I mean, we could speculate and explore the strange future and stuff. Just without that tired trope of “well, science and technology progressed a bunch and then we got this really great machine”.

I mean there’s gotta be another way. Examples?

  • 🔍🦘🛎@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Children of Men would be a sci-fi without any significant technological improvements. Ender’s Game does have the Ansible, but it’s more a plot device than anything.

  • seaQueue@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 months ago

    Try searching for authors who describe their work as “Speculative fiction” - that’s the way most of them don’t admit to writing low-brow schlock like sci-fi.

    Also near future sci-fi tends to be a bit lighter on the “magical machine” plot tropes. Climate fiction might be worth looking into too, most of the near future books exploring possible global warming consequences aren’t all hopped up on magical technological advances.

    Edit: also check out various books described as literary speculative fiction. Authors who want the intellectual cred of being a literary writer tend to land in the speculative fiction genre more often than not.