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Has the passage of time vindicated the major themes of science fiction? It seems like many centerpiece works are being represented in reality. People wanting to start euthanizing the elderly to keep social security running is almost exactly like Logan's Run. Big brother exists in most governments. People consume antidepressants to supress the issues in society and there is literally an antidepressant called Soma. Have we been warned and simply didn't listen? Is it too late to fix things? Is science fiction obsolete because its prophecies are already reality?

Yes we have been warned extensively and did not take things seriously. It is too late now indeed, atleast fixing things in society, the only way out now is a total social and economic collapse with the majority of humankind eradicated. The minds of the modern man or too corrupted to function in any way. Science fiction is way more than obsolete, things that not even science fiction has predicted exist and are in use now. Things such as nanobots, self replicating robots, ai and all sorts of other jazz are in working condition. Even experimental teleportation and timetravel have been working in something like 2016. Those kind of things are just the tip of the iceberg, there is a huge secret society behind the things with access to stuff that we dont even know about. Now the more interesting thing is that which we call paranormal phenomena has been proven to exist and in fact is not some freak anomaly but a inherit part of the universal fabric. Even though primitive ideas have such as basic telepathy and other dimensions have been somewhat explored in fiction. Very rarely are things such as remote viewing where 2 million dollars got pumped in, speaking only of the american remote viewing program, the russians had one too. Remote viewing has been extensively researched over 50 years and so were other phenomena with astonishing results, including retroactive psychokinesis, speak altering the past trough mind powers. But rarely we hear about these things, even the like of philip k dicks minority report, with the idea of precrime, barely scratch the surface of what is actually being worked on right now. Things even go so far that many scientist and other sorts of people even argue they have proof that we live in a matrix and none of this is actually real. The things that are going on right now are way more wild than any science fiction could have prepared us for and most people walk trough live completely blind of what lurks beyond the veil which they have been told is their life.

>>4167 As a creative writing exercise, not bad. As evidence of the existence of woo-woo, not so much. Care to point to some citations in reputable journals for any of this?

>>4167 Don't matter if we did or not since we're not in control.

it's just selection bias. Plenty of stupid bullshit was also predicted by SF writers. 1984 was pretty much designed as a warning though and pretty much came true, so I think that one deserves more credit than the rest.

What if these works are not to warn, but to program us? Remember, Aldous Huxley's brothers were biologists, one of them participated in creation of United Nations, Eugeniy Zamyatin paraphrased socialist utopianism of Alexei Gastev who was later in charge of scientific labor management in USSR, and George Orwell got disappointed in general state of socialist movements after all these perpetual wars that happened during his life. I'm not even touching Coudenhove-Kalergi's ideas, he was an absolutely insane man.

>>4173 The old "limited hangout" theory. Possibly. The past decades have certainly been using thing like Minority Report as an instruction manual instead of a warning. It's frustrating for sure.

>>4167 Your tinfoil hat is on a bit tight. Nanobots, self-replicating bots for starters are not remotely "functional". Teleportation has only been done with fundamental particles one-at-a-time. Time travel is as-yet not remotely plausible (and we're confident impossible). >Paranormal woo You're on your own there kid. >We LiVe In ThE mAtRiX Elon Musk would be proud of you, but the majority of scientists and philosophers would like a word with you. >>4171 >Selection bias This. Read some non-famous sci-fi and you'll see the err in your thinking. >>4173 I don't know, Brave New World seems more like a stern warning against unbridled socialism and/or communism. It's basically a worker's utopia: if you're a low-caste, you're too retarded to care. Higher-functioning higher-caste people are given drugs. Everything is controlled by a central council of elites at-a-distance. This doesn't seem like an effective way to program people, it needs to seem unabashedly good. 1984 definitely is no walk in the park. >C-K ideas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan ???

>>4176 Yes, Brave New World seems like a satire on roaring twenties if you're familiar with the topic. The unhappy people were the ones of the Betta class who did too much thinking and less drugs. If we look at dystopia genre, it just takes certain concepts and amplifies their depiction in negative scale, the utopia genre does the opposite. The reader's bias also enhances the perception in the different direction, so after all if the fiction work doesn't touch universally taboo things such as sex, drugs and rock-n-roll war, we might assume it's a utopia. I recommend everyone who visits this thread to rad Prisoners of Power (Inhabited Island), it's a clever new wave "dystopian" fiction with multiple levels of storytelling designed to withstand multiple levels of Soviet censorship grip, and I also recommend reading other Strugatsky Brothers works of the same universe to understand it better. >Read some non-famous sci-fi and you'll see the err in your thinking. What sort of fiction exactly? We're not diving into trashy American comic books territory, don't we?

>>4177 ever read anything by Larry Niven?

>>4166 Some would call it hyperstition!!!!

> People wanting to start euthanizing the elderly to keep social security running is almost exactly like Logan's Run. Giving people the right to end their own suffering by choice is nothing like Logan's Run where everyone is killed in the prime of their life by a psychotic social order pretending to be a utopia. No one is under the illusion that we're living in a utopia either. > Big brother exists in most governments. Only most? Not all? >People consume antidepressants to supress the issues in society People are depressed for a variety of reasons and as long as there is informed consent (look that term up if you need to) then they should have the right to put anything in their bodies they like.

>Soma totally not on topic but if you're talking about this, its carisoprodol, a muscle relaxant (not an antidepressant). You can get sort-of high from it though, people use it to accentuate heroin

somewhat off topic but man, brave new world is such a terrible book

>>4202 Why? sure its impact was greatly exaggerated, but it was a fun setup

>>4207 starts strong with the industrial birthing and soma stuff but the plot and characters are such thinly veiled metaphors its distracting, should've ended 100 pages early

>>4166 I think it is an essential quality of interesting science-fiction that the themes and idea it presents are a such that our world easily could 'spill' over to such a state - in other words, most science-fiction plays upon something that is not different from our world in kind, but in degree.

