Great Ideas in Science Fiction

Did the Dyson Sphere start in science fiction or did Freeman Dyson propose it first and it made its way into science fiction?

True, not really technology, though it may become so.

There have been times I would like to have taped them over their mouths.

At a guess, you're thinking of James the Christmas Bush from Forward's Rocheworld.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocheworld#James_.28the_Christmas_Bush.29

Rocheworld and A Mote in God's Eye are both first-contact stories.

Here's an interesting idea I liked from a novel called Singularity Sky: Humanity creates the first AI Singularity, which quickly evolves beyond all human understanding, names itself the Eschaton and vanishes from the Earth, taking with it 50% of the population of the planet. All vanished, just gone.

Years later it is discovered that the vanished 50% of the population has been translocated to other planets through the Universe, but they were transported back in time as far as the planets are located from Earth. So if the planet was a million light years distant, then the population was translated a million years back in time.

The result of this is that the descendants of those transplanted people have evolved into new forms. Some of which have taken to space travel and tried to come home.

One of these is an upload civilization of cybernetic organisms which call itself The Festival. The Festival is so different from humanity as we know it that it appears completely alien and behaves in alien ways.

Singularity Sky is by Charles Stross and is full of Great SciFi Ideas.

Can't remember the name or author but I remember a short story with that theme. The computer was called AC for Analytic Computer. Humanity eventually annihilated itself in a war, time passed, all the stars burned themselves out and AC got frustrated with nothing to do. The story ended with the line: And AC said 'Let there be light'.

My all time favorite Sci Fi idea was from the movie Forbidden Planet. On another planet where an alien civilization disappeared for unknown reasons, a scientist finds a machine capable of harnessing energy to create anything that the mind (both conscious and unconscious) invoked. You can imagine the possibilities...

This is great; I'm compiling a reading list.

I loved the stories in an anthology called Contact. It's all first contact stories, and there is one about a ship called the Llanvabon (there's a name) where they switch ships with the other civilization.

I know it well. That was an excellent older SciFi movie. It's in my collection. Poor Morbius.

I just googled it. It was first proposed by a sci-fi writer called Olaf Stapledon in his novel "Star Maker" ( I did not read it) in 1937. Freeman Dyson then popularized the idea in a scientific paper in 1960.
A fascinating concept, a ring around a star with a habitable inner surface. It spins to provide "gravity".

Cool. Thanks.

Which was based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, itself a bit sci fi and fantasy.

Btw, Hitchhikers Guide was originally a Radio 4 Series, not a novel.

Which sci fi plot did you mean here? Maybe I will have to give William's stuff another chance. His Romeo & Juliet put me off from reading more.

Tnx for the link. Some of my earliest memories are of listening to X-1, a Sci fi radio show.

you can get the entire series by going to induceddyslexia dot com and plop in hitchhiker.

More fantasy than sci fi. There's a magician, a witch (deceased) Sycorax and a "monster," Caliban.

Asimov - Foundation series: psychohistory

James Blish - A Case of Conscience: alien atheism / morality

Arthur C. Clarke - Childhood's End: paradise, post-physical evolution

Using software for fun and games instead of its intended purpose. Philip K Dick in Galactic Pot Healer conceives of a game where a book or film title is put through translation software umpteen times before being translated back and they have to guess what the original title was. People do that now using Google translate.

The very intricate planetary orbit in a three star system in The Three Body Problem maybe the best explanation for why the winters and summers are so unpredictable in the fictional world of Game of Thrones.