22 KiB
[Q] Is there any "down lift" fiction (opposite of uplift fiction)?
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Author: u/SimonSim211 *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5e0t77/q_is_there_any_down_lift_fiction_opposite_of/
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Score: 16
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Created: 2016-11-20T23:17:15
Post:
So I have been enjoying various uplift fiction stories e.g.
- www.fictionpress.com/s/3238329/1/A-Hero-s-War
- www.paultwister.com
- www.schlockmercenary.com/ (may not quite be considered uplift fiction)
So is there any of the opposite (preferably rational)?
Edit: Thanks for all the replies!
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+9] Time flies like an arrow (12 minutes later)
Meaning basically that someone comes across a technologically advanced world and attempts to destroy it? A Fight Club or Unabomber type thing?
Edit: or John Ringo's Council War series
u/SimonSim211 [+1] (an hour later)
Well fight club works, as it is kind of in an attempt to improve society, though it manly deals with the structure rather than removing e.g. the internet to stop people from wasting their life on social media (I know that is the most boring plot ever, but I couldn't think of a better one atm)
u/alexanderwales [+11] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
No, Fight Club deals with that kind of thing too, at least as ultimate aim:
Tyler Durden: In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.
u/buckykat [+25] (20 hours later)
And then you die of a minor infection at 30 because the past sucked.
u/alexanderwales [+9] Time flies like an arrow (20 hours later)
Yup. Which leaves people longing for a return to the past to either whitewash how terrible it was, or suggest that maybe dying of preventable disease was a better way to live.
u/buckykat [+6] (21 hours later)
Both of which are particularly dangerous, idiotic, and irrational ideas.
u/chaosmosis [+6] and with strange aeons, even death may die (a day later)
Exchanging quality of life for longevity or vice versa is an entirely reasonable trade for individuals with their own values to make.
u/buckykat [+5] (a day later)
Yeah. People are free to make their own dumbass choices.
u/chaosmosis [+5] and with strange aeons, even death may die (a day later)
Practically anyone would sacrifice longevity for quality if the slope of the tradeoff was steep enough. Preferences are not objective.
u/buckykat [+5] (a day later)
The dumbass part is thinking the lifestyle of the past was higher quality.
u/chaosmosis [+3] and with strange aeons, even death may die (a day later)
That's a defensible position. Certainly I enjoy the luxuries I currently experience, and would not like to lose them. But if I had never experienced them, my expectations and thus actual happiness would be different. There are many stories of Native American tribes who were able to easily convert white people to their way of life, and almost no stories of the reverse. Of course, that was two centuries ago, but I really don't think recent developments like the internet have altered cost/benefit tradeoff much for the better for modern civilization. Rates of mental illness are higher, experiences of loneliness and depression are higher, etc. Religion is more maintainable in small tribes or communities, and has many benefits for experienced well being. In small communities everyone can be unique and important. These aren't necessarily unanswerable arguments, but they're far from self-evidently incorrect ones.
u/buckykat [+1] (2 days later)
I'm only barely talking about the internet. I'm talking about things like indoor plumbing, refrigeration, vaccination, farm automation, heating, air conditioning.
And not even just technology, but philosophy. In a tribal society, physical strength rules and equality isn't even a fantasy. The enlightenment was a product of the wealth of western society, in the same way the bronze age was a product of the wealth of the first farming cities.
The things that make life anything other than "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," are the products of modern society.
Primitivism is the ultimate regressive nonsense.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (2 days later)
and what if small tribes did have access to modern wealth, technology and education? the reason that small tribes were so primitive is not because they were small, it's because they lacked the knowledge and resources necessary for a better quality of life.
and people are still living in tribes in the modern day. it's just that a lot of those tribes are much, MUCH BIGGER, and that might have something to do with issues like loneliness etc. (people feeling like they don't belong to their own tribe or something). That being said, having larger societies does have advantages. Like being easier to defend from other larger societies, or more social mobility--correct me if i'm wrong, but if you didn't like the people in your small tribe back when small tribes were a thing, you didn't necessarily have many other options. maybe just hope your small tribe encountered another small tribe which you liked more?
history is not a simple constant arrow of upwards progress. there are ups and downs. just because the present is much better than the past on average doesn't mean that it's better in every way.
u/buckykat [+1] (2 days later)
They lacked the knowledge and resources because small societies don't have the surplus labor that makes inventing and philosophizing possible.
