100% no doubt The parable of the sower and subsequent book. I read that book - started reading it - in June this year and read it over about a month. It was very creepy to be reading a sci fy book set in the future that is now my present and while it is not as bad right now as Octavia Butler makes it out to be, we are definitely heading there if drastic action is not taken immediately.
Edit: the books in order: (Only two, sadly she died while writing the third but still both worth reading, there isn’t a clif hanger at the end) https://www.octaviabutler.com/parableseries
Absolutely this! Octavia Butler literally wrote a fascist American president with the slogan “Make America Great Again” in 1993.
V for Vendetta
I like your optimism
L for Luigi?
"Lack of respect, wrong attitude, failure to obey authority. The Farm, immediately. - death sentence in Ellison’s book ‘A Boy and His Dog’
Awesome book. The whole series was good, except the last one.
The Simpsons
Her.
Given that we’ve already had a few suicides caused by (or at least exacerbated by) LLM chatbots, I think we’re already there.
Idiocracy/Dont look up/1984/Judge Dredd
My bets on Robocop style corporate dictatorship until terminator style annihilation occurs.
Star Trek was never on the cards.
Actually, star trek might be. In their lore, things got a lot worse before they got better.
World War 3 began in 2026 according to TNG, we’re close!
In the aftermath, the world became an irradiated apocalyptic hellhole for almost a century, most cities destroyed and governments collapsed. I’d say we’re well on our way to that state, question is whether or not we emerge better on the other side. I’d almost be okay with that if there was some assurance that humanity would come out as Star Trek afterwards.
Bell Riots never happened, that timeline is broken.
1984
deleted by creator
Been reading Corey Doctorow lately and catch myself thinking, “Aw c’mon! That’s not how it works!” And then remember, he’s writing about the near future.
Radicalized was pretty damn close to the mark. Sure in this case Luigi was radicalized from back pain and not cancer.
I do believe that a lot of aspects of The Ministry for the Future by K.S. Robinson have chances of becoming true.
The deadly heatwave in south Asia, governments going rogue and playing with geo engineering on their own, climate refugee camps and the general sense of too little too late.
But the book is fairly optimistic, so hopefully, people of the world getting together and accepting a new paradigm will come to be true.
People are talking about really wonderful interesting things, but I can’t even choose between those I’m thinking about.
Star Wars EU - because that’s what I see around. Lots of stupidity, evil and decay, but in the end there’s the sky and the life with all its beauty. The old part of it, which mostly was happening after Empire’s institution while the rebels were not something close to victory in anyone’s opinion.
Vacuum Flowers - that’s the “worse is better” evolutionary optimism. That it will all become only worse, there’s no good defeating evil, we will all die, but - life finds a way, humanity finds a way, and so on. It will go on.
Heinlein’s Door into Summer - some parts are too much like our reality.
Actually I think all 3 have the same general idea, I just can’t quite catch it.
Funny, I’d have said we’re closer to the new Star Wars cinematic trilogy than the EU.
You think you’ve won, then a few years later, oh look, fascism is back and it’s killing people in job lots again.
fElon is trying to make droids.
“Wow, I can’t believe it, after all that sacrifice, we’ve won against the fascist empire!”
“Somehow Putrumpatine returned. :(”
Honestly though, I think we’re seeing a lot of the prequel trilogy ring true, especially since it has a lot of similarities to historical empire corruption and collapse.
Except the bad guys in government are ridiculously, cartoonishly obvious and don’t even need to hide anymore.
I’m going to go obscure here and say that the world of 2077 from the television show Continuum
It ran for a few seasons; I enjoyed it for the most part. Not the best, not the worst. But definitely in terms of the premise where Corporations have essentially bought out failing governments, leading to an advanced surveillance state, and anti-corporate terrorists, etc… etc…
WALL-E. We just don’t have a way to escape yet, but the rest is happening regardless.
That’s a very optimistic view of our future.
I’m sure Bezass and Muskpoo got us covered, just most of us can’t afford to leave with them.
deleted by creator
A combination of all the worst bits of the worst ones
100% its cyberpunk. corpo takeover with having to use technology to get by even when it is bad for you.
Yeah, but where the hell are my leg implants that allow me to double jump and air dash already?
air dash is a skill. your just being lazy.
That would be cool…but I tell ya what, we have Ray Bans that you can talk to which require an account and act as a personal body cam to use your every waking moment for spying, registering shadow-accounts for everyone you interact with, and ai training.
How’s that sound?
(Man, we’re in the stupidest timeline aren’t we…)
We don’t even get cool neon signs, everything is sad beige now… :(
honestly the neon all over like tokyo is one of the more unrelistic aspects to me. same with the private link. all the ads will be straight to the optic nerve and it will be so dreary when looking at it plainly.
Makes me think of
LOL! Aerodynamic efficiency is great and all but I’m also already SO tired of every compact and crossover looking like a friggin’ jellybean.
