io9 blog: Decline of the Slide into Barbarism genre?

[Simon_Jester]

This is correct. While starving peasants would be gunned down with machine gun fire if they "storm[ed] the Bastille",

In post-apocalyptic conditions, or conditions where AK-47s and RPGs have proliferated (i.e. everywhere this is likely to happen), that is not a given.

the free market no more predicts that than it predicts that courts would impose damages for breaches of contract, or that people who are in the "business" of kidnapping teenage girls and renting out their vaginas against their will would be thrown in prison by law enforcement (or lynched by the girls' families).

In general, the free market does not take into account the existence of law enforcement or a court system.

This is true. As much to the point, the free market does not take into account the necessity of law enforcement and a court system, if the free market is to continue to exist in recognizable form. A rigorous, formal proof of how the free market works would basically be a form of game theory- and game theory always assumes some starting rule set or parameter set for the game.

This is not a flaw in free market economics as such, it's just a limiting condition- the laws of chemistry as we know them don't work to explain or model nuclear fission, and that's not a flaw in chemistry as such.

Now, in disaster conditions, the free market can still work as long as the general public thinks there will be a tomorrow- that law and order will come back and enforce the rules against stealing, but also against malfeasance like selling river-water that kills from diarrhea as if it were clean, drinkable bottled water. Or in an earlier era, that the king's soldiers would ultimately punish peasants who raided the granary, even if they were desperately hungry and there wasn't enough food to go around, thus forcing the peasants to struggle to buy at the accepted price.

If there is no tomorrow, at least in terms of being accountable for crimes, then that breaks down. And if true famine conditions emerge- there is not enough food to provide virtually everyone with enough calories to survive- then the market hits a singularity because the value of food approaches infinity, and you get into a position where all available grain-sellers sell themselves out and no more food can be had except by means outside the market.

In the case of an absolute shortage, some people are going to die. The only question is who. In practical terms, the question is what is the best way to decide. It's perfectly true that the losers under whatever system is chosen may try to reverse that outcome by force. That is true of any possible system of decision making. It is however irrelevant to an analysis of which system will produce the best outcome.

However, the analysis of which system will produce the best outcome is itself irrelevant if said system will predictably collapse and produce no outcome.

[energiewende]

Contra Marx, none of the various socioeconomic systems used by major historical actors is known to predictably collapse nor to endure forever. The existence of a possibility - but not certainty - that the market would be overthrown in a catastrophe is where the danger lies.

[Formless]

You know, what interested me about the article's question wasn't exactly "what would happen after the apocalypse", more "how might that effect audience's perception of the Barbarism genre"... although this discussion isn't too surprising. I guess it does show how SDN perceives it. Unless people are just trying to drag this towards pet topics and talking points. *glares at energiewende and amigocabal suspiciously*

There's a related idea, I think; the decline into not barbarism but into totalitarianism or fundamentalism: The Republic's transformation into the Galactic Empire, the republic of Gilead in the Handmaid's Tale, Panem in The Hunger Games, or even the state of the USA in Dark Angel. A cultural or moral fall rather than a physical, if you will.

It saves on the effects budget if all you need are some black SUVs and spare uniforms from Starship Troopers, and it means you can say pointed things about whichever polititians you don't like.

Actually, Sorchus reminded me of a third idea: barbarism as a moral failing different from tyranny, but not necessarily implying a technological backslide. That is, people maintaining their current technology but with no interest in innovation, cultural as well as technological, and certainly no interest in exploring science and philosophy; and an implication of anarchy and violence. A bit like the slide into fundamentalism, but without the implied dictatorialism. Something resembling Warhammer 40K, perhaps? Or maybe Foundation? I've never thought of that aspect of it, so it would be interesting to know of other examples. Or maybe its time to write a few.

[Connor MacLeod]

You could say it might point out how 'mechanically minded' sci fi fandom has become over recent years as 'hard' science fiction has become more popular (at least amongst the segments of fandom that congregate at places like here or Spacebattles.) I mean the fact that people would discuss the 'logic' of the situation rather than the perception or thematic value to the story (or such) would be pretty telling about the fandom, I'd think.

I think alot of the 'ideas' that characterized early fiction have been discarded because they aren't perceived as 'correct' to fiction. I mean to me it seems nowadays fusion powered rocketships and rayguns are deemd as fantastical and illogical as 'barbarian/lost cultures'.

Assuming I'm reading your original intent and that last post correctly, at least. I can never be quite positive I am

[Connor MacLeod]

Hmm to build on what I said before, since I thought it over some more. I'm kinda reminded of how when I was younger and 'the future' was mentioned you would sometimes get people picturing shit like you'd see in the Jetsons. Flying cars, meals in pill form, robot house servants and all sorts of 'technological' conveniences. Oh and nuclear power. All the way. Its how we envisioned the 'reality' of the future, and thats often what shaped the ideas alongside the inclination to 'write what you know/are familiar with'.

Over time, alot of those predictions unsurprisingly never came true, were disproven, etc. and our 'current' view of things kind of clashes with how things were 'then' Which of course affects the way the ideas about sci fi and 'the future' are shaped, so the ideas would change to 'fit' those new perspectives (and the fiction changes along with it.) Over time those trends have been, I think, shaped more and more by how technology has progressed and how it is projected to progress... and I think people again get into the habit of thinking 'this is how it will be, and nothing else makes sense.' - basically how people define 'suspension of disbelief' for themselves. At least, thats what I get when I read about stuff like post scarcity, transhumanism, etc. because I often feel like its exorcising the 'human nature' element on the assumption humanity is going to invariably and automatically 'change' and somehow cease being be the greedy, shortsighted, competitive evolved monkeys we sometimes are (again because of the 'inevitability' of tech progression, I think.)

This mindset I feel extends as well to fiction where you have the 'nature over technology' idea, and how people react poorly against that: Endor in Return of the Jedi and the Na'Vi in Avatar being good examples of that I think. Because people think 'the future' and 'sci fi' will be a certain way (again likely due to technology), it would be impossible for certain things to happen. But if they get depicted that way, it offends suspension of disbelief and therefore is 'wrong' (and we get some of the over-reactions to the Na'Vi that have been seen on this board and elsewhere.)