They also lack the cosmopolitan outlook crucial to the international project of science. With a bunch of small independent tribes, there's no opportunity for giants to start stacking up for Newton to stand on the shoulders of. Not to mention how small, homogenous communities breed racism.
u/daydev [+3] (7 hours later)
I know that is the most boring plot ever, but I couldn't think of a better one atm
Well, neither could Neal Stephenson. The second half of Seveneves features this idea of "social media ruin society" (UPD: It's not the central plot, though). He even invents a pseudo-anthropological concept to describe how cultures reject certain technologies.
u/earnestadmission [+6] Singular "they" user (an hour later)
It's difficult to give suggestions that don't give away too much of the story. Metamorphosis of Prime intellect might count, but it's ambiguous how to interpret the ending (imo)
u/GeeJo [+4] Custom Flair (an hour later)
Could you specify some criteria that a "downlift" story should meet? Active suppression of technology to a pre-industrial level? Set in Stone by /u/Farmerbob1 puts that front and centre. As do several YA dystopian stories, like John Christopher's Tripod series.
It's a second/third-act reveal in stories like Spoiler, Spoiler or the anime/manga Spoiler.
u/SimonSim211 [+1] (23 hours later)
I will give it a try, thanks.
u/technoninja1 [+3] (55 minutes later)
I guess anything where knowledge is suppressed instead of increased? Mistborn 1-3 by Brandon Sanderson has that, but it's just part of the backstory. It's not a central theme of the books or anything.
u/Amonwilde [+6] (an hour later)
Both Anathem (Stephenson) and Dune (Herbert) posit worlds in which computers turn out to be so dangerous that the technology must be dramatically limited. In Anathem, programmers are separated from scientists, and both groups are forced to live apart from society in monasteries. In Dune, computers are considered anathema and an alternative set of technologies based on advanced human intelligence allows people to perform (somewhat) similar operations, like astronavigation. The Tripod Trilogy might also fit this (human technology suppressed by alien occupiers).
The universe of the Culture books (Banks) has a sort of technological high point in the distant past, but the level of technology in the books is still high. A technological fall is a pretty common trope in general (post-apocalyptic everything, also many fantasy books like Sword of Shannara or Prince of Thorns), but that might not be what you're looking for. Wheel of Time might also technically fit your criteria, as the "technology" there (more like magic) has fallen from a high point and must be rediscovered over the course of the novels.
u/Isthiriel [+4] (2 days later)
The Culture is very much on the slope upwards, they are the collection of material societies that are voluntarily choosing not to transcend. The stories talk about how the effector and displacer technology improved from the Idiran war to the stories set after it and Player of Games directly contrasts a large (~50cm) drone built several hundred years earlier to the newly created drone that was fist-sized. The same books also mentions that they are contacting societies in the Large Magellanic Cloud for the first time. GSVs are getting larger -- the MSV Not Invented Here was a GSV when it was built and reclassed down when the Plate class GSVs started being built.
u/SimonSim211 [+2] (an hour later)
I am not interested in post tech, but in dismantling tech in order to improve society (ending of battlestar galactica goes in that direction)
u/Farmerbob1 [+7] Level 1 author (8 hours later)
This is exactly the scenario I considered in Set In Stone. Someone plugged me with a link earlier (which is how I found this thread.)
After colonizing an extremely metal-poor world, Humanity finally manages to create a stable, sane, AI, and convince it that humanity is required for it's long-term sanity. The AI, in turn, determines that humans are insufficiently sane. So it suppresses technology and engages in a very long term biological and societal experiment in an effort to reduce humanity's aggressive violent tendencies.
