Josh Susser on Nostr: A recurring conversational topic among some college friends was "Which science ...
A recurring conversational topic among some college friends was "Which science fiction world would you want to live in as an ordinary person?"
That means you're not part of the story, but just live in the background and aren't involved in any plotlines or shenanigans. You're just a normal person living a normal life in that world. But you do get to pick a particular culture in a partitioned setting, like whether you would live in the Federation or the Dominion, so you don't have to just say Star Trek.
My pick would be Edenism in Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn stories. It's basically fully automated luxury gay space communism, where everyone is well-adjusted because they're all genetically engineered telepaths so they can actually understand each other. They live in giant, bio-engineered, intelligent habitats that provide for all their material and esthetic needs and give them the freedom and support to pursue their dreams, and has enough mental capacity to be every resident's personal friend. As utopias go, it's a pretty nice one with few downsides.
I might have picked The Culture (Iain Banks), but I find the overall vibe of those stories to be a big downer, since they're largely about how the utopia is actually dystopian. But narrative vibes aside, the standard of living of a typical Culture citizen seems pretty amazing.
So, what's your pick for the best #SciFi world to live in as an uninvolved, ordinary person? And why?
That means you're not part of the story, but just live in the background and aren't involved in any plotlines or shenanigans. You're just a normal person living a normal life in that world. But you do get to pick a particular culture in a partitioned setting, like whether you would live in the Federation or the Dominion, so you don't have to just say Star Trek.
My pick would be Edenism in Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn stories. It's basically fully automated luxury gay space communism, where everyone is well-adjusted because they're all genetically engineered telepaths so they can actually understand each other. They live in giant, bio-engineered, intelligent habitats that provide for all their material and esthetic needs and give them the freedom and support to pursue their dreams, and has enough mental capacity to be every resident's personal friend. As utopias go, it's a pretty nice one with few downsides.
I might have picked The Culture (Iain Banks), but I find the overall vibe of those stories to be a big downer, since they're largely about how the utopia is actually dystopian. But narrative vibes aside, the standard of living of a typical Culture citizen seems pretty amazing.
So, what's your pick for the best #SciFi world to live in as an uninvolved, ordinary person? And why?