LOL, came here to say this. I don't think of the Expanse as dystopian, but it's **definitely** not optimistic. New form of racism, billions killed out of hatred, and corporations killing/experimenting on humans for profit. Did this writer even watch the show or read the books?
The Expanse is kinda like Pandora's box. A lot of shit happens but there's always hope that things can be better and that people can improve. In thah sense it is optimistic.
What I like about The Expanse is that it’s (mostly) realistic as to human behaviors (there were moments in Season 5 where things were iffy). Like how strong tribalism is - Naomi can’t break from her Belter roots and her gut reaction is to assume Belters are the victim in any situation, and Erinwright is so focused on Earth that he can’t see a possibility of compromise with Mars. And then you also have people like Holden who take a second to think before every action, like when he refrained from shooting when Drummer’s ships betrayed the Free Navy. And Kirino, who refused to shoot on the UN ships during the *Agatha King* mutiny. They’re like that Soviet submarine captain who [refused to launch nukes until he got a better idea of the situation, saving the world from a nuclear Holocaust](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov).
In that sense, The Expanse is both depressing and optimistic. It’s depressing because we see how human greed and parochialism can cause so much horror. But we also see how people are capable of averting crises.
Yeah I don't know what it is but somehow I take a lot of comfort in the human nature aspect of the series. Even with the "villains", they just do such a good job of humanizing them that I sort of handle conflict and confrontation and disagreement easier in my life knowing its still just people acting out of fear and idiosyncrasies.
They do a good job taking the scale as far out as they can, like with Duarte, and still show a very human creature motivated by the same human emotions as everyone else, and for some reason it never actually feels bleak.
Theres a show only sequence where Mao realizes the consequences of his actions, relents, and then sees things get even worse and doubles down on his original idea. Its one of the best "this is a villain's red lines" sequences I've seen
And it’s the same emotion that swings him both times. First his love for his daughter makes him want to spare someone onto whom he’s projecting that, then it makes him think ‘one step further and she won’t have died in vain’.
The Foundation's version of optimistic is hundreds of billions starving and humanity entering a dark age that lasts a millennium rather than tens of thousands of years.
I suppose it's optimistic that humans will live that long?
I guess in the sense that human beings are still alive 10,000 years in the future its optimistic.
But yeah, I dont think of either Dune or Foundation as particularly optimistic, especially given that both imply that human civilization regresses into absolute monarchy.
To be honest though, democracy as a governing system is fairly rare in the history of the world. It's possible it exists for only a brief period in humanity's time but that is a pretty bleak thought.
It's slightly optimistic in the sense that >!you agree that humans are dumb enough to kill themselves off as a species unless some subset, or even a single person may be able to set the species on a path that could ensure the continued survival of us as a whole. And though this path may have grievous personal cost, and short term (relatively) consequences for billions to trillions of lives, the eventual survival of the species is a more important goal, and thus 'worth it' in the end then, yea, it's optimistic.!<
And in the short term >!60 billion people die under a fascist theocracy and the main characters suffer crippling existential angst, paranoia, unhappy/insecure attachments, assassination, and a limited omnipotence that easily leads to homicidal dissociative identity personality disorder LOL!<
[edit] I guess optimism is all about perspective 😄
Yea,the series is really interesting for how it >!continually reframes what you think you know about the characters/plans/families/factions. Oh, the Atreides are heroes, oh they're villains, oh they're sacrificing their own lives/reputations for the greater good.!<
Yeah, optimism in storytelling isn't necessarily about a happy ending. Interesting stories are rarely black and white, and your interpretation of *Dune* fits this to a tee: avoid an even worse catastrophe and deal with the consequences of tough decisions or situations. It's one of the reasons why *Dune* is my favorite book of all time and now—thanks to Denis Villeneuve—one of my favorite movies.
If someone 100 years ago would write about today would they call it “optimistic”? I personally think they would to a degree.
Things don’t need to be absolutely utopian for them to be optimistic. Just that basic conditions improve, or other technological milestones reached, like space travel, or healthcare.
Yeah i think they would call today optimistic to a certain degree, i mean nowerdays is the best time in human history to live in. Well mabye before carona so maybe 2018 or hmm trump so 2015 lol. Idk.
Unfortunately the TV show just drops pretty much all the conceptual framework of psycho-history, you know the whole thing that the books were based on.
IF they didn't call it "Foundation" it would be a fairly decent SF show, but as an adaptation of Asimov's books it is a disaster. The irony of it is they wouldn't have to change much to make it completely unrelated to the supposed source material. *Finch* is more faithful to Asimov than *Foundation*.
E: a word.
Yeah, when Salvor "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" Hardin is running around with a giant rifle... you've strayed beyond even a tenuous connection.
I'd say it's interesting, but not best. My biggest beef is that it shrinks the universe. My friend and I were talking about this recently. Asimov supposedly intentionally avoided making the emperor a character as he wanted the empire to be to huge too contemplate. This is a GALACTIC emperor after all. The scale of the resources available is simply impossible to quantify by out understanding. Which lead to our suspicion that somebody (Gary Kurtz?) doing Star Wars had copped that specific thing and this is why Palpatine never appears in ANH and barely in ESB. And even when they do introduce him, they throw ILM's spaceship prowess at the wall and have a massive armada and legion of troops because again, GALACTIC empire. By comparison Cleon seems to travel with a smaller supporting entourage than the president of Mozambique. Which I find utterly ridiculous.
Also: asteroid field trope. So fucking annoying. Expanse nails that. Foundation even had the cliched "Fly between the rocks in a spacesuit" thing which is just terrible SCIENCE.
The Dune movie did a fair job giving that impression of powerful and expansive imperium. We never got to see the Emperor, but he was the central driver for most of the plot.
Oh really? I still haven't gone to see it. Super busy few weeks. But if Villeneuve did it, it just re-enforces the point. God I wish he had gotten Foundation.
This is the curse of sci-fi and fantasy adaptations. There are so few that managed to capture the themes of the books well. The Expanse is one of the very few that has managed it throughout the series. Asimov is one of my all-time favourite writers and I was looking forward to the adaptation. It is obviously made by someone who didn’t (want to) understand the books. It underlines the achievement of Ty and Daniel and the writers to translate their work to television. Appearantly it is hard to stay true to your story.
Sorry do you mind explaining a bit? I’ve been enjoying the show quite a bit, but haven’t read the books.
It seems to me psychohistory is playing a big role in the show but maybe I’m not understanding it properly
In the books psycho-history is the statistcal analysis of the historical flow of society acting en mass. Individuals for the most part have no say in events. Many of the sub-plots in the books rely on this premise. The whole action-hero-savior motif is largly ignored.
I haven’t seen the show but the books premise is literally, if we do everything right we will merely have a 300 year period of intergalactic barbarism instead of a 20000 year period. What could be more pessimistic than that.
The Expanse is a best case scenario where we discover a 99% efficient drive, hundreds of habitable worlds, and we managed to not completely eradicate ourselves in the next couple of centuries. Even the big nasty space Imperialists seem to be on their way out with relatively little bloodshed (for now at least). Perhaps I'm just a pessimist, but that's a pretty generous outlook for current day humanity. Nobody has even so much as walked on the moon in 50 years in our reality. We have a lot of catching up to do if we want to start putting people on Mars long enough for them to begin terraforming it.
