Science Fiction

13639 readers

34 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

What's science fiction without the machines? (leminal.space)

submitted 2 weeks ago by infinite_ass@leminal.space to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I’ve wondered about a sort of fantasy story with all the hallmarks of science-fiction. Maybe a wizard grapples with the ethical problems that a new spell would unleash if he were to use it. He could end famine for all time for his people, but maybe it makes every other land in the surrounding area inhospitable to life. Or something along those lines where a new “tech” will cause a major disruption with moral/ethical dilemmas, it’s just that the “tech” is some sort of magical device or spell, something very fantasy-based. Everything would take place in a medieval era, nothing high-tech at all, but the whole thing is structured like a sci-fi story. After all, medieval tech is still “high-tech” depending on your temporal point of view.

[–] Yaky 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You might enjoy N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy. The setting at first appears as fantasy, but there is a sci-fi-like depth to everything. The climate and periodic catastrophic Seasons, the tectonics, orogeny (humans' magic-like abilities to manipulate heat and tectonics), and "high-tech" of the world's past history.

[–] Gumbyyy@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

I literally just started the second book a few days ago! I'm loving it so far.

[–] infinite_ass@leminal.space 3 points 2 weeks ago

I figure the main arc of the plot is "a mystery is revealed and its depths explored". That's basically Egan and Hughes right there.

Except we'd do it without the science/technology tropes.