Regarding population: C.M. Kornbluth wrote a whole bunch of short stories on the subject from all sorts of angles back in the 50s. Steal some ideas and expand on them. Think "The Marching Morons" -> "Idiocracy."
The "His Share of Glory" anthology is well worth picking up.
The Author’s prognosis about ‘the Near Future of Sci-Fi & what will sell with & appeal to readers’ is interesting but ultimately mistaken on the key issues & the ‘bird’s-eye view.’
Per capita Energy & Electricity numbers for Europe & North America have been stagnant to declining for several decades. Even though Duncan’s Olduvai Theory re: Mass Blackouts circa the early 2030s & beyond will likely be incorrect, the trends indicate that sometime in the mid to late 21st century, most parts of the world will have to make do with less energy, materials, & population. America has been in an electricity plateau since the late 90s, meaning that AI & its large energy requirements, infrastructure, etc, are DOA.
Classical Sci-Fi is a genre born during a Positive-Sum World, where Energy, Materials, & Population were growing. Now that we no longer live in that world, that Genre will die with it.
If anything, Fantasy, Deindustrial fiction, & Fatalist Literature will probably increase in their overall influence & clout, albeit many True believers will still remain for quite some Time.
Overall, I think to understand general trends... one needs to go back to Basics.
The Prime Motif in British English Literature is 'The Wedding' (Union, social order, or ironic stability), while in American English literature, it is 'The Road' (Escape, reinvention, or endless pursuit). These two are fundamentally incompatible.
It is not an accident that the latter is what gave rise to the Classic Sci-Fi genre, given the boons & surpluses that wider American society had access to.
Now that we are in a Negative-Sum Environment, the foundations necessary to generate, upkeep & maintain said Genre... will slowly wither & die likewise. Mid-millenium & beyond, till about the start of the Next Millenia... the genres that descend from Sci-Fi &/or Serally Succeed it will be antagonistic to these prime elements (i.e. endless pursuit & its various corollaries).
Yes, I occasionally read his stuff… it’s interesting, albeit not really my “cup of tea.”
I don’t subscribe to this notion of “the bad guys have these amazing plans that they are finally implementing to subjugate humanity 😱 “
I have always been in the “there is no plan” camp. Yes, hundreds of millions will perish… but it’s not going to be due to Soros or someone else pulling off an impressive “techno feudal masterclass” against the hapless peasants.
I view this as a cope… equally as impossible as the other cope of “Elon will fly us to Mars and humanity’s Second Golden Age begins there!”
The part about AI Judges versus AI lawyers reminds me of this part from an old Han Solo novel where he’s on trial and his lawyer is a robot and just says “he’s guilty lock him up”
Most of the things in Thomas Umstadtt's list of good sci-fi topics (i.e. depopulation, fiscal meltdown, collapse of scientific credibility, WWIII being very different from WWII, the Bronze Age Collapse as a model for sci-fi scenarios) are things that I agree will be important in the near future and that sci-fi authors should therefore deal with.
Including climate change on the list strikes me as strange, though. While it's true that people are tired of being moralized to about it, (and for what it's worth, I've never voted for a political party that ran on the climate issue), that alone doesn't make AGW any less of a real phenomenon. The fact that (as he points out) China is opening two new coal plants every week makes warmer climates, rising sea levels, etc. MORE plausible as settings for a story taking place in the 24th century or whenever, not less so.
All of the sci-fi stories that I've published myself are in the genre of "deindustrial" fiction. So basically, you see some elements of ecological disaster and climate change, but also elements of the post-apocalyptic - technological decline, the crumbling of large empires, depopulation, a total mixing and overhauling of cultures... eventually you have new societies that are on the upswing again where people explore the old ruined cities in an effort to revive and recover the lost technologies.
I know full well that this isn't a genre that everyone is going to like (most conservatives would take issue with the climate aspect of my stories, most liberals would take issue with, well, everything else; overall I am quite the reactionary). But I'm also not the kind of person who's willing to omit stuff that he believes is really happening just to appeal to a particular political tribe.
I look forward to listening to your two podcasts with Umstadtt when you have time. And I hope that you get around to writing a full-length novel someday, as I'm sure it will be good!
Regarding climate change: The settled climate science for the past 128 years is merely that CO2 emissions should increase the greenhouse effect by some unknown amount. That's it. Most of the effect of CO2 emissions is warmer winters in colder states and nations.
