space warfare xviii rocketpunk manifesto

Space warfare xviii rocketpunk manifesto full#

Adventures in the Plausible MidfutureĪ week ago a poster over at SFConsim-l, Gregory Muir, raised an interesting question : 'What has changed in your assumptions about SF and w.There is some debate among hard science sci-fi sites that future space fleets may not even need space fighters. Or for that matter the future of 1950 with its circular astrogation slide rules. In SF we (usually) imagine futures, though experience suggests that our best efforts to realistically portray the world of 2100 will, by 2100, be as laughably or charmingly retro, or both, as the future of 1900 seems to us.

Space warfare xviii rocketpunk manifesto full#

Why go boldly where Firefly already went? This dissatisfaction has been building for a while 'Mundane SF' emerged to challenge the consensus back in 2002, and without quite intending to I jumped on the Mundane bandwagon by launching this blog.īut the full picture strikes me as more complicated and textured than simply Space Opera v Mundane SF, and it goes to the tensions inherent not just in SF but in the broader genre of Romance. Likewise, if your starship has to travel a few AU in normal space before the lady singing in Welsh can have her desired effect, it is reasonable and appropriate to equip it with a credible torch.Īll the same, the thread at SFConsim-l points to a growing dissatisfaction with the consensus tropes of SF.

In a pinch, if all else fails, you should be able to skewer someone with it. Most fantasy has non-fantasy elements, and the general modern consensus is that these more realistic elements ought to be done 'right.' If people are going to fight with swords, some of them may be magical, but they should still be functional as swords.

And on one level, creating an essentially operatic universe and then belaboring the technical details of fusion torch drives is an exercise in missing the whole point. On formal grounds All That Stuff is pure fantasy element, right up there with dragons and magic swords. Like pushing the reset button, such an event could seismically shift our perspective of 'values', forever placing our attention squarely on the future and pushing forward as a species. Perhaps it might give humanity a healthy kick in the rear by leaving us with decades of questions, few answers and the cold realisation that ET thinks of our planet and civilisation as a garbage dump. It would certainly be interesting to see the ramifications of aliens leaving an environmental mess for us to clean up. Star Trek would be the obvious best choice for me, there's an almost endless list of benefits and most problems can be solved with relative ease by the Enterprise crew members.Ī world akin to 'The Forever War' with massive time dilation would be interesting to experience but would probably push my cynicysm to apocalyptic levels.Ī 'Roadside Picnic' type situation would be my choice for a more ambivalent universe. I love sci-fi and cyberpunk but you couldn't pay me to live in most of the universes.