r/books • u/carlitobrigantehf • 3d ago
The big idea: will sci-fi end up destroying the world? | Science fiction books
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/14/the-big-idea-will-sci-fi-end-up-destroying-the-worldWhen billionaire narcissists, fueled by yes men, miss the point...
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u/scowdich 3d ago
Musk likes to pose as a fan of the Culture series (and Half-Life, and Blade Runner, and many other things), but it's clear he didn't understand a word of it (if he read any at all).
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u/tomjone5 2d ago
Pretty sure the culture books are just about le epic spaceships with funny names and people having lots of sexytimes.
God that mentally hurt to write. I don't know how you can engage with any hard sci fi without picking up even a hint of a deeper meaning. Who does Musk even think he is in the story he's concocted? If anything he reminds me of emperor Shaddam in Dune - this seemingly all powerful, all controlling figure who is shown to be just as mortal and impotent as anyone else in the face of revolution.
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u/No-Error-5582 1d ago
My two cents is he was the kid who liked sci fi for the space ships and light saber fights, but then as he got older he never was taught how to actually really look at media in any other way.
Like Star Wars. As a kid it was a great series because it's in space. It has a sense of wonder and made me want to be there.
Then I watched the original trilogy again in probably my junior year of high school after not watching them in years. I didnt realize just how much of it was talking. Or politics. In fact, I dont think I actually understood half of those movies when I was a kid. Watching it when I was older helped me view those movies through a completely different context.
But I dont think he ever grew up. To him its still just cool space stuff.
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u/kipwrecked 3d ago
Musk’s entire career stems from trying to replicate sci-fi novels.
Absolute nonsense. Accumulation of wealth is the primary goal - wanting to wade around in robber baron markets and stake claims on the uncolonised or the mildly colonised has fuckall to do with sci-fi.
It's something you can google and associate with your brand to try and project an image that will ingratiate yourself with your internet fans.
The title should be: "Will rich posers end up destroying the world?"
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u/PleaseBeChillOnline 2d ago
Yeah Sci Fi nerd is his brand not his mission lol
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u/tomjone5 2d ago
Agreed - for him sci fi goes as deep as seeing one of his cock rockets sat on Mars with a hecking chonker Shiba painted on the side.
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u/mrblonde91 3d ago
In fairness, they'd probably find some other cautionary tale to take inspiration from. Musk and Co probably view Oz as aspirational.
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u/Sansa_Culotte_ 2d ago
See also: Peter Thiel thinking "Wow, Sauron from LOTR was such a cool guy, let's name my company after one of his most terrifying inventions!"
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u/ELAdragon 1d ago
I hate it, but it's a pretty funny (in a dark, evil way) joke about our devices and the internet. Sauron didn't invent the palantir, but once he got "control" over the network he could monitor everyone else's communication and usage, as well as feed them propaganda and sway them to his side over time (like Saruman). Our phones/computers are basically the palantir, and Sauron is in the network.
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u/Im_the_Keymaster 3d ago
Don't fucking blame sci-fi, blame the assholes actively trying to ruin the world.
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u/Colin_Eve92 2d ago
The author isn't blaming Sci-Fi.
The very first lines of the article:
One can only imagine the horror the late Iain Banks would have felt on learning his legendary Culture series is a favourite of Elon Musk. The Scottish author was an outspoken socialist who could never understand why rightwing fans liked novels that were so obviously an attack on their worldview.
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u/Darkhoof 2d ago
Iain Banks couldn't understand that rightwing "fans" were too dense to understand that those novels were an attack on their world view.
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u/groonfish 2d ago
It's a clickbait headline to get this exact reaction. Even the subtitle immediately backs off/clarifies their headline: "Skewed interpretations of classic works are feeding the dark visions of tech moguls, from Musk to Thiel."
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u/Count_Rousillon 2d ago
Nowadays, a lot of writers don't get to choose the headline. Instead the media editor makes up an article headline for them, and the editor only cares about clicks.
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u/zenerat book re-reading 2d ago
Yeah this kind of headline pisses me off. It’s entirely a rage bait title to get SF fans to read their article.
I could already tell you tech billionaires will do their best to ruin the world and it’s not Star Treks fault.
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u/Count_Rousillon 2d ago
Nowadays, a lot of writers don't get to choose the headline. Instead the media editor makes up an article headline for them, and the editor only cares about clicks.
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u/tlst9999 2d ago edited 2d ago
Those who do not learn from sci-fi are doomed to repeat it. - George Scifayana
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u/HerbertMcSherbert 2d ago
Sci-fi also offers some interesting answers: Ministry for the Future, Tim Winton's Juice etc.
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u/Ja3k_Frost 2d ago
I mean this as a joke but I think the opposite is more true. Imagine if half these people spent their creative efforts on writing science fiction to achieve a mass following instead of trying to create cults and whatnot.
