: Re: How can I dig conflict out of an optimistic SF-nal premise? I frequently have ideas for what could be called "optimistic" science-fiction premises - imaginary technological or social changes which

@Harper186

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First you need to clarify how much the story is supposed to be about the technology and how much it is supposed to be about people.

If it's mostly about people, go read some Greek literature. Now imagine the story took place in modern times. Would things change much? Not really--maybe it's unmanned drones instead of swords, and maybe it's a social hack into a supposedly secure system instead of a horse statue, but the sources of interpersonal conflict--desire for power, love directed in some fashion other than reciprocally between a pair, the young striving to prove themselves by breaking free of the hard-earned "wisdom" of the old, etc.--are the same unless the tech has also dramatically altered human nature. Even if it's only somewhat person-focused, all these same trends are likely to continue, and you can see their form in most every work of great literature.

If it's mostly about tech, it's almost impossible for new technology to not have both upsides and downsides. For example, fracking is a fantastic technology for increasing our available energy resources--but we have to worry about methane leakage, groundwater contamination, earthquakes, and continued reliance on CO2. Social networking is great, but it can be a huge time sink and make various sorts of social crimes (e.g. sex trafficking) easier to get away with. Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons are based on the same physical principle. If you imagine some awesome piece of tech, even if overall it's great for it to exist, there are almost certain to be downsides to imagine too. Once you anticipate the downsides, you can ignore them, you can focus on them as challenges even though it's obvious that overall the tech is great, or you can make the downsides be far greater than the advantages in standard dystopian style.

For example, suppose fusion reactors become practical and can be reduced to the size of a small car. You can quickly imagine a plot where the main characters are investigators who stop terrorists from acquiring or using such devices. It's clear that such abundant energy is great in most cases, but there are still abuses to be curtailed.

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