That's the backstory. The story itself is told from the point of view of a young swineherd with worrisome violent tendencies, who has to navigate through a scenario of potential war in a society that hasn't seen a war in a thousand years.
The story is a readable draft, but due to my change of career and working 80+ hour weeks for the last year or so, I have not edited it for publication yet.
u/SimonSim211 [+2] (23 hours later)
I will give it a try, thanks.
u/Isthiriel [+2] (2 days later)
Science Fiction tends to be written by people with big ideas, that don't like hewing to Malthusian principles or "appropriate technology", and if you extend the last thousand years forward you are going to assume that technology will (eventually) have an answer to every question and problem that it raises. By giving that up you are assigning an end date to the continued survival of the people who suffer under your restrictions.
So, some examples (none of which are particularly rational):
Anne McCaffrey's Pern was settled by Space Amish, colonists who deliberately selected a world that didn't have the resources (metals) to sustain an industrial society.
David Weber's Safehold books are about a colony world that lives in fear that the aliens who destroyed Earth and the other human colonies would come back for them and so ban anything that might lead to the re-development of radio.
David Brin's The Practice Effect is a world where machines built under conventional physics have difficulty operating.
Niven and Pournelle's Fallen Angels is Earth, after an anti-technology government took power in the US and banned space flight. It tells the story of two survivors of the International Space Station after they crash during a routine machine to skim atmosphere and resupply volatiles and how they get back into space. It's propaganda, but it's also fun :)
Sharon Shinn's Samaria (romance) novels are another colony world that was colonized by Luddites that wanted the pastoral ideal (with semi-mystical weather control).
Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy has two examples, the human colonized world of Norfolk that prohibits most post-industrial technology and iirc one of the alien races they interact with has deliberately frozen their technology level. (I might be mis-remembering it but I think the Adamists also had some self-imposed limits on researching biology? Most of them found the Edenists unsettling and avoided researching anything that might rediscover the technology that set them apart?)
u/Amonwilde [+1] (2 hours later)
Sorry, do Anathem and Dune fit the bill, then, since it's deliberate in those? Actually The Anarchist by Joseph Conrad is also largely about this, ha.
u/buckykat [+1] (20 hours later)
How could there be a rational story about that?
u/SimonSim211 [+1] (23 hours later)
Well I can think of writing a story of how a group of people tries to ban "high frequency trading" globally and fail followed by the sequels where they manage to get it banned in one country e.g. Switzerland through the direct democracy... this story could naturally be told through the groups or one of the people who try to oppose them (both could have rational actors).
u/DRMacIver [+2] (a day later)
Well I can think of writing a story of how a group of people tries to ban "high frequency trading" globally
So it definitely doesn't entirely satisfy your general request, but a recurring theme in The Fall of Doc Future and its sequels is shaping the direction in which technology develops and suppressing certain technologies and aspects of society while improving things overall. It's in general much closer to uplift than downlift, but it's a very specifically shaped uplift in which certain things (including high frequency trading) are stomped on pretty hard.
u/buckykat [+1] (a day later)
That's not dismantling tech, that's fighting one specific rent-seeking bit of capitalism. It's not like they're trying to destroy knowledge of LOS microwave links or fiber optic cable.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
There's a subgenre of rational fiction where an entity has alien values but rationally pursues their goals. So for example, if my main character had a value of "maximize the number of paperclips in the universe" I could write a rational story about that, even if it's a stupid value to have.
See: Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous Planetsized Nutshell. I think it's incorrect, but I will say that I think it's not so incorrect as to be completely outside the bounds of what a rational person might believe. (Though downlifting a society would require another leap of logic.)
u/literal-hitler [+5] (5 hours later)
The first parts of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is about destroying the current stagnant galactic empire as soon as possible, to shorten the "dark ages" before the next galactic spanning civilization arose.
u/bassicallyboss [+1] (2 days later)
Foundation is wonderful and everyone should read it. The first three, anyway. Foundation and Empire is probably my favorite.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+2] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (2 hours later)
Atlas Shrugged could be considered an example.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+2] fear of last pages (3 hours later)
Abner Doon’s story in Worthing series. I’ve been seeing probable parallels between this story and actions of a certain RL dictator for quite some time, by now.