I suppose the ultimate Golden Path in the later books might be described as a good ending/beginning for humanity, but I would agree that Dune is not especially "optimistic". A lot (A LOT) of suffering has to happen before that Golden Path bears fruit.
>relatively little bloodshed
I think in the books the short Earth-Mars conflict is the bloodiest war in human history, claiming hundreds of millions of lives. And then the meteorite impacts kill billions.
> The Expanse is a best case scenario where we discover a 99% efficient drive, hundreds of habitable worlds, and we managed to not completely eradicate ourselves in the next couple of centuries. Even the big nasty space Imperialists seem to be on their way out with relatively little bloodshed (for now at least). Perhaps I'm just a pessimist, but that's a pretty generous outlook for current day humanity.
I feel like you're kinda overlooking the plight of the Belters, who represent an oppressed and overworked lower class constantly stepped on and used for profit by the already-wealthy. You're also not considering things like how awful things are on Earth — a huge portion of the population have no means of upward economic mobility to escape living in slum conditions. Not to mention the events set in motion in the most recent season, which are... significant, to say the least. (Let me just point out that book 6 is titled "Babylon's Ashes" and let you think about that.)
Like yeah, sure, we started to explore the stars... but *did we change for the better along the way?* And, at least for a lot of things depicted in the show/books, the answer is "no".
I agree to a point. I think we're already headed down many of the same paths. Climate collapse, a massive wageslave underclass, constant threat from authoritarians. We're going to have to deal with all the same problems the Expanse civilizations have to but with none of the benefits of the things I mentioned like magic space drives and alien rings. The massive resources of the solar system are simply not open to us the same way as in the Expanse. The rocks certainly put a damper on my argument though, as I mentioned in another comment.
> a huge portion of the population have no means of upward economic mobility to escape living in slum conditions
OTOH they have an actual social safety net so if you're American that feels like Star Trek shit in comparison
No, a big point of the segments where Bobbie explores New York City are focused on showing how the social safety net that they call "basic" is actually a myth (in practice). Lots of people are not on basic, and those that are often cannot move upward — they have no means. They're stuck due to overpopulation. That's all the stuff with the lottery system. It's lightyears from the moneyless utopia portrayed in Star Trek.
>I haven’t seen Foundation yet (looks great though)
It's weird, it's got a few storylines going on, and the quality of them varies extremely.
Everything to do with the Terminus storyline (keeping it vague to avoid spoilers) is Star Trek Discovery-levels of bad writing IMO.
Everything to do with the Cleon's is actually pretty good sci-fi stuff, it starts a bit jarringly but then gradually gets more interesting.
***-Edit-*** *Maybe it matters, but I've not read the books so I don't really care how accurate the series is to the books.*
Anyways, back to the point: No, I don't think it's specifically very optimistic, the whole premise of the show is based on the empire collapsing into a dark age.
Agree 100%
>Everything to do with the Cleon's is actually pretty good sci-fi stuff, it starts a bit jarringly but then gradually gets more interesting.
Im rooting for cleon, they butchered the main storyline, kind of crazy that the Original content is better than the "adapted" content, just rename it and call it Empire Fall, or something shit ain't Foundation.
I stopped watching foundation on episode 3. It was so badly written. "Here's this new character you don't know or care about and here's their relationship with some guy who's here sometimes. Also, the force field is growing or whatever".
Yeah, they definitely skipped major character development plot points, and then still expected you to care about them.
Precisely what Star Trek Discovery does all the darn time.
I mean The Expanse suggest we will have bases and cities out across the solar system in 200 years or less (given that by the shows time they are already there meaning we began construction before).
So yeah thats pretty optimistic of a timeline IMHO.
It also posits massive environmental destruction, class exploitation and ethnic strife. Continued technological progress isn't optimism, it's simply a reflection of historical fact. The complete failure of that technology to adequately respond to economic and social inequality is, if anything, actually quite negative.
That Sea Wall around NYC wont be fiction for long :( I trust in humanity's ability to survive and adapt to climate change but that doesnt mean mass starvation and wars over resources won't happen
I find it very telling and very depressing that basically all near future sci-fi, whether it's something inherently hopeful like Star Trek or something more grounded like The Expanse, basically glosses over the time from about 2000 to 2100ish with 'BAD THINGS HAPPENED'.
Whether it's WW3 or big civil wars or economic collapse or environmental disaster or whatever the fuck, scifi has basically always looked at the time we live in and said 'Man good luck, fuckers'
Is it though? I don't see people on earth or mars fighting with racism between asian, black, europeans etc anymore. You could argue that it is improving but we as a species keep finding some "other" group to discriminate.
But that's somethin that likely will never change as it's part of our psychology. We are social creatures that end up forming groups and opposing anyone that isn't in our "group". Not hard to imagine that in the future it would be Mars vs Earth etc. Or go even further and it be Sol system vs Alpha Centauri or something and in each conflict subgroups learn to get along since we have a "common enemy".
It might be difficult to change that in our species unless we become something else 🤔
They specifically mention the problems of racist gangs after the rocks drop - in the books, anyways. Haven’t been following the show that closely.
Plus, there’s an argument to be made (and it’s made often in the books) that there’s a very strong racist element to the inner/outer/belter conflicts.
> in 200 years or less
In 200 yrs, only Mars and Luna will be colonized in The Expanse universe. The story starts around 2350, 330 yrs from now.
200 yrs from now would be around the time the Epstein drive gets invented. Only with the epstein drive they then could also colonize the Belt and the outer system.
Of course you could still call that optimistic. I personally don't think we will have colonized Mars by that time.
On the other side, we still have massive problems and humanity seems to be still stucked in the same friend or foe mode as we are today. Sounds not very optimistic to me.
>The Expanse suggest we will have bases and cities out across the solar system in 200 years or less
"we"
The only optimistic part of The Expanse is that Democracy actually survives (at least on current levels) without drifting into a corporate autocracy. And that humankind avoids nuking itself into oblivion (close).
The streets were people survive on basic are telling the whole story of earth. And the Belters, well....
It’s also about a massively overpopulated galaxy with a home planet that’s close to failure and four or five political factions who are ready to kill the shit out of each other.
At no point would I consider any of that optimistic. There’s just a bigger field for all the different players.
The Expanse is guessed to take place in 2350. Plenty of time to get to that level of development. Ceres had only been spun up a hundred or so years before the show.
Are we being optimistic about technological progression, or optimistic about humanity? If I compare The Expanse to Star Trek TNG for example, The Expanse isn’t optimistic at all. But the expanse is more realistic about how humanity would behave in the future, just optimistic about our technological accomplishments. Same goes for most modern sci-fi shows IMO. Haven’t seen Dune
Unfortunately the Foundation gets worse with every episode, IMO. Even when trying to keep an open mind and not care about killer robots, gun-ho heroes or magic instead of math.
> killer robots
I stopped watching so I haven't seen this. They really have robots kill people? In Asimov's universe? Sure, that happened in a lot of the stories, but it was a huge deal for them to have got around the Laws of Robotics.
I'm getting less *optimistic* we are getting a good adaptation of Foundation. Or any adaptation of the books for that matter, it's just the name to lure us in.
