages, the healh of eveyone is better on the whole, and technology is only going to increase these things.
Posts: 36 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Well, if all else was equal (which it never is), I would prefer the latter because I find it more believable. Call me cynical if you like, but I tend to think that one of these days something we're doing is going to come back and bite us -- hard.
I could also be biased because that is exactly what's happening in my WIP -- a futuristic collapsed society.
The biggest difficulty I find with the collapsed society is the disagreements you'll get over how much future will be in such a future. Maybe I decide people are still reading books on paper but mark my word, someone will come by and say that it's unbelievable to still read books on paper in the future. (I've had that comment. )
posted
I kinda liked the future in "Back to the Future II"---one of the rare ones that wasn't Choice 1 (the antiseptically clean one) or Choice 2 (the messed-up one). I found Choice 1 hard to believe, especially that people would voluntarily live in such a future, and Choice 2 seemed too much like the present extrapolated and run through someone's bitter filter---and even less probable than Choice 1.
(I thought some of the "Star Wars" stuff did have a feel for a lived-in culture.)
posted
If it's well written, I'll read it. Bright and shiny or dull and grungy. As long as I don't have to live through some non-plot Max Max recap, I'll give it a chance...
Posts: 269 | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
If it doesn't have a good mix, I'm not much interested. Star Wars DID have grunge on their spaceships--it was bucking the trend at the time to do that.
But if it's too grungy, I feel it's just as unbelievable as if it's too clean.
posted
I think Choice 1 normally is hiding Choice 2, a bit like admiring the clean streets of New York until you take a wrong turn down an alley and find a homeless man sleeping in a cardboard box. Or living your entire life in a 1st World Country and never thinking about the 3rd World Countries. Especially if the governments of Earth are putting on a nice show for intergalactic visitors. I remember when the Commonwealth Games came to Melbourne there was talk of putting up all our homeless in hotels for the duration so the overseas visitors didn't see them. Though in a Sci Fi I imagine keeping them underground or the like.
I used this idea in my one sci-fi WIP, the capital planet of my universe had been building higher and higher skyscrapers for such a long time that some of their people lived so far down they spent their entire lives without seeing sunlight and the further down you went the poorer the people and their living conditions, but all the top levels where visitors went and the powers-the-be lived were clean (partially because of having such a large work force in the slum levels.)
But mainly because I prefer optimistic sci-fi, even if it's dealing with real problems, real challenges, I prefer entertainment to entertain in a positive way. I don't like to get depressed while reading or watching a movie, for example.
Course now that I said that, I can think of two recent examples of movies I liked that weren't all sweetness and light - Bridge to Terabithia was adorable and made me cry like a baby (was watching it with my two babies, probably had something to do with the gusher) and I just loved the movie Children Of Men even though many horrible things happen and the future looks bleak. It ends on an optimistic note, or so it seems, and I suppose that's my whole point. I prefer stuff that ends with a possibility for hope/happiness, no matter where or what setting a person is in. I gave up on the Inkheart/Inkspell series somewhere in the 2nd book because I honestly couldn't take any more of the heroine getting kidnapped again or losing her mom again or her dad again or whatever. At some point you have to cut the reader a break and let something GOOD happen, I wanted to shout to the author (who I think is very talented, but this series just really bugged me.)
Anyway, just one person's POV, but I'm a sci-fi junkie, don't know if that helps.
posted
I like dystopian SF, which comes in many flavors. Typically, the dark and grungy is my preference, but clean and sparkly is good if it has something sinister in it.
Posts: 172 | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote: I remember when the Commonwealth Games came to Melbourne there was talk of putting up all our homeless in hotels for the duration so the overseas visitors didn't see them.
I didn't remember anything about that. I was new to Melbourne when the Games came here last year, but I never heard of that.
Back on topic, I don't read much sci-fi, I just watch a lot of it on TV without really realising that I do. I prefer the dark and grungy sci-fi like in Star Wars on that planet where Luke Skywalker is from.
Though the pristine, clean and white sci-fi like I, Robot can be good as long as the sinister part is truly sinister and NOT AI wanting to kill of humans. I only like I, Robot because I'm a fan of Will Smith, lol.
posted
I often think that the "or" word should be removed from English. It forces choices and too often implies that life is a zero sum game. Whenever someone offers me a choice of this or that, my instinct is to ask why I cannot have both, please.
My preference is similar to KayTi's. I like optimistic, especially in my entertainment. I suppose I have a preference for clean technology above grunge because dystopian stories rarely seem to get out of "life sucks" mode. Like KayTi I think some light relief is necessary now and again.
