We need more optimistic science fiction
98 comments
·April 27, 2025AIPedant
ben_w
You may be interested in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, an entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. The planet on which the dog was located then exploded, but not due to the battle fleet, instead it was because some people didn't want the planet to provide the right question to an answer they already had, but they didn't realise they didn't need to owing to the accidental interference of a dead species that had sent away all their telephone sanitisers before being wiped out in a pandemic caused by a dirty telephone.
Legend2440
Hilariously, a dyson sphere operating at 5% capacity would still generate more power every second than humanity currently generates in 10,000 years.
ben_w
But at even just 4%, the thermal emissions from a partial Dyson swarm would still be enough to heat Earth by twice what anthropogenic climate change has managed so far: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092702482...
Legend2440
Interesting.
Luckily with that kind of energy you can do absolutely insane things, like build planet-sized sunshades or push the earth to a more distant orbit. These challenges can be engineered around.
Calwestjobs
Sure, but 89 % of that 5% will be still used for interplanetary yacht fleet of owner of Chocó-Darién Inc.
philipkglass
The remaining 11% of 5% would need about 8 seconds to generate more energy than humanity currently generates in 10,000 years.
Luminosity of the sun: ~380 yottawatts (3.8 * 10^26 watts)
Sunlight conversion efficiency of a silicon based solar panel: ~20%
A Dyson swarm around the sun built with silicon solar panels: ~76 yottawatts
A Dyson swarm around the sun where 5% of the panels work: ~3.8 yottawatts
The leftovers from a Dyson swarm around the sun where 5% of the panels work and 89% of the output has been used for interplanetary yachts: ~418 zetawatts (4.18 * 10^23 watts)
Primary power production on Earth: ~20 terawatts (2 * 10^13 watts)
10000 years times 20 terawatts is 10000 * 365.25 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 10^12 = 3.16 * 10^24 joules
Since a joule is just a watt-second, it takes 7.6 seconds for that 418 zetawatts of leftover Dyson swarm output to match up to 10,000 years of current human energy consumption.
AIPedant
It would also cost more power to construct than humanity is currently capable of generating in 10,000 years, so I am not sure what your point is.
Presumably a 5% functional Dyson sphere would be a corrupt boondoggle in the same way as a power plant which is down for maintenance 95% of the year, but the financial calculation would use much larger numerators and denominators than we are used to.
gcanyon
There is a science story, I don’t remember who wrote it or the title, where humanity discovers a way to modify the speed of light within a region. Excited, they work incredibly hard to implement the technology, only to discover they can only make it slower.
Maybe it was jumping to a parallel universe to travel and then jumping back. But the same issue: the limit was lower.
aaronbrethorst
Something similar to this comes up in Death's End, the last book in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy.
m463
I think optimistic scifi needs to lie a bit:
- allow you to exceed the speed of light, or better yet portal somewhere
- learn we are not alone in the universe
- store basically infinite energy in your hip-mounted blaster
- get the girl/guy in the end
nathan_compton
I think Greg Egan writes very optimistic science fiction that only really does 2 sort of. Exceeding the speed of light is, from my point of view, so absurd a premise as to make me feel that any hard science fiction which tries to get around it is not serious.
Its not that I can't enjoy that kind of science fiction, its just I can't take it seriously as having anything to do with actually reckoning with our position in the universe as human beings. Universe Big.
aleph_minus_one
> - learn we are not alone in the universe
This is neither a message that is optimistic nor pessimistic. Isn't it much more likely that this species (despite having something that can be called "intelligence" in an appropriate sense) simply be so different that the difference is insanely much larger than between an human and an octopus?
Example:
Stanisław Lem; Solaris
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)
where the alien species is an intelligent ocean.
nathan_compton
Everyone read Solaris.
ferguess_k
I look forward to a world where people no longer need to sacrifice their curiosity to earn bread, clothes and basic housing. UBI would be a good start, but with the resources at hand we should be able to do more.
I look forward to a world where potentials are promptly discovered and put to be nurtured, instead of being wasted or randomly thrown to the society. Every one willing to share what they have learned or made are welcomed.
