A development of some thoughts from entry below this one:
Cyber SciFi will prosper, but Hard SF will die. There's no more room for Asimov and his type...you can't tell fairy tales in that sort of environment.
As Lewis wrote:
An Expostulation
Against Too Many Writers of Science Fiction
Why did you lure us on like this,
Light-year on light-year, through the abyss,
Building (as though we cared for size!)
Empires that cover galaxies,
If at the journey's end we find
The same stuff we left behind,
Well-worn Tellurian stories of
Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love,
Whose setting might as well have been
The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bethnal Green?
Why should I leave this green-floored cell,
Roofed with blue air, in which we dwell,
Unless, outside its guarded gates,
Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits,
Strangeness that moves us more than fear,
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart
That finger-tip at which we start
As if some thought too swift and shy
For reason's grasp had just gone by?
Hard SF gives us morality tales...stories about our society, thinly disguised. Tell me some fairy tales, give me the fantastic...those stories can talk about the ultimate. If all we wrote were Hard SF (which for a while was all we could do...'40s through '70s) we would be short-sighted indeed. If all we write is Hard SF, we have no ultimate meaning in our lives beside the living interactions between human beings.
So long live Cyber Sci-Fi and other funkadelic stuff...use SF to give me Wonder, or some thought too swift and shy/For reason's grasp.
Cyber SciFi will prosper, but Hard SF will die. There's no more room for Asimov and his type...you can't tell fairy tales in that sort of environment.
As Lewis wrote:
An Expostulation
Against Too Many Writers of Science Fiction
Why did you lure us on like this,
Light-year on light-year, through the abyss,
Building (as though we cared for size!)
Empires that cover galaxies,
If at the journey's end we find
The same stuff we left behind,
Well-worn Tellurian stories of
Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love,
Whose setting might as well have been
The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bethnal Green?
Why should I leave this green-floored cell,
Roofed with blue air, in which we dwell,
Unless, outside its guarded gates,
Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits,
Strangeness that moves us more than fear,
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart
That finger-tip at which we start
As if some thought too swift and shy
For reason's grasp had just gone by?
Hard SF gives us morality tales...stories about our society, thinly disguised. Tell me some fairy tales, give me the fantastic...those stories can talk about the ultimate. If all we wrote were Hard SF (which for a while was all we could do...'40s through '70s) we would be short-sighted indeed. If all we write is Hard SF, we have no ultimate meaning in our lives beside the living interactions between human beings.
So long live Cyber Sci-Fi and other funkadelic stuff...use SF to give me Wonder, or some thought too swift and shy/For reason's grasp.
Comments
Post a Comment