One reason I enjoy Star Trek, despite its occasional failings, is that Roddenberry set out to make it ultimately optimistic and in this it always delivers. Further, the stories are so much better when some grungy alien (well, okay, mildy messy alien) happens along and messes up the crew's fancy technology and clean corridors.
I think Grant John's right in saying that choice 1 stories can hide choice 2 stories. All is apparently clean and shiny but discontent seethes below the surface. They've been done time and again since Metropolis and if they're done well, I never tire of them. One common modern version is clean shiny government undermined and subverted by lovable rebels. (Star Wars, Firefly)
But the clean and shiny can wear thin, not least because as others have said it can be hard to believe. I cannot think of examples of stories where choice 2 hides choice 1, though. Hmmm ...
posted
Choice 1 or Choice 2, the main point of both of them was that nobody seemed to be having a good time there, at least when most writers handled it.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Oh, excuse me, I'm still snickering at Robert Nowall being a parent model. I assume that Talespinner would also be classified as doddering old paper-book-reading fossils as well? Which would mean that Rick Norwood and I would be like grandparent models. (Help me, I'm hyperventilating). My question is, what would wouldbe be? And would Uncle Orson really be an uncle, or would he be . . . a grand uncle?
Posts: 1304 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
Too many of us are geeky ourselves, and we don't even notice when Talespinner gets that way. Good thing you pointed it out, Jeanne T.
For those who aren't geeky, "zero sum game" means a game where there is only one winner (I'm not geeky enough to know why that is the term for it, but we can't all be THAT geeky).
A "non-zero sum game" is where the players figure out how to let everyone get something out of the game, even if no one actually gets the BIG prize.
It isn't exactly "can we have it all?" so much as it's "can we each have some of it?" instead of one person getting it all.
"In game theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). It is so named because when the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero."
posted
Wups, sorry folks. In meatspace I know when I've gone geek because people's eyes start rolling to the ceiling.
Guiness works well for me as a med.
Your descriptions of the term, Kathleen and wetwilly, are entirely correct. I see it used in commerce, where companies are apt to see the market as fixed in size. A competitor's win is their loss--a zero sum game. Hugely successful companies do not see the market as fixed in size. They try to expand it. For example, during the 50s and 60s Honda expanded the market for motorcycles on a global scale simply by making them not stop, and not spit oil. They refused to see the motorcycle market as a zero-sum game.
Interestingly, writing SF&F is one of the few businesses (all or most of us are trying to sell stories) I can think of where competitors (as writers we're competing for just a few slots in magazines, publishing schedules and bookstore shelves) help each other. We see SF&F as anything but a zero-sum game :-)
Um. Wups. Did it again. Is it too early for Guiness? Pat
posted
I feel your pain, in economics we use game-theory all the time. I spent weeks describing very basic behavior as seeking "the nash-equilibrium strategy."
However, I suggest that guinness isn't a very good medicine for this diagnosis, (unless you mean the beer.) I suggest one pizza, two songs from guns and roses, and three hours watching seinfeld.
posted
I think he means the beer and it's good for almost any diagnosis--assuming you're over the legal age for drinking. (Don't want to get myself in trouble there.)
And we enjoy your geeky turns even if I do tease you about them, Talespinner.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited December 19, 2007).]
We should NEVER be ashamed of our inner geek! Take that protractor out of your pocket protector and give it a little hug!
I can entirely relate to the zero-sum discussion, but nash was always a little beyond me. Too dang much post-calculus math.
As a public policy guy who focuses on the environment, I always end up devolving into discussions about the appropriate applications of pareto optimality in comparison with coasian cost efficiency.
Good old Coase. Just when we thought we had to make public good decisions based on somebody winning and nobody losing, along he comes suggesting that the "winners" can compensate the "losers," and here comes the world of "adjusted and estimated" environmental cost-benefit assessments....
[This message has been edited by Igwiz (edited December 19, 2007).]
posted
Okay, thanks for helping confuse the confused even more, guys.
So, back to the topic, or has the question been satisfactorily answered (always something to consider when the discussion goes off topic)?
I'll offer, whether you choose grungy or spotlessly clean, you need to be sure you let the reader know the reason for it, or don't spend a lot of words describing it.
posted
i like the near futuristic movie BLADE RUNNER. it seems more real to me than any other near futuristic movie i have seen. it the only thing i cant forsee by the time the movie takes place is the androides that are grown and die after 3 or 4 years.
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