this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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Science Fiction

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What's science fiction without the machines? (leminal.space)
submitted 2 weeks ago by infinite_ass@leminal.space to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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I mean, we could speculate and explore the strange future and stuff. Just without that tired trope of "well, science and technology progressed a bunch and then we got this really great machine".

I mean there's gotta be another way. Examples?

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[–] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 2 weeks ago

There's plenty of science fiction without technology playing a significant role.

Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside was the first that came to mind; Asimov's The Gods Themselves or Nightfall might be other examples; Olaf Stapledon's Sirius; Clarke's Childhood's End has (alien) tech, but it mostly focuses on the psychological and societal effects of the contact with aliens, as does Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life (and some of the other stories collected in the same volume, Stories of Your Life and Others); Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five... lots of great science fiction works focus on aspects other than technology.