[ExI] ai in education

[Ben Zaiboc]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2026 at 4:27?PM ilsa via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: 
> Oh Keith, 
> How come science fiction is always pessimistic?


On the contrary, SF is often optimistic, but you have to bear in mind that a good story involves conflict and suffering and other bad things to be overcome, so SF, the same as any other type of story, often has bad things in it.

In terms of the background society portrayed, quality of life, etc., though, I can think of quite a number of SF authors and stories that are very optimistic indeed. Iain M Banks, Neal Asher, Charlie Stross, Greg Egan, Peter Hamilton, are contemporary (or recently-deceased) authors that immediately come to mind, but there are many more, and Keith already mentioned Heinlein, to which we could add a whole host of less-contemporary ones.

The main thing that I've noticed is that most examples of 'optimistic' SF are in books, but most of the 'pessimistic' stories are in films or TV series. It seems likely that someone's habitual type of entertainment - video form, or print form - would affect their impression of whether SF is generally pessimistic or not. I've always been a reader, so don't have the impression of SF being pessimistic that only seeing SF films/videos probably produces.

Come to think of it, I can't at the moment think of /any/ SF films or TV series that are optimistic about the future. At best, they seem to be ambiguous. Oh, that Anime series that John Clark was talking about a while ago wasn't bad. 'Pantheon'. It was certainly good enough to overcome my normal aversion to anime (that, and of course 'Ghost in the Shell', but that portrays a distopian society).

On the whole, I think there are probably more optimistic than pessimistic SF stories, but you have to be willing to sit down with a book.

---
Ben