# What do sci fi writers have agains the future?



## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

From 1984, Fahrenhit 451 to the Giver and well beyond, almost all the books about the future are bleak warnings for humanity.  Which is fine, because there's a lot of things that humanity needs to be warned against. But are there any books taking place in the future where the future actually looks like a better place to live in than now rather than worse?


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## TWErvin2 (Aug 7, 2010)

lacymarankevinmichael said:


> From 1984, Fahrenhit 451 to the Giver and well beyond, almost all the books about the future are bleak warnings for humanity. Which is fine, because there's a lot of things that humanity needs to be warned against. But are there any books taking place in the future where the future actually looks like a better place to live in than now rather than worse?


I believe, beyond the social commentary or warnings for humanity mentioned, is that for most novels there needs to be conflict. In a perfect utopia, there is little conflict. With no health struggles, no political struggles, no technological struggles, no wars or strife, much of the essence of what 'makes a story' isn't available to the author.

I also think it depends on the individual as to what is a better place to live--here and now, or some places in the future.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

You might want to check out the "Culture" group of novels by Iain M. Banks. There is certainly conflict of sorts, but they posit a future where humanity -- along with other races in the Culture as well as AI's -- have reached a state where things are quite good. Much of the conflict is in dealing with less developed races and species in the galaxy that have not learned to live harmoniously with others. Some of them get a bit long-winded at times for my tastes, but still overall I've liked all of them and really liked some of them a lot -- I think _Excession_ is my favorite.

You might also take a look at Alastair Reynolds's _House of Suns_, which has mankind having spread across the Milky Way, not without problems, but overall not dystopian by any means.


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## Kathelm (Sep 27, 2010)

There's an old curse: "May you live to see interesting times."

Reason being that times of peace and prosperity are kind of boring to discuss.  The same principles apply to sci-fi.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

lacymarankevinmichael said:


> From 1984, Fahrenhit 451 to the Giver and well beyond, almost all the books about the future are bleak warnings for humanity.


I completely disagree. Most of the science fiction about the future that I've read over the past 55 years or so has not fallen into that category at all. It's been a pretty small percentage, actually.

Mike


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

While books might have bleak warnings about the future, they usually also contain the spark of hope that people will ultimately triumph.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Here's a question.  If you had a chance to join any of the future societies in sci fi books, would you, or would you rather live in the society we have currently?


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## jhanel (Dec 22, 2010)

Check out Robert A. Heinlein. Some of his books were bleak, but most of them showed a very happy future... of course, the conflict came in due to machinery gone awry or some space adventure gone south. It's true that some of his works painted the future bleak, i.e. Spaceship Troopers (please ignore spaceship troopers the movie!!! The book is infinitely better!!!) but Tunnel in the Sky and "The cat who..." series were not too bad.

I liked them anyway. =)


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

jhanel said:


> Check out Robert A. Heinlein. Some of his books were bleak, but most of them showed a very happy future... of course, the conflict came in due to machinery gone awry or some space adventure gone south. It's true that some of his works painted the future bleak, i.e. Spaceship Troopers (please ignore spaceship troopers the movie!!! The book is infinitely better!!!) but Tunnel in the Sky and "The cat who..." series were not too bad.
> 
> I liked them anyway. =)


Thanks. By the way, I saw you're still chugging away on Smashwords. Congrats.


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## jhanel (Dec 22, 2010)

=) Thanks. 

My sales have stalled there. Not a single sale in two days after several great days in a row. It's like they just stopped counting my book or something. I'm getting a bit perplexed by it. We'll see. (* shrugs *)

Happy new year, and I wish you the best in finding great sci-fi.


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## Stephen T. Harper (Dec 20, 2010)

Even the bleak ones always offer hope.  But don't forget, it's not all like that.  I think the big reason why Star Trek has endured as a popular touchstone through so many different incarnations is Roddenberry's hopeful, triumphant and perfectly plausible depiction of humanity's future. 

Of course, they do talk about WW 3 happening before we get there, but still...


