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How I would like to change the cell phone industry [was AM electromagnetic waves: 20 KHz modulation frequency on an astronomically-low carrier frequency]
"Bob Myers" hath wroth:
Wrong. Science fiction has mutated into social adventure, space opera, and historical fantasy. I haven't seen any really technical science fiction in many years. Spider Robinson. Joe Haldeman. Larry Niven. Jerry Pournelle. Ben Bova. Greg Egan. Stephen Baxter. In the interest of brevity, I won't rattle off examples of how most of those authors started out with hard technical science fiction, and ended up recently writing what amounts to "future social problems" type of sci-fi. At age 74, Ben Bova still cranks out excellent stories but seems to be very light on the technology in the last few years. Stephen Baxter is a scientist and really does well speculating on where technology is sending us. Greg Egan is a mathemagician with a rather creative view of artificial intelligence. Haldeman puts me to sleep, Niven is just plain weird, and Pournelle is too militarist for my liking. They've all done "hard" sci-fi writing, but as time progresses, seem to be writing for a much different audience, such as writing for TV or movies. That's where the space opera, social adventure (chase scenes, crash and burn, and explosions) are coming from. I still read Stephen Baxter, but none of the others. This is the first I've heard of Spider Robinson, but will give his stuff a look. Arthur C. Clarke, who, thank the FSM, is still with us and writing. Yeah, but he can certainly beat the "2001 Space Odyssey" theme to death. At 89, I'm really impressed that he's still working. However, his last few books have been co-authored by Stephen Baxter and read more like Baxter's complex writing, than Clarke's neatly clipped short lines. Ok, I'll concede the hard sci-fi hasn't gone down the tubes completely and that there are still authors catering to a technically astute audience. However, even the best of these (as you've itemized) tend to drift toward the popular media, mass market, and general audience market, which deals primarily in entertainment. This entertainment is invariably devoid of technology, lacking in a basis on physical reality, and is dominated by space opera and general idiocy. For every sci-fi author that knows his science, there are perhaps 50 that are lacking. Little wonder that space opera predominates as it requires very little technical expertise to write. Maybe that's why I like reading Mr. Radium's muddled tech rants. It's the closest approximation to science fiction I can easily find. Sure, there's an AWFUL lot of crap out there - SF, like everything else, obey's Sturgeon's Law - but the good stuff is still being written. You just have to look for it. These daze, I have to do more than look. I have to dig, excavate, and filter to find it. However, I found a suitable replacement about 10 years ago. I was reading dot com business plans. Not only was I being paid to rip them apart, but the products and services were some of the best science fiction I had ever read. The authors of some of those business plans really should be writing sci-fi stories. I really miss the passing of the dot com era and the tremendous technical imagination that helped make it happen. Reminder: None of the sci-fi authors up to about 1970, ever predicted the rise of personal computah. It was always the giant mainframe (Multivac). Some came close with remote terminals, but even those had a mainframe behind them. Oh well, can't get it right every time. -- Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
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