I look forward to a world that prevention of physical and mental illness is more recognized than treating them, or worse, extracting value from them.
I look forward to a world that citizens do not hesitate to speak out when they identify anything worrying. That is, they feel that they own the world, not be owned as some sort of human resources.
I look forward to a world that technological advance frees people, not keeping them enslaved.
I look forward to a world where monetary profit is not the dominating indicator for success and failure of an organization.
gmuslera
The difference between science fiction and fantasy is feeling that it might become possible somewhat, or that it is consistent. In present world our culture has advanced enough to rule out or at least make it too complex things like FTL or time travel, and our current civilization struggles don't put in a good way long term perspectives.
Somewhat aliens are not the saviors anymore, it is complex to impossible to travel, and worse, colonize, anywhere else in the universe, and the bringer of doom is already here, now, and it is us.
What is left? Going virtual and living in a digital world? Lena ( https://qntm.org/mmacevedo ) ended with that.
lif
Unpopular take, and note, I am not an expert:
There seems to be an overabundance of sci-fi that is hyperoptimistic with regard to tech advances. The 2nd law of thermodynamics is not understood by most, or waved away as 'overcome thru future science'.
fwiw, here's a few works I've found to be less the above:
book: Kim Stanley Robinson's _Aurora_
short stories: Damon Knight's _Stranger Station_ Larry Nivens' _Inconstant Moon
Calwestjobs
Exactly ! Just simple : Do we have any complex mechanism which works for last 100 years nonstop without fail ? Answers question of generational ships towards other solar systems. XD
aleph_minus_one
> Do we have any complex mechanism which works for last 100 years nonstop without fail ?
For the following examples, this question is open, and you might have a different opinion whether they fit your opinion of "complex", but the following are candidates that I am aware of:
The 10,000 Year Clock (Clock of the Long Now)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now
https://www.10000yearclock.net/index.html
The organ in the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt (Germany) that is used to play the ORGAN²/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) by John Cage
Calwestjobs
lets say they fit, but they do not work, people expect for them to work. but yes they are designed to work that long in stress free environment.
your ship needs to be repaired on the way, do you need to have repair tools, materials, for that on board ? Seafaring cargo ship can not be going 100 years without repair. I bet space ship can not go either. What if your 3d printer on board which makes your repair tools brakes... etc etc.
you "can" fly 99.99% of speed of light to get there sooner, but you smash into grain of dust and what happens? either radiation burst or explosion. space is not vacuum as a 0 particle space.
Sevii
This is really a question of slack. How long can it fail for? For a 100 year mission you likely want at least a month of slack in your air supply. Things are going to break. You build in redundancy.
rcxdude
I mean, we have systems of government and other organizations which have lasted (significantly) longer than that. I think that's an important indicator of such questions.
wirdnok
Jerry Holkins of penny-arcade recently shared a similar sentiment.
> You can't operate a deconstruction machine indefinitely; ultimately, the machine is all you have left to take apart. We need to make aspirational shit again so we have something to deconstruct later. It's not a mysterious process, it's just the opposite of what we were doing before.
pessimizer
The problem with that sentiment is that cynicism isn't deconstruction. It's often an accurate assessment of current trends and a prediction of where they might lead, not a collapse into abstractions.
On the other hand, pining for "aspirational" works is the real collapse into abstractions and magical, associative thinking: get rid of the bad and bring in the good, sad is bad. A lot of people have the aspiration of wiping out entire cultures; idealizing aspirations is nothing but idealizing desires, and in a commercial environment that just means pandering to middle-class power fantasies.
In short, I accuse this sentiment of being a covert desire to deconstruct the present in order to quiet middle class fears. "Actually what we've been doing will work! If we ever need to change course, I'm sure we will. We'll defeat the evil."
GoatInGrey
Applied cynicism is deconstruction in the sense that all that is being offered is criticism and disbelief in a thing. There is no message of doing something else because it is better, only a message to do something else because it isn't the thing the cynicism is targeting. Sometimes not even an alternative is offered. The thing just sucks and it shouldn't be done, according to the critic.
