I think Stross misses the ability to draw inspiration from 'good' stuff happening. I've challenged my SF writing friends on occasion to start with some change that really flips the bit. Two interesting starting points are;
- Unlimited energy
- Unlimited Biology
These both have big potentials for bad thing happening as well. I think Unlimited Biology has already been done a lot, however. I think it's so prone to weirdness that it tends toward dystopian visions. Also, a lot of this territory was covered in the 20th century.
Perhaps there's inspiration to be drawn from good stuff happening despite the tremendous potential for bad?
Perhaps the challenge then is to imagine the mechanism / property by which the bad thing is averted and the good succeeds. In a classical twist one would have the protagonist struggle against the bad thing, nearly lose, and then through a series of heroic actions over come to achieve goodness.
For me, that has been one of the interesting parts of SF is to see how people imagine we might over come either a temptation to do evil, or intrinsic evil.
If you have nigh-unlimited energy -- and crazy people do too -- then planets become remarkably big targets. And space habitats become a practical alternative. That could be an interesting setting, and remarkably non-dystopian.
What do you mean by "nigh-unlimited?" Even if you have a store of energy that doesn't run out, thermodynamics will bite you if you try to use too much of it at once.
planets become remarkably big targets.
Even 1970's tech has access to huge amounts of energy for targeting planets from space, if all you want to do is to destroy stuff.
And space habitats become a practical alternative. That could be an interesting setting, and remarkably non-dystopian
"Burning Man in the Oort Cloud" has been done. There's still a lot of potential there, though.
Perhaps there's inspiration to be drawn from good stuff happening despite the tremendous potential for bad?