• ummthatguy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    11 days ago

    For me, Sci-Fi is about the hope of a better future. In those stories, people explore beyond our petty problems of the past.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      10 days ago

      At this point in our development, we are like new born babies … in a few hundred or even a thousand years, we’ll be like toddlers.

      When you look back on our human evolution as a species, our first ancestors came about two million years ago, the ancestors that look like humans are about 100,000 years ago and the ones that would most closely resemble us and our way of thinking is about 50,000 years ago. We’ve only been technologically capable for the past 150 years. When you think about it, we are closer to our frightened, superstitious, ignorant prehistoric ancestors than to any futuristic culture we would like to emulate.

      It’s going to take us generations and centuries to get to the point of being a contributing participant in a galactic community. IF we can survive that long.

      “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

      • Isaac Newton

      … but saying all that, I don’t mean to be disparaging or negative … just realistic. In the long run of human history, it will be through people like you and this community of hopeful people that enjoy playing in these ideas and possibilities that will take us one step towards a more hopeful future.

  • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
    271·
    11 days ago

    Flaw number one: sci fi can be a lot, tonally. It can be depressing, but also hopeful, horrifying, epic etc.
    Flaw number two: fantasy can be a lot, tonally. It can be depressing, but also hopeful, horrifying, epic etc.
    Flaw number three: “literature” is not a setting. There’s fantasy and sci fi literature as well as real-world-related or apocalyptic literature. “Literature” is just written down stories.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
    14·
    11 days ago

    I don’t think sci-fi and fantasy are that clear-cut. A lot of fantasy is quite hopeful (the bad guys pretty much always lose at the end of the story), and it’s kind of 50:50 whether it depicts the past as better or worse than it was. e.g. the shire in Lord of the Rings is practically a utopia, despite not being completely unrealistic for a pre-industrial society (it probably looks a lot more utopian than it is because most of the hobbit characters we know are aristocrats).

    Literature is, generally, definitely not about happy feelings, though.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    10 days ago

    For Conservatives these days …

    Sci-fi is their fantasy

    Fantasy is their reality

    and literature about dystopian futures is their guide

  • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
    61·
    10 days ago

    Sci-fi is what the future could be.
    Fantasy is what the world will never be.
    Literature is what the world is.

  • missandry351@lemmings.worldEnglish
    3·
    10 days ago

    Sci-fi makes me even more depressed because I start to think what we could have now and don’t have because of capitalism

  • Mustakrakish@lemmy.world
    3·
    10 days ago

    Wrong. Scifi at least is about the present. It just uses flashy backdrops and tech to bring you out of your bubble and think a different way about it.

  • AntelopeRoom@lemm.eeEnglish
    23·
    11 days ago

    Scifi is when you’re a fucking nerd who likes technology. Fantasy is when you’re a fucking nerd who likes history. Literature is when you’re a fucking nerd.