X Prize assembled a supergroup of sci-fi authors to develop its next competitions

The X Prize Foundation has launched a number of competitions over the years that includes everything from addressing water quality and women’s safety to exploring the depths of the ocean, to sending rovers to the moon. Now, it’s assembled a supergroup of some of the world’s best-known science fiction authors to help the organization imagine what the future will look like.

The Science Fiction Advisory Council is made up of 64 advisors, which includes some of the biggest names from the world of science fiction literature, film, and television: Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, David Goyer, Nancy Kress, Annalee Newitz, Larry Niven, Bruce Sterling, J. Michael Straczynski, Charles Stross, Andy Weir, and many others. Eric Desatnik, X Prize’s senior public relations director, told The Verge in an e-mail that he brought the idea of the advisory council to the foundation’s founder, Peter Diamandis last year, who “said yes before I could even finish my sentence.”

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Tau.Neutrino said:

X Prize assembled a supergroup of sci-fi authors to develop its next competitions

The X Prize Foundation has launched a number of competitions over the years that includes everything from addressing water quality and women’s safety to exploring the depths of the ocean, to sending rovers to the moon. Now, it’s assembled a supergroup of some of the world’s best-known science fiction authors to help the organization imagine what the future will look like.

The Science Fiction Advisory Council is made up of 64 advisors, which includes some of the biggest names from the world of science fiction literature, film, and television: Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, David Goyer, Nancy Kress, Annalee Newitz, Larry Niven, Bruce Sterling, J. Michael Straczynski, Charles Stross, Andy Weir, and many others. Eric Desatnik, X Prize’s senior public relations director, told The Verge in an e-mail that he brought the idea of the advisory council to the foundation’s founder, Peter Diamandis last year, who “said yes before I could even finish my sentence.”

more…

> exploring the depths of the ocean

Huh? What’s this one?

> some of the biggest names from the world of science fiction literature

Got to be careful there. A lot of SciFi these days falls into two categories, either promotion of the impossible, or pure soap opera with no Sci content.

mollwollfumble said:

The Science Fiction Advisory Council is made up of 64 advisors, which includes some of the biggest names from the world of science fiction literature, film, and television: Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, David Goyer, Nancy Kress, Annalee Newitz, Larry Niven, Bruce Sterling, J. Michael Straczynski, Charles Stross, Andy Weir, and many others. Eric Desatnik.

> some of the biggest names from the world of science fiction literature

Got to be careful there. A lot of SciFi these days falls into two categories, either promotion of the impossible, or pure soap opera with no Sci content.

It’d be a very interesting exercise to list all the SciFi innovations and allocate them into categories of physically impossible, unlikely to the point of being impossible, economically impossible, plausible and likely.

Lots of things from Star Trek are physically impossible. Humanoid aliens are unlikely to the point of being impossible. Antimatter drives and travel at high relativistic speeds are economically impossible. Smart tattoos are plausible.