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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeffzilla" data-source="post: 9735598" data-attributes="member: 6925169">We're really juggling two contradictory ideas in this thread-- how 'real' is our fiction?  Science fiction asks a lot of what ifs. It asks us to conjecture, to speculate. Those conjectures may be informed by what we know to be true-- by what is-- but the very concept of science fiction also requires that elements of the story be... well... fictional.You're quite right in suggesting that there are potential futures where human or alien societies might realistically be constrained from all-out genocidal attacks on major population centers-- restrained by the limits of technology, restrained by notions of morality, restrained by fear of lost intergalactic standing, and so forth-- and it's easy to extrapolate such a future from humanity's past and present.But there are also potential futures where human or alien societies might realistically be pushed towards all-out genocidal attacks on major population centers-- because the limits of technology push them into such a thing, or because notions of morality force them to make a choice, or because one's intergalactic standing depends upon it-- and it's equally easy to extrapolate such futures from humanity's past and present.So, yeah, I can see a fictional world where such things could happen.  That's how fiction works.  And how 'real' those fictional events might turn out to be depends upon how a whole lot of unpredictable and unguessable unknowns unfold between now and then.I can remember wondering how my deceased grandparent would have responded to 9/11.  The truth is that she never could have imagined such a thing.  I was alive and well on that day, and I couldn't imagine it either-- and then it happened. So is orbital bombardment impossible?  Unlikely? Have we evolved beyond such a thing?You tell me-- my crystal ball is in the shop.</blockquote>

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