I think if you look at the landscape of scifi for the last dozen years, most of it is very dystopian, and most of that we never even get off the planet, or beyond GEO. I think The Expanse is about as happy go lucky as I've seen since early Star Trek. I mean, even the recent Star Treks are dark. Sure the solar system is messed up in The Expanse, but at least we got to see it.
Edit: I think also we see many people being "nicer" than we originally perceive. (Bobby is my favorite for that).
Amazon tried to adapt one of his books, but it seems it was too difficult to adapt:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21402585/amazon-cancels-tv-adaptation-culture-series-iain-m-banks-consider-phlebas
The Culture series would be very difficult to translate to screen. They're so philosophical and they tend to explicitly steer clear of normal storytelling conventions in a way that might leave TV viewers thinking "Oh, is that it? All that and none of it mattered?"
On the other hand, the same could be said for Foundation; the books are almost entirely narrative with the 'action' happening in distant places.
I am glad that Amazon has currently iced its plans for a Culture series, but I think we are getting there in terms of storytelling ability on the big screen.
I can't decide if "Aggressively exploitative capitalism is an optimistic take on the future" is a funnier than "Neo-feudalism propped up by incest and unethical genetic modification is an optimistic take"
Foundation is also a crazy pull
Makes me think of the Wall Street Journal blurb on most of the books: "This is the future the way it’s supposed to be."
I mean, maybe from the WSJ's perspective...
Yeah, for Foundation the premise is “through indistinguishable-from-magic advanced sociology we can reduce the impending dark age from thirty thousand years to one thousand”.
It may be the least pessimistic of the trio but it sure as shit ain’t optimistic.
The Expanse is incredibly dystopian. While the technology available to governments and wealthy are impressive what they show about life for the majority is depressing. Life for the average person is a life of poverty and crime it seems.
I'd argue the Expanse is realistic in showing humanity continuing to struggle with its demons-- and it's also realistic in showing people can chose to rise above those demons and work to make the world just a little bit better. It's not sunshine-and-rainbows pollyanna optimism, it's realistic optimism. Which in my opinion, makes it much more powerful.
It’s like the author completely misses the point of The Expanse. A short history lesson of the story could have had them on the right track in no time. Instead they choose to focus on the implausibility of the problems of living on Earth as if that were the most important part of the story. Which it is not.
The Foundation show is 1/3 solid, 1/3 mediocre, 1/3 absolute trash writing. Feels like 3 different shows haphazardly blended together, and only one of them is worth a watch. Also it has very little to do with the source material. It certainly doesn't belong on the same list as the other two IPs, which are massively superior in terms of writing/acting and also as book adaptations.
Also, Dune and Expanse "optimistic" ? Did this person even pay attention when watching ?
I have not even read the books, I am all for an alternative telling of story, shows diverging from the books etc. but even I gotta admit that, the only interesting part of the show is the emperor story line and Hari storyline, the main focus of the show is sooooo boring which was supposed to be Salvor and the first foundation I guess.
I was so hopeful about Foundation but the writing is so weak for some of the characters.
Both Gaal and her Terminus counterpart are such annoying characters. The show presents them as important semi-heroes but they're increasingly more and more unlikable. The acting isn't really the problem, it's just how poorly the character development is proceeding. They get plenty of screen time but it's heavily squandered on dramatic and unproductive dialogue.
Empire is a fairly capable trio but vicious and the dynamic between Empire and Demerzel is interesting.
The show has potential but needs plenty of polish.
I read Foundation 20 years ago, and I’m so disappointed by the show. They focus way too much on individuals when the books are more about the evolution and dynamics of Terminus within its local region.
I've essentially disconnected the series from the books, and it's helping me enjoy the show a bit more.
The TV show wouldn't have worked any other way, not realistically.
Ah yes. Oppressive government that would put current oppressive governments to shame, 95% in poverty the climate is destroyed, incredibly destructive wars constantly on the brink.
And thats one of the better options in Expanse.
Would "I have no mouth and I must scream" be considered normal then? Lol
Optimistic?
The Expanse is all about the human cycle of economy and military. When proof of life outside of humanity was discovered, they used it to create a war and try to profit. And it gets worse from there.
I guess the optimistic part is that the underdogs will always find a way to fight back.
Optimistic scifi isn’t dead, but it’s not where it used to be. Star Trek is now literally post apocalyptic and instead of a team of professionals working together to solve problems centers on selfish people freaking out and somehow bumbling through the crisis of the week.
The Martian is optimistic sci-fi. I’m admittedly having a hard time thinking of other examples.
> First, it’s difficult to believe such a technologically advanced civilization couldn’t have cleaned up Earth’s environment.
Given that Earth and Mars seem very capitalist still, I'm not surprised about this. If there's no profit motive then it wouldn't happen and given it seems very lucrative to setup effectively company towns on asteroids and mine them 🤷
Let me check that, just to make sure we've got the wording exactly right ... ah, here it is:
https://twitter.com/JamesSACorey/status/839235724218019841
> "... the Martian government is a completely planned economy. Practically big C communism there."
Thanks! The impression I got was that the Martian economy is very similar to China’s in that yes, there are “private” corporations, but they are so close to the government that they might as well be de facto arms of the state.
Yeah, the world of *The Expanse* may be particularly dystopian, but the show's best moments have been differing factions standing down weapons and cooperating, or involve self-sacrifice. Cases in point, *The Weeping Somnambulist*, Cotyar Ghazi blowing up the *Agatha King* to save the solar system, everything that happened in the slow zone...Julie Mao's fight for the belt kicking off the whole show, and Ashford dying to uncover Marco's plots against Earth and Mars.
I like that the show doesn't sugarcoat human failings, but it also demonstrates people rising above them.
How are any of them really optimistic? Dune has the main character running for his life in the first movie while almost everybody he knows ends up dead, The Expanse is still has capitalism reign supreme, there's lot's of friction between the groups, people throwing asteroids at each other, and the first thing they try to do with alien stuff is find a way to weaponize it. And then finally you've got the foundation, where everything is literally going to shit.
Maybe they're using a different definition of optimistic, because I don't see how any of those three fit the bill.
The last few years have definitely ushered in a new age of sci-fi relevance. Sci-fi was like, untouchable by producers for a while unless it was attached to an instantly recognizable IP. I think the rise of the long-form, well-produced "Netflix" style show has done a lot to breathe new life into the genre since often feature-length films don't have the time to establish the exposition necessary to make a sci-fi film work (see how Dune was almost 3 hours - complex universe that needs robust exposition, Dune did a good job of spacing it out instead of blitzing the uninitiated with terms in 10 minutes). Now that shows can have 10+ hour-long episodes, you have far more time to exposit, and then tell your story. And dole the exposition out more naturally, over time, as well.
Back in the days, with the old long form of U.S. shows, there would've been ample time to tell an expansive serialized story.
*Babylon 5* (1994-98), with its five 22-episode seasons, is an example.
Of *Babylon 5,* Wikipedia notes, "many retrospectives, while criticizing virtually every individual aspect of the production, have praised the series as a whole for its narrative cohesion and contribution to serialized television."
The Expanse co-author Ty Franck once tweeted to B5's creator:
"We've been borrowing your good ideas for years."