I think that makes sense. Or at least it made sense in my own head.

[Formless]

Assuming I'm reading your original intent and that last post correctly, at least. I can never be quite positive I am

This time, you certainly are.

(Oh, I know you are trying to get me to go off on one of my own pet topics, but what the hell. Maybe it'll help people understand where I was coming from when I posted this topic)

I mean, I like my hard science fiction when its done for thematic reasons, because science is highly relevant to the meaning of life (or at least my life), and because it can help protect a plot from deus ex machina. But I'm also a huge fan of things like Sluggy Freelance where the friendly resident mad scientist (whose inventions work on story logic, natch) is the son of an aging Indiana Jones expy and his ex girlfriend girlfriend is a literal witch. One reason why would be its 4U City arc: probably one of the best Distopian Sci-fi stories I've ever seen because even though the technology is largely inexplicable or absurd, it takes those wacky inventions and shows the consequences of their existence on both the world and their inventor. And much more than that as well, once you take the character's motivations and history into account. Here, for those who don't read the comic, this is a wordless splash page summarizing it after the fact * . Tell me that something like that doesn't transcend either mere cartooning or mechanistic action.

( * fortunately that page won't spoil anything unless you know some context first. And anyway, 4U City a pretty good standalone story in its own right. Hell, I could almost make an entire thread about that comic and its greatest hits. But moving on...)

On the other hand, realistic space combat (for instance) is more interesting to speculate on than to watch, and the best stories I've seen about realistic science and technology don't try to intrude on the domain of Space opera because that just isn't Hard Sci-Fi's strong suit emotionally. To tie this into the main topic, I am not that interested in the specifics of the apocalypse and the "correct" way to depict society afterward, because it depends so much on your assumptions and what kind of apocalypse that we're talking about. An apocalypse caused by pestilence or mass famine is vastly different from one caused by nuclear war and different again from one caused by natural disaster. But the audience might not think of those as equally likely scenarios, assuming their horizon's are broad enough to include certain scenarios at all.

I speculated that the Apocalyptic genre pushed out the Barbarism genre because people during the Cold War and ending around the beginning of the 90's would have taken the nuclear apocalypse for granted, as opposed to the endless hordes of zombie fictions that sprang to life sometime after or the alien invasions that came slightly earlier or right at the beginning. It says something about the values and assumptions of the people living in different decades, and that's what is interesting to me about this genre shift. The idea that the predecessor to the apocalyptic genre was predicated on a much more gradual collapse and why is as interesting as how the two genres can be merged.

There are two questions posed by this thread, I think: my intended question of how exactly did the genre change and why (1), and how the genre might change in the future (possibly with our influence) (2). Most people are stuck on question 2, but I have faith that they can think outside the Gear Box on this one, if only because I know they are also fluent in the Black Box approach, so I hope to see what other approaches might be lurking inside their brains.

[Formless]

Hmm to build on what I said before, since I thought it over some more. I'm kinda reminded of how when I was younger and 'the future' was mentioned you would sometimes get people picturing shit like you'd see in the Jetsons. Flying cars, meals in pill form, robot house servants and all sorts of 'technological' conveniences. Oh and nuclear power. All the way. Its how we envisioned the 'reality' of the future, and thats often what shaped the ideas alongside the inclination to 'write what you know/are familiar with'.

Heh. I grew up around the 90's, and I have a couple of those books as well, but updated to 90's expectations. You could already see some of the singularity and information technology memes cropping up-- in fact there was a series of them (I have two of 4[?]) and the second was devoted just to information technology. That was the more boring one as I remember it...

I can't wait to see how those books evolve as time goes on and the TransWhatever predictions start becoming visibly premature.

Over time, alot of those predictions unsurprisingly never came true, were disproven, etc. and our 'current' view of things kind of clashes with how things were 'then' Which of course affects the way the ideas about sci fi and 'the future' are shaped, so the ideas would change to 'fit' those new perspectives (and the fiction changes along with it.) Over time those trends have been, I think, shaped more and more by how technology has progressed and how it is projected to progress... and I think people again get into the habit of thinking 'this is how it will be, and nothing else makes sense.' - basically how people define 'suspension of disbelief' for themselves. At least, thats what I get when I read about stuff like post scarcity, transhumanism, etc. because I often feel like its exorcising the 'human nature' element on the assumption humanity is going to invariably and automatically 'change' and somehow cease being be the greedy, shortsighted, competitive evolved monkeys we sometimes are (again because of the 'inevitability' of tech progression, I think.)

Sounds kind of like Roddenberry's direction for TNG, only instead of humans cleansing themselves of their "vices" (that is, whatever Roddenberry declared evil about us) its our technology that slowly removes us from the equation of our own lives and therefor obsoleting mankind's evil.

And I wonder if that doesn't tie into the direction of modern Zombie crap: that nature itself has a mindless element that human beings are one step removed from-- thus why those stories tend to end with our future uncertain, instead of surviving with a barbaric future in the making. We're uncannily similar to the zombies, not the other way around. We just don't know if our intelligent qualities are enough to outlive nature's mindlessness or succumb to it.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into a very broad and overrepresented genre.

[Simon_Jester]

At least, thats what I get when I read about stuff like post scarcity, transhumanism, etc. because I often feel like its exorcising the 'human nature' element on the assumption humanity is going to invariably and automatically 'change' and somehow cease being be the greedy, shortsighted, competitive evolved monkeys we sometimes are (again because of the 'inevitability' of tech progression, I think.)

I think it's also that we live in a relatively cynical era- no matter what take you have on the prevailing social problems of our time, the odds are high that you feel those problems are not being solved, not being addressed.

