Your mission, should you choose to accept it

[james_davis_nicoll]

In an article referenced in an article reference here, Ken MacLeod said:

It's just rare to see stories written about a future that the writer believes in and the reader can get excited about - let alone one they'd like to live in. What we need is a new intellectual engagement with the real possibilities, coupled with a new confidence in humanity's capacity to deal with them.

Outline such a future [of your own creation]. Extra points for not tucking "embrace poverty" into it in one form or another, not creating a backswing setting [1], not praising the virtues of oligarchy or dictatorship and on and so forth. In other words, outline my Nightmarish Future or something equally attractive.

I have a report to do on something that is the exact opposide of MNF so my entry will have to wait until tomorrow.

1: Settings where the author slaughters ninety nine of a hundred people to give his characters more room for their sword's backswing. I think Andrew Wheeler invented the term. He certainly has expressed distaste for settings that as a side-effect wipe out his kids.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

By 20xx, it's mainly used as a source of clip art for reality entertainment: e.g. they set up public booths where you can watch fifteen random minutes of yourself at the Fringe Festival.

All plausible positive futures aspire to the condition of Triton ?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Just some of them.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

You know, it's a shame SRD and Hal Clement never collaborated on a quasi-utopian novel.