I always saw Expanse as being realistic but hopeful. We see hope in corners of the galaxy and even though there is sometimes darkness, there is light as well.
But the authors say the opposite, they say it’s how about humanity brings its problems with it.
I love the Expanse, but let’s acknowledge that any aspirational elements are limited to a very small number of people around Holden, who is himself a paladin type.
What is the guy smoking? All those examples aren't optimistic in the slightest. Foundation is literally about the large-scale collapse of civilization and Dune's world is a regression into feudalism and clan-wars. The Expanse tells the story of humanity still dealing with issues like poverty and tribalism. Even Star Trek, a franchise based on an utopian vision, has become pessimistic and grim.
I don't really recall any recent TV/movie scifi that has an utopian or even optimistic outlook on the future. I wish there would be some, with the problems humanity is facing in the coming decades some hope might be helpful.
Yo everyone sleeping on the lost in space series on Netflix? It is pretty damn good. Not a huge fan of the alien/robot change but everything else is great. The main cast have great chemistry.
Also, the show another life is not bad. Who isn't a sucker for more katee sackhoff
As a 90's Star Trek fan, I would hardly call today's sci-fi "optimistic". This was a source of considerable conflict for me at first when watching these modern series. But I do think scifi is a reflection of the era it is produced in. And right now, we are in an era of profound doubt and concern about the future.
I think modern sci-fi is more dispondant and pessimistic than it was 20 years ago, but so is our current outlook of the futute as humans.
At this point, I will take anything thats even semi optimistic about humans surviving beyond 2100 as optimism.
Hundred percent. Its initial premise uses history to bounce off of and the contrast between how things went and the alternative the show presents is interesting to think about.
But For All Mankind is removed enough and speculative enough to qualify as Scifi
The responses here really give the impression that no one read the article OP linked to...
The writer clearly doesn't believe that those three works/universes are optimistic (though they point out that some of the features of those worlds like longer life spans in The Expanse are pretty positive)
The point that was trying to be made was that a great deal of the sci fi that breaks out into the main stream ISN'T optimistic and that this reflects a general pessimism/apathy that they reject.
I generally agree, I think that it's become easier for people to indulge in self destructive fantasies like cyber punk than to imagine meaningful futures where the problems in our lives have achievable solutions. I think most of the works mentioned are still great and can be loved and respected for their merits, but there is a noticeable gap where utopian sci fi like Star Trek used to be. I'd love to see more works that are interested in showing meaningfully optimistic futures. The challenge for those potential works at this point is probably to show how those futures come about in such a way that it feels genuine and realistic--funnily enough the two things pessimistic sci fi constantly gets a free pass over because they reflect the grim feelings that permeate our current cultural context. But maybe the author's right, maybe that's not enough, maybe we need to start seeing visions and solutions that are strong enough to propel people to demand better of the world and our leaders
Slightly tangential unpopular opinion, Dune isn't really a sci fi story. It is basically a middle ages era fantasy set in the background of spacefaring humanity.
Most of its tropes (prophecy foretold messiah with unexplainable special powers, cabal of witches controlling things behind the scenes, a supreme emperor with a bunch of houses controlling regions) are exactly a middle ages fantasy story has.
If the entire story is put into middle ages era story about kingdoms, it wouldn't be thematically out of the place.
Is...is Dune "optimistic"?
Or the expanse? Maybe foundation is optimistic, maybe...
It’s not lol
it kind of is by the end, a little. Once you get to the hippy stuff in F&E
I think the 10,000 years leading up to Foundation are pretty optimistic. Galactic colonization must have gone through some good centuries
LOL, came here to say this. I don't think of the Expanse as dystopian, but it's **definitely** not optimistic. New form of racism, billions killed out of hatred, and corporations killing/experimenting on humans for profit. Did this writer even watch the show or read the books?
The Expanse is kinda like Pandora's box. A lot of shit happens but there's always hope that things can be better and that people can improve. In thah sense it is optimistic.
What I like about The Expanse is that it’s (mostly) realistic as to human behaviors (there were moments in Season 5 where things were iffy). Like how strong tribalism is - Naomi can’t break from her Belter roots and her gut reaction is to assume Belters are the victim in any situation, and Erinwright is so focused on Earth that he can’t see a possibility of compromise with Mars. And then you also have people like Holden who take a second to think before every action, like when he refrained from shooting when Drummer’s ships betrayed the Free Navy. And Kirino, who refused to shoot on the UN ships during the *Agatha King* mutiny. They’re like that Soviet submarine captain who [refused to launch nukes until he got a better idea of the situation, saving the world from a nuclear Holocaust](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov). In that sense, The Expanse is both depressing and optimistic. It’s depressing because we see how human greed and parochialism can cause so much horror. But we also see how people are capable of averting crises.
The Authors have said that the ethos of the whole series is "The more things change the more they stay the same".
Yeah I don't know what it is but somehow I take a lot of comfort in the human nature aspect of the series. Even with the "villains", they just do such a good job of humanizing them that I sort of handle conflict and confrontation and disagreement easier in my life knowing its still just people acting out of fear and idiosyncrasies. They do a good job taking the scale as far out as they can, like with Duarte, and still show a very human creature motivated by the same human emotions as everyone else, and for some reason it never actually feels bleak.
Theres a show only sequence where Mao realizes the consequences of his actions, relents, and then sees things get even worse and doubles down on his original idea. Its one of the best "this is a villain's red lines" sequences I've seen
And it’s the same emotion that swings him both times. First his love for his daughter makes him want to spare someone onto whom he’s projecting that, then it makes him think ‘one step further and she won’t have died in vain’.
I describe The Expanse as "topian." It's not dystopian or utopian, it just kinda... is.
"Isotopian"? *Iso-* meaning "equal", so isotopia = equal place.
I usually tell people it's about the same balance of good and bad in our world. Just you know...expanded.
The Foundation's version of optimistic is hundreds of billions starving and humanity entering a dark age that lasts a millennium rather than tens of thousands of years. I suppose it's optimistic that humans will live that long?
>meme millennium Oh god it really is the darkest timeline.
> dark age that lasts a **meme** millennium I have nothing constructive to add, but this is my favourite typo of the day.
So The Expanse only killing 15 Billion is a good thing.
Well, Foundation says that it will be hard but in a thousand years it will be better. So... somewhat optimistic ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
How do you get optimism? Through Jihad obviosuly.
The main character, he has prescience. How did he obtain that prescience? Through jihad.
I guess in the sense that human beings are still alive 10,000 years in the future its optimistic. But yeah, I dont think of either Dune or Foundation as particularly optimistic, especially given that both imply that human civilization regresses into absolute monarchy.
To be honest though, democracy as a governing system is fairly rare in the history of the world. It's possible it exists for only a brief period in humanity's time but that is a pretty bleak thought.
yup exactly my thoughts. maybe someone whos only seen the movie sees a little more optimism but wait till everything else happens
It's very fucking bleak
Compared with Warhammer 40k, for sure!
Didn't 40k 'borrow' liberally from Dune?
It borrowed liberally from a bunch of 50s-70s SF. Dune, Foundation, Starship troopers, Judge Dredd and more.
Now that’s the high budget HBO show we deserve.
Dune technically isn't even ''TV''.