From the 1920s through the '60s, most of the Western world had fairly high hopes for the future assuming it didn't blow itself up in a massive war. It was assumed that without such wars, or even with them, progress would continue. Now, people are more skeptical, so when we imagine future progress, the first thing we imagine is that it must have been done by better-than-human "people."

Not that this didn't exist in mid-century fiction, but then it mostly expressed itself in quasi-eugenic arguments about people being 'more evolved' or whatever.

[Formless]

Not that this didn't exist in mid-century fiction, but then it mostly expressed itself in quasi-eugenic arguments about people being 'more evolved' or whatever.

You know, I was just thinking, how many other genres are in competition here? Whenever you find nerd sites like this one or io9 it seems like there is a lot of overlap between sci-fi and fantasy fandom, and indeed other types of "genre fiction" unless it involves romance. Star Trek explicitly has this "evolved times" subtext going on, but a lot of space opera leans on larger than life heroes for its upbeat feeling too. And it goes without saying in the superhero genre, which didn't even exist before the 30's.

[energiewende]

From the 1920s through the '60s, most of the Western world had fairly high hopes for the future assuming it didn't blow itself up in a massive war.

Really? I don't think the interwar and Missile Crisis generations were so naive. Remember that in 1960 a lot of people alive and everyone in power remembers WWI and WWII. The recent historical experience has been the end of an era of comparative peace and the inauguration of a series of increasingly bloody wars that have expanded to encompass the entire world, fuel by extreme totalitarian ideologies, at relatively short intervals (WWI-WWII is a shorter time than the end of the Cold War to now, for instance).

It would make more sense to suggest this genre declined because of the rise of strategic nuclear weapons and decline of 1930s totalitarian ideologies (basically everywhere except NK), and the consequent enormous reduction in direct hostility between the great powers. Whether this will last is less certain, but right now humanity is very safe from war. The only wars still allowed can affect only a small percentage of the population and generally the least developed and useful parts. The threat to human existence is minimal.

[Simon_Jester]

Not that this didn't exist in mid-century fiction, but then it mostly expressed itself in quasi-eugenic arguments about people being 'more evolved' or whatever.

You know, I was just thinking, how many other genres are in competition here? Whenever you find nerd sites like this one or io9 it seems like there is a lot of overlap between sci-fi and fantasy fandom, and indeed other types of "genre fiction" unless it involves romance. Star Trek explicitly has this "evolved times" subtext going on, but a lot of space opera leans on larger than life heroes for its upbeat feeling too. And it goes without saying in the superhero genre, which didn't even exist before the 30's.

Hm. I'm a little confused by your analysis, Could you expand on that a bit?

One note being that when I say 'evolved,' I mean literal evolution, or at least literal evolution as conceived by the 1930s. Check Stapledon's works for examples.

From the 1920s through the '60s, most of the Western world had fairly high hopes for the future assuming it didn't blow itself up in a massive war.

Really? I don't think the interwar and Missile Crisis generations were so naive. Remember that in 1960 a lot of people alive and everyone in power remembers WWI and WWII. The recent historical experience has been the end of an era of comparative peace and the inauguration of a series of increasingly bloody wars that have expanded to encompass the entire world, fuel by extreme totalitarian ideologies, at relatively short intervals (WWI-WWII is a shorter time than the end of the Cold War to now, for instance).

You missed a step. Now I am talking about Singularity fiction or lack thereof, and the idea that we would need to have some better-than-human technological entity in order to actually solve human problems and make the future anything other than a repetition of the present, only with "flashier cars and smellier air."

And I don't consider them to have been naive- it's simply that their idea of "what's wrong with society" is "um, dictators are oppressing and killing millions, hello?" And they figured, arguably with reason, that if the end state of mass death and oppression could be avoided or the dictators overcome, then overall, science and technology would continue to make people's lives better, as in fact they did from 1910 to 1950 or 1960, despite the world wars.

[energiewende]

It makes more sense to me that conventional 'vanished civilization' fiction was popular back then because they looked at WWI and WWII and thought they were describing an on-going process rather than a speculative possibility. The modern world has less of this type of thing because it seems much less plausible according to our life experiences. Yes there's the environmental apocalypse genre but it has much less raw emotional appeal when the effects are still vague and remote.

I don't think this was much to do with wishes. Reality eliminated conventional war by providing us the atomic bomb, and disproved the collectivist dogmas that both the socialist and fascist movements built on. Today only backward loser countries have dictatorial governments, not the most futuristic, so those stopped being associated with the future.

[Thanas]

I don't think this was much to do with wishes. Reality eliminated conventional war by providing us the atomic bomb, and disproved the collectivist dogmas that both the socialist and fascist movements built on.

But it did not eliminate conventional war. It just made conventional war between nuclear powers less likely.

[Formless]

Not that this didn't exist in mid-century fiction, but then it mostly expressed itself in quasi-eugenic arguments about people being 'more evolved' or whatever.

You know, I was just thinking, how many other genres are in competition here? Whenever you find nerd sites like this one or io9 it seems like there is a lot of overlap between sci-fi and fantasy fandom, and indeed other types of "genre fiction" unless it involves romance. Star Trek explicitly has this "evolved times" subtext going on, but a lot of space opera leans on larger than life heroes for its upbeat feeling too. And it goes without saying in the superhero genre, which didn't even exist before the 30's.

Hm. I'm a little confused by your analysis, Could you expand on that a bit?

One note being that when I say 'evolved,' I mean literal evolution, or at least literal evolution as conceived by the 1930s. Check Stapledon's works for examples.

I don't know what you mean by "evolved" then, unless you mean (as I have seen suggested before) that Superman was conceived as an ideal mankind might achieve at some point. But to elaborate, these genres are generally predicated on the notion that mankind will become less barbaric over time, or follow heroes who represent that ideal so the reader can strive to become more like that (again, Superman, or Star Wars). Likewise, High Fantasy tends to follow very noble heroes (oftentimes literally nobles)with noble ideals (see for instance Tolkien). Hence, these genres have very positive and hopeful themes that run contrary to the various "downfall of society" genres. So they have a lot of appeal, and may have over time out-competed the Barbarism genre and its variants at the market and with audiences; while dystopian fiction has political uses that keeps it timeless, and the apocalyptic genres were topical during the cold war and survive today because of inertia and possibly because the American Right loves its Rugged Individualism.

