To 'Reclaim Future-Making', Amazon Workers Published Collection of SciFi Stories
38 comments
·April 28, 2025worldsayshi
throwaway13337
Agreed!
When I was learning to drive, I was afraid of hitting the curb. It made me a bad driver. My driver's ed guy told me the common sense advice of 'don't pay attention to the curb - watch the road'. When I internalized that, I drove much better.
It was so simple.
We cannot even conceive of a good future today. We have no vision of what the better future looks like. We need positive fiction to help paint the picture.
Paying attention to the negative just gives you more negative.
The hard question is why it is so hard to imagine a good future. Maybe because we no longer understand our own core problems deeply.
The world waits for the new story.
natebc
I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundations safety course before getting my motorcycle license. They have a similar mantra about avoiding something in the road (puddle, pot hole, car with no taillights).
Look where you want to go.
I don't know where I'm supposed to look right now.
peppers-ghost
To me at least it's hard to imagine a good future because I understand climate change will ruin quality of life for most of humanity. I know what must be done to combat it will not be done due to the economic systems that dominate most countries. It's easier to envision the end of the world than it is to envision the end of capitalism.
Just knowing we do have the ability to slow things down, but actively choose not to in the name of profits and comfort is incredibly depressing and demotivating. The future looks bleak because it will be.
worldsayshi
> It's easier to envision the end of the world than it is to envision the end of capitalism.
Yes, so let us try to envision the end of capitalism; in a myriad different stories. That's one thing I want sci fi writers to do.
worldsayshi
Exactly this.
bawolff
> Suggestions are appreciated. C Doctorow and U Le Guin comes to mind.
Its always weird to me when people use U Le Guin as an example of "optimistic" sci fi. Some of her writing is extremely bleak. Of course she is pretty prolific and has written a lot of different types of things.
Fundamentally i think the issue is that novels usually have to be about conflict. If everything is peachy you dont have a novel. I think it takes much more skill to write an interesting optimistic near future sci fi novel that is actually about the technical change instead of just using it as a setting.
Most of the optimistic technology novels i can think of that i liked were far future - Iain banks. Maybe greg egan although optimistic isnt exactly the right word. They show an interesting world, but its clearly not our world. Is it really an optimistic take on the future of technology if the technology in question is hundreds of years in the future?
Perhaps you'd like something like "Song for a new day" by Sarah Pinsker.
I dont really know if it fits as "optimism", but i'd like to mention "The Fortunate Fall" as a really interesting novel about technology.
AdmiralAsshat
> Its always weird to me when people use U Le Guin as an example of "optimistic" sci fi. Some of her writing is extremely bleak. Of course she is pretty prolific and has written a lot of different types of things.
Some of it is, yeah. But I think part of what made her novels interesting was how she was (often) able to resolve conflict without violence. I think that's where the optimism comes from.
bawolff
I do think its interesting how much more pacifist older scifi seems to be then modern scifi.
I was watching the recent tv adaptation of asimov's foundation series, and one of the most striking things was how much characters (including the good guys) resorted to violence. Where in the books the entire theme was that brain beat brawn and the main characters almost never solved their problems with violence.
worldsayshi
Yeah I've only read The Dispossessed and a few short stories so I might have a tilted view of her bibliography.
I've tried to get into Ian Banks. One feeling I get is that there's two kinds of optimist sci fi. Technology magically solves our problems - or technology can be both force for good and bad, let's use it for good. I have a feeling that Ian M Banks writes the former but I'm probably wrong here?
There can still be interesting conflict even if the bigger problems have been solved. Dispossessed is one good example I think. The conflict is partially about flaws inherent in the "better" society that they created.
And in Star Trek and to some degree in "The long way to a small angry planet" the conflict is between the larger society and the hold outs.
bawolff
I think Iain M Banks tries to answer the question: in a hypothetical future where all our material needs are met, where does that leave society? Do people still do stuff if they don't need money and why? Who runs it? Etc. Its sort of an optimistic exploration of post-scarcity anarchism.
It remindsme a bit of how internet communities work.
I think it takes its premise much more seriously than star trek does. E.g. Star trek has free replicators for everyone and yet everyone is spending tons of money at Quark's for some reason. Which is fine, star trek has a lot of other good qualities, but i don't think it does a great job of exploring the implication of its technologies.
brianmcc
This is a really good point.
It rather reminds me of a recent Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) interview where he lamented what seems to be an emerging excess focus on villains, not "good guys" - and making them way too glamorous:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/vince-gilligan-...
If our fiction is only ever showing us dystopias and villains - it's not hard to see how that could be problematic for the wider collective psyche...
lokimedes
My childhood was spent reading Clarke, Asimov and the likes. Not for the gloom of runaway AIs or societal collapse, but from the glimmers of technology and advancement that was hidden in their stories.
silver_silver
Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built, its sequel, and to a lesser degree her Wayfarer series are very hopeful. Not exactly hard sci-fi so maybe not to HN’s taste but they check a lot of good tech boxes. A plot device in the former is their world’s version of a smartphone, a scrib, which is designed to last a lifetime and genuinely serve the user
worldsayshi
Yeah I've read both psalm/monk&robot and most of wayfarer. They are great!
e40
I wonder if we, as a species, are capable of looking at the positive. Since the 1960’s we’ve been in a doom cycle.
bawolff
I suspect we have always been a bit doomerish. Just look how much religion talks about the end of the world.
worldsayshi
I think just writing and reading such stories is a good start. I can vouch for that reading such stories is enjoyable and I want to do more of it. Which to me is a small proof that it is possible.
burkaman
The Ministry for the Future fits what you're looking for.
worldsayshi
Thanks! On my reading list. Will move it up.
sevensor
Parable of the Sower is set in dark times but has a hopeful note. We may not live in a better future, but we can fight for one.
blobbers
The 3rd paragraph is wrong. Bezos didn’t fund his space adventure with profits.