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## Jan Strnad (May 27, 2010)

I don't think I want to read a book where everything is hunky-dorey, whether it's s-f or some other genre or no genre at all.

There's a _Twilight Zone _ episode where a crook is shot to death and wakes up in a world (Heaven, apparently) where he's fabulously rich, where he has all the women he wants, where he gambles and never loses, etc. After a month he's bored to tears and realizes that he's gone to Hell.

An s-f novel about a world where everything works would have to have some kind of structure that I can't imagine in order to be interesting.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Jan Strnad said:


> I don't think I want to read a book where everything is hunky-dorey, whether it's s-f or some other genre or no genre at all.
> 
> There's a _Twilight Zone _ episode where a crook is shot to death and wakes up in a world (Heaven, apparently) where he's fabulously rich, where he has all the women he wants, where he gambles and never loses, etc. After a month he's bored to tears and realizes that he's gone to Hell.
> 
> An s-f novel about a world where everything works would have to have some kind of structure that I can't imagine in order to be interesting.


I don't believe it's an issue of a world where "everything is hunky-dorey" or not, but the type of "dystopian" SF novel where most of the general population is living in poor to terrible circumstances, perhaps being exploited by the few who are in power (or in the know, or whatever) and generally providing a depressing picture of the future. Alternatively, you can have an SF world where advances in technology, medicine, and psychology have made life in general pretty good, yet still have challenges that must be faced and dealt with by the protagonists (invading aliens, a rampaging virus (biological or computer), a charismatic wacko leading a cult of techo-terrorists, etc.). For me, the dystopian novels can be interesting and perhaps cautionary, but I cannot take them in large doses -- I suppose because they _are_ depressing.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

NogDog said:


> I don't believe it's an issue of a world where "everything is hunky-dorey" or not, but the type of "dystopian" SF novel where most of the general population is living in poor to terrible circumstances, perhaps being exploited by the few who are in power (or in the know, or whatever) and generally providing a depressing picture of the future. Alternatively, you can have an SF world where advances in technology, medicine, and psychology have made life in general pretty good, yet still have challenges that must be faced and dealt with by the protagonists (invading aliens, a rampaging virus (biological or computer), a charismatic wacko leading a cult of techo-terrorists, etc.). For me, the dystopian novels can be interesting and perhaps cautionary, but I cannot take them in large doses -- I suppose because they _are_ depressing.


What Nogdog said.

I know it's a cartoon, but look at the Jetsons. George Jetson lives in a pretty cool world of flying cars and the like. But he has conflict with his boss and his family. I just don't see many future worlds I would want to visit in literature.


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

STH said:


> I think the big reason why Star Trek has endured as a popular touchstone through so many different incarnations is Roddenberry's hopeful, triumphant and perfectly plausible depiction of humanity's future.


I've always thought of Star Trek as SciFi Lite -- in part because of its unwarranted optimism about the future. Roddenberry's future is pure Romanticism and not, as I see it, particularly plausible. Hard SF tries for plausibility whereas Star Trek fudges known science too readily.

While I don't need science fiction to be always dark and depressing, I do avoid large doses of the "feel good" science fiction filled with optimism, hope, and cheer. I'm just the opposite of Nogdog.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Geemont said:


> ...
> While I don't need science fiction to be always dark and depressing, I do avoid large doses of the "feel good" science fiction filled with optimism, hope, and cheer. I'm just the opposite of Nogdog.


I think you may be overstating my position. I was not trying to promote "feel good" science fiction (not even sure I could cite anything that would fit that description), nor even put down "feel bad" science fiction -- only stating that I can only take the remorselessly pessimistic stuff in small doses, especially as I get older.


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## Erick Flaig (Oct 25, 2010)

I live in a pretty cool world that was the future when I was a kid. We're still waiting for the flying cars, of course.  
But watch or read some old sci-fi from the 60's or 70's. Hey, we have almost all that stuff! Except for the flying cars, of course. Somehow, though, we've squeezed another 3 billion people on this globe without killing everyone at once. When I was a kid, _that _was the future we expected. We were all gonna die! Although, just for the record, I NEVER believed my desk would shield me from radiation.