How this good news morphed into a climate crisis shows how effective decades of leftist propaganda has been. Even if it is worse than the science predicts it will be much better to adapt to it than to continue to live with ruinables and Rube Goldberg machines. The Netherlands did it in the Middle Ages
Statistically I would still expect increased atmospheric CO2 to kill tens of millions of people over the next century, mostly in ecologically marginal regions of the world where life is already difficult. It's a real problem, just overhyped relative to other problems we have to deal with (our global population is large enough that 50 million people can statistically die from peripheral causes over the next century and the average person will never notice.)
Nuclear is the most viable solution in any case, though I'd prefer if the output wasn't squandered on more data centres.
IEDIT: I agree that it must be a part and should be more used especially for electrification. I think that but fossil fuel facilities are easier and cheaper to permit unfortunately like when Gavin’s all mighty ecological stances. I can’t disagree but gas is just better for many things like heating houses and offices and shift knowim saying? We’re in agreement that nuclear power is necessary especially if electrification is to gain any meaningful benefit. Rube Goldberg machines aren’t going to cut it. Ben Pile makes a good case for flooding being a political failure rather than a climate catastrophe, a la Katrina officials knew that New Orleans has flood prone areas but failed to address it. I think those are the kind of deaths you are talking about, correct me if I am wrong.
Second edit: the reason I bought it up was respectfully disagree. I don’t think that it’s great in places like Indonesia for example, environmentally . Turkey is no great shakes either, even though it’s not terrible. It’s beautiful countryside but the concept of keeping beauty beautiful for its own sake, that is not a Turkish public concept as far as nature goes, nature is a thing still to be tamed and subdued. . We’ve completed this phenomenon in America and somewhat in Japan but carefully curated. And Europe to some degree. There are still large parts of Nevada and even Yosemite that I’ve never been seen by humans multiple national parks have areas like that. We’ve got rid of bears and wolves mostly.. there’s still a lot of wild places though. I saw a documentary on the Japanese channel about Indonesia and they were burning plastics. Turkey was definitely better than that. I don’t quite see the whole cataclysmic climate change narrative. I mean, you know the earthquake was a climate change. That was definitely substandard building. By the way they’re trying to address it. . It was crazy anyway sorry to get long winded talk to you later have a great night by the way no disrespect whatsoever to the people of Turkey who are great but it’s their country and they have done a pretty good job of protecting and providing for their people. Wages and opportunities are low and fairly or not many blame the predicament.
Yeah I just wanted to say straight up in a separate comment that iris a pleasure to know that someone else takes these things seriously. and kinda knows the deal know m saying? Anyway have a good night.
You can get an estimate on potential death tolls here. Basically, if 60 million people currently die every year, and climate change increases death rates in the worst-affected countries by ~10% (countries that often also have large rates of population growth), then a ~1% increase in global death rates from extreme heat over the next century is ~50 million people. (This isn't counting indirect effects, such as war or famine caused by reduced agricultural output.)
Okay well I disagree with your premise because I think that the death of people dying in natural disasters is not mainly due to climate change. It would be hard to prove and I am with Ben Pile who ascribes them to societal failures.
I'm not really talking about natural disasters like flooding and wildfires and so on- those are a very small proportion of all deaths- but something more like "elderly person dies in sleep of heatstroke five years sooner than they otherwise would have, statistically", or "heatwave in the maghreb makes food 20% scarcer during a period when food is already scarce due to trade embargoes/scorched earth warfare/soil erosion/etc."
I agree that 'societal failures', broadly speaking, are the more powerful factor here, but that doesn't mean temperature increase can't exacerbate a bad situation. You apply that over a century across several billion people and those marginal effects add up.
I think real life and sci-fi is going to have the backdrop of biopunk vs cyberpunk. Possibly throw in psychics.
Establishment figures will go cyber, such as neuralink, and the rogue individuals will seek lower cost individualized bioenhancements. I infer this from the popularity of alternative medicine and distrust in experts as highlighted by Midwestern Doctor. So the homogenous sickly super cyborgs vs heterogenous uberhealth hulk Tarzans.
If you want to become a legend and a prophet in Sci-Fi, you need to recognize social and technological trends early in their development and logically play them out over 50 years. If you're lucky you'll get a significant proportion correct. Author and Physicist David Brin was very good at that. In his 1990 novel "Earth" Brinn made a lot of predictions about 2040 earth. Many were wrong but a lot were right, and a few may still happen. His secret was that he reasoned out the trends into the future and used that as the basis for the book. He wrote about the trends predicting how the future *would be*, not as a writer writing about how he thought the future *should be*.
