Does there exist

[james_davis_nicoll]

An SF novel whose setting knowingly includes a global example of a Stage Five society?

[not interested in examples where death rates exceed birth rates for reasons due to calamities like war, famine, plague and the like; those aren't really Stage Five societies]

Comments

[kithrup]

Does Saturn's Children count?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Technically no (at the time the novel is set, human death rates are perfectly in balance with birth rates) but at one time such a society did exist.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Kage Baker? I know that the world of the Zeus Corporation is very sparsely populated, and I don't think it's because of a Big Bad but because of a nanny state.

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

I guess John Campbell's "Twilight" isn't a novel.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

No, a faction of the Company spreads multiple plagues throughout history and especially in the run up to the "present" in the 23rd century.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Logan's Run?

[ross smith (from livejournal.com)]

A large chunk of Arthur C Clarke's output, e.g. Rendezvous With Rama and Imperial Earth.

-- Ross Smith

[oh6.livejournal.com]

In order of my thinking of them:

Ashinano Hitoshi's Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is all over this one, but it's a 2000+ page manga series, not a novel.

Nancy Kress's Maximum Light sort of has this, but it's due to pervasive unacknowledged pollution, not choice.

Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia has this as background, but a lot of it was probably because the Instrumentality was not all that great at their job.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Peter Watt's Blindsight -- low TFR, well below replacement levels; many young folks think sex with real human meatsacks is kinda icky and gross, and doesn't live up to the alternatives on offer, and why have children anyway?

[thespian.livejournal.com]

certain phyles in Diamond Age have intentionally done this (older members of the Victorians hint at it but don't say anything directly, but note that all of the families with children have just one child. Several of the synthetic phyles, such as CryptNet or the one that I'm forgetting the name of that has the characters do death defying things to learn to rely on each other are entirely opted into by adults).

The Countess in the one story arc in Tepper's The Family Tree (not to give any plot points away) discusses how most women in her society stick to one 'well-planned' pregnancy in a lifetime (there are issues with that in context, but...).

Would anything involving the child-permit trope count (either repressive future dystopias or things like Bujold's Beta Colony in the Vorkosigan books)? They are usually for one, sometimes for two, but I've never seen anything above that, so those societies are either intentionally shrinking their numbers with accidental deaths, or making it up with immigrants.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Imperial Earth is the closest example I can think of. Most of the ones that look like Stage Five societies have some pathological explanation like an infertility plague in their past.

[andrewducker]

Simak's "City" has mankind eventually dying out because we just don't reproduce enough to replace ourselves. (There's also the emigration to Jupiter, but the remaining people seem to just lose interest in propagation.)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The child-permit trope typically implicitly assumes that you won't get there without coercive measures. (On the other hand, the government could just be making unwarranted assumptions, like China in the real world, which is probably the model for many of them.)

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou has some unspecified event(s) in the near past which has seemingly caused the NPG situation -- sea levels are rising (or Japan is sinking) and Mt. Fuji is missing a chunk off the side of its cinder cone. Nobody talks about what happened at all, or why there are few children around.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Lots of Clarke, I'd say particularly pre-nova Earth in Songs of Distant Earth - yes, there's a calamity, but it's impersonal in the future rather than the Four Horsemen in the present or past.

[a-neonta.livejournal.com]

Children of Men?

[http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/]

Would the Asgard in the Stargate universe qualify?

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

why have children anyway

Well, in their defense: in that world, they may be right.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Beta gives two half-permits per person, and allocates some others via lottery or merit or maybe auction; they're going for stability or controlled growth.

Didn't Teela Brown get produced by a "two children plus lottery extras" Earth?

Frankly I can't recall any fictional permit society that was about shrinkage as opposed to stability and/or quality-controlled parenting.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

OTOH sea levels could just be global warming effects. Simply extrapolating demographic and pessimal environmental trends gives you a lot of the world of YKK without any events needed.

Mt. Fuji missing a chunk is another matter.

It *could* be a Stage Five society (for the humans). Just can't tell.


The movie A.I. is similar: global warming floods, reduced birth rates, and uncertainty as to whether those are simply correlated or causally connected. Hmm, *also* similar in the replacement robot population. But one has gladiatoral contests between discarded robots, and the other has a peaceful coffeehouse and mysterious elite robots in a nuclear powered plane.


Imperial Earth had what, half a billion people on Earth, sans disasters? Some space emigration. Unclear if it was still shrinking or had stabilized.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

but Stage Five doesn't have an intrinsic goal; James' question didn't exclude stability, parenting goals, eugenics, or other persona-driven/societally driven/government driven things, merely various tragedies and calamities.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Solaria, from The Naked Sun. Planetary (human) population of 20,000, minimal human-human contact, and the vast majority like it that way.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

But Stage Five *is* about quiet shrinkage, which those societies don't have. Beta's at Stage Four or Six.

(or, based on guessed author knowledge, naturally at Stage Three but coerced into Stage Four)

[matt-ruff.livejournal.com]

Any novel set in present day Europe or Japan?