On second thought, after watching some of the drivers on the road on my way to work today (you know who you are!) maybe not having flying cars is a good thing. They would have killed us all before the mighty A bomb/H bomb/Doomsday Device had the chance.


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## LaFlamme (Dec 9, 2010)

"The Neighborhood," in Box of Lies, is a long short about the future, where men and women are forced to walk to provide energy to a depleted society. "Asterisk" is set in the year 2086 and guess what: flying cars that will take you to Fenway Park!
When I write about the future, I'm guided by current trends in science and technology. I swear, a writer can pluck 50 story ideas out of one copy of Discover Magazine alone.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

I'm reminded of the book "Fallen Angels"  where sci-fi has been banned.  One of the characters remarks that what drew her to the genre was that even in the most dysutopian societies there was a glimmer of hope.


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## john_a_karr (Jun 21, 2010)

A sci fi book needs a bleak future, or a peaceful one suddenly in jeopardy for the Conflict to be interesting, imo. The peaceful future could be just one individual's life, while the cozy world goes on around him/her, but it needs to be there. 

Am reminded of the Star Trek episode where warring planets waged 'war' in computer simulation, where no real violence was done. Those people marked as Fatalities had to show up like lemmings for a nice, sanitized death by machine 

Kirk and the boys showed them that this was not the way ... surrendering your will to the machine/society. 

There's a parallel there somewhere, I think.


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## Chad Winters (Oct 28, 2008)

You might like David Weber's Honor Harrington novels. (www.baen.com)
Also Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell (indie author) is a great low conflict read.


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## sportourer1s (Oct 2, 2010)

The speed of scientific advance will be faster than ever in the 21st Century so sci-fi will struggle to look to the future. I think as we embrace science more and fear it less then fiction too will take a more positive view of the future.


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## Cliff Ball (Apr 10, 2010)

You know, in the current Star Trek novels, the one set right after the TNG, DS9, and Voyager universe, the future turns dark. The Borg decide to completely wipe out the Federation, instead of assimilating them, killing billions of people, and destroying planets, even though that sort of ends in a happy ending when the Borg are cleansed from the universe, but, then the Romulans decide to take advantage and team up with the Breen, Gorn, and Tholians. Sisko is depressed, Bashir is unhappy, Kate Janeway is dead, etc....  

If you read S.M. Stirling's Novels of the Change, he has a sort of bleak future, where technology suddenly disappears, and quit a bit of humanity become cannibals.

But, I don't think all science fiction is against the future, but the post apocalyptic ones do seem to sell better.


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

Erick Flaig said:


> Somehow, though, we've squeezed another 3 billion people on this globe without killing everyone at once. When I was a kid, _that _was the future we expected. We were all gonna die!


The doomsayers haven't gone away, they've just accepted new doom paradigms. Some of the Peak Oilers believe we are all going back to a pre-industrial society when civilization collapses and fragments into regional collectives when the oil is gone this year or next. The author James Howard Kunstler predicted the End Was Near when Y2K was still looming , but he switched over to Peak Oil after the no-show disaster on 1/1/2000. There is a guy who wants to fantasized about end times.

As for me, I'm a Peak Sun doomsayer, an Andromeda-Milky Way Collision doomsayer, and a Heat-Death of the Universe doomsayer. One of the three will surely get us all to the last man and woman. Maybe something else a littler sooner.