You will notice how in current political conversations that no matter what the problem being discussed is, the solution is almost always the destruction of something or someone. There's this stubborn perspective that X would be resolved if we could just somehow eliminate Y.
To be crude, the pattern I described isn't aspirational, it's bitchy. You'll also notice how very little gets accomplished in the current cynical environment for the same reason that nagging people doesn't motivate them as much as inspiring them does.
Animats
OK, we know what's coming.
- Energy is less of a problem, between cheap solar cells and batteries.
- Materials may start to be a problem, but not yet.
- Population is leveling off and dropping in some countries, but continues to grow in Africa and among the religious groups which keep women at home.
- Equatorial areas are becoming uninhabitable.
- AI is rapidly getting better. Not clear how good it gets, but if everything you do for money goes in and out over a wire, you're in trouble.
- Robots for unstructured tasks are just beginning to work. Maybe. The mechanical problems of building robots have been pretty much solved. Motors, sensors, controllers, etc. work well and are not too expensive. There are well over a dozen humanoid robots that can walk now. (Unlike the days of Asimo, which barely worked over two decades of improvement.)
- Automatic driving is being deployed now.
So how do we build a society to deal with that?
socalgal2
- Population is leveling off and dropping in some countries,
This is a problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
- AI is rapidly getting better. Not clear how good it gets, but if everything you do for money goes in and out over a wire, you're in trouble.
Or, everything gets so abundant that we can actually have high UBI
This reminds me if why I disliked to movie Elysium. They had a robots that effectively gave free perfect medical care. I didn't buy the premise of the movie that only that rich would be able to use them. Given they were robots, governments, hospitals, could and would make them readily available since ultimately it would massively lower their medical costs.
beeflet
I think elysium isn't an effective sci-fi in the sense that it discusses the effect of technology on mankind. It is just a metaphor for the US/Mexico border.
The only takeaway I got from the movie is that the robots look cool, it's the same robot design from chappie. Both half-baked scifi movies, but I would like to imagine they both exist in the same world.
WorldPeas
you assume their compotence and forethought. Such things cannot be taken for granted.
Calwestjobs
actually materials may be not a problem, - 40% of all transport is for transporting of fossil fuels !
so after we lower amount of fossil fuels mined, transported, refined, we can start focusing on working with other materials or start using freed workforce/manufacturing capacity for other kinds of terraforming activities.
AI - how many connections in human brain? google says 100 trillion, how many transistors in one NVIDIA Blackwell GPU - 200 billion. so you need just 500 GPUs to have number of connections as brain does. those are transistors only for connections, you need much more transistors for processing which is connected thru said connections, so does one datacenter holds one brain worth of biological level processing already ?
walterbell
Step 1: kindergarten through university simulator-based training for remedial omnipotence.
libraryofbabel
An essay on optimistic science fiction but no discussion of Iain M. Banks’ The Culture series…? for that matter, it doesn’t mention any specific sci fi writer at all.
marc_abonce
This reminds me of a related quote from Ursula K. Le Guin:
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."
Of course, that particular story later turns out to be a classic, boring dystopia, but only because we, the readers, refuse to accept the narrator's original premise of a prosperous and just society free of tradeoffs or caveats.
This is why I like her books so much, though. I don't know if the worlds she created are truly optimistic or possible at all, but at least she makes us imagine alternative ways for society to be organized.
JPLeRouzic
I love science fiction, but as someone born in the middle of the last century, I am biased toward authors from the 20th century.
I noticed that the novels at the end of Nature (the journal) were sad and weird, but I thought it was probably an editorial choice to look "modern".
Yet recently, I read SF novels with authors sorted alphabetically, and it struck me again how weird and sad 21st-century novels are.
snowwrestler
Optimistic science fiction shows humanity applying unique ingenuity to solve tough problems. Our lived reality today is that we already know the technical solutions to many tough problems (hunger, homelessness, many diseases, overpopulation, climate change, war) but simply refuse to apply them. Of course people don’t believe optimistic sci-fi anymore.
Star Trek the original series is usually taken as an example of optimistic sci-fi. It’s set in a faster-than-light space ship, so it’s science fiction. But the optimism came primarily from the back story: having solved our problems on Earth, and created a peaceful society of plenty, humanity turned its thoughtful minds to exploring the stars.
