No.168
Can we have transcendent fantasy for a change?
The genre appears to be so beaten, all these spaceships, humanoids, wars, quantum magic et al.
A lot of fiction seems to focus on personal experience of humans as well. It is so dull, so boilerplate.
It looks like the pretty serious discussion of how people in the future will have a problem with horseshit piling up in cities a century ago or so. Only linear foresight.
Let there be no people or anthropocentric wishful thinking. Let things conform to known physics laws and go from there.
No.177
Or let's put it that way:
Can we have people discussing What to Do?
What to Do is a relevant question in our time of development and globalisation. We may soon have a collective planetary will to speak of, with luck, so we need to discuss what we want to do with it.
Maybe not even fiction, but philosophy, however much I despise it usually. Is there such a discussion? Beyond shiny new technology or mysteries of superstring dimensions, is there a discussion of what we, humanity and the Earth biosphere, want to do with our collective hands? Other than masturbate, that is.
No.188
Greg Egan is your man, personally I have never found him all that interesting however.
Also check out One Million A.D.
http://www.amazon.com/One-Million-D-Gardner-Dozois-ebook/dp/B00O284SCC/Far Futures:
http://www.amazon.com/Far-Futures-Gregory-Benford/dp/1483031993And Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction.