I firmly reject Dark Forest. Not everyone on earth was an imperialist psychopath, and looking at the vast galaxy and thinking “Oh yeah people are definitely going to throw rocks at us the second they know we exist” is capitalist bullshit. AFAIK pretty much every socialist agrees that we’re a lot more likely to run in to other communists out there. And, like, that’s no guarantee we’ll be friends, or even able to meaningfully communicate, but colonization in space is such a ridiculous pipe dream of imperialist brain poisoning.
If you ever want to make a Game Theorist so mad they pee ask them to explain why people in the Prisoner’s Dilemma keep choosing “Trust” at far higher rates than Game Theory predicts they should.
Fair! I’m not a fan of Three Body Problem. The bits about the cultural revolution were interesting because I’ve never really seen it depicted by a Chinese person, but the whole premise of the story relies on “technology” too absurd to even dignify with the word magic. Like I can suspend a lot of belief, but unfolding protons and etching circuits on them was too much. It’d have been more credible to just say “Yeah the three body aliens are wizards and they’re going to fly here on space dragons”.
The bits about the cultural revolution were interesting because I’ve never really seen it depicted by a Chinese person
Agreed, that was interesting. I had to switch to an epub because the audiobook version was a bit too sad though.
the whole premise of the story relies on “technology” too absurd to even dignify with the word magic
Yeah, i was a bit dissatisfied with that. My lack of hard science knowledge probably makes it a lot easier to enjoy these sorts of books tbh. Even then, fucking around with protons was far fetched.
Yeah. I’ve been reading semi-firm to hard sci-fi my whole life, so I can believe in some pretty wild concepts like wormhole traveler or turning gas giants in to fusion torch-ships, but even wormholes can at least exist in the math, albeit not anything like they’re described in sci fi. One of the “rules” of scifi, especially hard sci-fi, is you should try to keep the scope of your made up technology limited enough to be comprehensible and believable to the reader. Like bruh, if you can turn individual protons in to space battleships what do you need a planet for? That implies a level of physical mastery over the universe beyond the wildest imaginings of most sci fi. Why not miniaturize your whole civilization in to little proton brains or something? It’s just so out there that it opens up too many questions and possibilities.
Like when Herbert did Dune everything ran on the Holtzman effect, and it was responsible for folding space for FTL travel, shields, and anti-grav. And that was pretty much the limits of what it did - Two key conceits that made the story possible. Gundam’s thing is Minovsky Particles, which they use for a bunch of stuff including justifying why mechs have to fight at knife-fighting distances in space with beam guns and swords instead of just launching high speed missiles from light seconds away. They use it to justify their compact fusion drives, some beam guns, and a few other things.
But both those cases sorta kinda make some kind of sense. Like yeah whatever space is wacky and everyone has at least heard of wormholes that connect two points in space that are otherwise very distant. And anti-gravity is weird, but Herbert is judicious about what it does - floating flashlights, personal shields that are just fancy bucklers for Errol-Flynn style sword fights, and weird schizo-tech like an anti-gravity cart drawn by oxen to highlight the deliberate technological stasis imposed by the LANSRAAD on their serfs to maintain control. Minovsky Particles mostly just justify having giant robots fighting at close range, and not being able to use guided missiles or precision long-range munitions.
But proton battleships with omniscient perfect knowledge of the entire planet? What does that even mean? What are the limits on that? If you could shrink people down so small they can inhabit a proton somehow, what do you need a wet planet for?
Never mind that “String Theory” is bupkiss that never produces anything…
For “Dark Forest” premises I consider much, much more compelling (One of them sent me in a three day long existential crisis and still gives me the willies) I’d suggest Peter Watt’s Blindsight This is the existential crisis one. It is terrifying in a way nothing else I’ve ever encountered is. The story itself is scary, but the concepts invoke that kind of deep dread you get in the pit of your stomach when you’re stuck an in earth quake and know you are totally, utterly powerless in the grip of forces beyond your control. The other series is Alastair Reynold’s “Revelation Space”. Both of them deal with some really weird transhumans, the Dark Forest (in two very different but equally frightening ways), a lot of weird speculative technologies, and some very memorable characters.
I had a funny memory. I forget what story it was, maybe one of the hitchhiker stories, but the FTL drive worked by blowing the ship up to truly immense proportions, vastly larger than the entire galaxy, moving a minute amount relative to the ship but vast distances relative to the galaxy, then shrinking it back down to something more reasonable. Easily most fun, silly spoofs on FTL I’ve run in to.
I thinks that’s a really good point. Coming up with a couple at most points of deviation that allow for new technologies.
The premise of the expanse, for example, hyper efficient ship propulsion. It’s not explained how, but this single change allowed for the solar system to be treated as a navigable setting. At least until the alien stuff.
Blindsight was amazing, I really loved that one. It’s not exactly the most sci-fi aspect of it, but I really enjoyed the horror of a human variant that was predatory towards other human variants as an explanation for the vampire myth. Like, imagine being in a cave tending the fire knowing a predator just as human as you could be out there. Shiver inducing.
I’ll check out “revaluation space”, being mentioned alongside “blindsight” is a strong recommendation.
I don’t know where it’s from, sounds almost like something Pratchett would write. I’m fairly certain the Hitchhiker FTL was based off probability.
had this saved for a year and only now read Blindsight. excellent. one of the many ideas it made me realise is that i should meditate more often and step out of my mind a bit more physically
It means a near infinite border to defend from nickle iron asteroids spun up to a significant fraction of c and flung at their core worlds.
