I mean, we could speculate and explore the strange future and stuff. Just without that tired trope of “well, science and technology progressed a bunch and then we got this really great machine”.
I mean there’s gotta be another way. Examples?
Try searching for authors who describe their work as “Speculative fiction” - that’s the way most of them don’t admit to writing low-brow sci-fi.
Also near future sci-fi tends to be a bit lighter on the “magical machine” plot tropes. Climate fiction might be worth looking into too, most of the near future books exploring possible global warming consequences aren’t all hopped up on magical technological advances.
fun fact. Science fiction is speculative fiction- it’s just a sub genre that’s evolved into its own genre (same with fantasy.)
Check out Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds
If I’m understanding this correctly, you’re looking for fiction that focuses on framing more of cultural and societal shifts than technological changes?
What you’re looking for is difficult to find in the framing of Science Fiction because its very framing invokes technological advancement - technology is the application of science, and machinery is the result of technological innovation. Science fiction is, at its core, about how discoveries in science may change the world.
Nonetheless, you may want to look into the sub-genre referred to as “social science fiction”. Although it’s not going to be devoid of advanced technology, the focus will be more on the social and societal impacts thereof, than the machinery itself.
What you’re looking for is difficult to find in the framing of Science Fiction because its very framing invokes technological advancement - technology is the application of science, and machinery is the result of technological innovation.
Machinery’s certainly a result of technological innovation, but not the only result. Different materials, even altogether different forms of organisms are also results of technological innovation. OP’s left it rather open, so it may be that they also mean these different applications of science.
What are some examples of things you don’t like? That’s really necessary to give examples. Science fiction usually has technology in some form or another. Sometimes it’s the focus of the story (eg The Last Question or Permutation City). Sometimes it’s a tool for the story (eg The Expanse or Neuromancer_). Other times it’s set dressing like magic in fantasy (eg Dune or Book of the New Sun). Outside of hard SF and beyond Golden Age SF you run into more “tech as device or background.”
Canticle for Leibowitz is a classic piece of sci-fi that spends most of its time in future medievalism but it kind of cheats in that it’s both post-apocalypse and society rebuilds its tech base by the end.
Other than that it sounds like you want future fiction without all that pesky science.
I once read a SciFi story where people lived in a way-post-scarcity world. There must have been machines somewhere, but they did not play a role worth mentioning.
I’ve wondered about a sort of fantasy story with all the hallmarks of science-fiction. Maybe a wizard grapples with the ethical problems that a new spell would unleash if he were to use it. He could end famine for all time for his people, but maybe it makes every other land in the surrounding area inhospitable to life. Or something along those lines where a new “tech” will cause a major disruption with moral/ethical dilemmas, it’s just that the “tech” is some sort of magical device or spell, something very fantasy-based. Everything would take place in a medieval era, nothing high-tech at all, but the whole thing is structured like a sci-fi story. After all, medieval tech is still “high-tech” depending on your temporal point of view.
You might enjoy N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. The setting at first appears as fantasy, but there is a sci-fi-like depth to everything. The climate and periodic catastrophic Seasons, the tectonics, orogeny (humans’ magic-like abilities to manipulate heat and tectonics), and “high-tech” of the world’s past history.
I literally just started the second book a few days ago! I’m loving it so far.
I figure the main arc of the plot is “a mystery is revealed and its depths explored”. That’s basically Egan and Hughes right there.
Except we’d do it without the science/technology tropes.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic
I read a cool short story a few years ago that really embraced that quote. It started out as a fantasy story with wizards doing magic. It then turns out that magic is actually old nano machines or something, but society has forgotten all about the science behind them.
That sounds fun. If you ever remember the name, let me know!
Magik by Angie Sage. Though truth be told that’s a 5th book revelation
Never heard of that, but I’ll look into it. The one I read was a short story in Analog, maybe 15 years ago
What I’m referring to is youth fiction but I remember them fondly
Thank you.
Science fiction is in it’s essence the exploration of a situation when all the confounding factors have been magicked/scienced away.
Not uncommonly it explores the requirements of the technical solution, what would the machine need to do for this to work out? And/or What happens if it doesn’t?
Take for example “Do androids dream of electric sheep” by Philip K Dick, it’s about finding androids advanced enough not to know they’re artificial and how to identify and relate to them when the only diagnostic is slow, clumsy, and suspect. It’s more an exploration of what makes a person than it’s around the marvels of The Machine™.
During the 1900s the vehicle for science to magick with had been machines, computers and AI. Remember that space travel, fission power, psychology, modern medicine were all new, hope inducing breakthroughs just this same period.
There’s also the issue that the definition of the genre came after it becoming large enough to matter. The edges between scifi, punk/cyberpunk, speculative fiction, isekai and even to fantasy are all made after the fact, meaning modern machines go into scifi, old machines go into steam-/diesel-/etc-punk. The main difference between Science, Magick, and Eldritch horror is how detailed the mechanics of the solution are described, and speak to different people.
But on the topic of the story not being centered around a machine: try the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.
Or go the entirely other way with Ring World by Larry Niven. There’s plenty of machines-did-it in the fringes, but the central theme is to figure out what would be needed for a Ring World to exist, what would happen on it, and how would it be managed. It’s an exploration of physics more than anything - more “what is the machine” than “machines-did-it”.
And the Foundation series (Asimov) famously explore the premise “what if sociology works”, and the other details solved by throwing machines at them.
You also have The Culture (Iain Banks) series that center on/around post-scarcity society and explore that.
Probably not exactly matching your meaning, but in a round about way, Dune, post Machine Crusade –
It’s maybe not as evident without reading the series–which definitely isn’t a negative comment! I’ve enjoyed (almost) every bit of the truly shocking amount of Dune I’ve put myself through since the very early '90s, haha.
I’m, uh, mildly obsessive as well as critical of the SF I stand by, (just for myself personally!–everyone should like whatever they like!) but Frank Herbert, entirely, still remains in my top 2 favorite authors. You may enjoy all the books as a whole, if you’re looking for something less about ‘the machine’ itself, but how humans diverge from it and without it, but it’s…a lot, lol. And…well, I won’t spoil things. I just remembered it might negate my entire point. Oh, no. (ʘ‿ʘ)
Anyway! Regardless!
If you do ever get into full-ass Dune–and I’d recommend this “tip” to literally anyone–I’d definitely suggest audio books for the early works of Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson. They took a bit to get into their groove from informational to actually entertaining. The lore is honestly fantastic, beautifully done, but physically reading their earlier Dune stuff can be textbook without diagram tedious. Love 'em both for the work, but shiiiiiiiiite.
It’s called Dune
- ‘The Chrysalids’ and ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ by John Wyndham
- ‘West of Eden’ by Harry Harrison
Children of Men would be a sci-fi without any significant technological improvements. Ender’s Game does have the Ansible, but it’s more a plot device than anything.
Alan Dean Foster has a series (Humanx Commonwealth) starting with Midworld. No special machines in the first 4.
Cachelot is excellent and is about sentient space cetaceans after forming a treaty with humans.
Midworld is basically Avatar.
Nor Crystal Tears is about the Thranx side of meeting Aliens (humankind) in first contact.
Sentenced to Prism is about the concepts of non-carbon life forms.
Must books cover elements of humanity and what is humanity.
Dune.