[Formless]

It would make more sense to suggest this genre declined because of the rise of strategic nuclear weapons and decline of 1930s totalitarian ideologies (basically everywhere except NK), and the consequent enormous reduction in direct hostility between the great powers. Whether this will last is less certain, but right now humanity is very safe from war. The only wars still allowed can affect only a small percentage of the population and generally the least developed and useful parts. The threat to human existence is minimal.

That... depends on who you ask. America isn't immune to criticism that it is a neo-colonial empire and/or a bully state. That's why dystopian fiction is ever popular-- its always possible that our society could decline into a police state of some kind or cause a civil war (which is unaffected by nuclear weapons-- you don't nuke your own land. That's just stupid). You only need to look at the things said to justify the War on Terror or the demonstrable lies told to justify the war in Iraq. And there are plenty of people who still conflate Communism/Marxism with Totalitarianism because "Stalin LoL", who have never read the philosophies or histories that lead to those states' evolution...

I don't think this was much to do with wishes. Reality eliminated conventional war by providing us the atomic bomb, and disproved the collectivist dogmas that both the socialist and fascist movements built on. Today only backward loser countries have dictatorial governments, not the most futuristic, so those stopped being associated with the future.

...like yourself, for instance. Jesus christ. You realize much of Europe considers itself Socialist, right? Or that many Americans concur with that description? Do you know that "Collectivism" is an anthropological term that describes most (modern!) Asian cultures, like Japan? It doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. Its not a dogma, ideology, or philosophy. Its a descriptor of the society's values, and can mean many things in a particular culture's context.

Also, "backward loser countries" is how you describe the third world? Are you real, or are you just that jingoist? No one wants to live under a dictator. Usually they end up living under one because of outside intervention. Like, say, the CIA. No one trusts them for good reason. Furthermore, those countries are no less modern technologically than anyone else. Dictators love high technology, as long as they own it and control it. I have no idea why you would imply otherwise.

If you wonder why I was suspicious of your posting motives, now you know.

But anyway, your analysis is quite shoddy here beyond the.... well, the outright bullshit above. Hostilities dropped after the 30's? Leaving aside for the moment that WWII happened during the 40's, hostility between the Soviets and the U.S. was immense during that time. Look at how many times nuclear war was threatened, or how many authorities were convinced that a nuclear war could be won through proper preparedness. It was tense like a bow.

There is a reason the Nuclear Apocalypse was such a popular subject-- people were genuinely afraid that it would happen if things went just slightly wrong. Nukes meant the difference between a hot war and a "Cold War", but that's it. And there was the American policy of wars of containment-- Vietnam ring a bell? Look up the "Domino Theory". Nukes hardly stopped warfare, they just changed the strategy behind it. In the end, massive numbers of people were effected, because it lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union-- not by invasion or other conventional military means, but through indirect action, political clout, and economic pressure. They didn't collapse on their own, but because our country used force to pressure the Soviet Union until it could no longer stand as a Communist country.

Lastly, your posts still seem disconnected from the purpose of the thread. The apocalypse and Barbarism can come about due to natural disaster as well; see any asteroid film ever made. Your focus seems very selective on war and competition causing collapse, but classically the reasoning went "decadence-->apathy-->decline-->collapse-->Dark Age". No apocalypse needed. Global Warming could cause it if a writer wanted to go that path.

[Simon_Jester]

One note being that when I say 'evolved,' I mean literal evolution, or at least literal evolution as conceived by the 1930s. Check Stapledon's works for examples.

I don't know what you mean by "evolved" then, unless you mean (as I have seen suggested before) that Superman was conceived as an ideal mankind might achieve at some point.

More or less. Or that some articles suggested (with varying degrees of seriousness) that man might evolve into giant brains with a vague, minimal support structure for a body. Or any of a number of similar prospects.

In the '30s it was not so well understood that evolution is a motion away from contra-survival traits; there was still a holdover from the "Great Chain of Being," with people thinking that evolution naturally drove a motion from lower types (apes) to higher types (mental or physical supermen). This of course also fitted in with all sorts of absurd racial crap.

But to elaborate, these genres are generally predicated on the notion that mankind will become less barbaric over time...

I quite agree. I was cross-comparing the SF version of this (we will develop into mental/physical/moral superhumans) with the modern genre of singularity-fiction. In short, the mid-century version of the Singularity was a singularity in human potential, although there were occasional amusing exceptions like The Duplicators by Murray Leinster which sort of poke fun at the idea of unlimited material wealth.

[energiewende]

That... depends on who you ask. America isn't immune to criticism that it is a neo-colonial empire and/or a bully state. That's why dystopian fiction is ever popular-- its always possible that our society could decline into a police state of some kind or cause a civil war (which is unaffected by nuclear weapons-- you don't nuke your own land. That's just stupid). You only need to look at the things said to justify the War on Terror or the demonstrable lies told to justify the war in Iraq. And there are plenty of people who still conflate Communism/Marxism with Totalitarianism because "Stalin LoL", who have never read the philosophies or histories that lead to those states' evolution...

People equate US to Nazi Germany or the USSR for propaganda reasons, not because they really believe it.

...like yourself, for instance. Jesus christ. You realize much of Europe considers itself Socialist, right? Or that many Americans concur with that description? Do you know that "Collectivism" is an anthropological term that describes most (modern!) Asian cultures, like Japan? It doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. Its not a dogma, ideology, or philosophy. Its a descriptor of the society's values, and can mean many things in a particular culture's context.

EU countries and the US are both social democracies (even the spending difference was pretty much wiped out by the financial crisis), which means they overlay some redistribution onto the market system. There is little desire for or practice of what people in the 1930s would regard as socialism, which was government ownership and control of the means of production according to a single central plan, replacing the market system entirely.

