Hacker News with Generative AI: Science Fiction

Berserker Hypothesis (wikipedia.org)
The Berserker hypothesis, also known as the deadly probes scenario, is the idea that humans have not yet detected intelligent alien life in the universe because it has been systematically destroyed by a series of lethal Von Neumann probes.[1][2] The hypothesis is named after the Berserker series of novels (1963–2005) written by Fred Saberhagen.[1]

Aliens, Science Fiction, Space Exploration, Artificial Intelligence

4 points by slater 2 days ago | 0 comments

China Miéville says we shouldn't blame science fiction for its bad readers (techcrunch.com)
It’s been 25 years since China Miéville stepped into the literary spotlight with his novel “Perdido Street Station.”

Science Fiction, Books, Literature, Authors

16 points by pseudolus 3 days ago | 2 comments

Proof that Steins;Gate world is a running simulation (samyar.me)
They literally have auto-error correction in their world. Just think about it, Okabe disappears in one of the episodes, and everyone forgets about him. It’s almost like the world automatically corrects errors that shouldn’t be there, ensuring that nothing is out of order.

Science Fiction, Anime, Simulation Hypothesis

19 points by samyar 5 days ago | 8 comments

Anti-Orbit Laser Submarines (2017) (blogspot.com)
Laser-equipped nuclear-powered submarines are the perfect last line of defense against an attacking force in orbit.

Military, Science Fiction, Submarines

64 points by EA-3167 6 days ago | 31 comments

Apple TV+ announces Neuromancer based on the novel by William Gibson (apple.com)
Apple TV+ announced today that it will expand its acclaimed slate of science fiction offerings with “Neuromancer,” a new 10-episode drama based on the award-winning novel of the same name by William Gibson.

Streaming Services, Science Fiction, Novels, Television, Adaptations

31 points by wslh 10 days ago | 4 comments

The Collective Ambition Behind Odysseus, a Game-Changing Sci-Fi Larp (mssv.net)
Last year, hundreds of players inhabited a spaceship on the run, scrambling to keep one step ahead of the enemy.

LARP, Science Fiction, Games, Community, Events

115 points by adrianhon 15 days ago | 28 comments

Component Simplicity (jerf.org)
There is a common metaphor for hyperspace travel in science fiction, where some scientist type explains how the FTL works by taking a piece of paper, drawing a line on it to demonstrate “normal” travel, then folding the paper to bring the origin and destination together.

Software Development, Metaphors, Science Fiction

58 points by todsacerdoti 16 days ago | 10 comments

Why Has Sci-Fi TV Stopped Imagining Our Future? (denofgeek.com)
Once, shows like Star Trek predicted new tech and a boldly going future; now, Severance, Silo and even Trek are looking to the past.

Science Fiction, Television, Technology, Future

9 points by pseudolus 18 days ago | 3 comments

The political philosophy motivating Musk (archive.org)
I have always been a huge science fiction fan, and I find these days that it’s helping me in my work life. Great science fiction often deals with geopolitical issues, broad social pendulum shifts, and large-scale systems failure (think Dune, or Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation trilogy, which I inhaled when I was about 12 and re-read for fun every decade or so). All these are in play today, particularly in the US, where politics is totally in flux.

Politics, Philosophy, Science Fiction, Social Change

14 points by doener 19 days ago | 16 comments

Chris Moore, illustrator for classic sci-fi books, has died (nytimes.com)
Chris Moore, a British artist who conjured fantastical worlds with high-sheen covers for books by science-fiction masters like Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and Alfred Bester, and who lent his artistry to albums by Rod Stewart and Fleetwood Mac, died on Feb. 7 at his home in Charmouth, on the southwestern coast of England. He was 77.

Science Fiction, Illustration, Art, Obituaries

51 points by donohoe 21 days ago | 8 comments

The 75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time (esquire.com)
Since time immemorial, mankind has been looking up at the stars and dreaming, but it was only centuries ago that we started turning those dreams into fiction.

Science Fiction, Books, Literature, Lists, Culture

10 points by dhosek 22 days ago | 3 comments

So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams (multiverseemployeehandbook.com)
Today marks what would have been Douglas Adams’ 73rd birthday—or depending on which timeline you’re accessing this from, his 3042nd, or perhaps his perpetual 42nd in the universe where time loops infinitely around that particular number. Regardless of your dimensional coordinates, we at The Multiverse Employee Handbook wish to raise our electronic towels and digitally frosted Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters to the man who taught us how to laugh in the face of existential terror.

Science Fiction, Humor, Douglas Adams

230 points by 6forward 23 days ago | 76 comments

The Unpredicted (kk.org)
It is odd that science fiction did not predict the internet. There are no vintage science fiction movies about the world wide web, nor movies that showed the online web as part of the future. We expected picture phones, and online encyclopedias, but not the internet. As a society we missed it. Given how pervasive the internet later became this omission is odd.

Science Fiction, History, Internet

6 points by zdw 23 days ago | 1 comments

Is a bone a viable weapon when combating a Rancor? (jgeekstudies.org)
In the first act of ‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi’ (ROTJ), the protagonist, Luke Skywalker, infiltrates the palace of the notorious crime lord, Jabba the Hutt, while seeking to free his allies from captivity.

