We need new fiction now

More like we know a lot more people that would have zombie bite parties because they "trust their immune system" and simultaneously don't believe in the zombie hoax.

You didn't know that already? The cute to a zombie bite is a bullet to the head and no one wants to be shot.

And yell at you for asking if they have ever been bitten.

This is a great comment

Funny, I was saying this for decades about zombie bites. I was such a downer pessimist. Now after COVID hit my family has rebranded me a realist.

You wouldn't be able to see the aliens. The best you would be able to do is get blurry pictures of their ships from telescopes if you're lucky. Conspiracy nuts would do fine.

Something Something else*

I thought the same thing. I could see the world banding (mostly) together for a fight, but not to just make life better.

Too complicated or invisible or…

Bing bing bing!

Internal Combustion Engine? Nuclear Bomb? SCIENCE, praise be.

Invisible / long term & murky phenomena? JUST YOUR OPINION, man, I trust Facebook and WhatsApp forwards on this one.

On that note, I highly recommend checking out The Three Body Problem books. Without going into spoilers, this is a huge part of one of the books.

I still can believe the world to rally together when it means to kill something.

The pandemic was an opportunity for humanity to kill something, at least to the extent that viruses are alive.

Sounds like right wing porn.

Aliens are woke

I wouldn't have believed you a few years ago but that pretty much happened.

The GOP would become the "Human Power Elite" trope in "They Live." Literally I swear to God that was a metaphor for Tim Scott and Herschel Walker. For that matter MTG and Boebert, too.

Also, the future of Elysium (also Bloomkamp) looks more and more likely, with the 1 percent fucking off to a luxury space station in orbit and the rest of humanity living in poverty on the destroyed Earth.

People getting together for the common good is just a government, the exact thing libertarians hate.

I think Don't Look Up got it pretty right, a lot of people would be willing to band together, if not the majority of the world. But politicians and billionaires would ruin it for everyone even if it means everyone dies. When the time comes we can still band together, and take down the people we need to

https://www.amazon.com/Libertarian-Walks-Into-Bear-Liberate-ebook/dp/B083J1FXY8

Here's a plug for a book I've never read. I think you'll like it.

Edit: I bought it.

Review: People are scary. Bears like donuts. Sometimes it's hilarious when those facts combine. Other times, it's terrifying.

Therefore, due to my judging you entirely on one sentence, you will enjoy this book. (That is not an exclusive link. Get it anywhere. I bet your library has an app that can send it to your phone.)

Honestly same both from and outsider and in group way. Libertarians we're willing to do nothing to help or worse risk others lives to virtue signal and statist saw governments fail to do anything meaningful and waffle about the best restrictions to put in place and still thought "but if my guy was in charge".

There were people making actual differences out there, but it almost always a political.

I'm glad mutual aid gained some hype for a little bit at least.

Yeah any ideology that's dependent on nobody prioritizing their self interest over society's best interest isn't going to work.

But that doesn't mean a functional society isn't possible. We're living in one right now. Sure there are a lot of improvements needed, but improvement is possible.

Utopia actually translates to "no place". Only fictional people can achieve a utopia. Real life functional societies with real people are an iterative process. Make improvements, some asshole finds a loophole to exploit, make more improvements to prevent assholes from exploiting the system. Repeat. Do that over and over again, vote in elections over and over again to move society a little closer, inch by inch, a little closer to the ideal, even when the ideal isn't actually possible.

Societies aren't created by intelligent design, they're a product of evolution. But that evolution can be guided by the people that vote. Democracy isn't something that's ideal, it's a grind. You're never going to be living in an ideal society, but if you try you can make the society you live in a little better.

You were smart enough to see that it's really a fetish.

What does this even mean? What does COVID have to do with Libertarianism?

Yep, scifi will need to amend the trope to "united just enough..."

If they had made a cure we wouldn't be living through the biggest wave since it first started, years later, with hundreds if not thousands of people still dying from it daily around the world (never mind the millions left disabled).. 🙄🙄🙄

Academia and pharmaceutical companies united to develop the vaccine while the shitmunchers were rioting in the streets because epidemiology is confusing

Individual governments and pharmaceutical companies aren't enraptured by the same degree of propaganda as your basic idiot citizen.

Arrival. Great flick.

thats a good point. I bet for an acute existential threat the major powers would nominally ally themselves against it, while still playing politics. So NATO, Russia, China, India, and whomever else would throw their hat in.
We see that if the threat has a long tail though (climate change) that nobody gives a shit.

There are so many stories from WW2 about how Americans didn't unite.

Here's one of my favorites Patriots complained about air crews painting naked ladies on their planes. They were fine with kids getting drafted and sent overseas, but God Forbid they thought about S*X

Quite a take on it!

Meanwhile, homo sapien are effectively half fighting chimp, half sexy loving bonobo.

We get to choose our own path.

Username checks out.

So the reason why an ideal future isn’t possible is because we can’t get past our weirdo loser ideas.

I can now picture Kirk, Spock and Bones having a chuckle about some weirdo aliens that can’t advance because they’re stuck in the rut of doomerism.

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was indeed a closet communist who infused his political beliefs into the show. The concept of a peaceful, egalitarian society united under one government, where resources were shared and everyone worked for the betterment of all - this is essentially a communist ideal. In fact, the characters themselves embody different facets of Marxist theory. For instance, Captain Kirk represents the proletariat fighting against oppression while Mr. Spock embodies the need for logic and rational decision-making.

