Various random thoughts (or long ramblings, take your pick)

[tanngrisnir]

1. Hmm. In some ways, I’m not feeling too bad at the moment, although my sinuses (well, one of them) are still throbbing a bit after that recent URTI. What is much more troublesome is the energy problem just now: I seem to be running on about half my normal available energy most of the time, and, most days recently, it just plummets mid-afternoon.

Comments

[tanngrisnir]

I’d say just about all good (never mind the best) SF isn’t about the technology. On the other hand, if you are looking at a supposedly very technologically advanced society and a bit of equipment fails because of a valve going, or people are agonising over getting time on a computer, or the best storage people have is tapes or microfilm, it brings you up short. I suppose what interests me is the assumptions we make about the possible. In the 60s and even the 70s, you would look long and hard for anyone who had the slightest idea that computers would ever be other than vast, room-occupying machines, and access to them a preciously guarded commodity.

I don’t know if you have ever seen the BBC series Moonbase 3 (which, come to think of it, was made in 1973). It is set on the European Moonbase (bases One and Two are American and Russian, obviously) in 2003. If you see it now, it is quite peculiar (apart from the production values, which were actually pretty standard for 1973) for two reasons: one is the continuing presence of the Cold War, the other is the level of technology. The scientists are always agonising over getting more time on the computer, and there is no notion of the sort of storage media we actually have now, where any individual can have music and films in compact media. I do wonder what assumptions we make now about technological development which will be false.

One which you refer to, robots, is interesting. They were nearly ubiquitous in SF 30-plus years ago. (Both Solaris and The Long Result incorporate them in their worlds.) The assumption that they would be humanoid creations doesn’t seem to fit with the way technology is actually going.

The Three Laws thing is a good question; if we get that far, it probably is a good idea to have some safeguard like that. Although, come to think of it, it might not prevent “robots” from taking over for our own good, à la Gort.