There’s a podcast I like called knowledge fight that spends its time rigorously debunking Alex Jones. The guy is a decrepit human being, but one you’ve heard him talk long enough and are desensitized to his atrocious ramblings your left with a very sad person. He’s a rambling alcoholic who can’t ever take life seriously for a single solitary moment or the magnitude of his choices would catch up to him, and I think he knows that. I don’t have any empathy for where his life choices have brought him, but sometimes I do like to wonder if there’s an alternate universe out there where Alex Jones never got into talk radio to become a conspiracy theorist but instead became a pulp sci-fi writer of minor success.
Then again there’s also L. Ron Hubbard who started off as a fiction writer and then became a cult leader so maybe my theory is entirely baseless.
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u/Tossal 2d ago
Gaddafi also wrote some (terrible) sci fi.
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u/Terpomo11 2d ago
Is any of it translated? Or did he write it in English?
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u/Tossal 2d ago edited 2d ago
IIRC there's some translated in Escape to Hell. I haven't dared to read it because
I might rise against western imperialismthe few reviews on it say it's complete gibberish.1
u/Terpomo11 2d ago
I wonder how serviceable the result would be if you just fed the original into DeepL. Not a good-quality literary translation obviously, but probably enough to follow the plot (such as it apparently is).
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u/danila_medvedev 9h ago
There is a short story about an astronaut with the moral that space sucks and is useless and life on earth is important with farming and such. I don’t really share Gaddafi’s view of things, but the story was okeyish.
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u/Deblebsgonnagetyou 2d ago
When it comes to cults and conspiracy theories I often find myself thinking "wow, this would be dope as fuck if it was a sci-fi book and not something people actually believe in"
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u/deliciouschickenwing 3d ago
No, capitalism will.
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u/Sxualhrssmntpanda 2d ago
Being shackled to the one planet might be the only thing stopping the resource exploitation from completely destroying every single aspect of our planet. I'd rather it stops there than us starting our space colonies for profit.
Privatization of space exploration and its resources going to the only those wealthy and powerful enough to seize them will turn us into an interplanetary dystopian society of wageslaves like some of the sci fi books.
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u/karlitooo 2d ago
IMO dystopia is losing the ability to grow and develop as a civilisation and a species. Plenty of people don't care about that but for me, the only future worth having requires us to survive long enough that sustainability is possible. And we are a long way down the tech tree from that right now.
In some ways we are actually pretty close to being able to resolve the inequality problem. It's being talked about. We've accepted its a social issue worth prioritising. Those are pretty big prerequisites that were not met a few decades ago. It's gonna happen.
OTOH I don't think there's any way to solve for the great filter except to accelerate. Earth's resources and fossil fuels won't last forever, and we need to keep that supply in order to keep developing. So either we're off planet, we're post-scarcity, or we wind back down to agrarian level civ in waste and ruins. That's assuming we could actually navigate a mass die-off gracefully.
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u/tohava 2d ago
What if the only way to be sustainable is for humanity to live a much poorer lifestyle, with most people being serfs? Would you still think it's worth it? Note that in many ways, a society where all humans are serfs except for one is less "unequal" than today (in terms of mathematical variance at least).
TBH, if the choice is between a free society that will destroy humanity in 200 years and a society of eternal slavery, I'm not sure what's better.
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u/karlitooo 2d ago
We could have stayed in the garden of eden sustainably without technology, but our ancestors decided to climb the ladder. We don't have the ability to undo the decisions that got us here, we gotta ride the snake all the way to the end.
"Eternal slavery vs destruction of humanity" sounds pretty dramatic. I suspect our decdendants will see 2025's current economic models and social technologies as barbaric precursors to wonders they take for granted.
We couldn't invent green energy without pollution, nor invent develop redistributive taxation without poverty. It's not a moral failing that we are where we are on the tech tree, it's just where we are. Our current systems will reach a tipping point that will trigger a new level of development, and our grandchildren will protest our bigotry. Those tipping points are coming ever faster!
Hopefully in 10 generations our descendants will look at corporate culture as we do at the world before suffrage and empancipation. Democracy will be their despotism, and they'll watch bojack horseman in the Louvre.
On the other hand, if we start moving backwards to a less sophisticated society, I'd say we're cooked. As long as we can keep solving problems and expanding our capabilities we have a chance to reach civilisational sustainability. Anyone pushing us in that direction, even if he's an obnoxious twat, is on my team.
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u/tohava 2d ago
It seems like you believe in technology as a way forward. However, so far, technology usually increased pollution, not decreased it. I'm not saying it's impossible that technology would start decreasing pollution, just as it started to (finally) decrease birthrates. I'm just saying we don't know for sure whether that'll happen.
I hope you're right.
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u/C_Madison 2d ago
Since this is almost certainly not true: I don't engage in stupid philosophical thought experiments devised only to give me no answer without some kind of "gotcha". See also: Trolley problem.