Does that seem like the track we are on?
Science fiction, to be optimistic today, needs to show how our society gets from here to there. Social progress was taken for granted in the latter 20th century. It’s not anymore. Something is stopping us, something beyond science and engineering. In fact whatever it is, is driving us to actively attack and destroy the science and engineering we have already developed.
A better future is going to take something else: culture, or society, or kindness, or empathy. It will take choice, and effort, not antimatter and phasers.
Retric
That negative view doesn’t match the underlying reality of the world today. We’re simply getting a closer look at just what most people are like on social media/reality TV/streaming etc. Meanwhile the past sucked.
Consider what are the major issues right now that aren’t being addressed? Global poverty is at an all time low, climate change has been met with vast investments in solar/wind/batteries/EV’s etc, there’s suddenly effective drugs for obesity, poverty’s down, medicine keeps advancing and antibiotic resistance is being slowed down by better methodologies, etc
The mainstream in the US is far more accepting than ever, remember when gay marriage was illegal? Yea interracial marriage was illegal in some areas as recently as 1967.
Not everything is improving in lockstep, but the general trends aren’t nearly as bad as you imply.
aleph_minus_one
> Consider what are the major issues right now that aren’t being addressed? Global poverty is at an all time low, climate change has been met with vast investments in solar/wind/batteries/EV’s etc, there’s suddenly effective drugs for obesity, poverty’s down, medicine keeps advancing and antibiotic resistance is being slowed down by better methodologies, etc
> The mainstream in the US is far more accepting than ever, remember when gay marriage was illegal? Yea interracial marriage was illegal in some areas as recently as 1967.
> Not everything is improving in lockstep, but the general trends aren’t nearly as bad as you imply.
Whether a lot of these changes are good/optimistic or bad/pessimistic depends a lot on your political stance.
Yes, society is very divided.
null
armchairhacker
> Our lived reality today is that we already know the technical solutions to many tough problems (hunger, homelessness, many diseases, overpopulation, climate change, war) but simply refuse to apply them.
Do we? We can do a lot for individuals, but even with cooperation, maybe can’t immediately give food and shelter to everyone, let alone fix climate change (war is fixable with cooperation, but unless I’m mistaken a very small minority of the world’s population is in a hot war). Even if we have enough resources, we also need logistics (hence why people in some areas lack clean water).
Also, Star Trek’s backstory is that humanity only started cooperating like in the show after nuclear wars. Most people would rather mutually benefit than mutually suffer (otherwise we’d have MAD), and the solutions that benefit humanity the most are mutual. Society may have backslided since the 2000s, but it’s far better now than it was before and temporary backslides happened before; humans have evolved to be altruistic because, barring death or extreme circumstances, altruistic groups win in the long term.
beeflet
Is the purpose of mankind to support drug-addled hobos?
abeppu
> I believe that a lack of alternatives to our current political and economic ideas is a problem for the world right now.
While I agree with this statement, I think imagining alternative political and economic systems is not primarily about science fiction. We could imagine these new forms of society with existing technology. We could imagine a future with technological regress which is political/economic retro-utopia where everyone has adequate food, housing, access to healthcare, education, green-space ... but no screen-based brain-rot, AI, space exploration or other fancy tech.
userbinator
which is political/economic retro-utopia
Mid-century America?
raymond_goo
This story is set in a future, where work is done by robots and humans spend all their time in virtual reality. https://rejacked.glitch.me/
On Twitter, Colin Fraser pointed out that Black Mirror was somewhat optimistic in that the horrible evil technology actually works as described[1].
Truly pessimistic science fiction would have
- people worshipping an AI God which is demonstrably dumber than a dog
- friendly humanoid robots which don't really understand how to walk down a flight of stairs
- gravitational warp drives which are purely cosmetic and cannot travel anywhere, though it leads to terrible cancer
- a Potemkin Dyson Sphere where only 5% of the panels work and the government blames out-of-system immigrants for the blackouts
[1] https://xcancel.com/colin_fraser/status/1911129344979964207#...