"The fundamental premise behind climate change is that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. But, from another perspective, carbon dioxide is plant food. The abundance of CO2 has led to more plants in more places, resulting in a greening earth, as NASA calls it."
And that ball can be driven all the way down to the other end of the court.
"If the CO2 concentration were to increase to several times the current paltry level (400+ ppm), we might see several times the current amount of Life on Earth. That is equivalent to adding several more Life-on-Earth’s right on to the existing one, some serious terraformation. Our descendants may wish to re-create the conditions of The Summer of Life (say, 2000 ppm), at least for the warmer latitudes. Someday they may strip mine the limestone– that was laid down in The Summer of Life- using undying self-replicating machinery that can continuously replenish the Earth’s atmosphere without further attendance.
"...In order to continue to exist and to prosper, Life on Earth needs one more trick, the one thing that not one of the marvelous Inventions of all the eons past had ever been able to accomplish. There has to be some way, somehow, to wrench the locked Carbon up out of the earth, and throw it back to the sky."
Warmer latitudes are the least likely to benefit from increased global temperatures, and it's not like you can isolate these effects with a thermostat.
I'm glad ToW is bringing up America's potentially civilisation-crashing deficit spending problem, because the Trump admin recently announced the- shockingly original for a Republican administration- intention of introducing substantial tax cuts primarily benefitting the american upper class.
Someone needs to explain to the people who complained about inflation during Biden's term that if you cut taxation more than you cut spending, the feds will have to print money to make up the difference. This is at least an order of magnitude more significant than USAID, by the way.
You made one significant error: You believed the institutional economists. You can go to the FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) website and research for yourself. Historically, tax rates have little correlation to Total Federal Receipts, or GPD. They do have an impact on Total Federal Expenditures, which is a positive correlation. These economists are using static scoring, which only works if we ignore supply/demand and assume nothing will change. In other words, it's almost always wrong.
It would be helpful if you could point me at the exact data-series being used for this correlation analysis, but most of the articles I can dig up on this topic are worse than useless (e.g, looking for correlation with specific rates of taxation instead of a weighed aggregate of each, which is almost by definition going to track with tax revenue.)
I personally find it totally implausible that the income group which accounts for 70% of US income tax is *not* to yield any additional revenue if you increase their tax rates. It doesn't pass the smell test.
Why not set tax rates to zero? because taxes operate on supply and demand just like everything else. It's called the Laffer Curve. When rates go up on rich people, they spend more resources on reducing taxes and finding loopholes. There will always be loopholes because politicians put them there. So, if rates get below a certain point revenues decrease, but also when tax rates go above a certain point tax revenues decrease as well. After the fabled "Trump Tax Cuts" which the opposition swore would starve the government, revenues actually increased. The idea that you get higher revenues by putting higher tax rates on people, especially wealthy people, seems logical and common sense, but history proves otherwise. During the 1950's the top tax rate was 91%, in 1964 it went to 70% (Kennedy), and didn't get to below 40% until Reagan. With a few exceptions, such as during Covid, the federal government's total outlays have stayed within the range of 20%-23%, regardless of top tax rates. In addition, a balanced budget became highly undesirable and then impossible after 1972. Our government needs to continue to borrow and create new treasury notes because our foreign trade partners need someplace to park the surplus dollars they've received due to our trade deficit.
> After the fabled "Trump Tax Cuts" which the opposition swore would starve the government, revenues actually increased
They declined as a percentage of GDP. If the economy is growing overall, revenues can still increase but that's not a particular indication tax cuts were responsible (technically GDP growth has been a little faster under democrat administrations.)
> There will always be loopholes because politicians put them there
Have you considered closing the loopholes?
> Our government needs to continue to borrow and create new treasury notes because our foreign trade partners need someplace to park the surplus dollars they've received due to our trade deficit
Yes, I'm aware the US trade deficit has to exist in order for dollars to act as the global currency, but I don't expect this to keep going much longer since I'm skeptical about the global economy growing for the rest of the century (barring some AGI or biosingularity scenario.)
"If the economy is growing overall, revenues can still increase but that's not a particular indication tax cuts were responsible"
Exactly what I've been arguing. Tax cuts or increases within a certain revenue range have very little correlation to GDP growth or budget deficit sizes. It's rate of GDP growth that drives revenues and deficits.
"Have you considered closing the loopholes?"
Yes, and it will probably never happen. If it did, the wealthy would simply move elsewhere. During the days of the 91% top tax rate, only mugs paid it. The vast majority of the wealthy took advantage of the plentiful loopholes. Some people want to go back to those levels of taxation. Most wealthy people would be fine with 1950's tax levels if they also got 1950's tax deductions and loopholes.
