14 thoughts on “Science Fiction”

    1. Read the Mack Reynolds Joe Mauser series written in the 1960s. Society was stratified into Propertied Citizens and “ordinary” citizens that lived on the dole and watched mercenary battles fought with a 1900 technology limit IIRC. Relevant to the subject: every citizen was required to carry a state supplied ‘communicator’ (early cellphone?) that also served to track their location and listen in to them — amusingly a response by the populace was to have small Faraday Cage boxes that the ‘communicator’ was placed in when getting home.

    1. “In fact, Bernie, Liz, Stacey, Jaime, Hakeem and others seem to be spending half their time herding frippy sanctimony ‘cats’ back into the only coalition that can possibly save civilization.”

      Yeah, I’ve never read anything by him either, but just that one line from that little screed has shown that I’ve not missed anything by my by not reading his other “futurism” writings, fiction on non-fiction.

    2. IMO, you are missing some really good Space Opera he wrote in the 1980s: Sundiver(1980), Startide Rising(1983) and Uplift War(1987). He started going off the rails in the 1990s on environmentalism and what would be ‘woke’ these days. In the preface to Glory Season(1993) he rather grovelingly describes as a ‘mere male author’ his attempt to write a “true feminist novel” (!!!) –no, I didn’t buy it or ever read it after seeing that.

      1. I enjoyed the uplift books though my suspension of disbelief got a workout. Specifically on leaving worlds fallow for millions of years to recover from some mismanagement.

    3. I stopped paying attention to Brin after he predicted Obama would rebuild the US military.

  3. David Brin is the author of “The Postman,” and his books and stories are well worth reading. Judging a book by its author is prima facie evidence one might not be so smart as one imagines.

  4. It’s amazing how many people (who should know better), have no concept of how terrible they sound. It’s not the voice, or the dust, it’s a crap mic.
    Forty seconds in and my ears are bleeding.
    Drop $300-$400 and RTFM, or ask somebody with ears.

  5. I met Brin once, and along with a gaggle of commercial space geeks, spent some time having dinner and/or drinks (I don’t remember which, if either) and shooting the breeze with him on all sorts of issues. I’ve met a lot of people with more imagination, whose ideas were much more interesting. I earned a reputation as a space visionary back in the day, and it may come as a surprise that I generally don’t like science fiction as a literary genre. I started reading the classics when I was seven, and liked some. But my interest gradually petered out the more I read. I was more interested in developments happening in the real world. I still am.

    1. Most published science fiction is imitative drivel. That said, what classics are you referring to? I see the foundation classics as the work of Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and Edgar Rice Burroughs (badly misrepresented by academia and largely misunderstood by underage readers). In the same era, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were dead ends. Later on, the self-appointed “deans of science fiction” wound up as hacks. Clarke’s only really worthwhile book was “The Sands of Mars.” Heinlein could write well (“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” and “Glory Road,” frex) but mostly wanted to make money off trash. Many better writers are completely forgotten.

  6. In the same era, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were dead ends.

    I strongly disagree. Jules Vernes “From the Earth to the Moon” has a good chance over the next thousand years to outpace the Bible as the most influential bit of literature. That’s because the book inspired most of the early rocketry pioneers. Anyone living off of Earth in a thousand years won’t have the Bible to thank for that.

    1. Depends on how important “rocketry” turns out to be (in the context of big artillery as in Verne?). Most space scientists cite ERB. Why do any of it? Verne didn’t have much to say about that. “Bible” is conventional wisdom, but “Quran”? “Meditations” and “De Rerum Natura” are probably more important than in the West. “Tao Te Ching” in the East.

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