Truly Imaginative Yet Solid Science Fiction

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The discussion highlights a frustration with traditional science fiction's reliance on familiar alien species and social structures, often mirroring historical empires. The conversation shifts to the appeal of history for its inherent unpredictability and imaginative potential. An exception noted is Anders Sandberg's "Hildemar's Knots," which presents a unique concept of life as energy vortices in neutron stars, supported by credible astrophysical research. The dialogue also references an older short story by Isaac Asimov, "Victory Unintentional," where robots mistakenly perceived as humans avert a conflict with Jovians, illustrating how earlier sci-fi benefitted from a lack of contemporary scientific knowledge. The mention of authors like Alastair Reynolds and Ian Banks underscores a trend in modern space opera that balances imaginative storytelling with scientific plausibility, exploring themes of time dilation and advanced civilizations.
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I read much science fiction as a teen but got fed up with the limited imagination. The aliens were always based on some known species : octopi, lions, wasps, etc. and the social system was usually a thinly disguised Roman Empire. Sure, you can write good stories in that framework, but I gravitated to history. The stuff that happens in real life isn't constrained by plausibility so it can be more outrageous and "imaginative."

Here's an exception, a truly original idea. Anders Sandberg's Hildemar's Knots. Life made of energy vortices in the superfluid/superconductive cores of neutron stars. While the astrophysics might be unknown to most, it is quite respectable stuff. The most prominent exponent is Egor Babaev. He's had over a hundred articles in Nature and Physical Review and is dripping with prizes and honors. Anders Sandberg is no slouch either, having been senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. Be assured that the science is respectable.
 
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Hornbein said:
I read much science fiction as a teen but got fed up with the limited imagination.
I don't remember most of the details, but I remember reading an old short story about humanity sending robotic creations to make first contact with the denizens of Jupiter. As in, on the surface of Jupiter. The robots end up being immune to various things the Jovians subject them to, such as the liquid oxygen that they douse them and their ship with as a form of chemical warfare (or something like that, it's been 30+ years), along with a few other things that also end up being useless against robots. Finally, after mistaking the robots to be actual humans and seeing that they and their ship are incredibly resilient, the Jovian leader calls off his crusade that he was planning to launch against humanity (which would almost certainly have been successful given the IMMENSE amount of raw material Jupiter would provide if it had a substantial solid interior along with the ludicrous amount of surface area of which to populate and extract said resources) and the robots get in their ship and leave, after accidentally saving humanity by simply not telling the Jovians that they were robots and not humans.

It strikes me that many older sci-fi stories are 'more creative' for the very reason that we didn't know as much about the universe as we do now, so stories like this didn't seem impossible when first written. It's a little easier to create when you don't have decades of astronomy and cosmology telling you that your ideas are impossible.
 
It's a wonderful short story by Isaac Asimov. The title was something like "victory..."
 
Alaistar Reynolds - Space opera sans FTL, there is some magic drive that can do 1G acceleration forever but no violations of relativity. Pushing Ice and House of Suns are two stand alone novels that explore this

Ian Banks Culture Novels - Space opera does w/ FTL, but sort of Star Trek for grownups
 
I'd say The Forever War fits into this category. I read it long ago, maybe 1975. It's how time dilation causes soldiers to return to Earth hundreds of years after they departed. They have trouble fitting in as their customs are archaic and despised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War. Today it seems remarkably prescient.
 

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