"Yes, I'm aware the US trade deficit has to exist in order for dollars to act as the global currency, but I don't expect this to keep going much longer ..."
In general, most of the people that follow ToW believe the same thing. Best to use our devaluing dollars now to create real physical infrastructure while we still can.
> If it did, the wealthy would simply move elsewhere
I'm not generally pro-immigration, even for the wealthy/talented, and the US already takes significant steps to stamp out tax evasion by american expats. So I don't see this as a compelling objection.
> Most wealthy people would be fine with 1950's tax levels if they also got 1950's tax deductions and loopholes
This seems to be a concession that many tax deductions and loopholes have already been closed. The dollar doesn't have to devalue if you actually match taxation and spending, and I'm not going to pretend Trump is being especially helpful in this regard.
- Discovering that almost everything you have been taught came from people that hate you and want you to be destroyed; and that the people you were taught were the "good guys" are actually the bad guys and often vice versa.
- An unexplainable feeling of lethargy and a lack of will to deal with huge problems even when they are widely acknowledged.
- Situations where there are two competing narratives but it turns out the truth is something completely different and the two competing narratives were just a containment strategy.
- A "benevolent" group leading society that turns out to be anything but benevolent. (And not because they are secretly Hitler or Stalin).
- I'm not sure what to do about a highly feminized "empathetic" form of totalitarianism. It might feel a bit too on-the-nose; after all, people read sci-fi for escape, usually to a more masculine imagined world.
- Situations where the very words and concepts you use turn out to have been carefully designed and tested by your enemies to contain you. (It may be hard to come up with convincing moral universes of this type that aren't just obvious copies of modern ones.)
- Alienation from the physical world, and longing for something real but being unable to give up technological conveniences.
- What happens after historical forces have caused a great mingling of incompatible peoples and resources eventually run out.
- Having to walk away from family and friends in order to secure a better future or to avoid a foreseen tragedy.
- Musical-chairs situations where everyone pretends to believe a polite fiction such as "there is no such thing as race" but nobody really believes this; and how does this end?
I will say there are a lot of historical examples of, "What happens after historical forces have caused a great mingling of incompatible peoples and resources eventually run out."
Empires by definition tend to be multi ethnic and held together with wealth and power. When the empire leaves, the people go back to tribal conflict. See India/Pakistan in the 1950s or the Britons and Saxons in the 4th century Britain.
A lot depends on how regional/ethnic the successor powers tend to be. It also depends how nearby a rival empire is.
There is a really good Star Trek Next Gen episode that explores "Discovering that almost everything you have been taught came from people that hate you and want you to be destroyed; and that the people you were taught were the "good guys" are actually the bad guys and often vice versa."
If I remember correctly, Riker is brainwashed into thinking the good guys were the bad guys.
Your mention of WW3 warfare brought to mind David Drake's excellent Hammer's Slammers series, which concerns the exploits of a high-tech mercenary tank battalion in an increasingly balkanized galaxy rife with religious, ethnic and economic conflict.
"The Terran Federation in Piper’s stories suffers the same fate as Asimov’s Foundation, Poul Anderson’s Polesotechnic League, George Lucas’ Galactic Republic, and countless other mid-Century space opera civilizations modeled on Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Namely, it collapses, and gives rise to a galaxy-spanning Empire."
"When in doubt use the Roman history" is still a solid rule of thumb when writing sci-fi. Men don't think about Ancient Persia every day, but they do think about Ancient Rome every day.
Regarding population: C.M. Kornbluth wrote a whole bunch of short stories on the subject from all sorts of angles back in the 50s. Steal some ideas and expand on them. Think "The Marching Morons" -> "Idiocracy."
The "His Share of Glory" anthology is well worth picking up.
Interesting Article.
The Author’s prognosis about ‘the Near Future of Sci-Fi & what will sell with & appeal to readers’ is interesting but ultimately mistaken on the key issues & the ‘bird’s-eye view.’
Per capita Energy & Electricity numbers for Europe & North America have been stagnant to declining for several decades. Even though Duncan’s Olduvai Theory re: Mass Blackouts circa the early 2030s & beyond will likely be incorrect, the trends indicate that sometime in the mid to late 21st century, most parts of the world will have to make do with less energy, materials, & population. America has been in an electricity plateau since the late 90s, meaning that AI & its large energy requirements, infrastructure, etc, are DOA.
Classical Sci-Fi is a genre born during a Positive-Sum World, where Energy, Materials, & Population were growing. Now that we no longer live in that world, that Genre will die with it.
