It is always fascinating to see how much influence authors and scientists have had on each other throughout history.
You sometimes see clear examples of how fiction fuels technology, and sometimes technology inspires fiction.
As a writer who hasn’t been published yet, I find that most of my stories start by imagining where today’s science might take us next, though every now and then, I catch a glimpse of something that feels truly original.
I'm curious if others here feel the same. Is the future mostly written by visionaries in fiction, or by the engineers and scientists bringing it to life? Or maybe it’s a union, intended or not, between both sides.
Thanks for your comment, that’s exactly what I was wondering about.
For me, I actually tend to see things the other way around where authors often inspire tech. Example, engineers who watched Star Trek as kids and ended up designing the first flip phones. Sometimes we build things simply because technology finally makes them possible, and only later do we realize it’s straight out of a story we grew up with.
Especially when a whole generation grows up with the same sci-fi stories, certain ideas just start to seem “normal” or even become things people expect to see for real. A kind of relationship between our collective dreams and the inventions that follow, i guess.
while i agree in principle, you seem to make it sound like without a science fiction story, some things would not have been invented. but i disagree with that. the thing is that science fiction is the imagination of humans of how the future could look like but new ideas in tech come from the same source. that is, while star trek may have predicted phones and tablets they were not invented because of star trek. they would have been invented anyways simply because it is part of the imagination of humans. just like multiple authors can come up with the same plot lines or settings, multiple people can invent the same tech.
science fiction represents the full breath of human inventiveness, and tech inventions the part that can realistically be built. in that sense the first airplane was also inspired by historical scifi
basically, someone has an idea, and either, like you, they write about it, or, if it is realistic enough, and they know how to do it, they set out to build it. and any idea that is written about but can be realized (and is practical enough to be useful) will eventually be realized. but ideas are cheap, and i feel we give far to much credit to people having an idea because a thousand others probably had the same idea, but only a few write about it and a few more are able to build it, while the remaining 995 stay silent and do nothing about it.
so i credit star trek not for inspiring the tablet, but for predicting it, and more so, for popularizing the idea. the flip phone less so, because the original communicator is just a wireless handset with a cover. very different from what a flip phone actually does. (you'll notice that the flip phone is not listed in the above wikipedia page, and even the tablet has been described more than a decade before it appeared in star trek TNG)
I get what you’re saying, and it makes total sense. I’d lean toward it being the best (and worst) of both worlds: sometimes stories spark inventions, sometimes inventions spark stories, and we can probably agree it’s rarely just one-way.
In my case, my imagination pulled me into writing, where I conjure things up, so I definitely feel that inspirational side, even if the ideas themselves aren’t always “original.” To the creator, though, they can feel original.
As I write fiction, I notice I often end up predicting futures where humans might go next. So you’re right, writing can be as much about prediction as inspiration. But I also like to think that, every now and then, a truly new paradigm emerges, something unpredictable, that most people didn’t even realize was needed until it existed. Sometimes, society doesn’t know what it needs until it’s already here.
>Is the future mostly written by visionaries in fiction, or by the engineers and scientists bringing it to life?
I find Charles Stross' blog to be quite informative.
He has a tendency to predict a thing, write a book demonstrating how it will be good, and then absolutely hate the real world implications of the technology.
Famously he picked up Nick Szabo's old whitepaper on smart contracts, and envisaged a world where the technology would be used to disrupt an evil US government. Making it too hard for them to examine complex business structures.
By the time we got smart contracts, he was dead set against their use. And has written a lot about how corporations are in fact evil AI running on the operating system of the government.
He also has a variant of crypto currency in one of his novels, used to trade at light speed (so incredibly slowly) against distant space colonies. He is quite anti crypto, and I believe if such a system were deployed he would be quite against it.
The problem I guess is that its fun to imagine a thing, but not as fun always to live with it.
That’s an interesting point you make, and a great example with Charles Stross. It’s a good reminder that ideas and inventions can have surprising real-world effects, sometimes not what the creators hoped for.
I’m dreading the day I hear, “I’m sorry Ed, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” (kidding).
