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Notes -
Does anyone have suggestions on books or movies that have a positive vision that they're trying to portray through fiction? To elaborate, I don't mean positive in the sense of morality or optimism, but in the sense that they actually want to show something, rather than tear something else down.
As an example, the older Star Trek series did this well. The show wanted to portray a world where humans were mostly post scarcity, and what a society would look like in that environment. It looked like fully automated gay luxury space communism where most people focused on self actualization that incidentally sided society at large. I'm not a gay space communist, but I've always appreciated that they took the concept and ran with it. Banks' Culture novels fill a similar niche.
I'm not going to go too deeply into counter examples because this isn't the culture war thread, but it's lately felt like that positive vision is increasingly hard to find, awash as it is in "deconstructive reimaginings".
Can anybody recommend things that fit that description? I'm not particularly concerned about the topic, so much as that the creators own the topic and actually think it through to the point where the settings and characters feel natural.
Lazy answer first:
Most fiction actually has a positive vision, to the point where it’s taken for granted. If it’s not actively nihilistic, the characters are probably gonna succeed within their system and be praised for it. Go watch a sports movie or something.
Marginally less lazy:
Your story has to have conflict, right? Criticizing the setting is a popular way to get that. Look for fiction where the conflict comes from man vs. nature instead. Planetary romances with steely-eyed princes fighting off aliens. Rugged individualists making their way in the Old West. There’s plenty of fiction where people just get into adventures and present a personal vision.
I may draw a lot of flak for this, but I’ll slot a bunch of Brandon Sanderson in that category. He plops down a setting conceit, spins out a bunch of consequences, then has his characters struggle and grow within those systems. He doesn’t really do antiheroes. Stormlight Archive is a central example: superpowers are literally fueled by paladin oaths.
Now, if you’re specifically looking for a positive societal vision, rather than personal ones:
Rationalfic. Transhumanist stories like To The Stars. Weirder glowfic and dath ilan: aviation is really remarkably safe. All sorts of other stuff.
For published fiction, I wouldn’t count Ancillary Justice, but Too Like the Lightning probably makes the cut. The Dark Forest made its utopia really stupid, but it certainly didn’t apologize for it.
There’s also an endless supply of uncritical HFY thrillers out there for your reading pleasure. I’ll leave you with a pseudo-recommendation for Tom Clancy. America is always right, government force is always justified, and a shadowy parallel intelligence community which funds itself through insider trading is apparently a good thing. It’s a window into a different world.
I forgot how much I hated this stupid story format. Here's a reformatted version, if anyone wants it.
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