Project Hail Mary, The Martian, Contact. Somewhat in line with a better future mentioned in the essay, The Ministry for the Future and the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson posit some solutions to some big technological challenges with a lot of time with each side in the political debate, though whether one finds it optimistic lies with the reader.
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#...
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.
Good point. Can someone recommend some good optimistic science fiction?
A Half Built Garden was lovely, I thought.
Ada Palmer had a good write-up on Hopepunk. Many of the example books come towards the latter half of the write-up. https://beforewegoblog.com/purity-and-futures-of-hard-work-b...
Thanks, hopepunk is a fun new concept to learn about.
Project Hail Mary, The Martian, Contact. Somewhat in line with a better future mentioned in the essay, The Ministry for the Future and the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson posit some solutions to some big technological challenges with a lot of time with each side in the political debate, though whether one finds it optimistic lies with the reader.
The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Realistic and optimistic climate fiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future
Tech is universal being used for evil. I see little chance of that changing