Also, "backward loser countries" is how you describe the third world? Are you real, or are you just that jingoist? No one wants to live under a dictator. Usually they end up living under one because of outside intervention. Like, say, the CIA. No one trusts them for good reason. Furthermore, those countries are no less modern technologically than anyone else. Dictators love high technology, as long as they own it and control it. I have no idea why you would imply otherwise.

Technology is roughly comparable to the GDP per capita, excepting some outliers like petrostates. There are no high GDP per capita dictatorships that aren't petrostates. And for sure the third world are losers; that's why they're called the third world. Today it seems gauche to say so, because everyone knows having dictators is for losers and there's no need to rub their noses in it. But from 1890-1945 a lot of influential intellectuals in the West argued that dictators were necessary and good to solve the 'problems' of free societies, and Nazi Germany and USSR gave them at least some reason to feel justified (though, if you look at the detailed economic data, it was a false impression).

But anyway, your analysis is quite shoddy here beyond the.... well, the outright bullshit above. Hostilities dropped after the 30's? Leaving aside for the moment that WWII happened during the 40's, hostility between the Soviets and the U.S. was immense during that time. Look at how many times nuclear war was threatened, or how many authorities were convinced that a nuclear war could be won through proper preparedness. It was tense like a bow.

I didn't say "hostilities" stopped, I said war stopped, at least between the great powers. Redefining my statements to make them vague enough to give you an argument is an odd way to proceed after accusing me of bullshitting. If you look at the trend from 19th century period of extended peace or brief, relatively low casualty wars in Europe, to WWI which killed 2-5% of the populations of all participants, to WWII where, aside from increased death in war, major combatants set out to also annihilate the civilian populations of various parts of the world, and all at 20 year intervals, the trend line is headed to apocalypse. Nuclear weapons, meanwhile, seem to have produced an uneasy peace between two heavily armed blocs.

There is a reason the Nuclear Apocalypse was such a popular subject-- people were genuinely afraid that it would happen if things went just slightly wrong. Nukes meant the difference between a hot war and a "Cold War", but that's it. And there was the American policy of wars of containment-- Vietnam ring a bell? Look up the "Domino Theory". Nukes hardly stopped warfare, they just changed the strategy behind it. In the end, massive numbers of people were effected, because it lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union-- not by invasion or other conventional military means, but through indirect action, political clout, and economic pressure. They didn't collapse on their own, but because our country used force to pressure the Soviet Union until it could no longer stand as a Communist country.

Unlike WWI or WWII no one thought the Vietnam War would destroy the world. It was a small, contained war in the periphery, like the Boer War. Same for the Soviets in Afghanistan. I'm also very sanguine about US claims to have 'defeated' the USSR even in a bloodless and indirect way (though, what's bad or depressing about that?). Their system was simply misconceived and collapsed under its own weight. The only choices were to hold the country together by force but reform anyway ('PRC option') or centralize further and completely destroy living standards ('NK option'). They weren't crazy enough to choose the NK option and their internal nationalisms were probably too strong for the PRC option. None of this has much to do with the US.

[Simon_Jester]

People equate US to Nazi Germany or the USSR for propaganda reasons, not because they really believe it.

Excuse me, I thought you had brains.

Don't you know the difference between saying "The US is a neo-colonial empire which exploits a periphery by manipulating governments and keeping up a strong expeditionary military" and saying "the US is Nazis?"

EU countries and the US are both social democracies (even the spending difference was pretty much wiped out by the financial crisis), which means they overlay some redistribution onto the market system. There is little desire for or practice of what people in the 1930s would regard as socialism, which was government ownership and control of the means of production according to a single central plan, replacing the market system entirely.

How come their definition of "social," "socialist," and "collectivist" have evolved over time, while you are firmly stuck using definitions from the 1930s as if they were current and accurate?

What will you do for an encore, insist that "concentration camp" means what it meant to the British in 1901, not to the Nazis in 1944?

Technology is roughly comparable to the GDP per capita, excepting some outliers like petrostates. There are no high GDP per capita dictatorships that aren't petrostates. And for sure the third world are losers; that's why they're called the third world. Today it seems gauche to say so, because everyone knows having dictators is for losers and there's no need to rub their noses in it.

Has it occurred to you that the dictatorships may have been caused by the same conditions that made them "losers," rather than their loss being caused by the dictatorship? It seems like an obvious alternate hypothesis you should want to explore.

I mean, do you think these countries are losers because their people made a mass, consensual decision to lose? That would imply deep ignorance of the history of the world from, say, 1500-1960.

Unlike WWI or WWII no one thought the Vietnam War would destroy the world. It was a small, contained war in the periphery, like the Boer War. Same for the Soviets in Afghanistan. I'm also very sanguine about US claims to have 'defeated' the USSR even in a bloodless and indirect way (though, what's bad or depressing about that?). Their system was simply misconceived and collapsed under its own weight. The only choices were to hold the country together by force but reform anyway ('PRC option') or centralize further and completely destroy living standards ('NK option'). They weren't crazy enough to choose the NK option and their internal nationalisms were probably too strong for the PRC option. None of this has much to do with the US.

The Soviet state collapsed at the time and in the manner it did partly because of the massive economic burden of keeping up a military competitive with the US on a national GDP 1/4 to 1/3 the size of the US's.

Remove that burden and it is harder to say whether the Soviet system would have fallen apart entirely under its own weight, and if so when. Sure, it might have- but we do not know the details. Geopolitics always plays a role in the collapse of any nation not totally isolated; the USSR is no different.

[energiewende]

Excuse me, I thought you had brains.

Don't you know the difference between saying "The US is a neo-colonial empire which exploits a periphery by manipulating governments and keeping up a strong expeditionary military" and saying "the US is Nazis?"

He was responding to a passage pointing out that 1930s style totalitarianism has largely disappeared. If he is not claiming the US resembles 1930s style totalitarianism then he concedes the point.

