19 KiB
[Q] Rationalist fiction tends to have a main character whose ultimate goal is to end death/suffering, colonize the galaxy, and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for humanity... Do any stories get to this point?
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Author: u/ianyboo *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2jm95g/q_rationalist_fiction_tends_to_have_a_main/
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Score: 14
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Created: 2014-10-18T16:47:38
Post:
This might be hard to answer without spoilers, just giving the name of a series could spoil the end but I'm really frustrated. I keep reading new stories linked here and most are works in progress, which is fine, but I'm dying to see a character actually realize their goals. I want a transhumanist utopia!
The closest I've gotten is reading the iain m banks culture novels or reading Manna by Marshall Brain
Are there other works where these concepts are explored in detail? I'm so tired of dystopian science fiction that makes technology out to be the bad guy who must be defeated at all costs :(
Comments:
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+9] Godric Gryffindor (a day later)
If it's okay to start out with that as the setting, then:
Aristoi by Walter John Williams goes on the list. Possibly Greg Egan novels although only Permutation City and Quarantine seem to me to be really good and they aren't set in happyland. The Golden Age by John C. Wright, but the sequels suck. Many different novels by Peter F. Hamilton.
Stories where the protagonists win sufficiently hard? I'm having a hard time thinking of a single one. Some of Alicorn's writing maybe.
u/DataPacRat [+2] Amateur Immortalist (a day later)
Stories where the protagonists win sufficiently hard?
How hard do you think is winning 'sufficiently hard'?
(I'm curious whether my current notes for the story I'm writing come anywhere close to that mark.)
u/ianyboo [+2] (a day later)
Thank you, I will be sure to check each of those out.
And thank you for HPMOR :)
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
The Golden Age had a notable impact on my worldview for anyone questioning whether they should read it or not. The sequels are not as good, but they are still worth reading.
u/None [+9] (2 hours later)
No I will not spoil Real Life for you.
u/Adamantium9001 [+3] United Federation of Planets (9 hours later)
Damn time-travellers. Take your elitism somewhere else! *shakes fist
u/None [+2] (14 hours later)
Don't be silly: time travel is impossible.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+4] Utopian Smut Peddler (17 hours later)
So that's why I've been stuck in the same Sunday, over and over again, for a month...
u/None [+3] (9 hours later)
The problem is that you're asking about rationalist fiction. Have the main character be super intelligent and live in a utopian civilization? What would be interesting about that? There's no point in telling you what happens after the Death Star/Dark Tower blows up except to let you know that the heroes lived happily ever after.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is quite the opposite - The protagonist is terribly bad at life, and fucks up as much as any human possibly can in the world, but ends up for the most part completely fine.
Also I haven't read it, but doesn't Accelerando fit your description pretty well?
u/None [+3] (14 hours later)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom[1] is quite the opposite - The protagonist is terribly bad at life, and fucks up as much as any human possibly can in the world, but ends up for the most part completely fine.
Ahhh, so it was actually Doctorow's intention that I find Julian totally and completely unlikeable?
Also I haven't read it, but doesn't Accelerando fit your description pretty well?
DO NOT ENGAGE IN FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS WITH ENTITIES RUNNING "ECONOMICS 2.0".
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
Accelerando ... let me just quote the author.
In the future of Accelerando, about 90% of the human species is exterminated by feral business models and the rest go live out their lives as rats in the virtual walls. This is not my idea of a utopia.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+5] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (22 hours later)
Friendship is optimal does but with a high price you might miss.
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (14 minutes later)
Banks gets closest to a true utopia. I'm not going to say utopias are boring, because they don't have to be, but there doesn't tend to be a whole lot of conflict, and conflict drives stories. And for whatever reasons, books that are essentially explorations of an idea or setting without much in the way of story don't tend to sell (though there are a few examples of this working, the only popular ones are extensions of existing franchises).
If you just want the transhumanist happy ending that comes after the conflict is resolved ... I don't know of any. I tried writing that ending once, and it just felt too happy, but that might have been because of the type of story it was.
u/None [+7] (14 hours later)
I'm not going to say utopias are boring, because they don't have to be, but there doesn't tend to be a whole lot of conflict, and conflict drives stories.
Frankly, this sounds to me like fallacy and cowardice on the part of the writers. Plenty of stories manage a conflict with some kind of Big Bad to fight. In fact, since real people have a tendency to get into conflicts of some sort over things, you should expect that a utopia will have conflicts: they just won't be existentially risky, Save the World-y conflicts. Besides which, that kind of conflict is exactly the kind people don't actually want to participate in on a regular basis.
