Topic: The 6 Most Important Sci-Fi Ideas (Were Invented by a Hack)

http://www.cracked.com/article_19949_th … -hack.html

Re: The 6 Most Important Sci-Fi Ideas (Were Invented by a Hack)

Interesting article. So the book was prescient in one way (technology), but the broader ideas were still a product of the 19th century. It's been said before that sci-fi is more about the past than the future e.g. colonialism, Napoleonic naval battles, the threat of invasion during the Cold War, Captain Cook/Kirk sailing around the Pacific encountering new islands/worlds and making first contact.

If you go back to the 18th century, novels about travelling to strange new worlds (e.g. Gullivers Travels) were all about subversive ideas i.e. satire on ruling elites, comparing/contrasting alternative political systems, road-testing utopian ideals.

All those type of interesting ideas doesn't seem to exist anymore in sci-fi. It's goodies v baddies and explosions and superpowers, etc. They're very conservative, in that the status quo must be defended.

Last edited by avatar (2012-08-11 10:04:00)

not long to go now...

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Re: The 6 Most Important Sci-Fi Ideas (Were Invented by a Hack)

I'm inclined to think the article overstates the book's influence. I'd have to know more about the history of science fiction to know when and where these ideas first appeared, but I know for a fact that #5 is nonsense. Jules Verne published FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON in 1865, so Edison's Conquest of Mars wasn't the first novel to deal with the topic of space flight (though it may have had the first suits, I don't think they wore special suits in the Verne novel).

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