Oddbean new post about | logout
▲ ▼
LynAlden | 1 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +2 
 Neither. Near-term on-earth sci fi. Can’t call it “hard” per se since some characters have telekinesis. Psionic abilities have always kind of been the sci fi version of magic, although in this world they are bound by conservation of energy and other details even though the underlying mechanism itself can’t necessarily be explained in rigorous hard sense.
▲ ▼
Clint Quint | 1 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Cool, I'm definitely reading it. Is this near-term future on a bitcoin standard, by the way? Is there any good SF writing out there with bitcoin playing an integral role? I haven’t been able to find any. 

I’m drafting a short story currently where Bitcoin and the bitcoin network is so ubiquitous that people barely know they’re using it or how it came about.
▲ ▼
LynAlden | 1 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 I thought about it and decided that bitcoin exists in the story but is like the size of gold at that point. Really big and common, but major fiat currencies still exist so far. Because the military industrial complex exists in the story, and hasn’t been de-fanged of its seigniorage yet.
▲ ▼
Clint Quint | 1 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 I’m surprised that there hasn't been any substantial fiction predicting the possibilities and future applications of bitcoin. I feel it’s an incredible building block for an imagined future on which to overlay a story. Something like Iain M Banks’ The Culture.