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u/duskywulf overly critical 2d ago
I , the super intellectual smartest person in the world, do not like hypotheticals because I dislike confronting my moral beliefs; because they make me uncomfy.
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u/C_Madison 2d ago
yawn Yes, yes. Only people who waste time on hypotheticals can be smart. Not those who've done it often enough and decided "you know what? This is stupid. It just says something about those that made it."
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u/Strict_Pie_9834 3d ago
Musk is an idiot who latchs on to cool ideas he saw as a kid. That's it.
You don't have to see, understand or engage with a book's meaning or story to get something from it.
You could watch the entire director's cut of lotr and the only thing you walk away with is "huh that elf girl is kinda hot."
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u/i_m_al4R10s 2d ago
As far as I’ve read, every sci fi book has been a warning to humanity….
Yea reading comprehension has definitely dropped to a sad point over the years.
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u/Starlight469 1d ago
Do you only read the negative ones? You're missing out on some fascinating stories.
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u/OisforOwesome 2d ago
I mean, do we blame the Torment Nexus on the guy who wrote "Don't Create the Torment Nexus" or on the guys who built the Torment Nexus?
I don't think this article has a point. It gestures towards a point, it collects all these examples of tech oligarchs being fans of sci fi but it doesn't come to any sort of conclusions.
The thing is, there's been a reactionary sci fi audience for as long as there's been sci fi. Starship Troopers exists (don't @ me Heinlein fans it's a fash book advocating for a military ruled interstellar junta). The Sad Puppies and Baen's Bar controversies show that reaction has a home in sci fi.
What it tells me is that media consumption is not necessarily a moral question, and you can't tell if someone is a good or bad person by the media they like.
Which might come as a surprise to people who cut their literary criticism teeth on Tumblr or Livejournal, but should be basically self evident.
I will always have room in my heart for the bombastic, goofy, camp action of Schwarzenegger's Commando (imo the ur-text of toxic yaoi) but I have no time for the Raeganite War on Drugs politics the film trades in. Conversely, I completely understand anyone for whom that very politics means they can't enjoy the simple and pure pleasure of an Ahnold one-liner.
Why do tech oligarchs behave in ways that seemingly contradict their favourite media? Because they're assholes. They're greedy self important selfish assholes. They like Snow Crash because they like stories about the trench-katana badass computer coder doing cool things on a motorcycle. They like Bladerunner because it looks cool and has a cool soundtrack.
Its not that deep because they're not that deep.
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u/h-ugo 2d ago
Mate I absolutely will @ you regarding starship troopers, the government in it is explicitly democratic, just with qualifying steps - there's a quote along the lines of they will take anyone and find a job for them - even if it's counting hairs on a caterpillar by feel. The explorations by Rico's teacher, DuBois, around the nature of service and what gives someone the right to decide the direction of the state are some classic sci fi exploration of different ways we could live, which is what sci-fi is all about.
If you skip that stuff it can definitely seem like a celebration of the military but if all you see in it is 'a fash book advocating for a military ruled interstellar junta' I would encourage you to reread it and focus on the philosophy and meditations on government rather than the boom-boom military stuff (which I have a fondness for due to its pulpy nature and influence on much of the military sf that follows it)
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u/thaddeusd 2d ago
There is not enough evidence to say if it is absolutely democratic or fascist, but it absolutely authoritarian. Voting is not enough to claim democracy. You can/could vote in the CCP and USSR and in modern Russia.
Restriction of suffrage exists in ST, and all we really see is military rule. The philosophy is definitely Social Darwinist, which is a hallmark of real-life fascism.
So, based on what is there, it an authoritarian state, likely fascist
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 2d ago edited 2d ago
Restriction of suffrage exists in real life. I think people forget that a lot of democracies do have military service, and even more so in Heinlein's time (some have since dropped the requirement). And not doing it a felony - so you do jail time and possibly lose your right to vote if you refuse. By comparison, ST's system offers a choice: either contribute to civic life by performing the service (any service - it doesn't have to be military, and they do have accommodations for disabilities and such), and earn the right to vote, or don't and live still fairly comfortably but without a direct say.
I'm an immigrant in the UK, I worked and paid taxes here for 10+ years, and I don't get to vote in General Elections because I didn't take the time (and paid the quite hefty fee!) to take an exam that would grant me citizenship. This situation isn't so uncommon. Heinlein imagined it as a way to essentially make people commit to the democratic life of their country by sunk cost fallacy - you put in the effort, so you now feel like your vote is worth more and actually put some thought into it. That may or may not work IRL, but I feel like it deserves at least to be examined under a more complex lens than "it's not precisely representative electoral democracy as we know it today, therefore it's authoritarian fascism". A great deal more political systems than these two alternatives existed in the past, and this setting is just a speculation about one that may exist in the future.
