TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Reviews Literature / The Second Renaissance

Go To

•••
Booplesnoot Since: Aug, 2023
10/05/2023 16:57:36
•••

Intriguing but Flawed

It’s hard to review something like The Second Renaissance, because I’m not quite sure what frame of mind to approach it in. Technically, of course, it’s a work of fiction, and if I were to evaluate it as such I would consider it a very good one. The issue seems to lie more in Sean McKnight’s conviction that it is NOT simply a story, and—aside from certain details such as the existence of aliens— is what he genuinely believes the future will look like. And he implores his audience to view it the same way.

To put it bluntly, I don’t think the story entirely earns that. Many of the predictions it includes are based on those of George Friedman, but others seem to come from nowhere except McKnight’s own personal gut feelings. McKnight posits that a second American civil war will happen in the late 2020s, but provides no substantial evidence for this. This is probably a good place for me to point out that I do agree that America is headed for a major period of civil unrest, but not necessarily one that will look anything like what McKnight is picturing. He gives no reason, for example, how white-supremacist militias, even at their most ruthlessly effective, could overrun half of America; they simply do, no questions asked.

It’s difficult, in other words, to see where the educated guesses end and the outright fiction begins, or even if McKnight himself makes any distinction between the two. He asserts that faster-than-light space travel will be developed in the 2060s—again, no supporting evidence is given. I have a great deal of respect for McKnight’s knowledge of history, engineering, and geography, and that knowledge is on full display throughout this work. Unfortunately it is often overshadowed by his more questionable decisions.

And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe McKnight DOES have proof that these things are going to happen. But if he does, his energy would be much better spent helping make sure these worst-case scenarios don’t come true than writing alarmist science-fiction stories.


Leave a Comment:

Top