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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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chapotraphouse
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I have hope that capitalism will destroy us all before we infect the wider galaxy with it.
It's very telling how many "universe empty, only humans out there" space power fantasies use the creative bankrupcy of not even trying to imagine what intelligent life may look like elsewhere all for what amounts to capitalist realism space manifest destiny shit, pretty much without exception.
I didn't like the way The Dark Forest, the second Three Body Problem book, portrayed this. ”Of course there's no intelligent life out there, because they'll just be destroyed by a more advanced civilization once they find out, because everyone is always hostile to each other. This also extends to the last remnants of humanity in space killing each other.”
I argue that in many cases (not all, but hear me out), it's an after-the-fact justification for the difficulty in coming up with alien life that feels sufficiently "alien" to not feel like a Star Trek makeup job.
To be fair to the TBP trilogy..
spoiler
Some civilizations have been fighting an endless transdimensional grudgematch to the point that successive inevitable dimensional collapses purge all the races that aren't hyper survivalist and also hyper advanced. The trisolarans are an example of a primitive civilization who's experiences have somewhat mirrored this extremely poisoned outlook.Communists do the best sci-fi and proper alien aliens. China Mieville's Embassy Town being a great example.
I don't know if Ursula Le Guin was really a communist, but she wrote some good aliens.
Certainly so some of her books featured communism or communal societies quite heavily. I'm pretty sure she would have been, or anarchist