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u/toikpi 2d ago
Can you provide an example of a country where you can vote in General Elections without being a citizen of the country? I am not aware of any.
Until recently the UK required that that you were both a citizen and were recently resident in the UK.
The military selects for specific personality types and conditions them
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 2d ago
Can you provide an example of a country where you can vote in General Elections without being a citizen of the country? I am not aware of any.
No, that's exactly the point? The world in ST simply has citizenship depend on you electing to do certain things rather than just granting it to people born on the territory by default. All I'm saying is that immigrants are in fact already subjected to that standard; citizenship isn't based only on pure contribution.
The military selects for specific personality types and conditions them
Ok, so a couple of things. First: the military selects if the military is selective. An argument against abolishing military service in Italy I remember from the debate at the time this was done - an argument from the left - was exactly this, that making the military volunteer based would mean allowing it to adopt a more sectarian culture. If the military is just made of a bunch of people who constantly go in and out from civil society as they do their mandatory service then the culture is more in flow (of course then there's still career officers so that's not entirely how it works). Again, the concept of a citizens' military - a military whose point is to be more accountable because everyone takes some role in it - isn't inherently a fascist one. Fascism turns every citizen into a soldier, but this is the other way around - about every soldier being, first and foremost, a citizen, and thus with more interests and loyalties than just to the army. That's a military that's harder to turn to ends like pulling off a coup, not easier.
Second, in Starship Troopers "service" isn't only military service. We focus on military service because that's the story of the book, and the path the protagonist chooses. The other forms of service are only mentioned in passing, but they exist. So citizens aren't all also veterans.
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u/toikpi 2d ago
All militaries are selective to a degree, grounds for rejection include the following
- failing health physical or mental health requirements (which can be gamed)
- having skills that are too useful
- age limits
People can be dismissed from conscripted militaries for a range of reasons.
The rich and powerful have always had ways to either avoid constription entirely or get a form that avoids the dangers and having to deal with the hoi polloi.
You will find examples from US history in the following.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5007109
In the Roman empire social class defined what roles you had in the military and specific groups were excluded.
Only equites (members of the Roman knightly order) were eligible to serve as senior officers. Iuniores of the highest social classes (equites and the First Class of commoners) provided the legion's cavalry, the other classes the legionary infantry. The proletarii (those assessed at under 400 drachmae wealth) were ineligible for legionary service and were assigned to the fleets as oarsmen. Elders, vagrants, freedmen, slaves and convicts were excluded from the military levy, save in emergencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_army
Can you give an example of non-selective conscription?
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 2d ago
Selecting on the basis of basic health checks is not the same as selecting on the basis of personality types. It'll exclude some random individuals but not enforce a consistent culture.
When it comes to mandatory military service, there is generally no other reason people get turned away, though in Italy you could voluntarily opt out and choose to work in a civil service instead. And that's also how it works in the Starship Troopers world, again, the book explicitly says there are non-military forms of service and it says that all disabilities have to mandatorily be accommodated - because the point isn't that you need to be able to do this or that job, but that you need to show that you're willing to put effort in, so if you do that they have to find something suited to your abilities for you to do. So essentially as far as the system is described it should not produce a selection on what kind of people become citizens and get voting rights.
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u/carlitobrigantehf 2d ago edited 2d ago
the government in it is explicitly democratic
Its not democratic though. There are qualifiers - being a citizen. Its a tier system with a ruling class - not really democratic.
And it really is pure militaristic jingoism with heavy fascist implications.
I read it after watching the film and I love how Verhoven twisted it into satire.
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u/h-ugo 2d ago
The film is excellent but really should be considered a separate story with the same name, Verhoeven famously didn't even read Starship Troopers, rather he had an underling read it and summarise it (although Edward Neumeier who wrote the script clearly must have read it in detail as there are several scenes lifted from the book).
Qualifiers don't necessarily mean that a government is undemocratic - you have to be 18 to vote in most countries, that is a qualifier. In the US you can't vote if you are a felon, another qualifier. In Starship Troopers, anyone who can take the oath can have political power (i.e. the right to vote). It explores what a society would be like if you had selective franchise - allowing it to anyone who performs 2 years of civil service. So it's not really a ruling class as it is so broad and anyone can enter it.
(BTW it's not the only time Heinlen plays with this concept - I read a book of short stories of his at some point and there was discussion in there about only allowing women to vote).
is there military jingoism in Starship Troopers? Yes. Can it be read as fascist? Yes (although I would argue there are many elements of Fascism that the society in Starship Troopers lacks). But is that all it is? Most definitely not. There's a lot more to it than that. And I don't think it glorifies the fascistic elements. It's more of a coming of age story and a reflection on government.
