Comment by NoTeslaThrow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NoTeslaThrow | Hacker News Reader

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Not mentioning Kim Stanley Robinson's The Mars Trilogy is insane. Almost "didn't bother to google the topic" insane. Screw the article; it's a worthless wrapper around a single quote by one of the authors of the actual paper[0], which is also far less stimulating than KSR (although I'm sure very validating to us KSR-heads!). just go find some of the best hard sci fi you'll ever find (and hundreds of pages loving devoted to lichen and escarpments) at your local library.

And unlike most hard sci fi: it's optimistic, the characters are vivid and memorable well after you stop reading, and i've never read anything else like it. Except maybe Ursula K Le Guin's The Disposessed (and she was his mentor).

[0]: https://imafungus.pensoft.net/article/145477/

Edit: no disrespect intended to the author, who was likely unaware of such an amazing trilogy. I am just very excited about lichen on mars. Far, far, far more excited than I am about humans on it.

To be fair, those are three very long books, in my reading more about the people and how politics might play out in that situation with competing ideas and factions vying for power. My interpretation of the ending is not optimistic - they had to go to the stars to try again, but they did persevere in a way on Mars.

The automated robots and factories able to make copies of themselves by harvesting raw materials is not as far fetched as some speculative fiction (the jaunting in The Stars My Destination or instant transportation pads in Ringworld come to mind off the top of my head) but though conceptually I see the steps it is several technological leaps ahead of us at present.

> My interpretation of the ending is not optimistic - they had to go to the stars to try again, but they did persevere in a way on Mars.

Humans managed to avoid the collapse of human society into hobbesian violence or "dystopian" fantasy while being tethered to our very real society and cultural conflicts, so that seems pretty optimistic to me. There's also star trek, but that depicts in a post-scarcity world that seems further away than ever. Utopian (in the imaginative, hopeful meaning and not the pejorative sense) sci-fi feels like slim pickings to me.

But yes, the automation depicted is certainly many decades ahead of us. Particularly in a world of enshittified, rented everything.

The use of the word 'insane' is a bit strong of you don't mean disrespect.

I do support your enthusiasm for the topic and applaud your critique of the article.

But your argument seems to be: the authors didn't pay much respect to the science, in favor of clickbait; they should've read work of fiction instead.

I cannot asses how scientifically accurate Kim Stanley Robinsons' writing is, but he's a doctor of literature rather than a astrobotanist.

> The use of the word 'insane' is a bit strong of you don't mean disrespect.

I'm insane, too. All the best people are.

> But your argument seems to be: the authors didn't pay much respect to the science, in favor of clickbait; they should've read work of fiction instead.

I am definitely not making an argument for anything. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. I'd rather have my teeth ripped out than get roped into a good-faith argument with a stranger from VC culture.

> I cannot asses how scientifically accurate Kim Stanley Robinsons' writing is, but he's a doctor of literature rather than a astrobotanist.

WHAT?! Why didn't anyone tell me?

R G B Mars

But what about (AM)OLED, and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PenTile_matrix_family ?

Did you read his "The Years of Rice and Salt" btw? I've found this to be more entertaining, though less epic. Just one paperback of slightly alternate history, showing how arbitrary things come to be and are.

The Years of Rice and Salt is amazing, very vivid characters, and (SPOILER) it's amazing how he ties in multiple lifetimes.

Shaman is another one I'd recommend.

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