[HN Gopher] Destination: Jupiter
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Destination: Jupiter
Author : AndrewLiptak
Score : 53 points
Date : 2025-06-03 19:43 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (clarkesworldmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (clarkesworldmagazine.com)
| ednite wrote:
| It is always fascinating to see how much influence authors and
| scientists have had on each other throughout history.
|
| You sometimes see clear examples of how fiction fuels technology,
| and sometimes technology inspires fiction.
|
| As a writer who hasn't been published yet, I find that most of my
| stories start by imagining where today's science might take us
| next, though every now and then, I catch a glimpse of something
| that feels truly original.
|
| I'm curious if others here feel the same. Is the future mostly
| written by visionaries in fiction, or by the engineers and
| scientists bringing it to life? Or maybe it's a union, intended
| or not, between both sides.
| aadhavans wrote:
| I feel the same way, although I think technology's inspiration
| on fiction is stronger. Today's fiction, as you said, is simply
| tomorrow's science.
| ednite wrote:
| Thanks for your comment, that's exactly what I was wondering
| about.
|
| For me, I actually tend to see things the other way around
| where authors often inspire tech. Example, engineers who
| watched Star Trek as kids and ended up designing the first
| flip phones. Sometimes we build things simply because
| technology finally makes them possible, and only later do we
| realize it's straight out of a story we grew up with.
|
| Especially when a whole generation grows up with the same
| sci-fi stories, certain ideas just start to seem "normal" or
| even become things people expect to see for real. A kind of
| relationship between our collective dreams and the inventions
| that follow, i guess.
| cmrx64 wrote:
| as a high schooler I took a summer class in "reading & writing
| scifi" offered by MIT Junction. it was very influential on my
| intellectual development and after that I focused myself on
| learning software and electronics, the only crafts I saw that
| could give me the power to pull parts of the visions into the
| present.
|
| a few weeks ago I started on a focused read of historical
| scifi, in chronological order, that had something to say about
| intelligent machines and AI. I feel like the best story for our
| moment might be "The Master Key," where a boy wise beyond his
| years rejects powers too advanced for humanity to adapt.
|
| all my interest in building https://rbg.systems came from
| wanting the sort of powerful, resilient, reflective software
| systems that show up in fiction all the time but are so far
| from the reality. it's pretty boring stuff to try and reach
| something like the ship described in Aurora by Kim Stanley
| Robinson.
| ednite wrote:
| That is interesting. I might have to find some time to check
| out the book. Thanks for sharing your experience.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > "The Master Key," where a boy wise beyond his years rejects
| powers too advanced for humanity to adapt.
|
| For those stumbling by- that's a 1901 novel by L. Frank Baum,
| who also wrote The Wizard Of Oz! Here's a synopsis:
| https://oz.fandom.com/wiki/The_Master_Key
| zabzonk wrote:
| Kind of hard for SF stories featuring organic life (i.e. humans)
| to be based around Jupiter because of the planet's incredibly
| strong magnetic field and hence killing radiation belts - like
| the Van Allen belts around Earth, but much worse. Probes to the
| Jovian system have to be heavily hardened.
| freedomben wrote:
| If anybody is into sci-fi, I highly recommend The Three Body
| Problem series. I'm being very elusive here to avoid spoilers,
| but let's just say that there are some very fascinating
| challenging with establishing technology (and especially human
| life) around Jupiter, what with it's gravity, the radiation,
| it's moons, distance from the sun, etc. As a space nerd, those
| books were highly enjoyable
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Well, life on Jupiter is possible, but "organic" life seems way
| less likely. "Organic" means carbon compounds, and there's not
| a whole lot of carbon on Jupiter.
| generic92034 wrote:
| What kind of life are you thinking of?
| stevenbedrick wrote:
| In case anybody's interested, Malka Older has a really
| enjoyable series (two books so far) of short novels set on
| habitats in Jupiter's atmosphere (so not breathable atmosphere,
| but also not vacuum). They're solid mystery stories with fun
| characters and an intriguing setting. The first is called "The
| Mimicking of Known Successes" and the second is "The Imposition
| of Unnecessary Obstacles".
| arjunbajaj wrote:
| Reading this post reminded me of another book I read a few years
| ago: Curious Moon [0].
|
| It is written as a novel that teaches PostgreSQL by exploring the
| dataset of the Cassini orbiter around Enceladus, Saturn's moon.
| Highly recommended and fun read.
|
| [0] https://sales.bigmachine.io/curious-moon
| conception wrote:
| Similar idea for intro to sql for people -
| https://selectstarsql.com
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| The author of that article somehow managed to miss the most
| famous Jupiter story of all. Arthur C. Clarke's "A Meeting with
| Medusa." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Meeting_with_Medusa
|
| That novella was so enduringly influential that noted SF authors
| Stephen Baxter (a collaborator with, and sort of heir to,
| Clarke,) and Alastair Reynolds wrote a very good sequel a few
| years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medusa_Chronicles
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(page generated 2025-06-03 23:00 UTC)