Star Trek's vision of the future was meant to inspire hope and demonstrate what humanity could achieve when freed from the constraints of class and economic systems. In many ways, the show serves as a subtle form of communist propaganda. As you mentioned, each episode often portrayed humans as progressing towards an idealistic future, while the aliens faced various challenges due to their clinging to old ideologies and social structures. This reflects Roddenberry's belief that to truly advance, societies must shed outdated and divisive ideas.

By presenting a world where these barriers are overcome, Star Trek encourages viewers to question their own societal norms and consider how they might work together in a more just and cooperative manner. Although the series was never overtly political, its underlying message clearly illustrates Roddenberry's support for communism, making it a unique piece of entertainment that not only entertains but also educates its audience.

Nice. I'd have used lemmy.ml as my target, they are a bit angrier over there.

There is no way the "united" states makes it a thousand years (climate change allowing).

The US couldn't even get it's own shit together, let alone make any coherent pronouncements to anyone else

Oxford University wanted to open source it's vaccine. Bill Gates and his foundation "convinced" them to partner solely with Astrazenica.

OP desperately needs to read The Expanse. 🤦

Remember when Tawanize officials were trying to tell the WHO about their experience and lessons learned and the WHO officials pretended to disconnect because they were being pressured to not let them be acknowledged as a country?

There also was annoying back and forth of "not built here" syndrome between the US and Germany

As they say though, everything is political

Well it only starts improving after next world war.

mirror universe.

evil timeline

I mean, even in the StarTrek universe humanity got WAYYYYY worse before it got better.

Turns out we were the born all along

People on the Enterprise would point and laugh at an alien society that's stuck in a rut because of Doomerism.

Thinking that cynicism will result in an ideal society is illogical. You can't control how other people think, you can only control how you think. If everyone is is mired in the cynicism of doomerism, would we be in the ideal Star Trek society?

For us in Germany it went pretty smooth. Kurdish Immigrants developed the first and very potent vaccine, the industry went into overdrive and delivered faster than anyone could have imagined, a well know Immunologist became Minister for Health, we received daily updates, none of the major party tried to downplay anything, when a new chancellor was voted to power he mostly continued the policy of his predecessor and when priority lists for vaccination were given out people simple honoured them. After two years 75% were vaccinated.

And trust me, no one drank bleach. Everyone made fun of the stupid Yankees who did.

So, who's up for false flagging an alien invasion to get earth away from a dystopian path

Humans can't even unify against trump. I'm telling you you'll be seeing factions worship them aliens while some will be hiding inside their bunkers isolated from everything

yeah i think in 2020 everyone got fed up because it wasn't like a tangible, visible threat. it's just invisible, everywhere, all the time. you have to desensitize to some degree to live a semblance of a life.

if there were alien snipers posted up everywhere it's a much different matter

We can most certainly come together willingly, it just depends who has the power.

Ok sure an external threat helps, how about your boss? Most everybody has a boss.

Or healthcare, unaffordable bad healthcare is perhaps the greatest external threat we all face on earth. We can certainly unify around that, it is absolutely in the realm of possibility.

How many times in history the colony was still infighting even under the bootheel. There is no way a united India or a united China or a united South America would have been ruled by the Europeans. They got a billion and homefield the other side has a few hundred guys with muskets.

I think you underestimate the level of hatred some people have for various groups or individuals.

Also it's pretty damned likely that there would be a contingent of people who would insist that we shouldn't fight back because we have it coming, that fighting will make things worse, that the aliens are working for God, or whatever.

Eight legged freaks?

I haven't seen that film in years

That's the same story as Noah but with rugged individualism.

If you think only the Americans have highly polarized politics and fucked up during COVID, I have a bridge to sell to you…

In a lot of countries they also don't though. Especially fast developing countries that have first world countries pouring tons of money in like Africa.

world superpowers were somewhat effecticely cooperative

In that book the ideologies that divided people certainly existed, but they were not geographical.

You could make similar arguments about covid.

The only kind that matters. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Not to worry, we had our fair share of COVID nutjobs in the Netherlands as well. Including a whole political party.

Or maybe pay the screenwriters to do more than a first draft?

I also used to wonder why writing in TV shows and movies got so bad in the last decade. A lot of things feel like it's just a first draft level of quality. Some information came out last year that indicated that they were indeed filming things off of a first draft. Because the studios didn't want to pay writers beyond making a first draft.

Hopefully that issue has been resolved. Hooray for unions!

Expeditionary forces

https://www.goodreads.com/series/185650-expeditionary-force

Obama said the book had "immense" scope, and that it was "fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty".

I didn't really enjoy that book, it just strained incredulity too much to me, but they did get that part right.

Fidelity?

And then they'll tell you what the sci stands for and keep removed, and honestly quite rightly so.

It IS a dumb trope that doesn't reflect realiy, and fiction's job is to reflect reality, not to break away from it. Not with human reactions and behavior.

Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it shouldn't be believable. A good story shouldn't make you suspend disbelief to the point that it keeps feeling unrealistic, at least within the world that the author created.

If I write a story about an average Joe who goes back in time to the 1700s, people might be able to accept that premise, but then if I write that, because he's from our time, he knows how to do everything our civilization does, from making and programming a computer to building a jet airplane to landing people on the moon, I think most people would find that too unrealistic to be enjoyable.