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December: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
The next poll will pick two books. I'd like to do it that way to keep a strong second place contender from being overlooked, and so I don't have to update the poll so often.
Discuss The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin in the comments below.
Snow Crash was written by Neal Stephenson in 1992. The novel features a bit of a Calexit scenario, and is known for popularizing the term "avatar" (paving the way for James Cameron's true magnum opus). These days, Neal moonlights as Magic Leap's "Chief Futurist". Seems appropriate.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation
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SoylentNews Book Club: Discuss The Three-Body Problem, Start Reading Snow Crash
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Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-- Lord Acton
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 06 2018, @04:23PM
Listening to a bunch of Isaac Arthur [youtube.com] Fermi Paradox videos on YouTube, I'm not so sure anymore. It seems to me that if we were going to have a problem with this, we would just be swarmed without even attracting attention to ourselves (and future stupendously large space telescopes and gravitational lensing will allow us to locate civs). If there's no faster-than-light travel, we are as safe as can be. If there is, we have been visited or are being visited. And robust (not self-destructive) intelligent life is probably rare, thus the galaxy has not been colonized (as far as we can tell).
If we start planting humans on Mars, Ceres, Callisto, Titan, etc., asteroid mining, and building a Dyson swarm, humanity should have some staying power and enough splinter groups to keep things fresh and expanding. From there we can explore and/or conquer the galaxy on a relatively short timescale. We'll find what's in our cosmic backyard sooner or later.
As far as intergalactic travel goes, it's questionable if we'll accomplish it. But if we do nothing, Andromeda and some local group galaxies will merge with our own eventually, bringing many new star systems to us and potentially some intelligent aliens. Humanity could last for billions of years and reach this stage simply by distributing ourselves throughout the galaxy. A group or two could get wiped out but others will stick around. There will be some divergent and self-directed evolution, which could make our cheap sci-fi humanoid aliens a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
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