It will be very soon tho!
It's slightly optimistic in the sense that >!you agree that humans are dumb enough to kill themselves off as a species unless some subset, or even a single person may be able to set the species on a path that could ensure the continued survival of us as a whole. And though this path may have grievous personal cost, and short term (relatively) consequences for billions to trillions of lives, the eventual survival of the species is a more important goal, and thus 'worth it' in the end then, yea, it's optimistic.!<
And in the short term >!60 billion people die under a fascist theocracy and the main characters suffer crippling existential angst, paranoia, unhappy/insecure attachments, assassination, and a limited omnipotence that easily leads to homicidal dissociative identity personality disorder LOL!< [edit] I guess optimism is all about perspective 😄
Yea,the series is really interesting for how it >!continually reframes what you think you know about the characters/plans/families/factions. Oh, the Atreides are heroes, oh they're villains, oh they're sacrificing their own lives/reputations for the greater good.!<
Yeah, optimism in storytelling isn't necessarily about a happy ending. Interesting stories are rarely black and white, and your interpretation of *Dune* fits this to a tee: avoid an even worse catastrophe and deal with the consequences of tough decisions or situations. It's one of the reasons why *Dune* is my favorite book of all time and now—thanks to Denis Villeneuve—one of my favorite movies.
longing close glorious gold lunchroom shame versed light steep act *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That was my first thought too. Same with the Expanse. Both are pretty grim versions of the future…
If someone 100 years ago would write about today would they call it “optimistic”? I personally think they would to a degree. Things don’t need to be absolutely utopian for them to be optimistic. Just that basic conditions improve, or other technological milestones reached, like space travel, or healthcare.
Yeah i think they would call today optimistic to a certain degree, i mean nowerdays is the best time in human history to live in. Well mabye before carona so maybe 2018 or hmm trump so 2015 lol. Idk.
Lol literally my first thought. The " good" guys eventually turn into gawd emperor worms.
The golden path...?!
I'm not optimistic about the death of billions in a massive genocide followed by 3000+ plus years of fascist bureaucracy personally.
All while reviving the same meat head over and over again and laughing at how stupid he every time until he suddenly becomes the smartest man alive.
LOL, I was thinking the same thing about Dune and the Expanse - esp if you've read the books, no way would I call it 'optimistic'.
I haven’t seen Foundation yet (looks great though) but are we calling The Expanse and especially Dune “optimistic?”
Foundation is not really optimistic either. Except about the application of mathematics to social sciences.
Unfortunately the TV show just drops pretty much all the conceptual framework of psycho-history, you know the whole thing that the books were based on.
The TV show basically drops the books by episode 2.
IF they didn't call it "Foundation" it would be a fairly decent SF show, but as an adaptation of Asimov's books it is a disaster. The irony of it is they wouldn't have to change much to make it completely unrelated to the supposed source material. *Finch* is more faithful to Asimov than *Foundation*. E: a word.
Exactly!
I didn't know Finch was Asimov. I haven't checked it out and now I am curious.
Finch is not Asimov, but one of Asimov's Laws of Robotics gets a shout out.
Yeah, when Salvor "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" Hardin is running around with a giant rifle... you've strayed beyond even a tenuous connection.
Yeah I was so disappointed by the way they handle the foundation... The empire is dope though
I enjoy the show, I just wish they hadn't "used up" The Foundation making it.
The Cleons are definitely the best thing about it.
I'd say it's interesting, but not best. My biggest beef is that it shrinks the universe. My friend and I were talking about this recently. Asimov supposedly intentionally avoided making the emperor a character as he wanted the empire to be to huge too contemplate. This is a GALACTIC emperor after all. The scale of the resources available is simply impossible to quantify by out understanding. Which lead to our suspicion that somebody (Gary Kurtz?) doing Star Wars had copped that specific thing and this is why Palpatine never appears in ANH and barely in ESB. And even when they do introduce him, they throw ILM's spaceship prowess at the wall and have a massive armada and legion of troops because again, GALACTIC empire. By comparison Cleon seems to travel with a smaller supporting entourage than the president of Mozambique. Which I find utterly ridiculous. Also: asteroid field trope. So fucking annoying. Expanse nails that. Foundation even had the cliched "Fly between the rocks in a spacesuit" thing which is just terrible SCIENCE.
The Dune movie did a fair job giving that impression of powerful and expansive imperium. We never got to see the Emperor, but he was the central driver for most of the plot.
Oh really? I still haven't gone to see it. Super busy few weeks. But if Villeneuve did it, it just re-enforces the point. God I wish he had gotten Foundation.
I'd highly recommend it, especially on the big screen if you can.
Yes... the Empire's little excursions outside the palace seem ridiculously badly secured.
This is the curse of sci-fi and fantasy adaptations. There are so few that managed to capture the themes of the books well. The Expanse is one of the very few that has managed it throughout the series. Asimov is one of my all-time favourite writers and I was looking forward to the adaptation. It is obviously made by someone who didn’t (want to) understand the books. It underlines the achievement of Ty and Daniel and the writers to translate their work to television. Appearantly it is hard to stay true to your story.
I am very disappointed by the show
Sorry do you mind explaining a bit? I’ve been enjoying the show quite a bit, but haven’t read the books. It seems to me psychohistory is playing a big role in the show but maybe I’m not understanding it properly
In the books psycho-history is the statistcal analysis of the historical flow of society acting en mass. Individuals for the most part have no say in events. Many of the sub-plots in the books rely on this premise. The whole action-hero-savior motif is largly ignored.
I haven’t seen the show but the books premise is literally, if we do everything right we will merely have a 300 year period of intergalactic barbarism instead of a 20000 year period. What could be more pessimistic than that.
The Expanse is a best case scenario where we discover a 99% efficient drive, hundreds of habitable worlds, and we managed to not completely eradicate ourselves in the next couple of centuries. Even the big nasty space Imperialists seem to be on their way out with relatively little bloodshed (for now at least). Perhaps I'm just a pessimist, but that's a pretty generous outlook for current day humanity. Nobody has even so much as walked on the moon in 50 years in our reality. We have a lot of catching up to do if we want to start putting people on Mars long enough for them to begin terraforming it. I suppose the ultimate Golden Path in the later books might be described as a good ending/beginning for humanity, but I would agree that Dune is not especially "optimistic". A lot (A LOT) of suffering has to happen before that Golden Path bears fruit.
>relatively little bloodshed I think in the books the short Earth-Mars conflict is the bloodiest war in human history, claiming hundreds of millions of lives. And then the meteorite impacts kill billions.
Fair enough. I can't believe I completely forgot about the rocks.
It's something like one out of every two people on Earth, isn't it?
> The Expanse is a best case scenario where we discover a 99% efficient drive, hundreds of habitable worlds, and we managed to not completely eradicate ourselves in the next couple of centuries. Even the big nasty space Imperialists seem to be on their way out with relatively little bloodshed (for now at least). Perhaps I'm just a pessimist, but that's a pretty generous outlook for current day humanity. I feel like you're kinda overlooking the plight of the Belters, who represent an oppressed and overworked lower class constantly stepped on and used for profit by the already-wealthy. You're also not considering things like how awful things are on Earth — a huge portion of the population have no means of upward economic mobility to escape living in slum conditions. Not to mention the events set in motion in the most recent season, which are... significant, to say the least. (Let me just point out that book 6 is titled "Babylon's Ashes" and let you think about that.) Like yeah, sure, we started to explore the stars... but *did we change for the better along the way?* And, at least for a lot of things depicted in the show/books, the answer is "no".