If anything, Fantasy, Deindustrial fiction, & Fatalist Literature will probably increase in their overall influence & clout, albeit many True believers will still remain for quite some Time.
Overall, I think to understand general trends... one needs to go back to Basics.
The Prime Motif in British English Literature is 'The Wedding' (Union, social order, or ironic stability), while in American English literature, it is 'The Road' (Escape, reinvention, or endless pursuit). These two are fundamentally incompatible.
It is not an accident that the latter is what gave rise to the Classic Sci-Fi genre, given the boons & surpluses that wider American society had access to.
Now that we are in a Negative-Sum Environment, the foundations necessary to generate, upkeep & maintain said Genre... will slowly wither & die likewise. Mid-millenium & beyond, till about the start of the Next Millenia... the genres that descend from Sci-Fi &/or Serally Succeed it will be antagonistic to these prime elements (i.e. endless pursuit & its various corollaries).
You should read Neo-liberal feudalism’s Substack. You are both such philosophical pessimists, I swear. But still, I always read your comments. Cheers.
Thank You kindly! 😊
Yes, I occasionally read his stuff… it’s interesting, albeit not really my “cup of tea.”
I don’t subscribe to this notion of “the bad guys have these amazing plans that they are finally implementing to subjugate humanity 😱 “
I have always been in the “there is no plan” camp. Yes, hundreds of millions will perish… but it’s not going to be due to Soros or someone else pulling off an impressive “techno feudal masterclass” against the hapless peasants.
I view this as a cope… equally as impossible as the other cope of “Elon will fly us to Mars and humanity’s Second Golden Age begins there!”
The immunity to feminism. Unjust family courts and the false model of domestic violence called the Duluth Model. Have yet to surge.
The part about AI Judges versus AI lawyers reminds me of this part from an old Han Solo novel where he’s on trial and his lawyer is a robot and just says “he’s guilty lock him up”
I have complicated thoughts about this article.
Most of the things in Thomas Umstadtt's list of good sci-fi topics (i.e. depopulation, fiscal meltdown, collapse of scientific credibility, WWIII being very different from WWII, the Bronze Age Collapse as a model for sci-fi scenarios) are things that I agree will be important in the near future and that sci-fi authors should therefore deal with.
Including climate change on the list strikes me as strange, though. While it's true that people are tired of being moralized to about it, (and for what it's worth, I've never voted for a political party that ran on the climate issue), that alone doesn't make AGW any less of a real phenomenon. The fact that (as he points out) China is opening two new coal plants every week makes warmer climates, rising sea levels, etc. MORE plausible as settings for a story taking place in the 24th century or whenever, not less so.
All of the sci-fi stories that I've published myself are in the genre of "deindustrial" fiction. So basically, you see some elements of ecological disaster and climate change, but also elements of the post-apocalyptic - technological decline, the crumbling of large empires, depopulation, a total mixing and overhauling of cultures... eventually you have new societies that are on the upswing again where people explore the old ruined cities in an effort to revive and recover the lost technologies.
I know full well that this isn't a genre that everyone is going to like (most conservatives would take issue with the climate aspect of my stories, most liberals would take issue with, well, everything else; overall I am quite the reactionary). But I'm also not the kind of person who's willing to omit stuff that he believes is really happening just to appeal to a particular political tribe.
I look forward to listening to your two podcasts with Umstadtt when you have time. And I hope that you get around to writing a full-length novel someday, as I'm sure it will be good!
Regarding climate change: The settled climate science for the past 128 years is merely that CO2 emissions should increase the greenhouse effect by some unknown amount. That's it. Most of the effect of CO2 emissions is warmer winters in colder states and nations.
How this good news morphed into a climate crisis shows how effective decades of leftist propaganda has been. Even if it is worse than the science predicts it will be much better to adapt to it than to continue to live with ruinables and Rube Goldberg machines. The Netherlands did it in the Middle Ages
Statistically I would still expect increased atmospheric CO2 to kill tens of millions of people over the next century, mostly in ecologically marginal regions of the world where life is already difficult. It's a real problem, just overhyped relative to other problems we have to deal with (our global population is large enough that 50 million people can statistically die from peripheral causes over the next century and the average person will never notice.)
Nuclear is the most viable solution in any case, though I'd prefer if the output wasn't squandered on more data centres.
