At Play in the Fields of the Sturgeons

I am sincerely delighted any time I find evidence of a new generation discovering the power of posing science-fictiony questions.

When a new crop of cultural speculators are glimpses walking beneath the vast dome of a great, literary cathedral, brushing lightly against the spindizzies, ansibels, mass drivers, sandworms, bussards, galactic emperors and allotropic iron torpedoes left behind by the Elders of a Dying Genre, never realizing that the curve of that firmament and all of its furnishings were not naturally occurring phenomena phenomenon phrenologist :-), but has been carved out of the unforgiving marketplace more than a generation ago at a half-a-penny-a-word by battalions of hungry pulp scriveners whose names are now mostly forgotten (unless, of course, they had the foresight to cook up, say, some insanely profitable cult)...

Is Time Us, Space Them?
By Robin Hanson ·
(This post co-authored by Robin Hanson and Katja Grace.)

In the Battlestar Galactica TV series, religious rituals often repeated the phrase, “All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.” It was apparently comforting to imagine being part of a grand cycle of time. It seems less comforting to say “Similar conflicts happen out there now in distant galaxies.” Why?

Consider two possible civilizations, stretched either across time or space:

Time: A mere hundred thousand people live sustainably for a billion generations before finally going extinct.
Space: A trillion people spread across a thousand planets live for only a hundred generations, then go extinct.
Even though both civilizations support the same total number of lives, most observers probably find the time-stretched civilization more admirable and morally worthy. It is “sustainable,” and in “harmony” with its environment. The space-stretched civilization, in contrast, seems “aggressively” expanding and risks being an obese “repugnant conclusion” scenario. Why?

Finally, consider that people who think they are smart are often jealous to hear a contemporary described as “very smart,” but are much happier to praise the genius of a Newton, Einstein, etc. We are far less jealous of richer descendants than of richer contemporaries. And there is far more sibling rivalry than rivalry with grandparents
or grandkids. Why?
...

... apparently never realizing that 10,000 amazing, maddening, glorious possible answers to their questions can be found moldering silently away between the lurid covers of 10,000 ancient books and magazines scattered here and there in the dusty corners of the dying American Empire.

Some aging Boy or Girl Scout please gently slip a copy of "Time Enough for Love", "The Martian Chronicles", "Universe", the "Foundation" trilogy, "Dune", "The Demolished Man", "Venus Plus X", "The End of Eternity", "Bring the Jubilee", "When the Sleeper Wakes", the "Uplift" series, "Scanners Live in Vain", "Childhood's End", "The Left Hand of Darkness", "City", "The Mote in God's Eye", "The Marching Morons", "With Folded Hands", "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" or one of a dozen dozen other masterpieces into their pockets or onto their Kindles.

Years and years from now, they'll thank you for it.