As for science fiction: I like the dark edges more than optimistic outlooks. Maybe it makes the daily, routine grind a little less wearisome.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Geemont said:


> The doomsayers haven't gone away, they've just accepted new doom paradigms. Some of the Peak Oilers believe we are all going back to a pre-industrial society when civilization collapses and fragments into regional collectives when the oil is gone this year or next. The author James Howard Kunstler predicted the End Was Near when Y2K was still looming , but he switched over to Peak Oil after the no-show disaster on 1/1/2000. There is a guy who wants to fantasized about end times.
> 
> As for me, I'm a Peak Sun doomsayer, an Andromeda-Milky Way Collision doomsayer, and a Heat-Death of the Universe doomsayer. One of the three will surely get us all to the last man and woman. Maybe something else a littler sooner.
> 
> As for science fiction: I like the dark edges more than optimistic outlooks. Maybe it makes the daily, routine grind a little less wearisome.


Speaking of, gas prices just went up again today. Argh.

Thanks for all the book suggestions though. I'll check them out.


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## RyanMWilliams (May 28, 2010)

Speaking as a scifi writer I think one of the things missing in some scifi today is something positive, the happy ending. Sure, there are conflicts and bad things might happen but it's nice when the good guys win. I've enjoyed plenty of bleaker novels, but sometimes it's nice to read about characters succeeding against huge odds. That's sort of been taken over by a lot of fantasy fiction that I read. Imagine the Lord of the Rings, as dark as it was, if Frodo had failed, or never even tried?


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## Amy Corwin (Jan 3, 2011)

RyanMWilliams said:


> Speaking as a scifi writer I think one of the things missing in some scifi today is something positive, the happy ending. Sure, there are conflicts and bad things might happen but it's nice when the good guys win. I've enjoyed plenty of bleaker novels, but sometimes it's nice to read about characters succeeding against huge odds. That's sort of been taken over by a lot of fantasy fiction that I read. Imagine the Lord of the Rings, as dark as it was, if Frodo had failed, or never even tried?


You can say that again! I like the "science-y" science fiction more than the fantasy fiction and not only has it been hard to find lately, but so much of the fiction classed as science fiction ends with an "and everyone died or got assimilated" kind of ending. I like dark, dystopian futures but I want the hero or heroine to win against those huge odds. Or at least escape. LOL For me, that's what I'm really looking for in a book, i.e. the notion that the little guy can beat the odds. Even if it means he has to dine on the girl at the end.

I'm hoping that with e-publishing doors opening to writers, maybe folks will have a way to publish their view of the future and a few of them may even decide to have the "happy ending" where at least one or two characters survive. I'd sure like to see that!


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## sal (Aug 4, 2009)

This reminds me of something I tend to say about dystopian novels:

"People living in a dystopia don't want to read about one."

Personally I like well written dystopias, but I agree it's been pretty overused in the last decade.
I don't really think there's a shortage of "happy endings" in SF, you just need to know what to look for.

I find "Hollywood Endings" (artifically happy ending that feels slapped on) and Deus Ex Machina endings far 
more unsatisfying than a bleak ending that makes sense with the rest of the story.

Having said that, I AM letting some of my characters live....  

Sal


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

The "Happy Ending" is the least satisfying overall.  Just think of the original "Blade Runner".  The ending must fit the story and can't be forced into the happy camp.  I prefer the pyrrhic victories or the gloomy ends.


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## Chad Winters (Oct 28, 2008)

Geemont said:


> The "Happy Ending" is the least satisfying overall. Just think of the original "Blade Runner". The ending must fit the story and can't be forced into the happy camp. I prefer the pyrrhic victories or the gloomy ends.


Or you can have the new BSG, where the ending made no sense whatsoever


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## Some Writer Cat (Sep 22, 2010)

Chad Winters (#102) said:


> Or you can have the new BSG, where the ending made no sense whatsoever


Personally, I don't care if the ending is happy or not, so long as its satisfying. That said, it's harder to satisfy the reader with a bleak ending. It can be done, but even bleak books like Cormac McCarthy's The Road ended on a slight hopeful note.

Great book, btw.


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## LaFlamme (Dec 9, 2010)

Every generation believes doom is imminent. We're almost never bright with hope for the future. It would be interesting to look back a hundred years and see if anybody prognosticated a time when the world would communicate through an electronic medium with a 140 character limit.