How come their definition of "social," "socialist," and "collectivist" have evolved over time, while you are firmly stuck using definitions from the 1930s as if they were current and accurate?

What will you do for an encore, insist that "concentration camp" means what it meant to the British in 1901, not to the Nazis in 1944?

In the first place it's mainly hysterical Americans who say the European countries are socialist. Most European countries have explicitly socialist parties that complain about how "neo-liberal" we have become. In the second, again, he is responding to the claim that the ideologies prevalent in the early 20th century when this type of fiction was most common have disappeared. If you are saying taht they have disappeared, but some other ideology has emerged with the same name, then you have conceded the point. My exact argument is that what he may call European (or American) socialism today is dissimilar to what people in the 30s meant by socialism.

Has it occurred to you that the dictatorships may have been caused by the same conditions that made them "losers," rather than their loss being caused by the dictatorship? It seems like an obvious alternate hypothesis you should want to explore.

I mean, do you think these countries are losers because their people made a mass, consensual decision to lose? That would imply deep ignorance of the history of the world from, say, 1500-1960.

The number of countries with externally-imposed dictatorships is tiny. Jordan comes to mind, but I'm not sure of others. Some are arguably the victims of native tyrant cliques oppressing the majority (Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.), but most of the big and famous dictatorships - USSR, PRC, NK, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nazis, Italy, Franco Spain, etc. - have been established by concerted popular effort within the country. Not of course with the support of everyone, but a large fraction and possibly a majority of society, with a clear ideological goal.

The Soviet state collapsed at the time and in the manner it did partly because of the massive economic burden of keeping up a military competitive with the US on a national GDP 1/4 to 1/3 the size of the US's.

Remove that burden and it is harder to say whether the Soviet system would have fallen apart entirely under its own weight, and if so when. Sure, it might have- but we do not know the details. Geopolitics always plays a role in the collapse of any nation not totally isolated; the USSR is no different.

So why doesn't NK collapse, which has a much higher military burden and smaller economy?

[Formless]

I didn't say "hostilities" stopped, I said war stopped, at least between the great powers. Redefining my statements to make them vague enough to give you an argument is an odd way to proceed after accusing me of bullshitting. If you look at the trend from 19th century period of extended peace or brief, relatively low casualty wars in Europe, to WWI which killed 2-5% of the populations of all participants, to WWII where, aside from increased death in war, major combatants set out to also annihilate the civilian populations of various parts of the world, and all at 20 year intervals, the trend line is headed to apocalypse. Nuclear weapons, meanwhile, seem to have produced an uneasy peace between two heavily armed blocs.

It would make more sense to suggest this genre declined because of the rise of strategic nuclear weapons and decline of 1930s totalitarian ideologies (basically everywhere except NK), and the consequent enormous reduction in direct hostility between the great powers.

Threatening to bomb someone back to the stone age with nuclear weapons IS direct hostility, you fucktard. Shut the fuck up and stop polluting my thread with your nonsense.

[energiewende]

'Direct hostility' as opposed to the 'indirect' hostility you're talking about.

Thanks for conceding all the other points!

[Formless]

NO, you asshat. I have conceded nothing. I was silent on all other points because Simon addressed them, and on top of that what is more important is 1) you are lying and strawmanning 2) you are a fucking moron 3) you are hijacking my thread. I repeat: shut the fuck up or I will ask the mods to shut you up.

[Connor MacLeod]

Heh. I grew up around the 90's, and I have a couple of those books as well, but updated to 90's expectations. You could already see some of the singularity and information technology memes cropping up-- in fact there was a series of them (I have two of 4[?]) and the second was devoted just to information technology. That was the more boring one as I remember it...

I can't wait to see how those books evolve as time goes on and the TransWhatever predictions start becoming visibly premature.

One thing I've noticed is that a common thread (as Simon notes) of sci fi trends seems to be a certain.. pessimism. Or maybe pragmatism. But it seems to me like every successive gneration of sci fi fans trends 'downwards' rather than 'upwards' - if that makes sense. Things shift more towards realism and 'hard numbers' and shit like that rather than the high adventure and mystery and even outright 'magic' stuff like you uesd to have.

I mean I remember when B5 was still a big thing and it seemed lots of sci fi was rife with similar ideas. Zero point energy, or organic technology (including starships) and weird shit like that. But that got thrown out and replaced with 'new' paradigms as time went on too.

Sounds kind of like Roddenberry's direction for TNG, only instead of humans cleansing themselves of their "vices" (that is, whatever Roddenberry declared evil about us) its our technology that slowly removes us from the equation of our own lives and therefor obsoleting mankind's evil.

And I wonder if that doesn't tie into the direction of modern Zombie crap: that nature itself has a mindless element that human beings are one step removed from-- thus why those stories tend to end with our future uncertain, instead of surviving with a barbaric future in the making. We're uncannily similar to the zombies, not the other way around. We just don't know if our intelligent qualities are enough to outlive nature's mindlessness or succumb to it.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into a very broad and overrepresented genre.

'Nature' and stuff that is essentially random seems to be anathema to 'modern' fiction, or at least the 'hard' variant of it. I guess in my mind I see this more in terms of how things get analyzed. I mean at some point in the past if you were 'analyzing' zombie shit you might have had people go 'okay we assume it somehow can happen, how would things pan out' whereas now its like 'zombie apocalypse is stupid/impossible' so it gets reviled (I'm trying to remember some of the world war z threads here, but I'm coming up short.) To me that kind of parallels alot of the discussions had about 'Avatar' as well - the whole 'practical/realistic' vs 'storytelling' dynamic.

Maybe its a reflection of the juggling act you take between 'telling a good story' and 'world building/suspending disbelief' and that people's SoD thresholds have just.. changed. How that change manifests I can't begin to guess, but.. *shrug*

I think it's also that we live in a relatively cynical era- no matter what take you have on the prevailing social problems of our time, the odds are high that you feel those problems are not being solved, not being addressed.