So basically, all forms of Man vs Man, Man vs Self, and Man vs Nature conflicts that don't threaten the total extinction of your setting should be available in a utopian setting -- authors just think that people would sit around going "ooohhhhhmmmm" like fucking movie-Zen monks all the time because they haven't thought about it.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (15 hours later)
We disagree on the definition of utopia, I think. To me, utopia heavily implies conflict minimization, not just for the existentially risky stuff, but for all the day-to-day stuff as well. And when there is conflict, the utopia should be minimizing the drama involved.
But I feel like when you say utopia, you're thinking of normal human society with only a few large things fixed, not what I would class as a utopia.
u/None [+3] (16 hours later)
When I use the word, I'm thinking, "fun-optimized habitat for people" rather than "conflict-minimized habitat." Generally, I would hold that fun-optimizing the habitat means that a lot of "daily stuff", the little daily subgoals we have to get through in order to have fun, do get minimized, not only in the sense of conflict but in the sense of just making them easier because they're bloody unimportant.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+3] Utopian Smut Peddler (17 hours later)
Okay. Why can't your conflict be the person in charge of minimizing drama in a utopia? Or, as in Banks, the ones who protect the utopia from the barbarians at the gates and natural disasters? Seems really arbitrary to say it is almost without conflict definitionally.
Why does it have to be protagonist against the government, or against someone else in their own utopian society? Those are the only two conflict elements that a utopia stops from being as effective.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
I'm not saying that you can't write utopian fiction, I just take issue with /u/eaturbrainz seeming utterly flabbergasted at the idea that utopias don't tend to have a lot of conflict - like this is some act of cowardice or lack of imagination instead of just being the way that utopias are structured.
The Culture novels are all set at the hard edges of the utopian society, the places where the Culture interacts with other, less perfect societies. I'm trying to think through all of the novels, and I can't recall one that takes place purely within the Culture itself - they almost all deal with how the Culture interacts with other civilizations. And that's because within the Culture itself, there is relatively little in the way of (interesting) conflict, possibly with the exception of the Minds that do all the actual decision making.
Again, I'm not saying that you can't write successful and entertaining fiction set within a utopia, because you definitely can, I'm trying to explain why this is so uncommon - and it's not because writers are lazy or unimaginative.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+4] Utopian Smut Peddler (a day later)
I just take issue with /u/eaturbrainz seeming utterly flabbergasted at the idea that utopias don't tend to have a lot of conflict - like this is some act of cowardice or lack of imagination instead of just being the way that utopias are structured.
Well, if he and I can come up with simple and well-known examples...that sort of does suggest a lack of imagination inherent in your statement. Whenever utopias are written of, they are interesting in some way.
The Culture novels are all set at the hard edges of the utopian society
Not quite true, but even Jane Austin novels are set at the "hard edges" of their part of society, even if that is upper class people who technically don't fear for their next meal. No one writes stories about people without problems, just living normal lives, but those with serious personal or external issues that need to be resolved.
Seinfeld personifies this, with almost every problem the characters experience being internally generated while they live in the lap of (worldwide median) luxury in New York city. But they are also the most dysfunctional characters you can imagine, and they constantly rub up against a perfectly functioning society's minor issues and turn them into major ones.
As for conflict inside a utopia, there were several times that outsiders (like in Use of Weapons) were squicked out by the Culture. An entire habitat full of Culture citizens was endangered in Consider Phlebas, and their civilization is actively at war in that story.
People have conflicts about time use and the way they personally fit into the Culture. Body modifications exclude friends from interacting the same ways, and desires for adventure and excitement aren't drugged or genetically engineered out of anyone, so they still have them.
I'm trying to explain why this is so uncommon - and it's not because writers are lazy or unimaginative.
That is exactly what you have not shown, and what at least I am suggesting.
The fact that Dystopias in fiction are so common strongly suggests this. Dystopias are so easy because everything is rapidly approaching maximum shittiness. The level of imagination required to pull out an exciting story is minimal.
It is, in short, prone to lazy, unimaginative writing, and is more popular amongst writers than the utopian fiction genre.
u/autotrope_bot [+1] (14 hours later)
Conflict
This is the basic problem to overcome in a story, the driving force. If you don't have conflict, you don't have a story. Or just a story of things happening without incident .
I am a bot. Here is my sub
u/MugaSofer [+2] (a month later)
Banks gets closest to a true utopia.
It always bugs me to hear this, because it's so clearly a Bad Ending to me. Do people really read Banks and think that is a perfect society?
They life in motherfucking castes. The protagonists - our viewpoint characters! - are all from the lowest caste. The one that has essentially no legal protection or social standing, can't own industrial or military infrastructure and live at the whim of their masters, and mostly end up committing suicide in the depths of old age even though they can cure aging - because it's socially unacceptable to live. And half of the protagonists are actively fighting the Culture, for various reasons!
Is it because they're the "liberal" faction and the fanbase is primarily liberal, or because they're the most commonly-recurring faction so they get positive associations from Banks' writing, or what?