In general, people being people, it is always safe to assume that some will use a thing for its best purpose and others for its worst possible purpose.
Kind of hard for SF stories featuring organic life (i.e. humans) to be based around Jupiter because of the planet's incredibly strong magnetic field and hence killing radiation belts - like the Van Allen belts around Earth, but much worse. Probes to the Jovian system have to be heavily hardened.
If anybody is into sci-fi, I highly recommend The Three Body Problem series. I'm being very elusive here to avoid spoilers, but let's just say that there are some very fascinating challenging with establishing technology (and especially human life) around Jupiter, what with it's gravity, the radiation, it's moons, distance from the sun, etc. As a space nerd, those books were highly enjoyable
The tech/fantasy parts are great and were novel back then. But the characters were shallow, story so-so and ended in big meh, and overal it feels like chinese propaganda re freedom and future.
Any non-chinese character is evil for example, only chinese will inherit the right for their future. Western culture moved from such properly bad cliches long time ago for the better.
The opening scene of the first novel during the cultural revolution I recall as being absolutely fantastic. The rest of that novel was a big rather dull Asimovian deus ex, and then the rest of the series was more of that.
Big disappointment, very much not what I think of as hard sci-fi which is what it often gets billed as, and I absolutely do not get the love for it here.
Don't get me wrong, there's some total dross out there that I adore, but this ain't it for me.
I think it's more that western cultural cliches become invisible to western audiences rather than moving on. E.g. the "superhero" is definitely a western cliche. "A lone operative defies the rules to do the right thing because might is right if you're right. Individual exceptionalism triumphing etc". Somewhat shallowly examined in some films but still turns up all over the place.
Well, life on Jupiter is possible, but "organic" life seems way less likely. "Organic" means carbon compounds, and there's not a whole lot of carbon on Jupiter.
In case anybody’s interested, Malka Older has a really enjoyable series (two books so far) of short novels set on habitats in Jupiter’s atmosphere (so not breathable atmosphere, but also not vacuum). They’re solid mystery stories with fun characters and an intriguing setting. The first is called “The Mimicking of Known Successes” and the second is “The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles”.
There's a fantastic Ray Bradbury short story from 1948 called "Jonah and the Jove-Run" that I hardly see referenced anywhere. It's about Jupiter being the next frontier after colonizing Mars and the complexity of navigating the asteroid belt on supply runs.
It's a great quick read. Though it hardly attempts the sort of scientific justification as in The Three-Body Problem.
Of the four big ones, Callisto at 0.01 rem/day is probably the least deadly. Io is the worst, not only for radiation but being basically one huge volcano, powered by tidal stresses.
Reading this post reminded me of another book I read a few years ago: Curious Moon [0].
It is written as a novel that teaches PostgreSQL by exploring the dataset of the Cassini orbiter around Enceladus, Saturn's moon. Highly recommended and fun read.
That novella was so enduringly influential that noted SF authors Stephen Baxter (a collaborator with, and sort of heir to, Clarke,) and Alastair Reynolds wrote a very good sequel a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medusa_Chronicles
Jupiter and Saturn moons always make inspiring hostnames. Right now, I have Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede. Ganymede has the most powerful setup. Yesterday, I decommissioned Io.
In a similar vein, I really liked "Robot" by Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg, first published in 1973. It doesn't really mention AI itself, but it is about the relationship between humans and artificial life/intelligence. The central theme is the question of knowing if you're "real" in an artificial world. Not the easiest read and can be quite dark at times, but one of my favorite works of classical science fiction. Very underrated!
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 78.3 ms ] threadYou sometimes see clear examples of how fiction fuels technology, and sometimes technology inspires fiction.
As a writer who hasn’t been published yet, I find that most of my stories start by imagining where today’s science might take us next, though every now and then, I catch a glimpse of something that feels truly original.
I'm curious if others here feel the same. Is the future mostly written by visionaries in fiction, or by the engineers and scientists bringing it to life? Or maybe it’s a union, intended or not, between both sides.