>>4166 >Big brother exists in most governments. Nah, and it doesn't count as a visionary prediction either way. 1984 is based on the Soviet Union. They had a lot of surveillance going on. It's about "what if the USSR but more", it's not made up out of whole cloth. And the only thing western mass surveillance has in common with 1984 is the bare fact of it being mass surveillance. It doesn't follow the panopticon model. The biggest difference is that it's secret - the existence of PRISM was classified. In 1984 the government wants people to be afraid of surveillance and force them into correct behavior at all times out of fear. But that's not the NSA's goal. In their ideal state nobody alters their behavior at all. China is probably another matter. >People consume antidepressants to supress the issues in society That's a very doubtful interpretation of depression, and I don't think it even matches all that well with Brave New World. In BNW people are given Soma to exert control over their emotions, and this is a continuous thing, part of the overall theme of mechanization. In the real world people tend to take antidepressants voluntarily because depression is like kicking dead whales down the beach and they want it to stop. That's people exerting control over themselves. >there is literally an antidepressant called Soma. I can only find a painkiller with that name, and it's for short-term use with pretty specific physical conditions. Not Soma-like at all.

>>4180 > they should have the right to put anything in their bodies they like. True and is a reminder that we shouldn't mistake solutions to problems with the problem itself. Depression would exist with or without these drugs, be thankful that we live in a timeline where people can do something about it. I think this attitude could apply to lots of things that people moan about; political polarisation, government surveillance, centralised media - sure all these things might be bad, but don't lose the forest for the trees, they'd all still be here even if the tech was different.

>>5288 >And the only thing western mass surveillance has in common with 1984 is the bare fact of it being mass surveillance. It doesn't follow the panopticon model This is a good point. Although at this point pretty much everyone knows about the NSA. Still, they aren't constantly trying to remind people they're being watched like big brother does. Another interesting difference was that (iirc, it's been a while since I read the book) the justification for big brother's surveillance was to defend people from supposedly antisocial aspects of their own society. Whereas defenders of the NSA tend to focus on foreign terrorists and the like. It seems to me that the latter tactic is more effective because it makes it seem like if you're a good American the NSA is on your side fighting against outside enemies. I think the more relevant aspects of 1984's world have to do with the power that derives from controlling popular discourse. The fact that those in power rewrite history in their favor isn't a new idea, but the notion that this process can happen constantly and deliberately in relation to even minor events is worth thinking about. The most useful idea I took away from 1984 was the bit about how if you make an idea too shameful to even think about it will eventually become literally unthinkable as people lose access to the language needed to conceptualize it. Also, the 2 minutes of hate and the memory hole are both pretty compelling imagery, and make for handy metaphors.

>>5288 >It doesn't follow the panopticon model Unless you suspect the Snowden leaks were deliberately allowed to happen. Keep people in line without having to deal with the actual fallout of outright saying it in a society that claims to be free. Whether or not it was their intention the PRISM leaks and other subsequent leaks about things like Logjam have certainly had a chilling effect similar to what you would expect from a panopticon style surveillance system.

>>5298 >I think the more relevant aspects of 1984's world have to do with the power that derives from controlling popular discourse. The fact that those in power rewrite history in their favor isn't a new idea, but the notion that this process can happen constantly and deliberately in relation to even minor events is worth thinking about. I don't think this happens more now than in the past. Probably less. Anybody can now trivially publish information with the potential to reach a staggering audience, and the censorship is pretty mild and focused on social behavior more than actual content. That doesn't mean facts aren't getting twisted left and right, but it's more organic, happening due to memetic fitness rather than deliberate manipulation from above. >>5299 I don't think that works either. I think most people aren't now particularly more afraid of doing things the government disapproves of, except maybe on a felony level. They think it's creepy to be spied on at all, and they're perhaps afraid of people in the NSA making personal abuse of their abilities, but that doesn't push them toward being model citizens. In 1984 it influences life even on the pettiest level, with an aerobics instructor yelling at Winston through the telescreen because he's in poor shape. It's supposed to influence everything you do at all times.

>>5303 I see what you mean although I do think that the leaks have had a chilling effect on certain groups that were politically dissident if not the general population. When you put it like that though I start to think that social media is filling that role for the more "normal" people (that are also less likely to have changed their behaviour from the Snowden leaks), we have people being constantly judged and shamed into better conforming so that they can look the best on social media sites. Instead of the state enforcing it we have society at large acting as crabs in a bucket ensuring that people conform at all times.

>>5305 >I do think that the leaks have had a chilling effect on certain groups that were politically dissident That sounds plausible. >When you put it like that though I start to think that social media is filling that role for the more "normal" people To an extent, yeah. But it only affects things that are already public or that you choose to share. It's not omnipresent so there's a lot of leeway. And it's not new, it's just existing social bullshit given an extra avenue. I'm not terribly familiar with the dynamics, though. All social media I use is pseudonymous or anonymous. From what I know China's social credit system is much closer.

>>5305 Do not be fooled, the people behind those agencies are absolute master manipulators who know every possible trick in the book and have no scrutiny using them. The power of fear and observation has been well documented and studied over a 100 years in many forms. Spreading of fear is the most effective weapon in their arsenal and they can and do use it in so many ways. They realized long ago a prison where prisoners know they are always watched is the best way to control them, even better if the prisoners turn to guards by being rewarded on snitching one another and being put into hierarchies. I dont think the nsa could have made such a gross mistake with snowden, surely they handle information better than that.