<![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle? - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle? - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> The global war on terror foes on for years, continually wasting money and promoting hate, because God has been proven to exist and he has warned the heads of the nations the consequences of reuniting the tongues after the tower of babel. This is also why they start fucking with our intrawebs.

Think Soylent green on crack. The main character is a devoted catholic desperatly trying to find god again, but uncovers the truth and feels dejected.

cde

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Somebody actually made a movie around the "Peak oil" theme. It was called, Blood Car, and it showed at the Dead-Center Film Festival this summer in OKC.

tallcat601

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> What pressing social issue did Omega Man/I Am Legend take on? Vampires?

7Zark7 Iz In Ur Internetz

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> The social issue that frightens me to death everyday is the rise of the annoying, spoiled teenager.

7Zark7 Iz In Ur Internetz

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Wasn't Idiocracy message Sci-fi?

spudzill

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> It occurs to me that Dune pretty much covers them all with the exception of the subprime mortgage meltdown foreclosures.

Instead of oil, it's spice. The Fremen were refugees from genocide. It certainly talks about global terror. And the BG witches certainly knew how to deal with drug resistant bugs (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen showed us that).

I guess one more chapter about how Caladin went to hell after the Atreides left might be worth it.

Bryan Price

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I'm not voting for any of it, because what Sci-fi needs to tackle is religion. I could care less if we're dealing with Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. In time, science can handle battles with "peak oil" hypothesis (didn't it already in the Mad Max series?), GWOT, epidemics, what have you. So far, the only sci-fi thing I've read dealing with religion is the His Dark Materials series, and that was great and all...

You've got a lot of idiots in this world passing legislation and starting wars over a concept better suited to comic books than history and science books.

shazawn

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Bah. I want to see a movie that addresses the issue of robots as slaves. When the AIs become sufficiently advanced, won't programs or servitude essentially be slavery? "Oh, but they're not human." That's what the plantation owners used to say too.... o.O

PantherShade

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I frankly don't buy the "energy crisis" trope. Yeah, we may "run out" of oil, but the monetization of other energy sources will conveniently coincide with that event. Wait and see.

RRich

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> God forbid we do some work on race or class issues. If the comments on the "Pondering the Afro-Female Future" are any indication, io9 readership suffers from severe recto cranial inversion on the issue.

Really frigging easy to cover the glitzy sexy cool sparkly people topics. Not so easy to cover things that uncover potential uncomfortable truths about yourselves.

Charlie, you say "we need more than just parables about global warming and ebil corporations" and then... you give us thus that.

'Sup with that? Be real. Don't be afraid to get nitty gritty sometimes.

JoshJasper

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> maybe there could be a movie about how the "global war on terror" is really just a ruse to keep pumping money into the kill-bot factories & to continue containing and demonizing difference instead of attending to the actual issues of poverty, hunger, and human dignity.

DSTRYA

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> i'm hoping for more "environmental breakdown" films, because deserts look great on screen. i like me a desert epic.

DSTRYA

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> You could adapt J.G. Ballard's short story The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista for the subprime foreclosure/sentient house theme. It's available in the Vermillion Sands collection.

dbcooper.eu

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> As for sentient houses: Remember that cool Bradbury short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains?" Very moving. At least, loved it as a kid. Religion/Oil? Whatever. Goodnight, I'm gonna go read Heretics of Dune.

tinymoves

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @ratlas: the failure of the golden compass movie is a depressing example of how even with an outstanding narrative to base the plot on, tons of money, excellent casting, and suburb production values hollywood will still insist on castrating it to make a children's movie.

tetracycloide

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I'm definitely in the Peak Oil camp, but I've got to agree with RRICH that religion should at least have been on the list (it would have been a close second). But finding solutions to the looming energy crisis is the most important thing to keeping western society healthy enough so we can produce more SciFI in the future.

DUG and everyone else interested in Peak Oil story ideas: World Without Oil was an "MMO" of sorts about what would happen in the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis. People would send in journal entries, videos, images, etc, about what they think the effects would be in their area. Worth checking out!

[www.worldwithoutoil.org]

fugu_v

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @zeppelined: Check out Rudy Rucker's _Realware_. Replicators seriously fucked up the economy.

indemnitypop

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @MrLister: A friend of mine wrote a story like that to some degree. Well, at least it has religious people who have to live in hiding. It's in a free e-book at [lcc.gatech.edu]
The story in question is called "Seventh World."

indemnitypop

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Anybody remember "the Threshold Effect?"

Under the rubric of Peak Oil, here's what I would like to see explored.

The power goes off. Everywhere. Tomorrow. And it is never coming back.

Just sit back and write your own scenario. How would you cope? How would the people around you?

Or, a better question might be could you cope? If so, for how long?