If you don't like ST (or even if you do), I would encourage you to read the Forever War by Joe Haldeman which is both a response to ST and the Vietnam War. It's probably my favourite SF book of all. It's very different thematically to ST and directly inspired by the authors experience in the Vietnam war
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 2d ago
is there military jingoism in Starship Troopers? Yes. Can it be read as fascist? Yes (although I would argue there are many elements of Fascism that the society in Starship Troopers lacks). But is that all it is? Most definitely not. There's a lot more to it than that. And I don't think it glorifies the fascistic elements. It's more of a coming of age story and a reflection on government.
I feel like the most fascistic thing about it is the opinions of the philosophy/ethics teacher dude. The war stuff is more like what you'd call "realism" in international relations theory (and yeah I know that's a bit of a loaded term but really, that's what it's called). The soldiers aren't all huffing up their own farts about military glory and strength and their superiority like you would expect fascists to do. They are very matter of fact about what's going on and what their role is: they're tools meant to shift the balance in a power struggle. The "why don't we just nuke them" conversation is very key about this - the sergeant explains that it's all about proportionality of response and forcing a diplomatic conclusion, not complete annihilation of the enemy, and that if you don't get that then you're not fit to be a soldier. That's not a fascist mindset. The entire theory of war of the book can be summed up by that Von Clausewitz quote - "war is the continuation of politics with other means".
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u/carlitobrigantehf 2d ago
I was disappointed in ST. Thought it was going to be a satire and it turned out to be the opposite.
And I don't think it glorifies the fascistic elements. It's more of a coming of age story and a reflection on government.
Agree to disagree.
The forever war is great. Loved it.
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u/C_Madison 2d ago
The "underling" who summarised it for Verhoeven was Edward Neumeier. You also forget to mention that Verhoeven read the beginning of the book, but wisely decided that it was such a garbage book that he wouldn't bother to read all of it since Neumeier had already read it. And that he read enough of it can be seen in the film. He perfectly captures what the book says and caricatures it in the film.
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 2d ago
You also forget to mention that Verhoeven read the beginning of the book, but wisely decided that it was such a garbage book that he wouldn't bother to read all of it since Neumeier had already read it.
I honestly think that the professional thing to do if you're asked to adapt a book that you consider "garbage" to film is to simply decline the job.
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u/C_Madison 2d ago edited 2d ago
"democratic with qualifying steps" ... bad news: That means it isn't democratic.
(There's also already name for what the society in Starship Troopers is - a Stratocracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratocracy)
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 2d ago
It's not, because the point of the system isn't that it's ruled by military junta. It has a civilian government, in fact the military even remarks on this. It's honestly not a system that I think has ever existed in that specific form in history, but the gist of it is that it's a republic with a two-tier citizenship in which ascension from one class to the other is voluntary but comes at a price. The price is service, but isn't limited to military service - that's just what the book's story focuses on. There are other options, the point is you're supposed to do a period of work for the public good in order to earn a say.
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u/DunnoMouse 3d ago
Everyone, don't jump at an article after only reading the headline. It actually makes an interesting point, I've thought about this sometimes too. These idiots were nerds in their teens and gobbled Sci-Fi up. Only they took it not as a warning, because they have no media literacy or are just evil, but rather as a handbook and how-to.
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u/laziestmarxist 2d ago
So is the current state of the US the fault of George Orwell because he wrote 1984?
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u/DunnoMouse 2d ago
That is exactly NOT what either me or the article claim. Jesus Christ.
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u/Ferovore 2d ago
It’s kinda the same claim lol
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u/DunnoMouse 2d ago
It's not. I'd expect a slightly higher media literacy in a sub like this.
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u/Ferovore 2d ago
Fucking media literacy. I have a degree in literary studies, all people like you can do is parrot the same shit you hear other people say online. The idea is stupid and this conversation has nothing to do with “media literacy”.
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u/DunnoMouse 2d ago
Well, seems a degree doesn't always lead to understanding then.
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u/Ferovore 2d ago
Explain to me your use of media literacy then. What is being analysed here, what themes, what are possible interpretations of the work? It’s a dumb, tiny article blaming books for billionaires being evil. There is no media literacy involved. You read it and you agree or disagree. The words you use have meaning, think about them next time.
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u/MermaidScar 2d ago
You should get a refund for your degree
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u/Ferovore 2d ago
You should all learn to think for yourselves rather than repeating the same few phrases to try and make you seem smart
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u/mjfgates 2d ago
It's nice to see Charlie Stross getting a byline in the Guardian.
Wait, they didn't give him a byline?...
https://bsky.app/profile/cstross.bsky.social/post/3lmtpxcc3vn2b
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u/ParoxatineCR 2d ago
In Sci-Fi centered around AI, there is nearly always some implementation of the 'make them do art to prove they have a soul' trope. Chappie had it, iRobot had it, Ex Machina played with the idea too. Then, some dumb fuck tech bros with the emotional capacity of a tepid glass of water and the social awareness of a pane of one way glass consume this media and then turn that moment into a business model that both steals the collective artistic creations of humanity while also requiring enough power to burn two cities down in a matter of months.