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

Mystery writers write about lots of murders. If an alien were to come to Earth and learn about our planet from reading mysteries, that alien would probably think that murder is a lot more common here than it actually is. A true utopia might be wonderful to live in, but would be dreadfully dull to live in. There's that supposed old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" (it's greatly disputed whether it actually came from China). Much of our stories are set in "interesting times", but those are usually times that interesting to read about, but not so interesting to actually have to live through.

And we have the same with science fiction, the future has its own problems, just as the present has its own problems and the past had its own problems. It would be difficult to write an interesting story about people in the future sitting around talking about how wonderful life is. (I suppose you could do it by juxtaposing that paradise against what had come before). Even fixing other problems can lead to new ones to deal with. If you told people in the past that in the 21st Century, we would have more problems of too much food rather than too little, they might well say "I'll take that problem!"

Happy endings would be a refreshing change of pace. The problem with the trend toward "gritty realism" is that it tends not to be all that realistic. If people aren't all puppies and rainbows, they aren't generally "Lord of the Flies" either. I have no objection to killing off characters if it actually furthers the story, but the disposable redshirt just doesn't have the impact it used to have. When a nobody dies, people don't feel much. And killing off characters to avoid dealing with messy situations really avoids opportunity. Lets say the story is set on a ship and the ship won't be able to get to base for months. A dead crewman is convenient. But if one is injured and recovery will take time, that's an interesting complication.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I think the happy ending versus unhappy ending is a separate matter from the author's general view of what the future will be like. You can have a story which takes place in a pretty rotten future but which has a happy ending (maybe at least hope for making that future's future better?), and you can have a near Utopia where something bad happens and all the good guys die. And, of course, there are all sorts of in-between variations.

I think it's also a factor of how far in the future we're talking about. It is frankly difficult to visualize Earth in the next hundred years overcoming famine, poverty, genocide, war, gender/sexual/racial/religious bigotry, and so on. But if you look to, say, 1000 years in the future, it is at least nice to imagine that maybe famine and poverty will have been dealt with via technology and global education (including population control and/or an exodus to the stars). Then without those societal pressures, perhaps the other things will be much less common (and easier to police/prevent). The alternatives would seem to be that we wipe most of each other out and in a 1000 years it's a post-apocalyptic "Road Warrior" story; everything is just like it is now (which begs the question, why write about it in the future?); or we have totally killed ourselves off and thus there is no story at all.

Oh well, excuse the rambling post, I'm still getting over my flu or whatever it was.


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## altworld (Mar 11, 2010)

Dystopia writes easier than Utopia, and given current outlooks a dystopian future has a better case for our future. Me, I think we are going to land somewhere between the two. We do after all don't live in a Primary color future world... Well, not yet anyway 
Arigato,
Nick D


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

It depends on what we mean by a happy ending. If its all puppies and rainbows, and all the problems of the world get fixed, and no new problems arise, that's too much. But if it's just a slog through misery where you wonder why people even go on living, that's too much too. But where the heroes of the story more or less come through ok, fix the problem that they set out to fix and go home to live their lives however people in that time period live them, that's about right.


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## Chad Winters (Oct 28, 2008)

QuantumIguana said:


> Mystery writers write about lots of murders. If an alien were to come to Earth and learn about our planet from reading mysteries, that alien would probably think that murder is a lot more common here than it actually is.


My wife likes mysteries and she used to watch Murder She Wrote. I always teased her that at the current murder rate of the small town of Cabot Cove they should have been depopulated in the first 3 seasons


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

jhanel said:


> Check out Robert A. Heinlein. Some of his books were bleak, but most of them showed a very happy future... of course, the conflict came in due to machinery gone awry or some space adventure gone south. It's true that some of his works painted the future bleak, i.e. Spaceship Troopers (please ignore spaceship troopers the movie!!! The book is infinitely better!!!) but Tunnel in the Sky and "The cat who..." series were not too bad.
> 
> I liked them anyway. =)


Starship Troopers? And what's wrong with the movie? It's pretty good, IMO. A great parody, plus it makes you think. I do need to read the book, though.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Arkali said:


> Starship Troopers? And what's wrong with the movie? It's pretty good, IMO. A great parody, plus it makes you think. I do need to read the book, though.