IEDIT: I agree that it must be a part and should be more used especially for electrification. I think that but fossil fuel facilities are easier and cheaper to permit unfortunately like when Gavin’s all mighty ecological stances. I can’t disagree but gas is just better for many things like heating houses and offices and shift knowim saying? We’re in agreement that nuclear power is necessary especially if electrification is to gain any meaningful benefit. Rube Goldberg machines aren’t going to cut it. Ben Pile makes a good case for flooding being a political failure rather than a climate catastrophe, a la Katrina officials knew that New Orleans has flood prone areas but failed to address it. I think those are the kind of deaths you are talking about, correct me if I am wrong.
Second edit: the reason I bought it up was respectfully disagree. I don’t think that it’s great in places like Indonesia for example, environmentally . Turkey is no great shakes either, even though it’s not terrible. It’s beautiful countryside but the concept of keeping beauty beautiful for its own sake, that is not a Turkish public concept as far as nature goes, nature is a thing still to be tamed and subdued. . We’ve completed this phenomenon in America and somewhat in Japan but carefully curated. And Europe to some degree. There are still large parts of Nevada and even Yosemite that I’ve never been seen by humans multiple national parks have areas like that. We’ve got rid of bears and wolves mostly.. there’s still a lot of wild places though. I saw a documentary on the Japanese channel about Indonesia and they were burning plastics. Turkey was definitely better than that. I don’t quite see the whole cataclysmic climate change narrative. I mean, you know the earthquake was a climate change. That was definitely substandard building. By the way they’re trying to address it. . It was crazy anyway sorry to get long winded talk to you later have a great night by the way no disrespect whatsoever to the people of Turkey who are great but it’s their country and they have done a pretty good job of protecting and providing for their people. Wages and opportunities are low and fairly or not many blame the predicament.
Yeah I just wanted to say straight up in a separate comment that iris a pleasure to know that someone else takes these things seriously. and kinda knows the deal know m saying? Anyway have a good night.
Okay, thanks for saying so.
You can get an estimate on potential death tolls here. Basically, if 60 million people currently die every year, and climate change increases death rates in the worst-affected countries by ~10% (countries that often also have large rates of population growth), then a ~1% increase in global death rates from extreme heat over the next century is ~50 million people. (This isn't counting indirect effects, such as war or famine caused by reduced agricultural output.)
https://ourworldindata.org/part-two-how-many-people-die-from-extreme-temperatures-and-how-could-this-change-in-the-future
Okay well I disagree with your premise because I think that the death of people dying in natural disasters is not mainly due to climate change. It would be hard to prove and I am with Ben Pile who ascribes them to societal failures.
I'm not really talking about natural disasters like flooding and wildfires and so on- those are a very small proportion of all deaths- but something more like "elderly person dies in sleep of heatstroke five years sooner than they otherwise would have, statistically", or "heatwave in the maghreb makes food 20% scarcer during a period when food is already scarce due to trade embargoes/scorched earth warfare/soil erosion/etc."
I agree that 'societal failures', broadly speaking, are the more powerful factor here, but that doesn't mean temperature increase can't exacerbate a bad situation. You apply that over a century across several billion people and those marginal effects add up.
I think real life and sci-fi is going to have the backdrop of biopunk vs cyberpunk. Possibly throw in psychics.
Establishment figures will go cyber, such as neuralink, and the rogue individuals will seek lower cost individualized bioenhancements. I infer this from the popularity of alternative medicine and distrust in experts as highlighted by Midwestern Doctor. So the homogenous sickly super cyborgs vs heterogenous uberhealth hulk Tarzans.
For shits and giggles.
But things get bad when you giggle and shit.
Thomas has some amazing insight: both in the zeitgeist and in how to use it as an author. I'd love to read more from him.
I have more articles at AuthorMedia.com. Start with this episode with Alexander: https://www.authormedia.com/how-to-write-stories-readers-will-love-by-knowing-the-zeitgeist/
If you want to become a legend and a prophet in Sci-Fi, you need to recognize social and technological trends early in their development and logically play them out over 50 years. If you're lucky you'll get a significant proportion correct. Author and Physicist David Brin was very good at that. In his 1990 novel "Earth" Brinn made a lot of predictions about 2040 earth. Many were wrong but a lot were right, and a few may still happen. His secret was that he reasoned out the trends into the future and used that as the basis for the book. He wrote about the trends predicting how the future *would be*, not as a writer writing about how he thought the future *should be*.
"The fundamental premise behind climate change is that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. But, from another perspective, carbon dioxide is plant food. The abundance of CO2 has led to more plants in more places, resulting in a greening earth, as NASA calls it."
And that ball can be driven all the way down to the other end of the court.