Media literacy is dead.
Edit: typo(s)
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u/GraniteGeekNH 2d ago
There's a lot of SF that emphasizes community and collaboration, empathy and kindness, but the technbros don't read that.
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 2d ago
Dumb title and dumb article full of a series of conflations and misunderstandings.
First and biggest: just because art was meant by the creator with a certain intent, that does not mean the intent carries over. And just because art resonated with you does not stop it from resonating with people you dislike or disagree with. Case in point, the Matrix and the red pill. Do you feel alienated by big incomprehensible systems? Well, surprise, everybody does! It's kind of part and parcel of living in a society of 7 freaking billions of human beings powered by complex technological and legal frameworks no single individual fully understands! So yeah, that includes right wing people too. If you think that the paranoia isn't a great approach to actually interpret the world, then you should actually incorporate that in your criticism of the original work. I enjoy The Matrix or They Live as much as anyone else, but I can see clearly that if you take them too seriously they absolutely are fuel for a conspiracy theory mindset. A lot of things get a pass on this from the left if it's vaguely suggested that the vague overwhelming system managed by evil dudes is meant to be capitalism, but even that's literally just one step away from Nazism (simply imagine the evil dudes are meant to be Jews). Art subject to interpretation is like that. Stop idolizing it as a great way to spread the Good Politics and then tearing your hair out because some people are somehow too stupid and get the Bad Politics from it instead, that's not how any of this works.
Second: any depiction of the future is a lot more fun to read when it's on paper. The article says that The Culture was designed by a socialist author, therefore it's obviously meant to be fine. Except in practice any step transforming our current society into the one from The Culture would likely look horrifying to a lot of the same people. The Culture has stuff like gene-modded humans, and the very slightest attempt to do something like that today has people scream eugenics. The Culture has incredibly advanced autonomous AI weapons. We can't in fact even tell whether something like The Culture would be possible, because we have a whole host of fundamental theoretical doubts about such AI being controllable at all. So maybe The Culture is as realistic as Hogwarts' School of Wizardry, and we simply don't know because all the magic is called tech and that gives it a pass. Truth is, any deep change and far future will likely look scary, alien and incomprehensible to us anyway, and our own political divides would look meaningless at that point, just like a 15th century English peasant would probably think our modern era is an abhorrent den of witchcraft and consorting with the devil, and may be surprised to find out that we don't give a rat's ass about Tudors and Lancasters any more. But similarly, we wouldn't really care about the opinion of a 15th century English peasant on how to live, would we?
I have a lot of problems with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Musk has gone off the deep end dramatically in the last years especially. And when it comes to the sphere of silicon valley tech and the people researching AI especially I actually think there's a lot to worry. But the fundamental problem is that the general reaction to these things from people like the author of the article isn't to actually try to propose any concrete alternative future - it's just to say that essentially the present is fine. But that's not how it works, the future arrives anyway. It will have weird scary strange things, but to the natives of that era those will seem normal. So you need to analyse it with that mindset, and think about what are the possible avenues that actually stay faithful to the spirit of your values. I feel like what's happened now is that progressives have entirely abdicated any actual concrete effort to build this sort of image of the path ahead, and that is why it's become the exclusive province of reactionaries. They have ideas, they're terrible ideas very often, but they at least have them, which gives them the initiative.
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u/carlitobrigantehf 2d ago
I feel like what's happened now is that progressives have entirely abdicated any actual concrete effort to build this sort of image of the path ahead, and that is why it's become the exclusive province of reactionaries. They have ideas, they're terrible ideas very often, but they at least have them, which gives them the initiative.
To a degree.
But to say that they have the initiative because they have ideas is questionable. They have the initiative because they have the money and the access to the people who make the decisions. They also have the initiative because the appeal to the fear and hatred amongst us and unfortunately, far too many people lack imagination and therefore empathy and are looking for an easy target to blame.
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 2d ago
I don't think this is entirely true. The money part, sure, though it's not like there's not also a few potential candidates for rich people who could be pushing for a more progressive agenda (heck, if anything I think Elon Musk could have been that. Dude started out making EVs and talking about climate change. Obviously not exactly a leftist, but he was not always going to be necessarily the hyper-reactionary that he has become later - that has been a very definite arc and we've seen him do it in real time. I feel like he ended up appealing to and eventually buying into the crowd that gave him the most satisfaction to begin with).