^^I ^^notice ^^that ^^I'm ^^confused.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (a month later)
Note: "gets closest to" as distinct from "is".
Many of those criticisms are pointed out in-universe, either by the enemies of the Culture or people who live within it. But with that said, if I had free reign to pick a scifi/fantasy universe to live in, the Culture would probably be it. Though the humans (and droids) can't do everything that the Minds do, they have it really good compared to pretty much any other fictional society. It's the kind of place that I'd want to live, even knowing that I wasn't the guiding hand behind my fate.
(I think Star Trek comes second closest, but it's never really explained how their government/economy works, and so I'm skeptical of how much that stuff has been thought out, and whether or not it's got an underbelly.)
u/MugaSofer [+1] (a month later)
Yeah, Trek is pretty good. Although ... I'm enough of a Trek nerd to be suspicious of the slightly-inconsistent tech level and the opposition to eugenics - whatever force is doing the extrapolating might end up having to conclude there's a massive conspiracy limiting advancement.
I'm less worried about being the master of my own fate (I can always go for an Unusual Life Choice, right?) and more worried by that warship in ... Surface Detail, was it? ... that publicly tortured and raped a guy for days, and then erased his memory. Also, pretty much the entirety of Excession.
They really aren't kidding when they say the Culture has no laws. Minds view humans as insects, and they're no more moral or free from motivated reasoning than baseline humans.
u/Uninspiring_Username [+1] (4 months later)
Why is owning industrial or military infrastructure relevant (also: yes they can)?
What does your utopia look like?
u/MugaSofer [+1] (4 months later)
Why is owning industrial or military infrastructure relevant (also: yes they can)?
Because you can't do anything without industrial or military infrastructure; you have to hang out in places that Minds have already built and fenced off. (And because, in my experience, most people dislike the idea of being proles? I just would have expected more reaction from the readers to a society where we're lower-class.)
And no, I'm pretty sure they can't. Am I forgetting something? It's mentioned regularly that the Minds only "give" humans tech above slightly-above-our tech level by building an AI, giving the tech to the AI, and giving that AI the option to follow the human around. (Which is why the Culture's economy and military run on the principle of "persuade a Mind to do it", right?)
What does your utopia look like?
My utopia ... well, the correct answer is "I don't know", but we're certainly immortal, for a start. Probably resembles Scott Alexander's "Archipelago" a bit, with lots of little clades doing different interesting things and trying out different lifestyles and governments and laws. Universal "human rights" type thingy implemented by a Magically Infallible Authority, like an FAI (or nearest equivalent you can find, anyway) via universal surveillance and omnipresent security drones or forcefield projectors or something. Post-scarcity, of course, probably with heavy use of VR and/or physics-bending hypertech to effectively remove most "practical" limits.
Actually, my utopia probably most resembles The Metamorphosis Of Prime Intellect, if you've read that. (It's not very good, though, so I wouldn't recommend it.)
And, of course, nobody is left marooned in realtime.
u/Uninspiring_Username [+1] (4 months later)
The magical infallible authority is the Minds, collectively, in the culture. The clades are different orbitals, rocks, GSV pops etc.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (4 months later)
Minds are really, really not infallible. At all.
But yeah, I'm well aware the Culture isn't completely lacking in Good Things; they are post-scarcity, after all.
u/Uninspiring_Username [+1] (4 months later)
The minds as a collective are as close as its possible to be to infallible without omniscience and omnipresence.
u/None [+2] (an hour later)
I want to say the Dune series? I can't actually remember quite how that turned out for everyone.
I suppose the Super Happy People qualify if you take their perspective as the main characters.
u/None [+6] (2 hours later)
I want to say the Dune series? I can't actually remember quite how that turned out for everyone.
After 30,000 years of human existence they managed to reinvent modern democracy.
u/Geminii27 [+1] (13 hours later)
It'd most likely either have to be original fiction, or fanfic in an existing galactic setting. Otherwise, the basic universe/environment of the original series would be largely swept away (unless the story is more about the characters than the world they live in).
As an example, it wouldn't be easy to set anything other than maybe an epilogue in the Harry Potter universe - the irrational worldbuilding is an integral part of the setting and part of the appeal (especially to kids). You might be able to do it in, say, the Star Wars universe, as the setting already supports FTL space travel, advanced science, and very long-lived species.
u/Adamantium9001 [+1] United Federation of Planets (9 days later)
I'm currently in the middle of Time Braid and it looks like it might be heading in that direction. It's technically fantasy, not sci-fi, but I'd describe it as "fantasy with sci-fi sensibilities."
u/Uninspiring_Username [+1] (4 months later)
Manifold: Time sees this happen, at a distance, from a 3rd party perspective.