"If the CO2 concentration were to increase to several times the current paltry level (400+ ppm), we might see several times the current amount of Life on Earth. That is equivalent to adding several more Life-on-Earth’s right on to the existing one, some serious terraformation. Our descendants may wish to re-create the conditions of The Summer of Life (say, 2000 ppm), at least for the warmer latitudes. Someday they may strip mine the limestone– that was laid down in The Summer of Life- using undying self-replicating machinery that can continuously replenish the Earth’s atmosphere without further attendance.
"...In order to continue to exist and to prosper, Life on Earth needs one more trick, the one thing that not one of the marvelous Inventions of all the eons past had ever been able to accomplish. There has to be some way, somehow, to wrench the locked Carbon up out of the earth, and throw it back to the sky."
http://forrestbishop.mysite.com/Megafaunal.html
I am realizing this more and more. See this video from the co-founder of Green Peace talking about the importance of CO2 for plant life. https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1895783050203504920
Warmer latitudes are the least likely to benefit from increased global temperatures, and it's not like you can isolate these effects with a thermostat.
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-sci-fi-zeitgeist-has-shifted/comment/97101514
You should read Caroline Furlon's essay "The Abolition of Man for Zoomers" (not called that).
Between the two of you, you have it nailed. If you do a podcast together on the subject, could you ping me?
I'm glad ToW is bringing up America's potentially civilisation-crashing deficit spending problem, because the Trump admin recently announced the- shockingly original for a Republican administration- intention of introducing substantial tax cuts primarily benefitting the american upper class.
Someone needs to explain to the people who complained about inflation during Biden's term that if you cut taxation more than you cut spending, the feds will have to print money to make up the difference. This is at least an order of magnitude more significant than USAID, by the way.
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/2/27/fy2025-house-budget-reconciliation-and-trump-tax-proposals-effects?
You made one significant error: You believed the institutional economists. You can go to the FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) website and research for yourself. Historically, tax rates have little correlation to Total Federal Receipts, or GPD. They do have an impact on Total Federal Expenditures, which is a positive correlation. These economists are using static scoring, which only works if we ignore supply/demand and assume nothing will change. In other words, it's almost always wrong.
Okay, why not set tax rates to zero, then?
It would be helpful if you could point me at the exact data-series being used for this correlation analysis, but most of the articles I can dig up on this topic are worse than useless (e.g, looking for correlation with specific rates of taxation instead of a weighed aggregate of each, which is almost by definition going to track with tax revenue.)
https://www.mercatus.org/research/data-visualizations/tax-rates-vs-tax-revenues
I personally find it totally implausible that the income group which accounts for 70% of US income tax is *not* to yield any additional revenue if you increase their tax rates. It doesn't pass the smell test.
Why not set tax rates to zero? because taxes operate on supply and demand just like everything else. It's called the Laffer Curve. When rates go up on rich people, they spend more resources on reducing taxes and finding loopholes. There will always be loopholes because politicians put them there. So, if rates get below a certain point revenues decrease, but also when tax rates go above a certain point tax revenues decrease as well. After the fabled "Trump Tax Cuts" which the opposition swore would starve the government, revenues actually increased. The idea that you get higher revenues by putting higher tax rates on people, especially wealthy people, seems logical and common sense, but history proves otherwise. During the 1950's the top tax rate was 91%, in 1964 it went to 70% (Kennedy), and didn't get to below 40% until Reagan. With a few exceptions, such as during Covid, the federal government's total outlays have stayed within the range of 20%-23%, regardless of top tax rates. In addition, a balanced budget became highly undesirable and then impossible after 1972. Our government needs to continue to borrow and create new treasury notes because our foreign trade partners need someplace to park the surplus dollars they've received due to our trade deficit.
> After the fabled "Trump Tax Cuts" which the opposition swore would starve the government, revenues actually increased
They declined as a percentage of GDP. If the economy is growing overall, revenues can still increase but that's not a particular indication tax cuts were responsible (technically GDP growth has been a little faster under democrat administrations.)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
> There will always be loopholes because politicians put them there
Have you considered closing the loopholes?
> Our government needs to continue to borrow and create new treasury notes because our foreign trade partners need someplace to park the surplus dollars they've received due to our trade deficit
Yes, I'm aware the US trade deficit has to exist in order for dollars to act as the global currency, but I don't expect this to keep going much longer since I'm skeptical about the global economy growing for the rest of the century (barring some AGI or biosingularity scenario.)
"If the economy is growing overall, revenues can still increase but that's not a particular indication tax cuts were responsible"
Exactly what I've been arguing. Tax cuts or increases within a certain revenue range have very little correlation to GDP growth or budget deficit sizes. It's rate of GDP growth that drives revenues and deficits.