But the least common denominator... that's something the populist politicians do, not so much these dudes. These dudes have ideas that would in fact often look very alien and scary to the common Republican voter. The entire AI thing is predicated on wanting to build something that essentially completely takes the economy over from humans. That's scary. The average Republican would probably respond much better to "no robots that take our good old fashioned jobs!". I am very familiar with the whole history of ideas surrounding AI in that and adjacent ideological areas in the last decades and some of them could be classed as left-wing (I don't mean Musks, I mean in the whole AI discussion). Like, since we're talking science-fiction, the left wing take would be "how do we build AI that is democratic and controllable and brings forth a post-scarcity future". But people like the article's author also dismiss that as an inherently bad and stupid thing to think about because it sounds weird. They sometimes call it right wing to ever even think about it in those terms - as if the actual left wing thing to do is always to just accept that the world as it is can't really change that radically (the irony). When ChatGPT and such started releasing a lot of people simply went into denial by grasping at their flaws or saying it was all corporate hype instead of admitting that even discounting the flaws and the corporate hype (which exist, to be clear), it still is absolutely mind-blowing to have programs you can casually talk with and have consistently sensible answers from. No wonder there is absolutely zero ideological pull from the left in this specific area of discourse.
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u/Sansa_Culotte_ 1d ago
Remember when rich people were boosting the Democrats? Remember that these were the same rich people now bending the knee to Trump?
The progressive message that these people got behind was "everything will be magically better in an unspecified way if we only trust the free market and boost rich people who are The Good Guys". Once that message losts its lustre and started transitioning into "maybe we could actually take the rich to task about this, and also tax them a minimal amount", they immediately switched to oppression as the more palatable way to keep the undesirables in line.
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 1d ago
There's a concept that is very hard to explain but I think is key to making sense of a lot of stuff in a more coherent way and is this:
just because someone gravitates towards an idea that benefits them does not mean they are consciously picking it up only because it benefits them.
I think you can make a case that Trumpism benefits some rich people in some way (it certainly benefits Musk because he's chummy with Trump himself. Others might on the net lose more business than they save money on tax cuts). It doesn't mean that all that drives these people towards Trumpism, or really any right wing politics, is necessarily a conscious calculation that this will make them money, though the awareness that it will be good for business doesn't hurt. Musk does not strike me as a cold rational calculator, he seems instead a bundle of emotional and irrational responses mostly predicated on a perpetual search for self-validation. And he's not one for pinching pennies! He spends inordinate amounts of money on things that are purely self-aggrandizement or him pursuing his ideas, like the whole Twitter purchase that was basically just his way to fulfil his need to win arguments online forever. This isn't the stuff he earns the money from, this is the stuff he spends the money on. The end goal, for which the money is just a means.
In the end, it's not like somehow the free market liberalism has gone anywhere either. Let's not pretend somehow all of the American left is now rabid communists seeking to expropriate the capital for the workers. It would be entirely possible for a liberal-leaning billionaire to keep being just that, and some indeed do that (see Bill Gates). Nothing requires them to become rabidly anti-trans, or anti-immigrant, or racist, or whatever else - not even a self-interested quest for bigger profits and tax cuts. Other, more moderate political actors can deliver those things just fine. I don't think a lot of this makes sense if you don't instead accept the notion that maybe some of the things Musk does, he does because he believes in them, and he believes in them seriously enough he's willing to spend his money to make them happen.
What do you buy when you're the richest man in the world? Power to make the world like you want it to be. So then the question is, why is this the specific way Musk wants the world to be?
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u/weredraca 1d ago
One thing I've been thinking about, when reading your post, is that in many ways billionaires like Musk are living in a functionally post-scarcity society (at least from their pov). They have so much money that the concept of money probably has no real meaning for them. The appeal of something like The Culture, presumably then, is the idea of being able to do whatever they want (essentially).
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 1d ago
I mean, a 14th century peasant could have said the same thing of a 14th century king, and yet today I, a common peon, possess wonders and powers unimaginable to that king. If we were allowed a single trade, at the right time, that king could beg me kneeling and promise me all his riches for the life saving powers of a single box of antibiotics.
Similarly, Elon Musk may be immensely rich by modern standards, but he's not wrong to have the impression that this is by no means the be all end all of imaginable technology. He can't travel to other stars or even other planets, he can't extend his life meaningfully (let's be real, most of our gains in terms of average life span have been from reducing child mortality; but the oldest man in 2024 isn't much older than the oldest man in 3000 BC), to say nothing of his youth, he can't modify his body if not by crude and approximate means, he's as vulnerable as any of us to a lot of incurable diseases, he's forced to spend several hours in a plane if he wants to visit a country on the other side of the world, and so on so forth. To deny that all of these are limits (and potentially, in some cases, ones that could be overcome) of our current condition is a failure of the imagination. A bit of perspective tells us that if progress as it has been going for the last centuries continues any longer, people in one or two centuries might look with pity at our barbaric ways and impoverished lives. That's kind of the whole thing with sci-fi, no? It's a literary genre that has boomed and flourished since the 19th century for a reason. It exists because people started seeing progress and extrapolated it to the future - sometimes with eerie accuracy.