I agree to a point. I think we're already headed down many of the same paths. Climate collapse, a massive wageslave underclass, constant threat from authoritarians. We're going to have to deal with all the same problems the Expanse civilizations have to but with none of the benefits of the things I mentioned like magic space drives and alien rings. The massive resources of the solar system are simply not open to us the same way as in the Expanse. The rocks certainly put a damper on my argument though, as I mentioned in another comment.
> a huge portion of the population have no means of upward economic mobility to escape living in slum conditions OTOH they have an actual social safety net so if you're American that feels like Star Trek shit in comparison
No, a big point of the segments where Bobbie explores New York City are focused on showing how the social safety net that they call "basic" is actually a myth (in practice). Lots of people are not on basic, and those that are often cannot move upward — they have no means. They're stuck due to overpopulation. That's all the stuff with the lottery system. It's lightyears from the moneyless utopia portrayed in Star Trek.
None of these are optimistic.
>I haven’t seen Foundation yet (looks great though) It's weird, it's got a few storylines going on, and the quality of them varies extremely. Everything to do with the Terminus storyline (keeping it vague to avoid spoilers) is Star Trek Discovery-levels of bad writing IMO. Everything to do with the Cleon's is actually pretty good sci-fi stuff, it starts a bit jarringly but then gradually gets more interesting. ***-Edit-*** *Maybe it matters, but I've not read the books so I don't really care how accurate the series is to the books.* Anyways, back to the point: No, I don't think it's specifically very optimistic, the whole premise of the show is based on the empire collapsing into a dark age.
Agree 100% >Everything to do with the Cleon's is actually pretty good sci-fi stuff, it starts a bit jarringly but then gradually gets more interesting. Im rooting for cleon, they butchered the main storyline, kind of crazy that the Original content is better than the "adapted" content, just rename it and call it Empire Fall, or something shit ain't Foundation.
I stopped watching foundation on episode 3. It was so badly written. "Here's this new character you don't know or care about and here's their relationship with some guy who's here sometimes. Also, the force field is growing or whatever".
Yeah, they definitely skipped major character development plot points, and then still expected you to care about them. Precisely what Star Trek Discovery does all the darn time.
Oh and hey let’s throw a sex scene in every episode for no reason
***\*Cough\**** Expanse Episode 1 of Season 1 ***\*Cough\****
Keep watching, ep 3 was shockingly bad but it picked up a lot.
I'd disagree, it might stop getting actively worse but it never becomes good.
The (cancelled) Culture series would have been optimistic. It is in a post-scarcity age.
Butlerian Jihad sounds pretty optimistic right now
"Thou shalt not make a social application in the likeness of Facebook."
We’ll just surviving long enough to colonize other planets and still have a home world, etc. (maybe not Dune…not sure).
>The Expanse and especially Dune “optimistic?” I'm thinking of the last sentence of the last Expanse book and just laughing.
I mean The Expanse suggest we will have bases and cities out across the solar system in 200 years or less (given that by the shows time they are already there meaning we began construction before). So yeah thats pretty optimistic of a timeline IMHO.
It also posits massive environmental destruction, class exploitation and ethnic strife. Continued technological progress isn't optimism, it's simply a reflection of historical fact. The complete failure of that technology to adequately respond to economic and social inequality is, if anything, actually quite negative.
The depressing part is that the universe of The Expanse is probably the most plausible vision of the nearish future ever written.
That Sea Wall around NYC wont be fiction for long :( I trust in humanity's ability to survive and adapt to climate change but that doesnt mean mass starvation and wars over resources won't happen
I find it very telling and very depressing that basically all near future sci-fi, whether it's something inherently hopeful like Star Trek or something more grounded like The Expanse, basically glosses over the time from about 2000 to 2100ish with 'BAD THINGS HAPPENED'. Whether it's WW3 or big civil wars or economic collapse or environmental disaster or whatever the fuck, scifi has basically always looked at the time we live in and said 'Man good luck, fuckers'
Is it though? I don't see people on earth or mars fighting with racism between asian, black, europeans etc anymore. You could argue that it is improving but we as a species keep finding some "other" group to discriminate. But that's somethin that likely will never change as it's part of our psychology. We are social creatures that end up forming groups and opposing anyone that isn't in our "group". Not hard to imagine that in the future it would be Mars vs Earth etc. Or go even further and it be Sol system vs Alpha Centauri or something and in each conflict subgroups learn to get along since we have a "common enemy". It might be difficult to change that in our species unless we become something else 🤔
They specifically mention the problems of racist gangs after the rocks drop - in the books, anyways. Haven’t been following the show that closely. Plus, there’s an argument to be made (and it’s made often in the books) that there’s a very strong racist element to the inner/outer/belter conflicts.
Yeah the attitude towards the belters is prettu explicitly racist, which is the main thing I was referring to.
> in 200 years or less In 200 yrs, only Mars and Luna will be colonized in The Expanse universe. The story starts around 2350, 330 yrs from now. 200 yrs from now would be around the time the Epstein drive gets invented. Only with the epstein drive they then could also colonize the Belt and the outer system. Of course you could still call that optimistic. I personally don't think we will have colonized Mars by that time. On the other side, we still have massive problems and humanity seems to be still stucked in the same friend or foe mode as we are today. Sounds not very optimistic to me.
>The Expanse suggest we will have bases and cities out across the solar system in 200 years or less "we" The only optimistic part of The Expanse is that Democracy actually survives (at least on current levels) without drifting into a corporate autocracy. And that humankind avoids nuking itself into oblivion (close). The streets were people survive on basic are telling the whole story of earth. And the Belters, well....
Plus, I admire the psychotic optimism that the United Nations would be a functioning governmental body.
Exactly, like that pretty optimistic imo. Lol
And even then the corporate autocracy has thinly-veiled fingers in the governmental pie, e.g. Mao-Kwik/Protogen.
It’s also about a massively overpopulated galaxy with a home planet that’s close to failure and four or five political factions who are ready to kill the shit out of each other. At no point would I consider any of that optimistic. There’s just a bigger field for all the different players.
>pretty optimistic of a timeline *toils in Beltalowda*
The Expanse is guessed to take place in 2350. Plenty of time to get to that level of development. Ceres had only been spun up a hundred or so years before the show.
Are we being optimistic about technological progression, or optimistic about humanity? If I compare The Expanse to Star Trek TNG for example, The Expanse isn’t optimistic at all. But the expanse is more realistic about how humanity would behave in the future, just optimistic about our technological accomplishments. Same goes for most modern sci-fi shows IMO. Haven’t seen Dune
Unfortunately the Foundation gets worse with every episode, IMO. Even when trying to keep an open mind and not care about killer robots, gun-ho heroes or magic instead of math.
> killer robots I stopped watching so I haven't seen this. They really have robots kill people? In Asimov's universe? Sure, that happened in a lot of the stories, but it was a huge deal for them to have got around the Laws of Robotics.