Dug

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @allnamesused: True, did you happen to read the recent Nature article about "smart drug" abuse/use in academia. It will definitely happen, I mean if you're only average a little boost can go along way. That is, until everyone else is boosting. ;)

godhammre

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> What about the growing Petagap between the Rich and Poor. Surely the Singularity will only be for Rich geeks who can afford top notch brain scans, while the rest of us have our jobs taken over by machines.

godhammre

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I'll add my vote for religion. Of course, there are scifi stories that take it on, albeit usually rather carefully. The failure of The Golden Compass movie is a depressing example of how difficult being even marginally critical of religion can be.

Mathmos

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> abortion. pro-choice? pro-life? or pro-robotic-enslavement?

Simon Piper

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> there really isn't a social topic that you can come up with that is really new to sci fi. it's allllll been done before. but the ones mentioned seem particularly ubiquitous.

if we can't be new, at least we can be offensively controversial.... anything based on religion and/or politics.

better question would be - what topic that you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole should sci fi deal with?

on a somewhat related note, i thought it was "the other shoe" to have a "DROID REBELLION" historical timeline in star wars. lucas never deals with the issues of self aware subservient slave classes somehow never seeking freedom.

or if the only thing the force does is seek balance (seeking good in time of bad, seeking bad in time of good) and is not allied with the side of good or evil, that there wouldn't be a zealout group of anti-force users that seek to wipe out the influence of the force entirely. a fascist ep4 han solo. oooo, that can be tied into the droid rebellion history... cuz droids are logical and can't use the force. droid inquisitors.

jinchoung

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> The movie "Dark City" was all about subprime forclosures. :p

Bancho

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I want to see a remake of "Silent Running" with John Hodgeman as the main character.

Bancho

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I think Super Epidemics was already done. A few times actually. No, wait. I'm thinking of all genetic-engineering-gone-awry movies.

Ghede

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Super chickens will look like they taste great!!!

Eac_o_System

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @Gomi: I'll take my wealth in whuffie, please.

mumblingmynah

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @MrLister:your idea is the one that is most clearly fiction but where is the science? ;)

South Park did something similar. they had an episode where atheism was the norm and different factions of 'Dawkinsist' were fighting it out over dogma. Richard Dawkins is the writer of The God Delusion.

MrLister said "then have the second coming of Christ, leading his followers to the planet Promised Land" this is being done by BSG.

Dybbuk

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @tetracycloide: Bladerunner did it well I thought.

And Firefly did the TV version of it, where only curse words and insults were in Chinese. Which was just, odd, but easily understandable.

aspiringexpatriate

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> A lot of all this is in Bester's "The Stars My Destination." Teleportation economics and making religion illegal in any case. A lot more in in "Stand on Zanzibar."

I have a theory; "The Singularity is When Everything Happens at Once" So somebody need to write all those stories at once.

wishnevsky

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @braak: Ah, you meant O'Bannon. He was also the mind behind SeaQuest DSV.

I tend to give Kemper and Woods more credit for the style of the Farscape I loved.

aspiringexpatriate

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I voted for Peak Oil, just because I'm a "5 minutes into the future" geek, and that kind of pressing global collapse/revolution seems important. The Refugee one was a close second in that regard.

At first I thought the Subprime option was a bit of a joke, until I saw all the SF/econ comments. Especially with regard to cheap/free/unlimited transport and manufacturing. Stephenson's Diamond Age has some interesting concepts for the cheap construction side of things. If "things" are cheap and plentiful, what will wealth be? Information? Culture? Hand-produced items?

Gomi

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I went with sub-prime but in a way its already been covered by Walter Mosley's Futureland. Maybe the best sci-fi novel to look at how the future looks for the lower middle to middle class.

There is also Tales from the Montuzuma Strip by Alan Dean Foster.

Slubber

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @tetracycloide: There's a series of short stories by Niven (which I think are set early on in the Known Space universe) about the social impact of teleportation, including instant riots, the death of exoticism, and murderers always having an alibi. I don't think he touched on economics much except for, as you mention, no more retail stores or window shopping.

mumblingmynah

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I say sub-prime, not so much for sub-prime, but because if you want a concise explanation of what's wrong with "our society," sub-prime touches on most of them. Lack of space, views of society and culture that no longer are feasible, the new strong preying on the new weak, people selling out the future, the dangers of amazingly interconnected systems.

Slatz_Grobnik

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> The effect of intelligence modifying drugs, and how they split the workforce into groups who will pop pills to get ahead, and those who won't.

allnamesused

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @charliejane: sounds interesting although i'm more interested in the economic interests than the social ones. socially i think language barriers would breakdown within a matter of decades on a global scale (another interesting question might be what language would sound like then which has been done but never done well). national governments would hold considerably less sway over their citizens as well, depending on exactly how the tech worked.

still, the economics is what i really want to know. what happens to national markets when the laber market becomes international? would retail stores still exist if there are no shipping fees or shipping times? what would happen to manual labor positions if they had to compete internationally for workers?

for example, a lot of low skilled labor jobs in manufacturing are currently sourced in places that have a low standard of living because the workers need less to live in that area. there are still low skill jobs in more affluent areas, but only because moving the work to another location is not economically feesable.

if movement was free and unlimited what would happen to those jobs? what would the global job market look like after a century of two of this kind of movement?

tetracycloide

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @tetracycloide: I wrote a story years and years ago where people have invented the "hyper-luge," which basically uses quantum tunneling to transport a little person-sized canister anywhere in the world almost instantly. People associate much more according to affinity groups and much less according to where they live.

