Science fiction—Reduces status quo bias and gives interesting insights. Also teaches that the way a society is organized depends a lot on the set of technologies it has access to, so if you don’t like how your society works, one lever you have is to change that set.
From what I’ve seen of it, I disagree. With a very few exceptions, even the highest-ranking SF in terms of popularity and critical acclaim is usually badly written, and instead of exploring truly imaginable and inventive developments, it projects the prejudices and illusions of its own time embodied by the author.
I’d be very curious to hear about some counterexamples from other commenters, though.
As for a parent post, society is more dependent on it’s economical system more than on anything else. And technology advancements, as history teaches us, don’t always define social structure. Ancient Greece and Roma are the great examples of enormous scientific and technological advancements living side by site with an underdeveloped dead-end social structure. Yep, there is a good Sci-Fi novel about this, read “Hard to Be a God”.
Wei_Dai:
From what I’ve seen of it, I disagree. With a very few exceptions, even the highest-ranking SF in terms of popularity and critical acclaim is usually badly written, and instead of exploring truly imaginable and inventive developments, it projects the prejudices and illusions of its own time embodied by the author.
I’d be very curious to hear about some counterexamples from other commenters, though.
There has already been a few threads on SF recommendations. This one for example.
Read Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Stanislav Lem, Robert Sheckley, that’s just the first names that came to my mind.
As for a parent post, society is more dependent on it’s economical system more than on anything else. And technology advancements, as history teaches us, don’t always define social structure. Ancient Greece and Roma are the great examples of enormous scientific and technological advancements living side by site with an underdeveloped dead-end social structure. Yep, there is a good Sci-Fi novel about this, read “Hard to Be a God”.
Rainbow’s End.