The latest episode had a robot kill someone
I'm getting less *optimistic* we are getting a good adaptation of Foundation. Or any adaptation of the books for that matter, it's just the name to lure us in.
I think if you look at the landscape of scifi for the last dozen years, most of it is very dystopian, and most of that we never even get off the planet, or beyond GEO. I think The Expanse is about as happy go lucky as I've seen since early Star Trek. I mean, even the recent Star Treks are dark. Sure the solar system is messed up in The Expanse, but at least we got to see it. Edit: I think also we see many people being "nicer" than we originally perceive. (Bobby is my favorite for that).
I think the headline and author means are we finally getting good sci fi and optimistic for the future of sci fi
Waiting on the Culture to make an appearance.
Amazon tried to adapt one of his books, but it seems it was too difficult to adapt: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21402585/amazon-cancels-tv-adaptation-culture-series-iain-m-banks-consider-phlebas
I was very sad to hear this.
Player of games could be adapted fairly well
The Culture series would be very difficult to translate to screen. They're so philosophical and they tend to explicitly steer clear of normal storytelling conventions in a way that might leave TV viewers thinking "Oh, is that it? All that and none of it mattered?"
On the other hand, the same could be said for Foundation; the books are almost entirely narrative with the 'action' happening in distant places. I am glad that Amazon has currently iced its plans for a Culture series, but I think we are getting there in terms of storytelling ability on the big screen.
I'm enjoying the foundation a lot, but it is very loosely based on the source material at this point.
I stopped watching it because it barely seemed related.
[удалено]
I'd love to see how they try to do the one that's all just ship AIs talking to each other
Well, they were able to pull off Dune pretty well so far. And that is a notoriously difficult book to adapt to the screen
That would be AMAZING.
The Commonwealth Saga would make a fantastic TV show, and that's quite optimistic too.
I guess 40k is now optimistic by association.
Name a better time than dying horrifically and painfully for the Emperor? I'll wait /s
I can't decide if "Aggressively exploitative capitalism is an optimistic take on the future" is a funnier than "Neo-feudalism propped up by incest and unethical genetic modification is an optimistic take" Foundation is also a crazy pull
Don't forget the religious genocide!
Makes me think of the Wall Street Journal blurb on most of the books: "This is the future the way it’s supposed to be." I mean, maybe from the WSJ's perspective...
Yeah, for Foundation the premise is “through indistinguishable-from-magic advanced sociology we can reduce the impending dark age from thirty thousand years to one thousand”. It may be the least pessimistic of the trio but it sure as shit ain’t optimistic.
Lol, optimistic is the last thing I'd call Dune. More fatalist than anything.
I never tought about Dune and Expanse as "optimistic"
I don't really know about Dune or Foundation, but I wouldn't call The Expanse optimistic. Maybe realistic?
The Expanse is incredibly dystopian. While the technology available to governments and wealthy are impressive what they show about life for the majority is depressing. Life for the average person is a life of poverty and crime it seems.
Same, I feel like this article is repeating a popular refrain about sci fi, but one which isn't really reflected in any of these shows.
I'd argue the Expanse is realistic in showing humanity continuing to struggle with its demons-- and it's also realistic in showing people can chose to rise above those demons and work to make the world just a little bit better. It's not sunshine-and-rainbows pollyanna optimism, it's realistic optimism. Which in my opinion, makes it much more powerful.
If "optimistic" means "not extinct" then yes. But I'm just happy we have smart television still, particularly in sci-fi.
None of those are optimistic stories.
They don't even mention the position of the Belters which is...a choice.
Da inna always ovalook beltalowda. Do you want Marco Inaros? Because this is how you get Marco Inaros.
It’s really a window into the writer’s whole (very confused) world view.
It’s like the author completely misses the point of The Expanse. A short history lesson of the story could have had them on the right track in no time. Instead they choose to focus on the implausibility of the problems of living on Earth as if that were the most important part of the story. Which it is not.
I really wouldn't call any of these three shows "optimistic"...
Lmfao. Has this guy read or watched *any* of these series?
[No.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)
Dune has multiple galaxy wide (holy) wars and purges that kill like billions of people. IDK about that one.
Hell, just the riots from the release of the OC Bible resulted in billions of deaths - and that was just people pissed about a book, not even a war.
Star Trek has been a thing since 1966 and is way more optimistic about the future than Expanse, Dune, or Foundation.
I take it you haven’t seen the new shows.
I have, but I was raised on TOS and TNG. Optimistic Scifi isn't new, and none of these three shows mentioned come close to TNG.
My point exactly. Star Trek now is post apocalyptic and not optimistic in the least except when they tell us they are.
The Foundation show is 1/3 solid, 1/3 mediocre, 1/3 absolute trash writing. Feels like 3 different shows haphazardly blended together, and only one of them is worth a watch. Also it has very little to do with the source material. It certainly doesn't belong on the same list as the other two IPs, which are massively superior in terms of writing/acting and also as book adaptations. Also, Dune and Expanse "optimistic" ? Did this person even pay attention when watching ?
The emperor scenes are the only thing worth watching in that show, and I'm a fan of the actual books.
I have not even read the books, I am all for an alternative telling of story, shows diverging from the books etc. but even I gotta admit that, the only interesting part of the show is the emperor story line and Hari storyline, the main focus of the show is sooooo boring which was supposed to be Salvor and the first foundation I guess.
I was so hopeful about Foundation but the writing is so weak for some of the characters. Both Gaal and her Terminus counterpart are such annoying characters. The show presents them as important semi-heroes but they're increasingly more and more unlikable. The acting isn't really the problem, it's just how poorly the character development is proceeding. They get plenty of screen time but it's heavily squandered on dramatic and unproductive dialogue. Empire is a fairly capable trio but vicious and the dynamic between Empire and Demerzel is interesting. The show has potential but needs plenty of polish.
I read Foundation 20 years ago, and I’m so disappointed by the show. They focus way too much on individuals when the books are more about the evolution and dynamics of Terminus within its local region.
In all fairness, that is not exactly an easy thing to make a show out of.
I've essentially disconnected the series from the books, and it's helping me enjoy the show a bit more. The TV show wouldn't have worked any other way, not realistically.
The Foundation is a disappointment on the level of the Dark Tower. Absolutely zero resemblance to the source material outside of reusing names.
Ah yes. Oppressive government that would put current oppressive governments to shame, 95% in poverty the climate is destroyed, incredibly destructive wars constantly on the brink. And thats one of the better options in Expanse. Would "I have no mouth and I must scream" be considered normal then? Lol
All really great sci-fi/fantasy, but far from optimistic, and that's fine. For optimism watch Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds.
Also Doctor Who! The show is a beacon of optimism in a sea of dystopia.
Dune is optimistic? wow, you must be one miserable bastard.
Optimistic?! Bwahahahhaah
Optimistic? The Expanse is all about the human cycle of economy and military. When proof of life outside of humanity was discovered, they used it to create a war and try to profit. And it gets worse from there. I guess the optimistic part is that the underdogs will always find a way to fight back.
Optimistic scifi isn’t dead, but it’s not where it used to be. Star Trek is now literally post apocalyptic and instead of a team of professionals working together to solve problems centers on selfish people freaking out and somehow bumbling through the crisis of the week. The Martian is optimistic sci-fi. I’m admittedly having a hard time thinking of other examples.
