Neal Stephenson -- who once wrote a book about a virtual-reality bushido master/pizza delivery man named Hiro Protagonist, but has since devoted his entire writing career to meta-history at the expense of all the world's forests -- has publicly bemoaned the rather dismal nature of modern science fiction. And he's absolutely right: Sci-fi used to be about how awesome and wonderful the future could be; it used to be about big, stupid, bright, shiny ideas that could never happen -- until they did.

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The idea is that kids grew up reading about amazing stuff in science fiction, and then devoted their lives to science so they could one day make fiction a reality. That theory holds that we only have cellphones today because some kid watched Star Trek and couldn't bear to live in a world without Communicators anymore. Since his only options were "suicide" or "science," and he never learned to tie a proper noose, he went to college -- and that's why you can shoot birds at farm animals at red lights today.

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And it only costs the safety and lives of your fellow drivers!

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But even if that's true, I don't think the theory means that the sci-fi of yesteryear was all Fluffiness Augmenters and Snuggle Rays: When people talk about classic science fiction, they often refer to Orwell, Bradbury, Dick and Huxley -- all of whom wrote brutal, merciless dystopian fiction. And there's a reason for that: The negative stuff tends to stick with you, because as sad as it is, a slap in the face is more memorable than a good hug. But even if you're writing a miserably dystopian piece of fiction -- even if you're writing a post-apocalyptic piece about a clone army of Mao Zedongs piloting a squadron of Rape-Bots into an orphanage -- there's a way to do it that doesn't place the blame on technology.