From the 1920s through the '60s, most of the Western world had fairly high hopes for the future assuming it didn't blow itself up in a massive war. It was assumed that without such wars, or even with them, progress would continue. Now, people are more skeptical, so when we imagine future progress, the first thing we imagine is that it must have been done by better-than-human "people."

Not that this didn't exist in mid-century fiction, but then it mostly expressed itself in quasi-eugenic arguments about people being 'more evolved' or whatever.

That is an interesting point. It has seemed to me at times that alot of the more 'recent' fiction stuff that seems popular focuses either on totally redefining humanity in some way (transhumanism, or the singularity stuff from what I remember of it) or in trying to eliminate certain issues (post scarcity, God AIs, etc.) I suppose you might see that as a reaction (backlash?) against the problems of real life. I wonder if the push towards more 'realistic' space travel and such might be argued as a reaction against the decline of NASA and the space program or the privatisation of space (something I can remember in certain fiction I've read, like CJ CherryH, not turning out all that well cuz of CAPITALISM.)

On the other hand it seems like you're trying to eliminate 'problems' as well that could be fodder for good stories, or trying to just deny human nature on some level. I mean personally to me I never bought this notion that humanity was somehow going to magically just.. not be humanity just because of some technology or innovation or whatever. We have this annoying tendency to stay ourselves and defy predictions like that, and so the ideas of like oh 'SPACE AMERICA' or 'SPACE 19TH CENTURY BRITIAN' or whatever aren't really all that far fetched to me depending on how you figure history and shit takes its course. But if you're convinced that a certain future 'path' is inevitable you might take certain things as a fait accompli - and taken to extremes you may get that aforementioned 'truly realistic sci fi civilization actually are genocidal dicks' which seems to be an extreme 'rationalization' of shit like the Fermi Paradox (like with all those 'Killing Star' and similar arguments.)

[Simon_Jester]

Has it occurred to you that the dictatorships may have been caused by the same conditions that made them "losers," rather than their loss being caused by the dictatorship? It seems like an obvious alternate hypothesis you should want to explore.

I mean, do you think these countries are losers because their people made a mass, consensual decision to lose? That would imply deep ignorance of the history of the world from, say, 1500-1960.

The number of countries with externally-imposed dictatorships is tiny. Jordan comes to mind, but I'm not sure of others. Some are arguably the victims of native tyrant cliques oppressing the majority (Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.), but most of the big and famous dictatorships - USSR, PRC, NK, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nazis, Italy, Franco Spain, etc. - have been established by concerted popular effort within the country. Not of course with the support of everyone, but a large fraction and possibly a majority of society, with a clear ideological goal.

Most of the true "Third World" dictatorships have their roots in an independence struggle, which in turn created a precarious new anticolonialist government that was either subverted or overthrown by the dictatorship.

Of the "big and famous" dictatorships you cite, very few of them would be classed as third world countries today- China is accelerating out of it economically, the USSR was by definition the pole of the 'second world,' not the third. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and Spain were economically fairly well off for the time.

Vietnam, Cambodia, and North Korea all have high-profile dictatorships and third-world economies. And, not surprisingly, all of them are decolonialized countries. The "Third World" narrative consists almost entirely of the following sequence:

1) Colonization by powerful foreigners, usually Europe.
2) A period of colonial rule in which native centers of power and useful social systems were destroyed, and replaced by systems designed to funnel all power and wealth into the hands of a small foreign elite.
3) The retreat of the colonialists, voluntary or forced.
4) Political, cultural, and economic chaos as the natives try to figure out how the hell to run the wreckage left behind by the colonialists. Problems encountered can include:

4a) Ethnic tensions created by the colonialists using one ethnicity as a 'favored class' who got to lord it over other natives in the colony. This favored ethnicity predictably has most of the money, guns, education, and power at the moment the colonial regime leaves... but is also uniformly hated by the less-favored ethnicities beneath them. Violence ensues.
4b) Regional separatism created by the fact that the colonialists arbitrarily drew the borders of the 'country' in ways that do not correlate to the populations on the ground- say, as if the Martians landed in Europe and arbitrarily awarded half of France to Germany, half of Italy to France, and half of Germany to Italy. You can imagine how much of a pain in the ass it would be to sort that out without bloodshed, especially given a few generations for the ethnic groups to intermix and muddy any attempt to separate them territorially. Hell, just look at the Balkans for an example of this happening to white people.
4c) A lack of any infrastructure designed to provide a balanced, healthy economy. There may be railroads, resource extraction facilities, and so on in a freshly decolonized country. But they're all there to make it as easy as possible to remove wealth and valuata from the area, not to allow for industrialization and further economic growth. Indeed, not giving a colony the tools to grow its own economy without foreign investment is good practice if you are a colonialist.
4d) A lack of healthy political structures that can enforce good, progressive* legal systems on the society. The colonialists usually destroy any structure like that which threatens to get in their way, replacing it with a foreign colonial administration that is then totally removed as soon as the revolutionaries drive out the foreigners. As a result, there is little or no meaningful government in the new country, except whatever gets imposed by whichever armed group had the most to do with driving out the old colonial elite.

*And yes, that often means 'protecting private property' and so on, both the laws you'd like and the laws you wouldn't like.

The Soviet state collapsed at the time and in the manner it did partly because of the massive economic burden of keeping up a military competitive with the US on a national GDP 1/4 to 1/3 the size of the US's.

Remove that burden and it is harder to say whether the Soviet system would have fallen apart entirely under its own weight, and if so when. Sure, it might have- but we do not know the details. Geopolitics always plays a role in the collapse of any nation not totally isolated; the USSR is no different.

So why doesn't NK collapse, which has a much higher military burden and smaller economy?

-No regional separatist movements (the first cracks in the Soviet bloc came when the various Warsaw Pact countries and outlying Soviet republics started trying to leave)
-No gap in the brutal destruction of dissent against the regime (once Gorbachev relaxed pressure and tried to be humane, it was very hard for him to clamp the lid back down).
-Lower levels of overall oppression, not just at the moment of breakup but previously. North Korea has been a harsher regime than the USSR for some time- in the USSR, being in the gulag wasn't hereditary.

