RPO: Flash Forward vs Ready Player One: Which has the more realistic future? Possible minor spoilers

[Mitchell]

Last month's book Flashforward dealt with what the world would be like in 20 years. Ready Player One, set in 2040, deals with totally different depiction of the future with a world that has suffered decades of a depression with "Stacks" of trailer homes reminiscent of hoovervilles during the Great Depression.

I find the more depressing of the two futures more likely and realistic. It would make sense for people to recede into pleasure and entertainment while the world is going to shit around them à la Brave New World, especially if that entertainment was free.

I was curious what y'all thought would be the more likely an outcome for the future, Flashforward or Ready Player One?

[Veronica, Supreme Sword]

I also, sadly, see Ready Player One as the more "potential" future. I hope I'm wrong though!

[Nick]

While my initial reaction to agree with you both, I feel when I sit back it's the trap all generations seem to fall into. "Now is nowhere near as good as it was when I was young" or " things were simpler then" type attitudes.

I do think society sits back and recedes into entertainment till it finally gets "bad" enough and then rises to self correct. Possible the Arab Spring to be an example of this.

Ok I'll stop now and try not to think so hard I'm back to my initial reaction.

[Nathan]

Score a point for Sawyer. He picked this year's Nobel Prize winners for physics ten years ago: http://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=3008

[Vladimir]

I think most people will accept the RP1 future as the more probable one, as most people always think the sky is falling. Just look at the news, how many good vs bad stories are there?

Believing in a better future is hard as it requires hard work from everyone (including yourself) to achieve that future.
Believing that everything will be worse is easy - you don't have to do anything to improve the world (or even a small part of it), since it won't matter as everything will go to hell anyways.

[Stan]

I can not think of one generation in the past 50 years who were not convinced that "their" time was the worst ever and that any day now horrible things will happen.

There will always be recessions. There will always be decadent behavior. There will always be people who think they have it worse than any previous generation. It seems to just be part of human nature.

Me, I think things come in cycles. There will be good times. There will be bad. The cycle will be a random mixture of the two.

[Kris]

I think that two things really tip the scales for me and that is how many people total are effected negatively in how they live their life and what is the level of concern for the worst off people. So I think RP1 sits at the top of the bad future choices because everyones life is effected negatively and the poorest or worse off people are treated as objects by the most powerful with zero reaction by anyone to their machinations.

[Stephen]

I think Mechagodzilla is going to kill use all.

But seriously, I don't think the world is going to be as bad as Ready Player One's future. According to most people I talk, how good or bad the world is directly related to how much they have to pay for gas. I just chuckle.