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

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto: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 <mailto: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.  If you go into bookstores (are there any of those left?) some of them are arranged such that SciFi/Horror is one of their genres.  Stories need conflict, so much of traditional SciFi is about future warfare, or contains something dire.

 

There is a Star Trek episode I vaguely remember from a looooong long time ago (I never watched the reruns, so I am relying on childhood memories) where Kirk and the crew find a planet somewhere where the inhabitants have worked out all the serious problems, found solutions to their most pressing issues, had no conflicts with anything in the local cubic parsec, so it was a kind of resort planet where there is nothing to do but play.  Kirk was puzzled by it all.  He couldn’t find anything to shoot.

 

Please local Star Trek experts, what was that episode?  The one where Kirk finally realizes that such a planet would be cool, no serious problems anywhere, inhabitants live long healthy fun lives.  But he really needed to go fight something.  He couldn’t fathom a place with nothing to do but play.

 

spike

 

 

 

 


 

 

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