[ExI] Huxley or Orwell - who got it right?

Sun Feb 5 16:26:45 UTC 2017

On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 12:25 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On
> Behalf Of *spike
> *Sent:* Saturday, February 04, 2017 8:44 PM
> *To:* 'ExI chat list' <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Huxley or Orwell - who got it right?
>
>
>
>
>
> I was really into dystopian future fiction in those years, but back to the
> original thought: I never really saw Brave New World as all that dark.  OK
> so the guy dies, there is that.  In 1984, one of them disappears, but it
> isn’t clear he perished, and the others live to copulate, which is way cool
> when one is a teenager who never gets any attention.
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
> 
>
>
> *I don't remember thinking much about either book.  But I remembered them
> well and thought everyone should read them, so it must have had some impact
> on me.  Animal Farm, now, was really scary. Was that how things worked in
> the real world?  It turned out that it was far more representative of
> reality than BNW or 1984.  I don't read the dystopian stuff now:  life is
> too short for such darkness.  Why anyone would like Romeo and Juliet is
> beyond me:  the both die.  Where's the fun in that?  Sweet sorrow?  Not my
> gig.  Do we learn that life is unfair?  Better ways to do that.*
>
>
* I routinely turn to the end of a fiction book and see if my characters
> survived - happy endings is what I like and scifi has traditionally done
> that well - almost no tragedy at all.  I can't say that the quote has much
> contact with reality.  That is, I don't think the books will warn anyone
> and prevent any future. How many people's lives have been shaped by
> fiction?  Or even nonfiction, in the case of most people.  (I have to
> exclude religion here, as many have been shaped by religious writings -
> another category of fiction.  So, I am a cynic:  shoot me.)  Spike - you
> want others to read 1984 - what for?  What are they going to do after
> reading it?*
>

bill w

> * *
>
.

>
bill w

> **
> * *
>
>

> **
> *rom:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
> <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org>] *On Behalf Of *William Flynn
> Wallace
> *Sent:* Saturday, February 04, 2017 5:03 PM
> *To:* ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Huxley or Orwell - who got it right?
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 4, 2017 at 6:26 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
> The job of the SF writer is not so much to predict the future as to
> prevent it.
>
>
>
> Now just what the hell does that mean?  Are you stealing a quote?  Many
> tech advances have been predicted by SF writers.  bill w
>
>
>
>
>
> Ja, I was stealing a quote but I don’t know who it is from and only
> vaguely remember where I heard it, perhaps 30 or 40 yrs ago…spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> OK now I remember, I heard this quote in high school in 1978, and it was
> Ted Sturgeon, who was quoting Ray Bradbury who may have heard it from Frank
> Herbert:
>
>
>
>
>
> *Dear Quote Investigator*: I once read an interview with a science
> fiction writer in which he was asked about predicting the future. The
> interviewer was disappointed that some of the technological developments
> heralded in science fiction never seemed to actually happen. The response
> from the author was unexpected and haunting:
>
> *I don’t try to predict the future. I try to prevent it.*
>
> I think this answer confused the interviewer, but I understood it. The
> dystopian stories like Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Sheep
> Look Up, and The Machine Stops are not attempting to predict the future.
> They are trying to prevent the futures that they describe. The identity of
> the interviewee is fuzzy in my mind and so is the exact wording. Could you
> look into this quote?
>
> *Quote Investigator*: The earliest expression found by *QI* appears in
> 1977 from the typewriter of the SF great Theodore Sturgeon who credits the
> remark to another SF luminary Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451
> and the Martian Chronicles. In 1978 the idea is attributed to another famed
> SF writer, Frank Herbert, the author of Dune…
>
>
>
> http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/19/prevent-the-future/
>
>
>
>
>
> I was really into dystopian future fiction in those years, but back to the
> original thought: I never really saw Brave New World as all that dark.  OK
> so the guy dies, there is that.  In 1984, one of them disappears, but it
> isn’t clear he perished, and the others live to copulate, which is way cool
> when one is a teenager who never gets any attention.
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20170205/471e5560/attachment.html>