Articles on Optimistic science fiction

[Worldtree]

An article on Optimistic science fiction
https://newrepublic.com/article/123217/new-utopians

SolarPunk
http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarp...manifesto/
http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/city/...-solarpunk

[Drashner1]

Interesting. I'm reminded of how much of the SF that was current when I was growing up was either set in the aftermath of a nuclear war or had such an event taking place at some point in its past.

In more recent times, eco-disaster of one kind or another has taken the place of nuclear war.

I suppose OA falls somewhere in the middle, being neither dystopic, nor utopian in the sense that it contains a mix of things that might be considered very positive and never negative at the same time.

Todd

[Worldtree]

Interesting. I'm reminded of how much of the SF that was current when I was growing up was either set in the aftermath of a nuclear war or had such an event taking place at some point in its past.

In more recent times, eco-disaster of one kind or another has taken the place of nuclear war.

I suppose OA falls somewhere in the middle, being neither dystopic, nor utopian in the sense that it contains a mix of things that might be considered very positive and never negative at the same time.

Todd

Quite true-
Although at first glance OA seems like a utopia (and parts of it are) it's still interesting to consider the dystopian aspects in what might be much of OA, from our perspective

-universal surveillance
-the many possible shocking practices (to us) listed here

http://www.orionsarm.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1845

-despite living in high prosperity relative to us, it's still possible for a OA society to exist with an immense wealth disparity (a small number of transapients or an archai technically own or utilize the vast majority of resources in a solar system, so far as the concept of ownership can apply between toposophic levels)
-there's a risk of transcendences going disastrously wrong
-rigid birth control/population control measures
-potentially rigid waste management and recycling requirements.

None of these are necessarily dystopian from The perspective of the citizens of OA society of course

[Drashner1]

Perhaps one of the largest dystopian elements (by modern pov) is that the transapients effectively own you completely. Any transapient can pretty much exercise virtually total power of life and death over any mind of a lower S-level than it is. Or remake it almost as they choose.

Being under the protection of a transapient of a higher S-level than the transapient can prevent that. Of course, you are now completely owned by an even more powerful being as a consequence - and there are instances of transapients transcending or otherwise changing their minds and deciding to eliminate all of their lower S charges, sometimes painlessly, sometimes not, for reasons that now suddenly make sense to them.

In many respects I like to think of OA as an attempt to depict a civ that has pretty much solved every problem that plagues our RL lives - and then moved on from there. There is still struggle and problems and working hard to achieve things - but much of it is in a form we're not really used to even thinking about. And at the transapient level, we might not even be able to comprehend it.

Todd

[stevebowers]

Yes. There will always be problems, but it is quite possible that most of those problems will occur outside the sphere of an ordinary modosopont's experience. OA is mostly optimistic, and so are most of its citizens; even those who don't like the civilisation or culture they are currently embedded in, are generally free to move and find, or found, a better one elsewhere.

[Drashner1]

Even ordinary modosophonts might seem very strange to us in their approach and outlook toward problems.

In RL there is still a tendency to feel that we are more helpless passengers on the world than in real control. For a Terragen modosophont, 'the world' will usually have been literally created by their ancestors and be totally understood (not counting transapient bits). They're ageless and very resilient, can create life, travel the stars, etc. And most problems have probably cropped up millions of times across millions of solar systems - along with their solutions. So, in many cases, dealing with a problem is a matter of looking it up and picking the solution that you think will work best, rather than trying to figure it out from scratch.

Todd