Why Do Writers Write Science Fiction At All?

BAYLOR said:
The Movie is set 2022. and no sign go Soylent Green on the store shelves. ;)
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Thank God!
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2*2*2
8 billion people this year.

No soylent green in Make Room, Make Room!
 
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To prove that they could write better than crappy writers.

Octavia Butler and Edgar Rice Burroughs both made statements to that effect. So they might as well make money at it.
 
The way I see it, Science Fiction provides great flexibility with the background to the story. I literally get to invent a world, a concept or a technology. This allows me to focus on the reaction of the characters in the novel to their surroundings, and the effect that their environment has on them (which is what I am really interested in).

For example, suppose I want to write about the effect that overcrowding and associated loss of privacy might have on a society and the individuals within it. I either find an example from history - which may be difficult - or I invent a world in which to explore these ideas. In this context, think of, say, The World Inside by Robert Silverberg.
 
hitmouse said:
5. To pay the bills, put bread on the table.
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"Pay the bills, put bread on the table"?

Hah!

That aside, SF creates the image of a dynamic future where interesting things happen. The reality of the human condition in the present is really quite boring. We all live very constrained lives. We study to get a job, we get the job and since not everyone can be an astronaut or a movie director the chances are our job is pretty humdrum. We have to make do with little excitements in the real world, like birthdays or going on holiday. And everything we do is surrounded by regulations.

Our minds however want much, much more, and fiction is a way of satisfying that need vicariously. In ye olden days the globe wasn't mapped out and strapped down to a nanny-like techno-industrial order like it now is, where you get fined for building a garden shed too close to your garden wall. Then, exciting stories could take place on terra firma. To create reasonably exciting backdrops now you have to either go into a fantasy world or into future space (or a very different future Earth) - or both. I suspect we all have a secret desire to smash the current order to pieces and start over from scratch. We can't do that so we create another world instead and watch it get smashed there.

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Stephen Palmer said:
The future of the human race fascinates me, so I write to imagine stories and characters of possible futures. At the moment I'm 800 million years in the future. It's quite challenging.
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Seeing as there is no more plant life on Earth (too little CO2 to permit photosythesis) and the surface temperatures of the planet have boiled the oceans away thanks to a hotter sun, I would imagine so.

Of course humanity could migrate to one of outer planets' moons I suppose, on the lines of Last and First Men.
 
Justin Swanton said:
Seeing as there is no more plant life on Earth (too little CO2 to permit photosythesis) and the surface temperatures of the planet have boiled the oceans away thanks to a hotter sun, I would imagine so.

Of course humanity could migrate to one of outer planets' moons I suppose, on the lines of Last and First Men.
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Why limit yourself to the moons? The edge of Uranus' atmosphere has the same gravity as at Earth's surface and all it needs is a habitable platform to orbit the planet...
 
Justin Swanton said:
Seeing as there is no more plant life on Earth (too little CO2 to permit photosythesis) and the surface temperatures of the planet have boiled the oceans away thanks to a hotter sun, I would imagine so.
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800 million years ahead is the earliest end of estimates, it could be a billion years or a bit more before CO2 reduces to zero. In my scenario, the characters alive then are aware that they only have a few million years left on the surface.
 
Stephen Palmer said:
800 million years ahead is the earliest end of estimates, it could be a billion years or a bit more before CO2 reduces to zero. In my scenario, the characters alive then are aware that they only have a few million years left on the surface.
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True, but that's for plants using C4 photosynthesis. For C3 plants it's all over about 600 million years from now. That means 97% of all plant species including all trees, but OK there are probably still plants on the Earth in 800 million years. Breathing however will be seriously problematic.
 
Justin Swanton said:
True, but that's for plants using C4 photosynthesis. For C3 plants it's all over about 600 million years from now. That means 97% of all plant species including all trees, but OK there are probably still plants on the Earth in 800 million years. Breathing however will be seriously problematic.
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Considering that we currently have technology to filter CO2 out of the atmosphere, it seems a bit simplistic to ignore that future engineers might have a say in what gasses and plants are common.
 
Justin Swanton said:
True, but that's for plants using C4 photosynthesis. For C3 plants it's all over about 600 million years from now. That means 97% of all plant species including all trees, but OK there are probably still plants on the Earth in 800 million years. Breathing however will be seriously problematic.
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All we can do is estimate. This isn't science, it's guesswork. It could be 800 my, it could be 1,200 my. Nobody knows.
 
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