in the future i imagine this scenario.
one guy is on a balcony and has a soda in his hand and another guy comes up to him and asks "what does it mean to be a good person if all your mistakes are corrected automatically?" and the guy with the soda throws the soda off the balcony and a little drone detects it and whisks it away to the thrash bin. as that happens the guy that threw it says " i don't know. your intentions don't matter anymore. only convenience does".
this links to the transgender issue. what if they find a way to really turn people into the opposite sex. chromosomes and all.(even if they did i would still consider it devil worship).
i think technology will set a dangerous precedent as to what is and isn't acceptable as a society. how much convenience is to much and if technology did reach those heights would they be morally just?
Science fiction is becoming reality. This is oneof the reasons I like Philip K. Dick. Asimov was good about sticking with the technology aspect of futurity. Dick was prodigious in applying philosophy to futurity. The tech in Dick's work was very much made to move the story he's been known to borrow technology to drove his point home. There are so many good sci-fi writers who have put forward ideas of the future but these are of our here and now. Some good examples.
-Post 1968 Phillip K Dick- Flow My Tears the Policeman Said- Specifically things such as a Civil War in America between the Nats (National Guard) and the Pols (Militarized Alphabets and Law Enforcement). The age of consent in this world is lowered to 12 years old. This book is the Globalist dream. This is what I think they want us to head towards.
Radio Free Ablemuth- About a music producer who keeps having these premonitions of something which turns out to be a ruthless totalitarian politician that was part of a secret communist group who ends up placing people (including the protagonist) in FEMA concentration camps.
A Scanner Darkly- I call this George H.W. Bush CIA the book. We've all seen the movie. This to me has already come true back in the late 80's. Governments and pharma have been working to dumb us down and control us for decades.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep- If it's true the CIA is running breeding farms and MK Ultra brainwashing they are in essence creating replicants. It could be much worse than that too. You might just be an outdated replicant created by the shadow government run by morally unscrupulous Monopolists.
Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes by JG Ballard- These books basically deal with planned resort communities designed for business men. Psychopathy and sociopathy are encouraged or endemic. This is as a means to relax and relieve themselves from the stressors of the modern working world. Super-Cannes has a good example of MK Ultra shooters. The psychologist in town basically reinforces pro MK Ultra programming and a guy shoots up his work. Good reads. Highly recommended reading for suburbanites.
-William Gibson- The Blue Ant Trilogy- This is some of his more recent work. It's about the post 9/11 world. They're stories about defense contractors and board room advertising analysts. Specifically about how contractors could sell weapons and state secrets, surveillance state and using patterns of behavior in big data processing. Gibson's weird because he becomes less science fiction as he writes and more just regular fiction. Though he did sort of predict Snowden a decade or so before all of that.
The Bridge Trilogy- This whole series reminds me of the West Coast currently. Huge homeless populations, corporations creating earthquakes and natural disasters to buy up land and remake the world in their image. Data nodes and information black markets. Digital pop stars and the media complex. He sort of predicted things like TMZ and celebrity worship about 10 years before they were prevalent.
Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer- This is not so much a sci-fi book as it is a fantasy book. Not sword and sorcery fantasy though. More like urban horror. This is really the first mention of what I'd consider the cabal in literary form. Basically a bunch of sex freaks who kidnap people and make snuff films.
Yeah. Phillip K Dick is interesting. Hollywood loves him. I don't think he was big on them. I know L. Ron Hubbard was a huge PKD fan but it wasn't a mutual relationship. PKD thought of L. Ron Hubbard as a parasite in the genre. LRH was more about self-aggrandizement and less about exploring the science. L Ron Hubbard was Scientology's leader and so he had his tendrils around so many emotional compromised stars. He was also big into Allister Crowley and stuff. I think that's where a lot of the Satanism that runs through Hollywood comes from. Well rumor is that Satanism made it's way out there in the 30's. Scientology was most likely a government program to control that sort of thing. L Ron Hubbard had ties to the FBI. My guess is the government created Scientology to try and soak up people that would have gone to the Church of Satan but you know. If you're anywhere long enough you adopt some of the practices you're exposed to. The left coast is known for all sorts of weird cults. Meanwhile PKD is writing about more ethical and Christian centric (but kind of lefty) things. I think both the Church of Satan and the Scientologists kind of saw him as a threat. I highly recommend the Exegesis of PKD. Good read. Really opened my mind about what you can write about as a Christian artist.