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Comment by yumraj | Hacker News Reader

Such as?

Edit: especially curious about which topics folks think might be considered taboos in Western science fiction.

Maybe the primacy of individualism/freedoms as the only path to collective prosperity? Like, what if the Chinese model really is the best way to run a country (not an endorsement, btw)?

Not "taboo," persay, but it's something thing that's not really seriously considered by most westerners (not the ones I know, at least).

Then you might like Han Song

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Song_(writer)

Any of his works in particular? (Sadly, it looks from the wikipedia article like I'm not likely to find an english translation for most of his work)

But collectivism is widely popular in the west, no?

To some extent - but it is also explicitly contrasted with individual freedoms (presented as a good thing), and limitations on those freedoms have to be justified and rationalized in far more detail than "social harmony".

You could read Ken MacLeod or Iain M. Banks to get some Western views on that.

The ones we may not realise are worth talking about.

Just because this new wave of non-Western science fiction has issues, this doesn't mean it cannot contribute some novel richness to a genre that has so far been dominated by white Westerners.

Innovation doesn't lie in perfect solutions, and that's especially true for art.

I found western science fictions tends to promote heroism in some way, and whatever obstacle the main character faces, they fight off their enemies in the end. Chinese novels indeed feel different in many ways.

As a westerner, I'm not the right person to ask.

Can you think of a Western science fiction novel that portrays eugenics in a positive light?

Sterling’s Shapers come to mind, but it’s not common.

Neal Stephenson's _Seven Eves_ ends up with several distinct branches of humanity. It was a necessary adaptation to a population bottleneck -- after a global apocalypse there were only 7 living women and no men or sperm, but they did have a genetics lab. So they cloned themselves with some small changes to avoid inbreeding. Some of the changes weren't so small.

Some of the populations did well, some were strange, and some were constantly warring. So not quite "positive", but not gratuitously negative either.

I wouldn’t quite say “positive” light, but Stand on Zanzibar is surprisingly balanced as it contrasts overpopulation with eugenics.

Of course this is almost unreadable fifty years later, so I’m not actually recommending the book.

An Anti-Enlightenment message would be one. There's a lot to unpack there.

Maybe something like Adrian Tchaikovsky's "The Expert Systems Brother" touches on what you mean? It explores what a back-to-basics society with hidden tech keeping it afloat might look like.

Perhaps we have fewer children to make our ongoing existence sustainable.

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