[arcticfox]

I have a hard time reading sci-fi these days because the rapid advances of AI have altered or closed off entirely a lot of the futures that I would find most interesting. I have a hard time seeing much other than computers in the future. Maybe stories like the Hyperion Cantos with the AIs in the TechnoCore largely fighting amongst themselves over the future of humanity are still intersting to me.

[robotresearcher]

> the rapid advances of AI have altered or closed off entirely a lot of the futures that I would find most interesting.

Opening them up again is a possible creative move. For example 'Dune', a far future where AIs and computers are banned and highly taboo because they caused too much trouble. Or there's alternate paths from the actual past such as steampunk in which we pushed mechanical engines further instead of switching (!) entirely to electronics.

[jhbadger]

I agree that opening up opportunities for other futures is good, but I don't think Dune was a good example of that even if you like the story -- Dune simply avoided the issue by assuming the future would implausibly turn into the past and that technology would be rejected and medieval feudalism and centralized religious control would return. A better, more plausible, future would show, as is often the case, that the technology we think is so ground-breaking today, just is integrated into daily life and hardly thought about rather than disappearing (which basically never happens).

[komali2]

Imo good sci fi was never really meant to be a technical description of cool technology, but more about how humans interact in specific scenarios dictated by the existence of certain technologies. Star Trek was less about the intricacies of the warp drive and more about "what if humans could interact with hundreds of unique cultures," or "what could human society look like without scarcity?"

There are many stories to tell in the age of AI. I've yet to find a good Luddite novel that explores how the technology might be taken by the commons, rather than hoarded and made to serve capital (the way governments have been). There's plenty of stories to tell around exploring university of ethics once we have a truly non human intelligence to reckon with. Accelerando spent just as much time exploring the legal implications of non-human intelligences as it did the underlying technology.

[operatingthetan]

Iain Banks still reigns supreme. Throw a couple LLMs in a chat together and they sound similar to his conversations between intelligences (particularly in Excession).

[discardable_dan]

I do not want to read a bunch of gross torture porn, though.

Greg Egan is far more interesting and spares you that.

[rsynnott]

That's _mostly_ just Consider Phlebas and Surface Detail.

[Rzor]

Some of Player of Games, too. Use of Weapons has a creative piece of furniture. You gotta excuse Banks, he was also a horror writer.

[rsynnott]

It's definitely _alluded_ to in Player of Games, mostly as a method of emphasising how unpleasant the Azad society is, but I don't think we ever really _see_ any of it?

(I may just be forgetting; it's probably at least a decade since I last read it.)

[Rzor]

If I remember correctly, Gurgeh's internal narrative reveals what he observes in one of the secret channels that are restricted to the upper class. Unpleasant is quite the understatement. lol But yeah, I don't think we actually see it firsthand, it's more disturbing than gory.

[mosura]

Yeah, with who is doing space exploration being right up there. If it is us it isn’t going to be in our organic bodies, and this renders so much of it irrelevant. Wider society will likely pigeon hole their thinking on that next to concerns about the heat death of the universe, but for a lot of us it is disappointing.

I did wonder about what it would be like embodied as a space probe encountering an alien that had also gone through the same process. That is now the sort of scifi that appeals.

[firegodjr]

I'd be very interested in any recommendations in that vein. I've been really enjoying the themes of embodiment in the new Marathon, where your body is disposable, woven silk with unfamiliar organs, while your consciousness is totally owned by a corporation.

[WillAdams]

There was a short story online a while back which covered that which was put forward as an answer to the Fermi Paradox.

[reactordev]

Literally the basis behind Eve-Online… you’re just a clone of consciousness of a citizen of New Eden.

[Joel_Mckay]

In some stories, the outcome seems more plausible with current scientific hubris =3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth%2C_and_I_Must_...

[whynotmaybe]

Barjavel's "Ravage" written in 1943 completely missed the computer revolution.

The passage about audio books that works by having a camera above your book and someone remotely reading it to your headphone, is entertaining.

And 3d tv was a success.

Nevertheless, still a great story.

[api]

Sci-fi is always about the future, or some possible future or alternate world, as imagined in the time it was written, and I think it has to be read that way. It's always about both the present (when it was written) and the future.

It's basically fantasy except the magic is, to varying degrees, rooted in real science and physics. There is of course the whole hard/soft sci-fi continuum that determines just how rooted it is, with soft sci-fi being pure fantasy with sci-fi veneer and hard sci-fi being fantasy that's physically plausible.

As actual science and technology advances and as society changes what we imagine will change. Sci-fi imagined today will either deal with AI and what AI is really shaping up to look like or it will imagine futures where AI has been abandoned for some reason (like Dune).

[operatingthetan]

>Sci-fi is always about the future, or some possible future or alternate world, as imagined in the time it was written, and I think it has to be read that way. It's always about both the present (when it was written) and the future.

In other words, it allows writers to talk about culture with a technological flair. It's still valuable later because it was really about the culture. The tech also enables wild scenarios, that often come true later on.

[chongli]

It's basically fantasy except the magic is, to varying degrees, rooted in real science and physics.

That's a superficial view of both Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Sure, there's a lot of schlock out there which essentially functions as this sort of meaningless escapism for the reader. But proper Sci-Fi and Fantasy is philosophical in a way that makes them radically different, if not diametrically opposed.

Fantasy stories typically depict a society in decay, with evil ascendant, and characters who yearn to return to a time of past innocence. It's ultimately backward looking and conservative. When it functions as social commentary, it's a critique of the alienation and impersonality of modernity.

Science Fiction is forward-looking. It asks "what if" questions about the limitations of our modern society by inviting us to view a society that has been freed from those limitations. It challenges our ideas about human nature. It's ultimately progressive, even when it depicts dystopian governments.

[TomasBjartur]

I agree. But lots can be written about the future of computers. It's worth trying. Writing is fun at least!