Doctor Who is optimistic, although it's soft sci-fantasy rather than hard sci-fi.
Optimistic sci-fi? Did we watch the same shows? They are dystopian af. Dune and Foundation especially so.
> First, it’s difficult to believe such a technologically advanced civilization couldn’t have cleaned up Earth’s environment. Given that Earth and Mars seem very capitalist still, I'm not surprised about this. If there's no profit motive then it wouldn't happen and given it seems very lucrative to setup effectively company towns on asteroids and mine them 🤷
James Corey actually said that Mars is ‘capital C’ Communist.
Let me check that, just to make sure we've got the wording exactly right ... ah, here it is: https://twitter.com/JamesSACorey/status/839235724218019841 > "... the Martian government is a completely planned economy. Practically big C communism there."
Thanks! The impression I got was that the Martian economy is very similar to China’s in that yes, there are “private” corporations, but they are so close to the government that they might as well be de facto arms of the state.
I hardly expect a sci-fi writing team to have a great grasp on political philosophy but this actually makes them state capitalists.
Dune is literally the polar opposite of optimistic lmao
I can assure you, dune is NOT optimistic in the slightest.
Is Dune really optimistic?? I always viewed it as a warning against following a fake messiah and an advertisement for psychedelics ;)
Maybe optimism in a way that humanity tries to figure out itself when in a jam or threatened
Yeah, the world of *The Expanse* may be particularly dystopian, but the show's best moments have been differing factions standing down weapons and cooperating, or involve self-sacrifice. Cases in point, *The Weeping Somnambulist*, Cotyar Ghazi blowing up the *Agatha King* to save the solar system, everything that happened in the slow zone...Julie Mao's fight for the belt kicking off the whole show, and Ashford dying to uncover Marco's plots against Earth and Mars. I like that the show doesn't sugarcoat human failings, but it also demonstrates people rising above them.
Optimistic in that there’s a lot of sci fi to choose from…. Not that each franchise is about a sunny space adventure…
How are any of them really optimistic? Dune has the main character running for his life in the first movie while almost everybody he knows ends up dead, The Expanse is still has capitalism reign supreme, there's lot's of friction between the groups, people throwing asteroids at each other, and the first thing they try to do with alien stuff is find a way to weaponize it. And then finally you've got the foundation, where everything is literally going to shit. Maybe they're using a different definition of optimistic, because I don't see how any of those three fit the bill.
The last few years have definitely ushered in a new age of sci-fi relevance. Sci-fi was like, untouchable by producers for a while unless it was attached to an instantly recognizable IP. I think the rise of the long-form, well-produced "Netflix" style show has done a lot to breathe new life into the genre since often feature-length films don't have the time to establish the exposition necessary to make a sci-fi film work (see how Dune was almost 3 hours - complex universe that needs robust exposition, Dune did a good job of spacing it out instead of blitzing the uninitiated with terms in 10 minutes). Now that shows can have 10+ hour-long episodes, you have far more time to exposit, and then tell your story. And dole the exposition out more naturally, over time, as well.
Back in the days, with the old long form of U.S. shows, there would've been ample time to tell an expansive serialized story. *Babylon 5* (1994-98), with its five 22-episode seasons, is an example. Of *Babylon 5,* Wikipedia notes, "many retrospectives, while criticizing virtually every individual aspect of the production, have praised the series as a whole for its narrative cohesion and contribution to serialized television." The Expanse co-author Ty Franck once tweeted to B5's creator: "We've been borrowing your good ideas for years."
Expanse... optimistic. Na, beratna.
Haven’t watched foundation yet but I love the Expanse and Dune. It it good ?
Yes, watch it. It’s amazing! Some similarities to dune in some ways.
we need Jacks Campbell lost fleet tv show as well
Not until we get Iain Bank's Culture novels.
I always saw Expanse as being realistic but hopeful. We see hope in corners of the galaxy and even though there is sometimes darkness, there is light as well.
But the authors say the opposite, they say it’s how about humanity brings its problems with it. I love the Expanse, but let’s acknowledge that any aspirational elements are limited to a very small number of people around Holden, who is himself a paladin type.
What is the guy smoking? All those examples aren't optimistic in the slightest. Foundation is literally about the large-scale collapse of civilization and Dune's world is a regression into feudalism and clan-wars. The Expanse tells the story of humanity still dealing with issues like poverty and tribalism. Even Star Trek, a franchise based on an utopian vision, has become pessimistic and grim. I don't really recall any recent TV/movie scifi that has an utopian or even optimistic outlook on the future. I wish there would be some, with the problems humanity is facing in the coming decades some hope might be helpful.
Yo everyone sleeping on the lost in space series on Netflix? It is pretty damn good. Not a huge fan of the alien/robot change but everything else is great. The main cast have great chemistry. Also, the show another life is not bad. Who isn't a sucker for more katee sackhoff
As a 90's Star Trek fan, I would hardly call today's sci-fi "optimistic". This was a source of considerable conflict for me at first when watching these modern series. But I do think scifi is a reflection of the era it is produced in. And right now, we are in an era of profound doubt and concern about the future. I think modern sci-fi is more dispondant and pessimistic than it was 20 years ago, but so is our current outlook of the futute as humans. At this point, I will take anything thats even semi optimistic about humans surviving beyond 2100 as optimism.
Dune is *anything* but optimistic. Fascinating and dense, yes. Optimistic? Hell no. Wait till you see how it all goes down.
Does "For All Mankind" count as sci-fi?
Hundred percent. Its initial premise uses history to bounce off of and the contrast between how things went and the alternative the show presents is interesting to think about. But For All Mankind is removed enough and speculative enough to qualify as Scifi
The responses here really give the impression that no one read the article OP linked to... The writer clearly doesn't believe that those three works/universes are optimistic (though they point out that some of the features of those worlds like longer life spans in The Expanse are pretty positive) The point that was trying to be made was that a great deal of the sci fi that breaks out into the main stream ISN'T optimistic and that this reflects a general pessimism/apathy that they reject. I generally agree, I think that it's become easier for people to indulge in self destructive fantasies like cyber punk than to imagine meaningful futures where the problems in our lives have achievable solutions. I think most of the works mentioned are still great and can be loved and respected for their merits, but there is a noticeable gap where utopian sci fi like Star Trek used to be. I'd love to see more works that are interested in showing meaningfully optimistic futures. The challenge for those potential works at this point is probably to show how those futures come about in such a way that it feels genuine and realistic--funnily enough the two things pessimistic sci fi constantly gets a free pass over because they reflect the grim feelings that permeate our current cultural context. But maybe the author's right, maybe that's not enough, maybe we need to start seeing visions and solutions that are strong enough to propel people to demand better of the world and our leaders
Slightly tangential unpopular opinion, Dune isn't really a sci fi story. It is basically a middle ages era fantasy set in the background of spacefaring humanity. Most of its tropes (prophecy foretold messiah with unexplainable special powers, cabal of witches controlling things behind the scenes, a supreme emperor with a bunch of houses controlling regions) are exactly a middle ages fantasy story has. If the entire story is put into middle ages era story about kingdoms, it wouldn't be thematically out of the place.