Star Wars, Science Fiction, Weapons, Movies

4 points by sohkamyung 24 days ago | 1 comments

The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama) (wikipedia.org)
"The War of the Worlds" was a Halloween episode of the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds (1898) that was performed and broadcast live at 8 pm ET on October 30, 1938, over the CBS Radio Network.

Radio, History, Entertainment, Science Fiction

5 points by altilunium 25 days ago | 0 comments

"Big 3" science fiction magazines including Asimov's and Analog acquired (jasonsanford.substack.com)
For other news from February, see my previous grapevine. This report is available free to the public. If you like my writings on genre issues, consider backing my Patreon.

Science Fiction, Magazines, Acquisitions

151 points by ilamont 28 days ago | 85 comments

Skynet won and destroyed humanity (dmathieu.com)
For a very long time, it appeared obvious to outside observers of the time flow that Skynet would never win the war, and never annihilate humanity.

Artificial Intelligence, Science Fiction, Dystopia

198 points by xena 29 days ago | 137 comments

We were promised "Star Trek," so why did we settle for these lousy chatbots? (bigthink.com)
At some point in the first week of January, I came down with a self-diagnosed case of AI fatigue.

Artificial Intelligence, Science Fiction, Chatbots

5 points by Brajeshwar 29 days ago | 5 comments

Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021) (reactormag.com)
At first glance, Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) might appear to be a mere copy of the story of Lawrence of Arabia with some science-fictional window dressing.

Science Fiction, Literature, History, Analysis

282 points by softwaredoug 30 days ago | 197 comments

How long before the machines print their own Terminators? (ycombinator.com)
How long before the machines print their own Terminators?

Artificial Intelligence, Science Fiction, Robotics, Future

8 points by andrea81 32 days ago | 5 comments

Doctorow: The coming war on general-purpose computation (2011) (lwn.net)
Cory Doctorow's 28C3 talk was called "the coming war on general-purpose computation." It's available as a video; there is also a transcript on Github. "And it doesn't take a science fiction writer to understand why regulators might be nervous about the user-modifiable firmware on self-driving cars, or limiting interoperability for aviation controllers, or the kind of thing you could do with bio-scale assemblers and sequencers. Imagine what will happen the day that Monsanto determines that it's really... really...

Technology, Regulation, Science Fiction

13 points by fsflover 35 days ago | 0 comments

The Estate of Iain Banks (iainbanks.co.uk)
Between 1984 and 2013, Iain had 29 books published.

Authors, Books, Literature, Science Fiction

8 points by pseudolus 37 days ago | 0 comments

Fans are better than tech at organizing information online (2019) (wired.com)
Kudos to the fans. One of the nominees for the Hugo Awards this year is Archive of Our Own, a fanfiction archive containing nearly 5 million fanworks—about the size of the English Wikipedia, and several years younger. It's not just the fanfic, fanart, fanvids, and other fanworks, impressive as they are, that make Archive of Our Own worthy of one of the biggest honors in science fiction and fantasy. It's also the architecture of the site itself.

Fanfiction, Science Fiction, Online Communities, Awards

122 points by Tomte 40 days ago | 87 comments

If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown (migdal.pl)
One of Stanisław Lem's stories, The Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, begins with a strange phenomenon that turns all written materials into dust. While this is science fiction, something similar happens in our digital world.

Science Fiction, Literature, Digital Preservation

338 points by stared 40 days ago | 273 comments

Tales from the Loop RPG (freeleaguepublishing.com)
In this roleplaying game, you play teenagers in the late 1980s, solving Mysteries connected to the Loop.

Roleplaying Games, Science Fiction, 1980s

5 points by doener 40 days ago | 0 comments

Dune: Messiah: Villeneuve's crowning achievement or when the spice runs dry? (theguardian.com)
Denis Villeneuve has already done the well-nigh impossible, making two brilliant big-screen versions of Dune, but given the history of sci-fi film sequels, another could be a terrifying sandworm too many

Science Fiction, Film, Reviews

4 points by howard941 44 days ago | 2 comments

How to create LLM-driven tiny gnome robots? (ycombinator.com)
You know, like in the movie "The Borrowers". Since we have human-sized bipedals now, it shouldn't be impossible to create miniture robots that would act like living beings, right?

Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, Science Fiction

13 points by r33b33 44 days ago | 3 comments

The World Without a Mask (1934) (scifist.net)
German action star Harry Piel accidentally invents x-ray TV in this 1934 comedy.

Science Fiction, Film, History, Germany

12 points by walterbell 53 days ago | 5 comments

The Expanse's Epstein Drive (2019) (blogspot.com)
The Epstein drive technology allows for >250 ton spacecraft to accelerate for several hours at 5g with bursts of up to 12g, achieving a deltaV of 4000km/s, while not having any radiators and a tiny propellant fraction.

Science Fiction, Space Travel, Technology

12 points by EA-3167 56 days ago | 0 comments

Steve Meretzky – Working with Douglas Adams on the Hitchhiker's Guide (spillhistorie.no)
We talked with the designer behind games such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Mind Forever Voyaging and Leather Goddesses of Phobos.

Gaming, Science Fiction, Interviews

162 points by Retrogamingpap 57 days ago | 44 comments