Very well done. Thank you for this post. This is an excellent round up and would be a great article to send to New Maps or Symphonies of Imagination.
Here are a few other books that relate to the fantastic points you made.
For point 1 William Gibson's novel The Peripheral has characters that have made a community on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch... not exactly what you are pointing to, but it was interesting.
For point number 7 on Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson did explore this in his novel of the same name. It's about scientists in a research station down there, but there is also a political intrigue dimension to the book.
For 10, two other books to look at with regards to the way language is used is Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany and Embassytown by China Mieville. The latter features a translator / diplomat.
For 15, Cellular Automata, the works of Rudy Rucker could be explored. He is a mathematician as well as SF author, and many of his books are very mathematical. Some are even popular math/science books. He also wrote programs for and worked with cellular automata in his work. Here is a link to a blog post where he is talking about the fourth dimension... but there are so many more to read and explore: https://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2024/03/12/the-reality-of-the-fourth-dimension/
Rudy is so great, so funny... and he published my first publishable short story in his old webzine, so I'll always be grateful.
For 23, Paolo Bacigalupi included arcologies in his novel The Water Knife.
For 24, as an interesting counter-example, the aforementioned Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, features technology that blunts peoples emotions and mentality, a treatment called Radical Anxiety Termination, so people don't have to deal with the stresses of life.
Thanks for rounding up these ideas. I hope some writers take it to heart and start incorporating these into their fiction.
I was going to add Robinson's "Antartica", but since it is more about a research station instead of a proper colonisation project, I decided that it did not really count. Apart from that I thank you for all these extra suggestions for future readers of this essay.
On the subject of submitting it to New Maps, it did not occur to me that I could do that, but you are right. However, I'd want to edit it a bit more if I went through with that idea.
Yeah, go ahead and revise it... I think it would be good to get this into the hands of more people who read and write the kind of fiction where these tropes can be utilized. I thought it was an excellent round up.
I would love to read a novel premised on #14 written within the next few years. Even if you don’t agree with the idea, a realistic (no magitek) exploration of the idea and how it politically plays out on a global scale within one character’s lifetime could be a really good read.
True, it would also be useful on account of the many misanthropic (to anyone not in their class) "environmentalists" who desperately need some kind of reality check in regard to many of their more dickish ideas about how to make people fit in with their ideology.
As much as I like E. O. Wilson I think he may not realise how much strife would be required to bring his Half-earth to fruition.
Brilliant article... you should follow my substack. I write a bit here and there and also review quite a few books. A number of the topes you're thinking of are visible in the book "Accelerando" which I'm planning to review soon. Architecture for an arachnid species is described well in the book "The Children of Time" which I'll also review pretty soon.
There's a lot of great science fiction out there, but it's hard to find in the piles of slop that get pumped out by publishing companies and self-published authors. Until those reviews are done, I have a few other books I'd recommend. "Return from the Stars" is currently reviewed on my substack and it's one of the most interesting and concerning science fiction novels I've ever read in terms of philosophy. https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/book-review-return-from-the-stars
Excellent ideas for improving SF. I am in rewrites with a novel about evolving cultures in the Pacific Northwest set about 700 years in the future and have been working with several of the points you bring up; it is reassuring to hear other writers are having similar ideas. In particular, I want to present the idea that there are genuine options in how we organize ourselves in families, communities and regions to young, and not so young, SF readers that are feeling dystopia-fatigue without resorting to naive utopian tropes. As you point out, Ursula K. LeGuin wrote many excellent stories that are neither utopian nor dystopian, one of my favorites being, Always Coming Home, but the Dispossessed is also a classic. Another extraordinary but under-appreciated story from the peak of her career is the novela, Buffalo Gals, which truly transcends genres. Thanks again for this post!
"Buffalo Gals, and other animal presences", which featured both the novella and a compilation of her short stories and poems, was my first introduction to Leguin. It was owned by my mother who was going to chuck it until I convinced her to let me have it on account of being intrigued by the cover. "Always coming home" is also a favourite of mine, along with the tie-in album she made with Todd Barton.
On the subject of helping you, I wrote a review for a book called "Spiritwalker" which is set in a deindustrial future in which a Hawaiian derived civilisation plays a major role, which may inspire you.
