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Homo-erotic subtext!!!!! This proves that everyone was ghey and were angel approved!

Lawdy, I can’t wait till Imgur gets a hold of this.

we are way, way overdue for that next plague or comet or rain of frogs?

What? The Obama administration isn’t enough for you?

Hmm, I don’t have any trouble with books from the early 1800s (e.g., Jane Austen). Could just be my many years of experience reading old stuff.

Weas, I can’t remember if I recommended this to you before, but check out Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers. I found it via a crazy random happenstance, and it is super fun. Adventure and mystery and excitement.

It’s when you go back before 1100 that stuff gets all muddly.

The end is nigh!

If only.

Old books. I own a first edition set (1909) of Harvard Classics, Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf of Books. I wish I could tell you that I had read all of them, but no. And the typeface is a killer, but that’s a poor excuse.

Mrs. Peel wrote: . . . Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers. I found it via a crazy random happenstance, and it is super fun. Adventure and mystery and excitement.

Mrs. P., I recall reading the stage play when I was in high school and trying to convince our drama teacher that we should do it. (With me in the lead, of course.) I know Biggers created Charlie Chan and wrote a number of novels with him, but was SKtB a novel too?

Science fiction is speculation on a single topic, not an attempt to predict the entirety of a future. They look at one thing and examine its meaning and potential consequences. At least, the real thing. Then there’s Battlestar Galactica which is just soap opera.

I’ll tell you what…if we don’t take back the Senate, hold the House and neutralize (not that way!) Obama I’d welcome a pandemic or stadium sized asteroid befalling our pitiful race.
Only the strong will survive and that means no more libs…anywhere!

Wolfus, yes, it is a novel! It’s on Project Gutenberg. I would link it for you but I’m on my phone.

Oh, come on, Christopher — you can’t think of any science fiction that creates a whole culture, with its own fashion and music and cuss words and attitudes? Of the future? I’m having a hard time thinking of any SF that’s about a single topic.

And for no particular reason, in case you missed it, here’s the MST3K treatment of Moon Zero Two, one of my favorite sci fi stinkburgers.

To clarify, Moon Zero Two doesn’t extrapolate anything into the future — it just takes 1969 and plops it onto the moon, with big silly foam rubber hats.

Then there’s Battlestar Galactica which is just soap opera.

Star Warts is Epic Adventure & a rip-off of Kurosawa… IN SPACE!

Alien is Friday the 13th… IN SPACE!

I’ve never seen that Adam Baldwin thing, so I dunno. I’d guess it’s a soap opera, though.

Start Wrek is soap opera, too. Albeit some of the episodes were written by some pretty brilliant authors, including Harlan Ellison.

I’m having a really hard time coming up with a scientifiction moving picture that isn’t a soap opera (or some similar sad recasting), actually. Hrm.

Tarkovsky’s Solaris, being rather too true to the novel, is actual (dry, long, boring*) science fiction.

Dark Star (Dan O’Bannon who also wrote Alien (based on a single annoying humour bit in Dark Star)) is actual science fiction. It’s not well done, though.

Frau Im Mond is definitely science fiction.

Logan’s Run, while hilariously terrible, is also, definitely science fiction. (it had Ustinov in it, too, so *nyah*)

* Entirely Tarkovsky’s fault, too.

you can’t think of any science fiction that creates a whole culture, with its own fashion and music and cuss words and attitudes?

Not even being a fan of their work, I can think of Iain Banks, Vernor Vinge, Joan Vinge, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Timmy Zahn, Larry Niven, & Herb Wells. Hell, Kube-McDowell even postulated that lesbians would be totally sweet* in the SPACE FUTURE.

* Even Thomas More didn’t predict that one. Though I guess Edmund Spenser did, kinda. Huh.

Heinlein had the POTUS elected in 2012 becoming a religious dictator.

Kind of scary, huh?

“Oh, come on, Christopher — you can’t think of any science fiction that creates a whole culture, with its own fashion and music and cuss words and attitudes? Of the future? I’m having a hard time thinking of any SF that’s about a single topic.”

The writers have to create a setting for the story they are telling, but they’re less interested in being future-telling prophets than examining an idea or concept. Like “What if robots had artificial intelligence?” or “What would it be like to train a child in video games to fight a war” or “what if an alien artifact swept by earth and was explored?”

They answer that question, but to do so requires a setting and filling out the world around them. That’s a side effect of examining the concept, not their purpose.

I’m guessing you read a lot of hard scifi.

Last century I couldn’t wait for this century ‘cuz flying cars and space and stuff.
Got “everybody must be gay or at least talk about it constantly” instead.
Boy, didn’t see THAT coming.

Well guys writing Star Wars books aren’t making any kind of bold visionary predictions, so yeah I’m referring to Hard Sci Fi.