For me, I actually tend to see things the other way around where authors often inspire tech. Example, engineers who watched Star Trek as kids and ended up designing the first flip phones. Sometimes we build things simply because technology finally makes them possible, and only later do we realize it’s straight out of a story we grew up with.
Especially when a whole generation grows up with the same sci-fi stories, certain ideas just start to seem “normal” or even become things people expect to see for real. A kind of relationship between our collective dreams and the inventions that follow, i guess.
science fiction represents the full breath of human inventiveness, and tech inventions the part that can realistically be built. in that sense the first airplane was also inspired by historical scifi
basically, someone has an idea, and either, like you, they write about it, or, if it is realistic enough, and they know how to do it, they set out to build it. and any idea that is written about but can be realized (and is practical enough to be useful) will eventually be realized. but ideas are cheap, and i feel we give far to much credit to people having an idea because a thousand others probably had the same idea, but only a few write about it and a few more are able to build it, while the remaining 995 stay silent and do nothing about it.
what makes scifi interesting is to predict inventions that at the time can't yet be realized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_existing_technologies_...
so i credit star trek not for inspiring the tablet, but for predicting it, and more so, for popularizing the idea. the flip phone less so, because the original communicator is just a wireless handset with a cover. very different from what a flip phone actually does. (you'll notice that the flip phone is not listed in the above wikipedia page, and even the tablet has been described more than a decade before it appeared in star trek TNG)
In my case, my imagination pulled me into writing, where I conjure things up, so I definitely feel that inspirational side, even if the ideas themselves aren’t always “original.” To the creator, though, they can feel original.
As I write fiction, I notice I often end up predicting futures where humans might go next. So you’re right, writing can be as much about prediction as inspiration. But I also like to think that, every now and then, a truly new paradigm emerges, something unpredictable, that most people didn’t even realize was needed until it existed. Sometimes, society doesn’t know what it needs until it’s already here.
Thanks for the link, really interesting list!
I find Charles Stross' blog to be quite informative.
He has a tendency to predict a thing, write a book demonstrating how it will be good, and then absolutely hate the real world implications of the technology.
Famously he picked up Nick Szabo's old whitepaper on smart contracts, and envisaged a world where the technology would be used to disrupt an evil US government. Making it too hard for them to examine complex business structures.
By the time we got smart contracts, he was dead set against their use. And has written a lot about how corporations are in fact evil AI running on the operating system of the government.
He also has a variant of crypto currency in one of his novels, used to trade at light speed (so incredibly slowly) against distant space colonies. He is quite anti crypto, and I believe if such a system were deployed he would be quite against it.
The problem I guess is that its fun to imagine a thing, but not as fun always to live with it.
I’m dreading the day I hear, “I’m sorry Ed, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” (kidding).
I also get the impression that as people age they place an increasing value on safety and comfort. Change is the antithesis to that.
I would say his view of them is more Lovecraftian than "evil", but here's the speech (as a blog entry): https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-yo...
Any non-chinese character is evil for example, only chinese will inherit the right for their future. Western culture moved from such properly bad cliches long time ago for the better.
Big disappointment, very much not what I think of as hard sci-fi which is what it often gets billed as, and I absolutely do not get the love for it here.
Don't get me wrong, there's some total dross out there that I adore, but this ain't it for me.
It's a great quick read. Though it hardly attempts the sort of scientific justification as in The Three-Body Problem.
It is written as a novel that teaches PostgreSQL by exploring the dataset of the Cassini orbiter around Enceladus, Saturn's moon. Highly recommended and fun read.
[0] https://sales.bigmachine.io/curious-moon
>He had discovered four of Jupiter’s moons
okay then..
edit: flagged?? refer to above
For those stumbling by- that's a 1901 novel by L. Frank Baum, who also wrote The Wizard Of Oz! Here's a synopsis: https://oz.fandom.com/wiki/The_Master_Key
That novella was so enduringly influential that noted SF authors Stephen Baxter (a collaborator with, and sort of heir to, Clarke,) and Alastair Reynolds wrote a very good sequel a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medusa_Chronicles
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/177/why-is-the-des...