Tag: Technology

Sci-Fi Favourites

What are your favourite Science Fiction titles? Here are some of ours.

Use the comments to share some of your favourite sci-fi titles.

What is Sci-Fi?

What is science fiction? There are many different books, films, games and other media that can fall into the genre of sci-fi. There are many different definitions, many different sub-genres, and many different elements that can make something “sci-fi.” It wouldn’t be possible to come up with one definition that all Science Fiction writers and creators would agree upon. Having said that, we can examine some common themes and elements.

Science Fiction is a genre which can fit under the umbrella of Speculative Fiction, alongside, and often overlapping with, Fantasy and Horror. Science Fiction tends to be futuristic, imagining advances in technology and scientific achievement beyond our current levels. Robots, cyborgs and technologically modified humans are common in SF. Sci-fi often includes elements such as space travel, aliens, life on other planets or in other galaxies. However, sci-fi can also stay here on earth, exploring such things as utopia, dystopia, alternative histories, and post-apocalyptic scenarios. There can be an emphasis on science, with stories set in very realistic situations based on real scientific research, but can also extend into levels of conjecture that may try to extrapolate or predict where we are headed with science. In fact, SF can stray from hard science, abandoning realism altogether as it explores the paranormal and the fantastic.

Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?

InternetThinkingThought provoking ideas from a wide variety of thinkers are brought together by editor John Brockman in Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? In the opening essay, “The Bookless Library,” Nicholas Carr asserts:

As a technology, a book focuses our attention, isolates us from the myriad distractions that fill our everyday lives. A networked computer does precisely the opposite. It is designed to scatter our attention. It doesn’t shield us from environmental distractions; it adds to them. The words on a computer screen exist in a welter of contending stimuli.

Carr isn’t arguing that the internet is bad.  We cannot dispute that the internet has given us huge advantages. However, those advantages come at a cost.

My own reading and thinking habits have shifted dramatically since I first logged on the Web fifteen years ago or so. I now do the bulk of my reading and researching on-line. And my brain has changed as a result. Event as I’ve become more adept at navigating the rapids of the Net, I have experienced a steady decay in my ability to sustain my attention… What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.

The computer age has not rendered the book obsolete. True, the future of paper publishing may be in doubt. The physical book is here for at least the short-term. In the long run maybe they will be completely replaced by e-books. That is not the point. Regardless of the format, we need books, more than ever. We need them for many reasons, not least as an antidote to the distracted, shallow thinking that is the product of so much of what people do on-line. We need long-form text, including fiction and non-fiction. We need to read things that require concentration, engagement and deep thinking.