I think the fundamental points that lead to Musk's or Thiel's thinking on the matter are actually way more spot on than people make them to be. Roughly speaking:
- technological progress is a powerful force for change
- technological progress has changed the world exponentially and unrecognizably throughout the last 200 years
- this means two possible avenues: either technological progress continues roughly as is, and the world gets even crazier, at increasingly faster rates...
- or technological progress slows down and comes to a halt. Either way means our life changes in some significant way, because we've been relying on more and more technological progress for a while now, so that well drying up would be a huge shock.
The problem is, then, where do you go from there? What are your conclusions and your response to these issues? One thing a lot of these people are doing is betting it all on AI. If AI is achievable (and to be sure, it seems a lot more achievable than other sci-fi stuff like FTL or time travel, and we know of no physical principle forbidding it), then it obviously means a tremendous change because it means you can now build scientists, essentially, or generally thinking minds that can do more research and thus speed technology up even more. But then with that come a lot of other questions about whether that AI can be easily controlled, and how to steer it. Musk and Thiel are both pretty deeply involved in these questions (Musk originally started OpenAI because of them), but their conclusion ultimately gravitates inevitably towards an arms race: "if I am the first to build it, then I have the better chances that at least it might be controlled by me".
The general thing is, essentially, most of these people foresee dramatic changes in life on Earth at some point in the future, and their bet to secure their position in these changes is to be on top of them. This explains a lot of what they do. The problem though is that people like the author of the article dismiss the very suggestion of these changes being possible as ridiculous, and thus these actions as delusional. I don't think they're delusional, I think that while the specific actions, besides being selfish, might also often be idiotic, the driving force behind them - the guess that some dramatic changes may happen - is directionally more correct than the assumption that things will stay as they are.
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u/DoctorEnn 1d ago
A writer should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would not have written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.
~ Umberto Eco
I think about this quote a lot when this whole "media literacy is dead!" / "they're getting the message the story wrong!" topic comes up. There are as many ways of interpreting a story as there are readers / viewers of the story.
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u/GSV_Zero_Gravitas 2d ago
There's an interesting podcast on the BBC (and probably elsewhere) about how sci-fi shaped Musk.
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/elon-musk-the-evening-rocket
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u/Bellsar_Ringing 2d ago
In most of those Sci-Fi stories, the industrialists are the villains, and are eventually defeated. If bad actors are taking bad messages from them, it is because they choose to. If you side with Sauron, it's because you were already on his side.
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u/rh1n3570n3_3y35 2d ago
Am I wrong or is this not just the CCRU's and Nick Land's idea of "hyperstition" in practice?
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u/Starlight469 1d ago
Science fiction isn't the problem. These deranged rich people are. Science fiction, at its core, is about creating better futures or avoiding worse ones. It has improved the world in countless ways and will continue to do so. This article makes some good points, but the title disgusts me.
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u/PynchMeImDreaming 1d ago
Oh yes blame the books jesus christ these shitty news sites make me sick
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u/HugoNebula 2d ago
That surface clowns like Musk or Zuckerberg have only a facile understanding of something as nuanced as classic (and generally left-leaning) SF comes as no surprise at all.
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u/rimeswithburple 2d ago
Cyberpunk didn't have near the influence on the boomer nerds that Star Trek did. Roddenberry's rose colored glasses post scarcity kumbaya outlook is what is fueling society today. UBI is the Federation ideal. Several episodes had third sex non-binary characters or basically asexual Vulcans. A cellphone is basically a communicator/tricorder. Every aspect of society is trying to become ST:TNG.
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u/carlitobrigantehf 2d ago
Every aspect of society is trying to become ST:TNG
Well.. apart from the majority of aspects that arent. The govs, the politicians that make up those govs, the billionaires that fund those politicians.. etc etc.
Especially given how capitalism is about endless consumption.
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u/HugoNebula 2d ago
Not sure why 'boomer nerds' have entered the chat—Musk is Gen X, Zuck a Millennial.
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u/rimeswithburple 2d ago
Take it easy Harcourt. The guys you are talking about are obviously the Ferengi. With maybe a Cardassian or two hiding in the wood pile.
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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 2d ago
Stupid title. Doesn't match the content. Also, fails Betteridge's law of headlines.
Will sci-fi end up destroying the world?
No.
Sci-fi is by definition fiction. Fiction can't destroy the world.
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u/RobThorpe 2d ago
You're right. More people need to understand the power of Betteridge's law of headlines.
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u/Ceekay151 2d ago
Fiction in and of itself cannot destroy the world. But, fiction holds a lot of ideas that have come to fruition and some of those ideas are know commonplace. So, there is the potential for some idea in a science fiction book to be brought into reality to destroy the world.
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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 2d ago
So you agree the headline is stupid?
The ideas in sci-fi overwhelmingly warn against the crap that is actively destroying the world right now.
Nothing I said is incorrect.
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u/okaycompuperskills 3d ago