Given your request, you can start from chapter 4 of Capitol (“Breaking the Game”) and see if you like the general narration and storyline, because it serves as a pretty good preview to the whole trilogy.
p.s. Here’s another recently made book request that could be relevant to your interests:
Looking for books in which the protagonist’s main goal is to destroy our planet and all the life on it (or in the entire universe). (/r/booksuggestions/)
u/clawclawbite [+1] (4 hours later)
In David Zindell's Neverness, there is a trip to visit a group that had intentionally reverted to primitive status. While not the main focus of the book(series), it is a clear example of a post downlift culture.
u/edwardkmett [+1] (9 hours later)
While not exactly "downlift", Worm
u/SimonSim211 [+1] (23 hours later)
While I have not finished Worm (only got to part 18.6 and then decided it wasn't for me), unless there was a fan fiction written from that "endbringer that flies" 's point of view, I don't expect it would satisfy my desire for the "manipulation of society into living with a lower technological level.
u/edwardkmett [+3] (a day later)
u/trekie140 [+1] (a day later)
I stopped reading Worm too, so this is the first I've heard of the ending. It wasn't what I expected, I'll give it that, but that sounds pretty bleak. I suffered from Darkness Induced Audience Apathy from the Slaughterhouse 9 showing up just after Leviathan and the introduction of a malicious conspiracy within the Protectorate, but if the story ends on a note that depressing I think I got off easy.
u/edwardkmett [+1] (a day later)
It definitely runs on the grimdark end of the spectrum.
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Well there is a chapter from her point of view in vanilla Worm. Does that count?
u/lvwolb [+1] (10 hours later)
Terry Pratchett, "The dark side of the sun" (1976). I recommend.
Especially if you like Pratchett, try his early non-Discworld work, preferably without reading spoilers (wikipedia) before. It is as rational as Pratchett tends to be.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (2 days later)
Good point. But couldn't that be solved by not having tribes be completely isolated nor completely independent of each other? There is such a thing as trade, immigration, and international cooperation, after all, and if tribes had good enough education and internet access then maybe prejudice wouldn't be as much of a problem
u/DangerouslyUnstable [+1] (4 days later)
(spoilers for the series in case my spoiler formatting didn't work, I'm on mobile)
In Neal Asher's polity universe, there are [gabbleducks](which are a previously sentient species which purposely devolved in order to avoid an alien plague which targeted technologically advanced civilizations.) It's not the main plot but I think it might be what you are looking for. The gridlinked series in particular.
u/mg115ca [+1] (28 days later)
Stargate had 2 episodes about a race that did this in season 4 and 5 (spoilers as to how obviously).
The first episode was set 10 years ahead of the shows present time. The characters had contacted an advanced race called the Aschen, who shared their technology with Earth. The Goa'uld are wiped out, the public transportation system uses personal teleporter pads, an anti-aging vaccine has been distributed worldwide, and the beginnings of a plan to turn Jupiter into a star are being discussed. One of the characters discover that the anti-aging vaccine has actually caused sterility in over 90% of the human population in a long term invasion plan by the Aschen. The characters use a time travel application of the Stargate to to warn their past selves, who receive a bloody note in their own handwriting telling them that under no circumstances to visit (address of the Aschen homeworld).
Next season, we see an example of another race who have been downlifted by the Aschen into a primarily agrarian society who export most of the food they farm to to the Aschen and who have no memory of ever having been an industrial civilization. The characters eventually discover some industrial ruins and a newspaper headline proclaiming "Aschen vaccine causes sterility", as well as realizing that the Aschen homeworld has the same address as the one they had been warned about in the bloody note.
Luckily, the Aschen are mostly quarantined since they only have a handful of Stargate addresses, and no way of discovering more (the SGC's database of addresses are the main thing they wanted to trade with Earth for).