"Have you considered closing the loopholes?"
Yes, and it will probably never happen. If it did, the wealthy would simply move elsewhere. During the days of the 91% top tax rate, only mugs paid it. The vast majority of the wealthy took advantage of the plentiful loopholes. Some people want to go back to those levels of taxation. Most wealthy people would be fine with 1950's tax levels if they also got 1950's tax deductions and loopholes.
"Yes, I'm aware the US trade deficit has to exist in order for dollars to act as the global currency, but I don't expect this to keep going much longer ..."
In general, most of the people that follow ToW believe the same thing. Best to use our devaluing dollars now to create real physical infrastructure while we still can.
> If it did, the wealthy would simply move elsewhere
I'm not generally pro-immigration, even for the wealthy/talented, and the US already takes significant steps to stamp out tax evasion by american expats. So I don't see this as a compelling objection.
> Most wealthy people would be fine with 1950's tax levels if they also got 1950's tax deductions and loopholes
This seems to be a concession that many tax deductions and loopholes have already been closed. The dollar doesn't have to devalue if you actually match taxation and spending, and I'm not going to pretend Trump is being especially helpful in this regard.
Don't suppose you can provide advice on how to publish/market a book once it's written?
I can! That just happens to be the focus of my podcast Novel Marketing. You can find it where ever you listen to podcasts.
Great piece!
I'm not a "published author" but perhaps I could be...?
Lot of food for thought. Thanks!
Some thoughts on themes:
- Discovering that almost everything you have been taught came from people that hate you and want you to be destroyed; and that the people you were taught were the "good guys" are actually the bad guys and often vice versa.
- An unexplainable feeling of lethargy and a lack of will to deal with huge problems even when they are widely acknowledged.
- Situations where there are two competing narratives but it turns out the truth is something completely different and the two competing narratives were just a containment strategy.
- A "benevolent" group leading society that turns out to be anything but benevolent. (And not because they are secretly Hitler or Stalin).
- I'm not sure what to do about a highly feminized "empathetic" form of totalitarianism. It might feel a bit too on-the-nose; after all, people read sci-fi for escape, usually to a more masculine imagined world.
- Situations where the very words and concepts you use turn out to have been carefully designed and tested by your enemies to contain you. (It may be hard to come up with convincing moral universes of this type that aren't just obvious copies of modern ones.)
- Alienation from the physical world, and longing for something real but being unable to give up technological conveniences.
- What happens after historical forces have caused a great mingling of incompatible peoples and resources eventually run out.
- Having to walk away from family and friends in order to secure a better future or to avoid a foreseen tragedy.
- Musical-chairs situations where everyone pretends to believe a polite fiction such as "there is no such thing as race" but nobody really believes this; and how does this end?
That is a great list of potential themes!
I will say there are a lot of historical examples of, "What happens after historical forces have caused a great mingling of incompatible peoples and resources eventually run out."
Empires by definition tend to be multi ethnic and held together with wealth and power. When the empire leaves, the people go back to tribal conflict. See India/Pakistan in the 1950s or the Britons and Saxons in the 4th century Britain.
A lot depends on how regional/ethnic the successor powers tend to be. It also depends how nearby a rival empire is.
There is a really good Star Trek Next Gen episode that explores "Discovering that almost everything you have been taught came from people that hate you and want you to be destroyed; and that the people you were taught were the "good guys" are actually the bad guys and often vice versa."
If I remember correctly, Riker is brainwashed into thinking the good guys were the bad guys.
This was a great article.
Your mention of WW3 warfare brought to mind David Drake's excellent Hammer's Slammers series, which concerns the exploits of a high-tech mercenary tank battalion in an increasingly balkanized galaxy rife with religious, ethnic and economic conflict.
Odd coincidence. Last week I read an article about a lot of the classic writers were inspired by Gibbons book about the fall of the Roman empire
https://www.blackgate.com/2022/05/01/h-beam-pipers-future-history-emfederationem-and-emempireem/
"The Terran Federation in Piper’s stories suffers the same fate as Asimov’s Foundation, Poul Anderson’s Polesotechnic League, George Lucas’ Galactic Republic, and countless other mid-Century space opera civilizations modeled on Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Namely, it collapses, and gives rise to a galaxy-spanning Empire."
"When in doubt use the Roman history" is still a solid rule of thumb when writing sci-fi. Men don't think about Ancient Persia every day, but they do think about Ancient Rome every day.