Charlie Jane Anders

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> The war on terror. Mostly because of the applications in literature to use cool new technologies/weapons as a MacGuffin.

cjk

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Delany, in Aye, and Gomorrah, covered cheap labor, teleportation, prostitution, and using those genetically inferior as labor for dangerous jobs. Fantastic story.

vurtscribe

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Frank Herbert tackled oil decades ago.
Spice is oil.

Horselover Fat

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Fritz Leiber published in 1951 the story "Poor Superman" which was basically mocking the fledgling Dianetics of L. Ron Hubbard. It's a great short story but it kinda covers religion along with Dune, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, Jeff Noon's works, etc.

vurtscribe

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> i want to see sci-fi tackle labor economics and imigration in a world where teleportation is safe and cheep. what would the world look like if anyone could be anywhere they wanted to be at any time and take any amount of stuff with them?

labor economics in a world where you can download knowledge and experience directly into your brain is a close second.

tetracycloide

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @Thieu: Duly noted. Thanks!

Ed Grabianowski

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> How about a sexually transmitted disease epidemic from space, with gratuitous nudity?

wingbatwu

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @MrLister: that sounds a lot like titain a.e.

tetracycloide

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @zeppelined: There's a Charles Stross novel, Singularity Sky about the social and economic effect of cheap replicating technology.

Thieu

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Human cloning is getting closer and closer to becoming a reality. I've always been curious about what might happen to rejected clones and where they fit into society.

It would be great to see race tackled more in sci-fi instead of just alien race....

bonniegrrl

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Also? Alien Nation (the movie, written by that same crazy guy that produced Farscape) is an interesting exploration of science fiction and refugees.

braak

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @braak: Yeah, I picked that one because I'm curious about sci-fi economics as well. I've always wondered what the invention of replicators did to the economy in the Star Trek universe.

Ed Grabianowski

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> The Future: Transgender robots wreak havoc because the T got left off of LGBT.

moncapitaine

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Will a two-headed mutant get to vote twice in the primaries? And what if each one wants to vote a different party?

SundaySunday

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @Jeff-Minor: Well, sure, but there can be more than one, right, Jeff?

Maybe even a good one next time, ya know?

RRich

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @MrLister: Or no one "rules" based on which fairy tale they believe.

RRich

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> RRich, if Dune (all the way to Chapter House)isn't enough religion, then what!

Jeff-Minor

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> .

shan6

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Peak oil for me, although religion definitely needs to be added to the list.

shan6

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I voted for the super-epidemic, with this thought in mind: It should be SF focused on the actual social issue at hand - fear of super-epidemics and constant media frenzies over things that probably aren't going to harm us en masse (SARS, avian flu, mad cow...). That can be exploited in many interesting ways. Possibly the megadeath epidemic is just normal old flu, cold or minor infection but we've all become so heavily bleached and duct-taped-windowed and scared of vaccines that everybody's immune system's gone to pot.

papercup mixmaster

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @Huxleyhobbes: yes!

CMG

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I want fewer cautionary tales about technology and more cautionary tales about insufficient technology.

Mister Adequate

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> ^
^
Good idea! Let's have a sci-fi movie where atheism rules and religious people have to live in little underground hovels eating ratburgers. Set it in 3000AD and then have the second coming of Christ, leading his followers to the planet Promised Land.

MrLister

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Global warming and radical climate change (which feeds into refugees, I guess)

Gyrus

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I like the sub-Prime mortgage one.

I've been reading Iain Banks' Excession (thank you, io9), and the idea of sentient habitats, as well as the changes that future technology will bring about in manufacturing and economics, has become fascinating to me.

braak

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> @rrich: agreed. but since it wasn't an option, i went with peak oil.

CMG

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> Religion. It's probably the biggest source of problems on the planet.

RRich

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> 'Super-epidemics of drug-resistant organisms" has kinda been done to death. I voted Peak oil.

MercuryPDX

]]> <![CDATA[What Pressing Social Issues Do You Wish Scifi Would Tackle?]]> I like the Refugees from Genocide because it could be expanded to Refugees from Natural Disasters. What do you do with displaced Katritians (New Orleans residents)? You send them to work the iron mines on Mars! What do you do with Oklahomans displaced by tornados? Make them the cleaning crews for interstellar stations! The fun is endless.

vurtscribe

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