---

One thing I've noticed is that a common thread (as Simon notes) of sci fi trends seems to be a certain.. pessimism. Or maybe pragmatism. But it seems to me like every successive gneration of sci fi fans trends 'downwards' rather than 'upwards' - if that makes sense. Things shift more towards realism and 'hard numbers' and shit like that rather than the high adventure and mystery and even outright 'magic' stuff like you uesd to have.

I mean I remember when B5 was still a big thing and it seemed lots of sci fi was rife with similar ideas. Zero point energy, or organic technology (including starships) and weird shit like that. But that got thrown out and replaced with 'new' paradigms as time went on too.

I think the Internet has accidentally taken a lot of the magic out, because it's become so popular to pooh-pooh things online. On the other hand, it may be cyclic; we may see a deliberate injection of the grand and fantastic back into things as SF finds itself struggling to compete in terms of big ideas and grand vision. Right now, we're on the downswing from a relative high of creative, productive televised SF in the 1990s and early '00s, and that may have something to do with it.

Maybe its a reflection of the juggling act you take between 'telling a good story' and 'world building/suspending disbelief' and that people's SoD thresholds have just.. changed. How that change manifests I can't begin to guess, but.. *shrug*

I think it's partly the company you keep, getting older, pickier, and more crotchety; Lord knows zombie/vampire/whatever stories are still selling pretty well in the mass market.

That is an interesting point. It has seemed to me at times that alot of the more 'recent' fiction stuff that seems popular focuses either on totally redefining humanity in some way (transhumanism, or the singularity stuff from what I remember of it) or in trying to eliminate certain issues (post scarcity, God AIs, etc.) I suppose you might see that as a reaction (backlash?) against the problems of real life. I wonder if the push towards more 'realistic' space travel and such might be argued as a reaction against the decline of NASA and the space program or the privatisation of space (something I can remember in certain fiction I've read, like CJ CherryH, not turning out all that well cuz of CAPITALISM.)

It is a commentary on us as a society, I think, that after winning the Cold War, America seems to have managed to make its dreamer-demographic* tired of humanity. We fantasize about posthuman intelligences, about vampires and werewolves and spirits living among ourselves, not about them in other distant places but essentially here and now.

Mass globalization, the Internet and the unipolar world... I don't know if they're good for out economy, but I'm increasingly sure they're bad for the soul of the human race, compared even to frightening and strange things like Mutually Assured Destruction.

*the main market for SF&F

[Connor MacLeod]

1I think the Internet has accidentally taken a lot of the magic out, because it's become so popular to pooh-pooh things online. On the other hand, it may be cyclic; we may see a deliberate injection of the grand and fantastic back into things as SF finds itself struggling to compete in terms of big ideas and grand vision. Right now, we're on the downswing from a relative high of creative, productive televised SF in the 1990s and early '00s, and that may have something to do with it.

True, you get plenty of that on Spacebattles with 'pick holes in sci fi concept x' - ships, weapons or armor design, etc.. even though some of those flaws get contested or are based on arbitrary/vaguely defeind standards. That seems to be something of a TVtropes style phenomenon, in that it may have served a useful or worthwhile purpose at some point, but the need to sustain that purpose makes it self fufilling - people keep inventing new tropes just so there can BE tropes, and it gets pretty silly because once you start substituting buzzwords like that for actual thought... well you get the idea.

A particular pet peeve of mine is how people always say stuff like Star Wars or 40K is 'not supposed to adhere to science' cuz of something silly like 'rule of cool'. And yet most of those people would probably shriek at the violated Suspension of Disbelief if the movies were portrayed like a Roadrunner cartoon.

I think it's partly the company you keep, getting older, pickier, and more crotchety; Lord knows zombie/vampire/whatever stories are still selling pretty well in the mass market.

I certainly am a relic of the days when my sort of 'logic' was paramount. But thats interesting to me in the sense I've seen how things like that react . You either get more reactionary, or you adapt. People I knew grew more reactionary and that turned out bad (EG the 'Saxtonite' view of Star Wars did not fare well, or Rob Brown's reactions to Star Wars. You always learned not to mention Star Wars around him when you talked to him.) But at the same time its also made me aware of how gradually these trends have gone. I mean fuck, it wasn't all that long ago when the stuff you see on Atomic Rockets was considered the 'plausible/realistic' side of things and reasonably 'hard' sci fi. Nowadays, not so much depending on who you ask.

Another thing that hit me was that American 'sci fi' as we know it basically started out as a sort of published fan fiction, given that it often was submitted by readers or 'wannabe' authors into those old sci fi magazines, it gradually became something more of an industry as those stories were turned into novels (and the writers into novelists). Somewhere things transitioned and became more stagnant (and the nostalgia for the 'golden age' set in, at least amongst some like us old folks )

It is a commentary on us as a society, I think, that after winning the Cold War, America seems to have managed to make its dreamer-demographic* tired of humanity. We fantasize about posthuman intelligences, about vampires and werewolves and spirits living among ourselves, not about them in other distant places but essentially here and now.

Mass globalization, the Internet and the unipolar world... I don't know if they're good for out economy, but I'm increasingly sure they're bad for the soul of the human race, compared even to frightening and strange things like Mutually Assured Destruction.

*the main market for SF&F

I think the 'Americanization' of sci fi probably doomed it itself, because America has been an inwards-looking culture in so many ways (our most recent brush with the shutdown being an ideal example of that.) Naturally my obsession with 40K has lead me to being exposed to the UK's view on things (and reading some of the UK authors shows that its quite different from what oyu get in say, a baen novel.) But even beyond that if you look at how other countries approach it (say Japan) you can notice even more differences, and the judging of such ficton by our own standards tends to lead to.. odd results.

That leads me to think America probably should have been less focused on segregation of fiction into categories and been bigger on integration. I mean the other countries fiction seems to have no problem borrowing from American sources, but the reverse does not seem to be the case.