He funded it with equity (or probably debt against his equity). His equity is valued at 34 times the Amazon profits annualized.
The workers did make Amazon valuable but it wasn’t profits.
bawolff
That's being pretty pedantic.
Its not even technically correct as the original sentence was "...generate profit so great their boss was able to finance his own private space program." They didn't say he funded his space project with amazon profits, they are saying that as a result of the profits bezos was able to fund a space program. Which is undoubtedly true as the amazon equity wouldn't be worth much if amazon wasn't making any money .
drysine
So "...generate profit so great their boss was able to finance his own private space program" is only misleading while technically correct.
rsynnott
Eh, not really. This is just, in practice, how profits are extracted from this sort of company (and most sorts of companies; for various reasons, the phenomenon of a company paying out most of its profit in dividends is dying out) at the moment.
pyrale
These days, the formal difference between the two is really hard to grasp, and mostly depends on which way accountants find they’ll pay less taxes.
There is no point nitpicking someone because they used one term instead of the other: Bezos’ fortune is derived from Amazon’s activity, and the rest of us has no interest in changing our vocabulary to abide by some obscure tax code rule.
firefoxd
E.M. Forster published his a bit too early in 1909. Check out "The Machine Stops" short story. Much too eerie.
righthand
I don't get it? Is this a unionization effort?
DanAtC
The year is 2058, I drive up to my home after working at the amazon warehouse for 14 hours, it's my 6th day of work, I finally get my day off. I drive home in my amazon basics SUV listening to "NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL AMAZON BASICS 54". After filling up my car at the amazon basic recharging station I pull into my amazon basics car shed and open my front door after verifying my prime membership to my amazon basics branded Ring doorbell. I get my amazon basics hungry man TV meal and sit down to watch some flicks on my amazon basics fire TV. Stranger Things finally entered it's 7th season, and I'm so excited I pissed my amazon basics boxer briefs on the way home. The show leaves me foaming in the mouth it was so good, I came into my amazon basics fleshlight 4 times. I go to clean it out in my complete amazon basics full bath, I'm all out of amazon basics bar soap, fuck. I walk into what used to be my home office and go to the nearest wall of amazon dash buttons. I press the amazon basics dash button and receive a notification on my amazon basics fire tablet that my amazon basics checking account has overdrawn. My account gets charged a $50 overdraft fee and I hear a knock on my door. The amazon basics SWAT came to my house, beat me to the ground with their amazon basics batons, and cuffed me with amazon basics handcuffs. They throw me into the back of an amazon basics crown vic for the next 30 minutes. The windows are tinted with amazon basics 100% tint, can't see shit outside. The car comes to a stop and the door opens. I've been brought to the amazon basics prison for delinquents. I'm now forced to work 16 hours a day making amazon basics clothes hangers for the next 35 years to pay off my amazon basics overdraft fees. I'm amazon basically fucked.
flir
In the grim dark future there is only ~~war~~ the quarterly reports of the last two corporations (BerkshireComcastDisneyExxonMobil and AlphabetAmazonAppleAramco).
apfsx
Jeff Bezo’s foaming at the mouth right now because of what you just wrote.
rsynnott
At the concept that there would be 'days off' in this future utopia?
(Also I'm fairly sure that the Amazon Dash is an un-product, so that's thoughtcrime for a start.)
bryanrasmussen
I believe you mean the year was 64 A.A (Anno Amazon)
deadbabe
Amazon prime citizens look down their noses from a high balcony at this Amazon basic worker.
DonHopkins
NO NO NO NO NO!
NOT the Amazon Basics Wed Wun! Don't EVER push the Amazon Basics Wed Wun!
protocolture
Kinda mad at myself for clicking through the book link and expecting an Amazon POD option.
I bought it anyway, mostly out of guilt. But I have had POD's like this one for half the price via amazon when shipping is accounted for.
I fear that so much of our story telling is driven by our worst fears. We end up not being able to hold a vision in our head of a good future because of all those fears.
Having fears in the front of your mind makes sense for an animal that can primarily shape their future by avoiding danger. But humans are very much in power of our own destiny. So if all we can imagine is dystopia that's what we get.
That's why we need not only fiction that shows effective resistance to dystopian tendencies, which is important, but (realistic) fiction that depicts stories where we are clearly on our way from something bad towards something much better. Such stories are important because they give us hope and we dearly need hope in those dark hours, to encourage us to act. And to make it more clear to everyone involved what 'act' should mean. I find those types of stories kind of rare. Suggestions are appreciated. C Doctorow and U Le Guin comes to mind.