Call him Mr. Buzzkill

[mmcirvin]

James Nicoll points out the questionable history of the Moller Skycar.

Mind you, he spends a lot of his time arguing that it's not a good idea for science-fiction writers to concentrate exclusively on depressing polemical futurism about tyranny and doom, so he's not the biggest Mr. Buzzkill by a considerable margin.

Comments

unpolemical futurism

[notr.livejournal.com]

I just finished the very fun short story collection jwgh sent me a while ago, Paul Di Filippo's Ribofunk. It ends with a pleasantly upbeat little tale of future tyranny and doom in what I've dubbed The Enormous Chinese Room (thanks to E.E. Cummings and John Searle), where a colony creature of tiny molecular replicators has taken over the planet by replacing everyone and everything with exact copies of themselves. There are so many different levels of understanding that this story approaches in such a simple way, it reminded me a lot of Brian W. Aldiss (and reminded me that I need to remember to read a lot more of him).

Re: unpolemical futurism

[jwgh]

That book gave me very strange dreams.