Posted on 09/27/2012 6:46:06 AM PDT by C19fan
I recently watched Starship Troopers for the first time. It’s brilliant, isn’t it? I can’t believe I’d never seen it before. If you can set aside the laboured subtext about militarism and the whole America policing the world thing, it’s a brilliant epic about love and the indomitability of the human spirit. And they’re all pretty hot, which helps. But I had another train of thought watching this movie. It reminded me of a guilty secret, and of a violent change in attitude I’ve had toward science fiction in the past few years, and toward Star Trek in particular.
(Excerpt) Read more at kernelmag.com ...
Don’t forget that even Heinlein delved into the economics of the future.
He often envisioned a society with an explicitly limited economy (no overproduction of goods), limited labor (work limits), and birthright pensions from the government.
Very strange future, but none of which are rational.
I strongly suspect dilithium crystals are responsible for Universal Warming. :)
Agreed.
Urban Legend has it that, when the original ST:TNG dolls hit the stores, her figurine had a similarly wide ass and she protested until they retooled the molds.
They could have done much, much better.
Ok. I’ll give Dr. Crusher a pass.
Not true. His juveniles - such classic works as "Have Space Suit Will Travel", "Rocket Ship Galileo", "The Star Beast", "Farmer in the Sky", "Red Planet", "Podkayne of Mars", and about a half dozen others, are just rip roaring 50s SF, no weird stuff involved. I don't read his later stuff at all. "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Starship Troopers" are on the cusp of the ones I like. But the juveniles are so classic. Great way to get into a fight at an SF convention, ask if the early or later Heinleins are better.
Well, except for the whole “Let’s take EVERYBODY down to the planet” and leave nobody in the multi-billion dollar starship. Nobody. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
The operative word is "magically." How would these magic machines be invented, built, operated, maintained? What would be the motivation for anyone to go through all that trouble for the benefit of someone else? There could be only one motivation: Profit.
Think of the depth and complexity of economic relationships that would be necessary in any society that could possibly produce these machines. Even if the machines seemed magical, the economic structure would be entirely understandable to certain people, at least, of our own time.
Just consider the things we enjoy today that could only be called "magical" to someone of one or more centuries ago!
If we turn our historical telescope to the future instead of the past, what fundamental principles about humanity and the real world might no longer hold?
Of course, we are speaking here of speculative fiction, whose bedrock principle is to break one or more of those assumptions and to create a ripping good yarn. But they have to gloss over how you get from here and now to then and there.
Economics is about how scarce resources are disrtibuted, so when there is no scarcity, economic systems become far, less relevant.
Quite correct at the beginning. But by human nature there can be no such thing as "no scarcity." In the real world, unfulfilled human wants will always exist; therefore an economic system of some kind, efficent or inefficient, will always exist.
Thank you.
I’ve always felt that way.
>>>Economics is about how scarce resources are disrtibuted, so when there is no scarcity, economic systems become far, less relevant.
Quite correct at the beginning. But by human nature there can be no such thing as “no scarcity.” In the real world, unfulfilled human wants will always exist; therefore an economic system of some kind, efficent or inefficient, will always exist.<<<
Well said. I tried to express that idea in some of my other posts, but not as eloquently as you did.
Even in an ideal world where there is no real “scarcity” it is our nature to imagine or create it.
True. Not all.
When I re-read Heinlein, I like to intersperse it with his juveniles, just to get past the weirdness.
I love the juveniles, but they don’t delve into the same political and cultural issues of his later work. You have to take the good with the bad.
He'd look on all of our comforts and he'd note how many of his most urgent wants are now easily fulfilled. But he would also note that, somehow, we still have wants that are not fully satisfied. With some of these he would be familiar, and rightly regard them as constants of human nature; some of course would be wholly new to him, brought on by the advance in our material prosperity.
Unless human nature comes to be altered significantly in the coming century or ten, humans will still have unfulfilled needs, some of which would be familiar to us, and some not.
I grant you that with the revolution in genetics, maybe human nature itself will be altered. And I give it less than even odds that it will be for the better.
half- ≤}B^)
Perhaps they had replicators like the ones in Hitchhiker's Guide, which were capable of making something "almost but not quite entirely unlike tea."
Hey, watch it. I resemble that remark.
In Door Into Summer, the protagonist brings a substantial quantity of gold back from the future, because in the future, gold is abundant due to the invention of cheap extraction from sea water IIRC, and therefore has lost its economic function. Of course, it is still highly valuable in the past, where the protagonist is headed.
The original series was also liberal, though the expression "PC" hadn't yet been coined (or at least become common).
it was pretty much that the first two seasons. If it was a first time concept it would never have lasted.
Part of it was Roddenberry’s own cash free society BS. The less involved he was the better the series. (voyager is an outlyer)
You also had mandates from suits to write about certain subjects. 100% of those episodes in any ST series were duds.
It was the Geen Koon(sp?) who made the original series.
As of right now TNG is no longer “canon” given the reboot. It does make enterprise canon.
I usually only get offended when there's a political motive behind turning a good story upside down, as with the film version of Clancy's The Sum of All Fears. Turning rabid Iranian monsters into American right-wingers was vomit inducing.
I certainly did miss the miniskirt she wore for the pilot episode that vanished afterwards... =)
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