@maxthefox @sudnadja @nyrath Are you aware of Joan Vinge's "Heaven Chronicles" ?
@michael_w_busch @maxthefox @sudnadja
Joan Vinge's Heaven Chronicles are classics.
They illustrate perils of tech decline in a system with no habitable planets but lots of rich asteroids
If a planetary colony falls into barbarism, everybody reverts to a non-technological agrarian society.
If an asteroid civilization falls into barbarism, Everybody Dies.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/techlevel.php#decline
@nyrath @michael_w_busch @sudnadja I didn't yet but I'll probably check them out for inspiration!
But yea the thing I have with spaceborne societies (aside from the largest of habs) is that they either have strict social control (if human) or have mindsets either natural (alien) or engineered (transhuman) to be able to properly maintain small habitats and asteroid colonies over generations.
With baseline humans, asteroid mines are at least partially dependent on the in-system inhabited worlds.
@maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja
"...spaceborne societies either have strict social control or ..."
Obligatory Atomic Rockets reference:
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacecolony.php#id--Space_Colony--Space_Colony_Problems--Society_Rules
@nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja@vivaldi.net
Being who I am, I’m increasingly inclined to write the IES article on social failure modes of space habitats: to wit, that the meme which states they require tight social control to function basically makes them catnip for all the authoritarian personality types in the area.
@nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja@vivaldi.net
Apart from the, ah, joyful societies authoritarian leaders usually create, of course, the *real* social failure mode is when the guy in charge of the strict social control comes up with the space version of the Four Pests Campaign or making steel in backyard furnaces and the population are unable to tell him he's full of crap before everyone's dead.
("Complaining about the smell of the air is unmutual, citizen!")
@cerebrate @nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja
Ooh, ooh, ooh, I hear the clinking of axes begging to be ground. Let me breathe it in. Yeah, this is the good stuff.
(I am very much a fan of purposeful political axe grinding in SF. I mean, all SF is political whether the creator intends it or not. I prefer intentional.)
@isaackuo @nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja@vivaldi.net
Well, then, just to grind my axe in a less expected direction, let me take a moment to point out that we can see exactly the same failure modes in corporations with the equivalent strict "social" control, too.
(In this particular area my politics is that "any system isomorphic to sticking your hands over your eyes and fingers in your ears when confronted with feedback is a very bad system indeed" 😊.)
