I’m a perennial optimist, so I look more at the Star Trek future than any of the dystopias, though dystopia is my favorite type of book (setting? genre?). In every dystopia, we get the same general theme of the human spirit pushing against evil, with the difference to other stories being the lack of success.
I think people take these warnings to heart and avoid worst of it. I don’t think we’ll get to the Star Trek utopia, but I think we’ll get closer than any of the various dystopias people concoct. Humans are late at responding to issues, but we generally do respond.
I think the same is true for AI. It’ll start as a helpful piece of tech, transform into a monster, then we’ll correct and control it. We’ve done that in the past with slavery, nuclear weapons, and fascism, and I think we’ll continue to overcome climate, AI, and other challenges, albeit much later than we should.
Actually, I’m glad to know you’re interested in utopian settings. I was mostly depressed because my utopian sci-fi story I published (I won’t spam but DM me if you use Amazon for reading books) had been outright attacked by other writers for being “too optimistic”; for some inexplicable and seemingly irrational reason, the idea of an artificial afterlife built entirely by human hands is outright offensive to Atheists. It was, admittedly, an unorthodox utopia: Resurrecting 125 billion people at a rate of (iirc) ~2.5 people every four minutes (I did the math, I just no longer have the notes) for 30 million years (Homo Australopithecus to Homo Sapiens Sapiens) and giving all of them immortality (via respawns with a 9 month timeskip every time you die 3 times in a single week), mental health care, privacy, security, education, water, food, mail and courier service, library membership (they saved the books that were burnt or lost too), shelter (hey, some people like living outdoors), transit, electricity, television, internet, and recreational drugs in that order and without being the only provider.
Basically, a constitutional oligarchy with municipal elected officials with full intent and obligation to transition to full democracy on vote, and which strives to balance capitalism and socialist regulation of that capitalism (because yes, outright communism would never actually work, but socialism is the “parent category” of communism and is why we have both TGVs and Interstate Highways in real life; taxes and tax-funded public services are the definition of socialist policy and I honestly believe they’re the best option seeing as it’s worked more or less consistently since the 1950s) because the oligarchy are REQUIRED to survive on the smallest income in the entire society (the leadership live completely on the same Universal Basic Income as the poorest citizens, and thus must raise the UBI to raise their own income) which leads to greater equity without complicated systems of bureaucracy.
To be fair, I don’t know if it would work, given all the historical factors involved, but I actually did research about what has and hasn’t worked and relied on that over my own opinion as much as possible. So it really hurt for people to outright reject it because ‘I don’t want anyone to get inspired to create anything like it entirely based on my hatred of an unrelated religious philosophy’ was/is(?) prominent among the current trend of ‘the societal implications of technology (Hint: wE hAtE tEcHnOlOgY aNd NeRdS!!!)’ in the sci-fi writing community.
Long story short, thank you, optimistic readers who want optimistic stories are in short supply lately.
That certainly sounds interesting, but I think there are a few issues here:
Artificial afterlife - aside from the technical issues, which I’m guessing you addressed, I wonder if this wouldn’t devolve into extreme levels of violence and corruption. If you remove the consequences for murder/death, what’s to stop you from taking extreme risks to get what you want?
Where’s the conflict? That’s what drives a story in most cases, aside from “slice of life” stories, which I honestly don’t understand.
Why would elected officials be okay with living off UBI? When you underpay your representatives, they get paid through other means, so surely that would lead to corruption instead? You want your elites feeling like they’re at the top so they don’t give in to bribes and whatnot.
But personally, when I read a story, I’m not looking to read about how things could be, I’m looking for insight into why things are the way they are and what we need to change to get what we want. Star Trek is interesting to me, not because of the utopian setting, but because they explore some facet of humanity in each episode, usually through visiting other planets. The setting is interesting, but I’m there for the story. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is interesting, not because of the “libertarian utopia” setting, but because it’s about an underdog pushing against an oppressor. We get just enough insight into the society on the moon to understand the conflict and resolution, and that’s it.
So perhaps you didn’t get a great reception because the setting took too much of the stage?
Yeah, no worries, I get it.
I’m a perennial optimist, so I look more at the Star Trek future than any of the dystopias, though dystopia is my favorite type of book (setting? genre?). In every dystopia, we get the same general theme of the human spirit pushing against evil, with the difference to other stories being the lack of success.
I think people take these warnings to heart and avoid worst of it. I don’t think we’ll get to the Star Trek utopia, but I think we’ll get closer than any of the various dystopias people concoct. Humans are late at responding to issues, but we generally do respond.
I think the same is true for AI. It’ll start as a helpful piece of tech, transform into a monster, then we’ll correct and control it. We’ve done that in the past with slavery, nuclear weapons, and fascism, and I think we’ll continue to overcome climate, AI, and other challenges, albeit much later than we should.
Actually, I’m glad to know you’re interested in utopian settings. I was mostly depressed because my utopian sci-fi story I published (I won’t spam but DM me if you use Amazon for reading books) had been outright attacked by other writers for being “too optimistic”; for some inexplicable and seemingly irrational reason, the idea of an artificial afterlife built entirely by human hands is outright offensive to Atheists. It was, admittedly, an unorthodox utopia: Resurrecting 125 billion people at a rate of (iirc) ~2.5 people every four minutes (I did the math, I just no longer have the notes) for 30 million years (Homo Australopithecus to Homo Sapiens Sapiens) and giving all of them immortality (via respawns with a 9 month timeskip every time you die 3 times in a single week), mental health care, privacy, security, education, water, food, mail and courier service, library membership (they saved the books that were burnt or lost too), shelter (hey, some people like living outdoors), transit, electricity, television, internet, and recreational drugs in that order and without being the only provider.
Basically, a constitutional oligarchy with municipal elected officials with full intent and obligation to transition to full democracy on vote, and which strives to balance capitalism and socialist regulation of that capitalism (because yes, outright communism would never actually work, but socialism is the “parent category” of communism and is why we have both TGVs and Interstate Highways in real life; taxes and tax-funded public services are the definition of socialist policy and I honestly believe they’re the best option seeing as it’s worked more or less consistently since the 1950s) because the oligarchy are REQUIRED to survive on the smallest income in the entire society (the leadership live completely on the same Universal Basic Income as the poorest citizens, and thus must raise the UBI to raise their own income) which leads to greater equity without complicated systems of bureaucracy.
To be fair, I don’t know if it would work, given all the historical factors involved, but I actually did research about what has and hasn’t worked and relied on that over my own opinion as much as possible. So it really hurt for people to outright reject it because ‘I don’t want anyone to get inspired to create anything like it entirely based on my hatred of an unrelated religious philosophy’ was/is(?) prominent among the current trend of ‘the societal implications of technology (Hint: wE hAtE tEcHnOlOgY aNd NeRdS!!!)’ in the sci-fi writing community.
Long story short, thank you, optimistic readers who want optimistic stories are in short supply lately.
That certainly sounds interesting, but I think there are a few issues here:
But personally, when I read a story, I’m not looking to read about how things could be, I’m looking for insight into why things are the way they are and what we need to change to get what we want. Star Trek is interesting to me, not because of the utopian setting, but because they explore some facet of humanity in each episode, usually through visiting other planets. The setting is interesting, but I’m there for the story. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is interesting, not because of the “libertarian utopia” setting, but because it’s about an underdog pushing against an oppressor. We get just enough insight into the society on the moon to understand the conflict and resolution, and that’s it.
So perhaps you didn’t get a great reception because the setting took too much of the stage?