I think the problem with the movie is that the actors weren't informed that they were filming a parody.


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## KindleLovinMike (Jan 6, 2011)

Futurama! Oh wait, that's not a book. lol


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## LaFlamme (Dec 9, 2010)

I'm one of a half dozen people left on the planet who hasn't read The Road yet. It's available in Kindle format, right? Just solved a reading list issue all by myself.


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## screwballl (Jan 4, 2011)

Asimov was either indifferent or upbeat in plenty of his books, or at least offered a possible alternative type of future from where we are headed. Sometimes he offered views into other areas that are evil off in the distance.


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## sportourer1s (Oct 2, 2010)

If the novel I am currently working on runs its full course then the world will be a very different place to now in just a few short years but as usual there will be winners and losers. It is human nature to hanker for the past viewing it through rose tinted glasses and to fear the future, which of course will become their past one day.


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## Randolphlalonde (Sep 12, 2009)

This isn't in the category of novels, but I can't help but bring up Firefly / Serenity by Joss Whedon. While his universe, or solar system in that particular case, seems pretty dark and the main characters are underdogs, there's a brightness that comes from the characters themselves. Some even seem plucky!

If there is one thing I learned from Joss Whedon, who was also responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse, Toy Story, and others, it's that even when you're writing in a dark universe it's all right for a character to crack a joke.

I've read a lot of war fiction and non-fiction as well, most recently War by Sebastian Junger. I couldn't help but be reminded of several books about Vietnam where, even under the worst conditions people had to have a sense of humour and a little hope in reserve. I find a lot of darker science fiction ignores that war time reality, while some of the classics pull it off so well that you find yourself laughing despite the moment of great jeopardy the main characters find themselves in.

I suppose what I'm saying is that, a well written futuristic science fiction novel should have a little buoyancy, and a ray of hope in the peripheral. From what I hear Robert A. Heinlein had a pretty good balance going on for a few of his books. Considering I write Space Opera, I might want to read him.


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## Iwritelotsofbooks (Nov 17, 2010)

Randolphlalonde said:


> This isn't in the category of novels, but I can't help but bring up Firefly / Serenity by Joss Whedon. While his universe, or solar system in that particular case, seems pretty dark and the main characters are underdogs, there's a brightness that comes from the characters themselves. Some even seem plucky!
> 
> If there is one thing I learned from Joss Whedon, who was also responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse, Toy Story, and others, it's that even when you're writing in a dark universe it's all right for a character to crack a joke.
> 
> ...


Everyone cracks jokes, no matter how depressing the times. Coroners, ER doctors, they all make light of things to blow off steam.

On an earlier note about people living in dystopian times not wanting to write about them I agree with. For example, when I was in college I had zilch for conflict and would watch dark indie movies. Now that I have a bunch of conflict in my life, I only want to watch light comedies.


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## jason10mm (Apr 7, 2009)

I would recommend Peter F. Hamilton if you are looking for "bright" future sci-fi. Sure, the over-all settings of his books typically involve galaxy wide genocidal war, but he raises his technology level to a point that typically eliminates death, ageing, and poverty, so almost every character lives a utopic life, at least until the bad guys come swinging in, blasting everything 

Start with the Night's Dawn trilogy, which can usually be found on the kindle in a bundle for $7 or so, which is a hell of a deal since the series is 3000 pages or so  

Edit- I see they have pulled all the Night's Dawn stuff from amazon, at least for now. Grrrrr. Anyway, then I would recommend "Pandora's Star", as it is the first in his most recent 2 series. "Fallen Dragon" is a completely stand-alone novel, but deals with corporate raiding on a planetary scale, so it isn't quite at "bright" a future as his other stuff, though I thought it was quite nice as well, with a very positive, though bittersweet, ending.


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