What? We were all thinking it.
Dark forest hours, who up?
I firmly reject Dark Forest. Not everyone on earth was an imperialist psychopath, and looking at the vast galaxy and thinking “Oh yeah people are definitely going to throw rocks at us the second they know we exist” is capitalist bullshit. AFAIK pretty much every socialist agrees that we’re a lot more likely to run in to other communists out there. And, like, that’s no guarantee we’ll be friends, or even able to meaningfully communicate, but colonization in space is such a ridiculous pipe dream of imperialist brain poisoning.
If you ever want to make a Game Theorist so mad they pee ask them to explain why people in the Prisoner’s Dilemma keep choosing “Trust” at far higher rates than Game Theory predicts they should.
I totally agree, I was just referencing the book.
I did not know about the game theory thing, going to keep that in my pocket.
Fair! I’m not a fan of Three Body Problem. The bits about the cultural revolution were interesting because I’ve never really seen it depicted by a Chinese person, but the whole premise of the story relies on “technology” too absurd to even dignify with the word magic. Like I can suspend a lot of belief, but unfolding protons and etching circuits on them was too much. It’d have been more credible to just say “Yeah the three body aliens are wizards and they’re going to fly here on space dragons”.
Agreed, that was interesting. I had to switch to an epub because the audiobook version was a bit too sad though.
Yeah, i was a bit dissatisfied with that. My lack of hard science knowledge probably makes it a lot easier to enjoy these sorts of books tbh. Even then, fucking around with protons was far fetched.
Yeah. I’ve been reading semi-firm to hard sci-fi my whole life, so I can believe in some pretty wild concepts like wormhole traveler or turning gas giants in to fusion torch-ships, but even wormholes can at least exist in the math, albeit not anything like they’re described in sci fi. One of the “rules” of scifi, especially hard sci-fi, is you should try to keep the scope of your made up technology limited enough to be comprehensible and believable to the reader. Like bruh, if you can turn individual protons in to space battleships what do you need a planet for? That implies a level of physical mastery over the universe beyond the wildest imaginings of most sci fi. Why not miniaturize your whole civilization in to little proton brains or something? It’s just so out there that it opens up too many questions and possibilities.
Like when Herbert did Dune everything ran on the Holtzman effect, and it was responsible for folding space for FTL travel, shields, and anti-grav. And that was pretty much the limits of what it did - Two key conceits that made the story possible. Gundam’s thing is Minovsky Particles, which they use for a bunch of stuff including justifying why mechs have to fight at knife-fighting distances in space with beam guns and swords instead of just launching high speed missiles from light seconds away. They use it to justify their compact fusion drives, some beam guns, and a few other things.
But both those cases sorta kinda make some kind of sense. Like yeah whatever space is wacky and everyone has at least heard of wormholes that connect two points in space that are otherwise very distant. And anti-gravity is weird, but Herbert is judicious about what it does - floating flashlights, personal shields that are just fancy bucklers for Errol-Flynn style sword fights, and weird schizo-tech like an anti-gravity cart drawn by oxen to highlight the deliberate technological stasis imposed by the LANSRAAD on their serfs to maintain control. Minovsky Particles mostly just justify having giant robots fighting at close range, and not being able to use guided missiles or precision long-range munitions.
But proton battleships with omniscient perfect knowledge of the entire planet? What does that even mean? What are the limits on that? If you could shrink people down so small they can inhabit a proton somehow, what do you need a wet planet for?
Never mind that “String Theory” is bupkiss that never produces anything…
For “Dark Forest” premises I consider much, much more compelling (One of them sent me in a three day long existential crisis and still gives me the willies) I’d suggest Peter Watt’s Blindsight This is the existential crisis one. It is terrifying in a way nothing else I’ve ever encountered is. The story itself is scary, but the concepts invoke that kind of deep dread you get in the pit of your stomach when you’re stuck an in earth quake and know you are totally, utterly powerless in the grip of forces beyond your control. The other series is Alastair Reynold’s “Revelation Space”. Both of them deal with some really weird transhumans, the Dark Forest (in two very different but equally frightening ways), a lot of weird speculative technologies, and some very memorable characters.
I had a funny memory. I forget what story it was, maybe one of the hitchhiker stories, but the FTL drive worked by blowing the ship up to truly immense proportions, vastly larger than the entire galaxy, moving a minute amount relative to the ship but vast distances relative to the galaxy, then shrinking it back down to something more reasonable. Easily most fun, silly spoofs on FTL I’ve run in to.
I thinks that’s a really good point. Coming up with a couple at most points of deviation that allow for new technologies.
The premise of the expanse, for example, hyper efficient ship propulsion. It’s not explained how, but this single change allowed for the solar system to be treated as a navigable setting. At least until the alien stuff.
Blindsight was amazing, I really loved that one. It’s not exactly the most sci-fi aspect of it, but I really enjoyed the horror of a human variant that was predatory towards other human variants as an explanation for the vampire myth. Like, imagine being in a cave tending the fire knowing a predator just as human as you could be out there. Shiver inducing.
I’ll check out “revaluation space”, being mentioned alongside “blindsight” is a strong recommendation.
I don’t know where it’s from, sounds almost like something Pratchett would write. I’m fairly certain the Hitchhiker FTL was based off probability.
had this saved for a year and only now read Blindsight. excellent. one of the many ideas it made me realise is that i should meditate more often and step out of my mind a bit more physically
:salute