Very well done. Thank you for this post. This is an excellent round up and would be a great article to send to New Maps or Symphonies of Imagination.
Here are a few other books that relate to the fantastic points you made.
For point 1 William Gibson's novel The Peripheral has characters that have made a community on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch... not exactly what you are pointing to, but it was interesting.
For point number 7 on Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson did explore this in his novel of the same name. It's about scientists in a research station down there, but there is also a political intrigue dimension to the book.
For 10, two other books to look at with regards to the way language is used is Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany and Embassytown by China Mieville. The latter features a translator / diplomat.
For 15, Cellular Automata, the works of Rudy Rucker could be explored. He is a mathematician as well as SF author, and many of his books are very mathematical. Some are even popular math/science books. He also wrote programs for and worked with cellular automata in his work. Here is a link to a blog post where he is talking about the fourth dimension... but there are so many more to read and explore: https://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2024/03/12/the-reality-of-the-fourth-dimension/
Rudy is so great, so funny... and he published my first publishable short story in his old webzine, so I'll always be grateful.
For 23, Paolo Bacigalupi included arcologies in his novel The Water Knife.
For 24, as an interesting counter-example, the aforementioned Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, features technology that blunts peoples emotions and mentality, a treatment called Radical Anxiety Termination, so people don't have to deal with the stresses of life.
Thanks for rounding up these ideas. I hope some writers take it to heart and start incorporating these into their fiction.
I was going to add Robinson's "Antartica", but since it is more about a research station instead of a proper colonisation project, I decided that it did not really count. Apart from that I thank you for all these extra suggestions for future readers of this essay.
On the subject of submitting it to New Maps, it did not occur to me that I could do that, but you are right. However, I'd want to edit it a bit more if I went through with that idea.
Yeah, go ahead and revise it... I think it would be good to get this into the hands of more people who read and write the kind of fiction where these tropes can be utilized. I thought it was an excellent round up.
Thank you, that is high praise.
I would love to read a novel premised on #14 written within the next few years. Even if you don’t agree with the idea, a realistic (no magitek) exploration of the idea and how it politically plays out on a global scale within one character’s lifetime could be a really good read.
True, it would also be useful on account of the many misanthropic (to anyone not in their class) "environmentalists" who desperately need some kind of reality check in regard to many of their more dickish ideas about how to make people fit in with their ideology.
As much as I like E. O. Wilson I think he may not realise how much strife would be required to bring his Half-earth to fruition.
Brilliant article... you should follow my substack. I write a bit here and there and also review quite a few books. A number of the topes you're thinking of are visible in the book "Accelerando" which I'm planning to review soon. Architecture for an arachnid species is described well in the book "The Children of Time" which I'll also review pretty soon.
There's a lot of great science fiction out there, but it's hard to find in the piles of slop that get pumped out by publishing companies and self-published authors. Until those reviews are done, I have a few other books I'd recommend. "Return from the Stars" is currently reviewed on my substack and it's one of the most interesting and concerning science fiction novels I've ever read in terms of philosophy. https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/book-review-return-from-the-stars
Excellent ideas for improving SF. I am in rewrites with a novel about evolving cultures in the Pacific Northwest set about 700 years in the future and have been working with several of the points you bring up; it is reassuring to hear other writers are having similar ideas. In particular, I want to present the idea that there are genuine options in how we organize ourselves in families, communities and regions to young, and not so young, SF readers that are feeling dystopia-fatigue without resorting to naive utopian tropes. As you point out, Ursula K. LeGuin wrote many excellent stories that are neither utopian nor dystopian, one of my favorites being, Always Coming Home, but the Dispossessed is also a classic. Another extraordinary but under-appreciated story from the peak of her career is the novela, Buffalo Gals, which truly transcends genres. Thanks again for this post!
"Buffalo Gals, and other animal presences", which featured both the novella and a compilation of her short stories and poems, was my first introduction to Leguin. It was owned by my mother who was going to chuck it until I convinced her to let me have it on account of being intrigued by the cover. "Always coming home" is also a favourite of mine, along with the tie-in album she made with Todd Barton.
On the subject of helping you, I wrote a review for a book called "Spiritwalker" which is set in a deindustrial future in which a Hawaiian derived civilisation plays a major role, which may inspire you.