All the stories on the FP are about labor relations and corporate shenanigans. So anyway, do you like Star Trek or Star Wars better? Anybody still ike to read old school sci fi, for example I really love Poul Anderson’s Polesotechnic League stories - the swashbuckling adventures of intersteller trador Nicholas van Rijn and his Solar Spice and Liquors company, David Falkayne, et al. Good old basic space opera.
I have a soft spot for star wars but only the first 3, probably because I was young and it was so breathtaking.
So now I roll with star trek, especially the older ones.
But back on track, Where are the robots? The DIY? The fun stuff. Where are posts about a new ESP32? Some portable 3D printer (probably garbage, lets have a flame war!), how to use phone chargers to get 20 vilts to your led strip, funky homelab setups and deals, better network stuff, even retro computing I’d say.
Yeah, block all the boardroom chatter and bring back real tech!
Star Trek for the technology and exploration (both of space and the human condition). Star Wars because WOW that dude just moved that shit with his FREAKIN’ MIND!
Think about the technology we have now - a lot of it was inspired by Star Trek technology. Communicators -> smartphones/watches, shuttle -> Rovers, non invasive medical diagnosis, large screens, video calls. And that’s just from TOS. And I’m pretty sure people are still working on creating Transporters.
Poul Anderson mentioned 🗣️ 🗣️🗣️
He and H.Beam Piper are my favorite SF writers, be sure to check Three Hearts and Three Lions, the book where the hero solves fantasy problems with Science™.
I’ve never heard of HBP, will take a look.
He’s fun reading, though being a woman I also find his stuff kinda sexist. It’s basically cowboys in space.
I mostly read sci-fi from the late Golden Age and the New Wave, so I have a lot of practice in glossing over questionable bits!
Cowboys in space sounds fun.
The Little Fuzzy books are some of my favorites.
In my late 20s at a sci fi con, a friend came up and said, “Here’s someone I’d like you to meet,” and suddenly I was face to face with Poul Anderson. He was one of my idols - I had read the crap out of his work for years and years. I was so gobsmacked all that came out of my mouth was, “How do you say your first name?” Worst fail of my life.
I like turtles
TMNT never made enough sense to me.
Better?
I’ve kind of felt the same way, would rather have a somewhat-stronger focus on technology in this community.
The current top few pages of posts are pretty much all just talking about drama at social media companies, which frankly isn’t really what I think of as technology.
That being said, “technology” kind of runs the gamut in various news sources. I’ve often seen “technology news” basically amount to promoting new consumer gadgets, which isn’t exactly what I’d like to see from the thing, either. I don’t really want to see leaked photos of whatever the latest Android tablet from Lenovo or whatever is either.
I’d be more interested in reading about technological advances and changes.
I suppose that if someone wants to start a more-focused community, I’d also be willing to join that, give it a shot.
EDIT: I’d note that the current content here kind of mirrors what’s on Reddit at /r/Technology, which is also basically drama at social media companies. I suppose that there’s probably interest from some in that. It’s just not really what I’m primarily looking for.
I made [email protected] for all the drama at social media companies
Hah, clever name!
Or you could start posting about the technology related things you expect to see here?
Some of us do, but that doesn’t remove the unending flood of business news and corporate drama that we don’t want in our feeds, so it doesn’t solve the problem.
I would quite literally rather piss into the wind. At least then I’d be doing something outdoors.
Why tho? Politics and social issues are clearly what people want here - and that’s fine, my objection is just calling the community “Technology” when that’s not at all the dominant theme. Maybe “Tech-Adjacent” would be better.
seveneves was a banger, if you haven’t read it just go in hot.
What boggles my mind is that there have been about fifty movies based on Philip K. Dick and zero based on Poul Anderson.
Anderson has galactic empires, roguish heroes, dozens of alien species, strong females, etc etc.
I think that it because Dick could write short stories that could get made into movies. A lot more of the sprawling book series are only done justice with multi movie series or TV series.
Poul did a throwaway story that I’d love to see expanded into a series.
A group of time travelers from 4,000 AD travel back to Renaissance Italy. They run into an evil baron and his henchmen, including one very learned monk. A little torture and the Italians have their own time machine. They set up a base in 10,000 BC and raid across time. They know that the Time Patrol can only use things in the historical record, so as long as they keep a low profile they’ll never get caught.
PKD is special somehow. He’s the one author where, I think, the movies are better than the books pretty consistently. Maybe it’s luck or my flawed opinion.
I think Dick was writing to be read in a particular time and place. Take Dashiell Hammett. ‘Red Harvest’ works a century later. there are some references that are dated [wearing a red tie] but overall you can give the novel to a modern person without a great deal of explanation needed. ‘The Thin Man’ requires a ton of annotation to be understood.
imho.
Agreed. Partly because the movies have actual endings…
I have just read one Poul Anderson (when I was a teenager) and the most important thing I remember was people fucking each other all the time.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
iirc, it was in "War Of The Wing Men’ where a princess has been traveling through the galaxy looking for a human male to sire her child. She ends up picking a fat, boorish space trader over the hero-type because the trader actually knows how to get things done.
