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Charlie Stross on his role in creating the Torment Nexus, with a long description of our very good friends (www.antipope.org)
submitted 2 years ago by [M] to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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[–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It's a few steps from one to the other, but it keeps holding true in practice. Science fiction is a fundamentally colonial genre for the most part.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    I got introduced to the genre through Star Trek and I always found its moral vision, in addition to all the weekly alien weirdness & how it was approached with patient curiosity, strongly appealing. Roddenberry set out to create an explicit alternative to the impoverished perspectives of the Cold War era. The Prime Directive is non-interventionist to a fault.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Gotta have to push back on that. Certain genres are, but even the ones that are written nowadays and explicitely in the space opera genre tend to try to grapple with the ethics of colonialism.

    Greg Bear's Hull Zero Three is set aboard a colony starship that's revealed to be chock-full of genocidal weapons to ensure that the target planet isn't a problem for humans to settle on. "Are we the monsters" etc.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago*

    sure, but even that's a reaction inside the genre to the genre being steeped in it

    look at The Culture, Banks was a straight up communist writing about somewhere he'd want to live but the stories are about liberal colonisation

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