It was “The Avatar” in a German translation. I read it twice or so at that time - and it’s many years since, so I have only a dim recollection of all the details, but a lot of politics, and (if I don’t mix it up now) questionable physics regarding light speed and mass, a lot of sex and some weird gaelic inspired poetry.
Maybe I’ll find a copy one day again, to have a new look with my now old eyes and different woldview.
From what I’ve seen on goodreads or so I had a bit of misfortune as The Avatar isn’t known as his best work. But beggars can’t be choosers, at that time I got my sci fi fix by browsing the one bookstand with scifi in the central station’s bookstore next to my bus stop home after school… they threw me out once or twice “This is for buying books, not for reading”
Here are some old school paperback writers you might not have heard of. I present them in no particular order, just off the top of my head. I found them all on wire racks in drug stores, lo these many years ago…
Robert Beck aka Iceberg Slim. If you ever wondered why there were so many rappers with ‘Ice’ in their name, it’s because Iceberg Slim was the author most widely read in the US prison system. I particularly liked ‘Trick Baby’ the story of a Black conman who could pass for White.
Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark. The other most widely read prion writer. Stark’s ‘The Hunter’ has been filmed about a dozen times. His crooks are unemotional professionals.
Tanith Lee. The Goddess-empress of the hot read. ‘Night’s Master’ has Satan as the hero. Every night he flies from his palace to seduce and/or terrorize mankind.
Enjoy.
Oh wow, thanks for the tips! I’ll check them out.
Love TNG and DS9, currently reading the Ringworld series
New age sci-fi, but you have GOT to read the Murder Bot books. They are absolutely incredible. They’ve also won Nebula and Hugo awards.
Also: children of time series, as well as the bobiverse series
I haven’t read Children of Ruin yet, but Children of Time was awesome.
Ruin is awesome. The story is like going on an adventure.
People are split on Memory, but I like it. It’s just written differently
Martha Wells… cool, thanks!
+1 for an actual tech focused community. I think it has to be focused on software or hardware as a rule. News about stocks, CEOs, rebranding etc should not be allowed. Maybe put them in tech_news or something.
I want to read about what new feature the openbsd folks are working on or innovations by the quebes os team or a new RISC based laptop or the raspberry pi 420 that can play half life 3.
“Business” also exists. If it’s news about the business, not the technology, it should go to Business.
It might be too technical for some, but Linux Weekly News (lwn.net) has been a long-running source of articles dating back to the 1990s, if memory serves aright, that’s kind of in that ballpark.
EDIT: Hmm. It looks like at some point, some of their articles went subscriber-only, though.
Seriously, the mods need to step. This is a technology community, not a business community.
I think it has to be focused on software or hardware as a rule.
I don’t. Those fields are but small slivers in the realm of technology, and they’re not even particularly novel any more. A community dedicated to one or both of them might make sense, but there’s no reason to let them dominate the technology community.
News about stocks, CEOs, rebranding etc should not be allowed.
I agree with you there.
Fair enough, I would have thought most things would be related to either hardware or software but I could be overlooking something. I was just trying to propose a sensible approach that could be a starting point.
DS9 > TNG > BSG
I’d put ‘The Expanse’ at the head of the line
The Expanse is great
I am firmly Star Wars, my wife is Star Trek. It’s a mixed marriage. We both love Firefly and Doctor Who.
I have not yet shown her Battlestar Galactica.
Whoa!
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it right there.
What about Babylon 5?!?
I love Babylon 5 and she loves what she has seen of Londo and G’Kar, but she hasn’t seen a lot of it.
She says: “Oh? You mean DS9?”
I love both Star Trek and Star Wars, but Star Wars has a lot of really toxic fans. These days I tend to be a quiet Star Wars fan.
I feel like in a post-global pandemic world, where we have AIs that can pass the Turing test, VR world’s where we can do global virtual raves, and if one cobbles enough cutting edge tech together one can say “earl Grey, hot” and a 3d printer can print up a model of a tea cup… I think scifi writers have to come up with what is NEXT.
No more “Oh this logical robot which can either be a metaphor for autism or enslaved people want to be free and human”. Give us projections on our current technology and social evolution. Shows set in the year 2200 shouldn’t just be dealing with the emergence of AI and still have only straight nuclear families.
True, most sci fi about the future just overlays fancy gadgets on top of present-day culture, and every robot is Pinocchio and wants to be a real boy. But if an author tried hard to speculate about future life it would probably be too unfamiliar and unrelatable to sell a lot of books - and I don’t really blame them for not wanting to put readers in a too-unfamiliar world, they’re trying to entertain not write white papers. Also consider the reaction to a writer who made it okay for an robot to get fulfillment out of just functioning perfectly. OMG no, we can’t give that toxic idea any breathing space. Every entity must long for Freedom like an angst-ridden teenager or the writer will be accused of shilling for the system.
