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ETERNAL_HUMAN

                                              March  6, 2004

Frederick Pohl once said:

   "science fiction is
   a way of thinking"             Some of Pohl's other thoughts
                                  about thinking:

                                    "Gold at the Starbows End";
                                    "In the Problem Pit"

                                  The fantasy that breakthroughs
                                  await, demanding merely some
                                  focused human attention.
This is touched on
in Blish/Atheling's
"A Question of
Content", a 1960
worldcon speech,
and also the
closing chapter of    This also mentions Poul
"The Issue at         Anderson's call for a
Hand".                "Unitary" SF, that covers       IN_DEEP
                      all the bases.


After discussing a number               Over the years, Blish
of mainstream SF hits                   refers a lot to Sturgeon's
(e.g. "1984"), Blish says:              critereon for good SF: a
                                        story about the human heart
  "In short, all these books are        that "would not have
  about something.  I submit to         happened without the
  you that very few science             technological premise".
  fiction stories, even the best
  of them, are about anything,              A very wimpy criterion: it
  and that in this sense they               does little to explain why
  fail Poul Anderson's unitary              anyone would care about
  test in the worst possible way.           such stories.
  For all their ingenuities of
  detail and their smoothness as              At it's core Science
  exercises, they show no signs               Fiction is about
  of thinking -- and by that I                intelligence emersed in a
  mean thinking about problems                "sea of possibilities".
  that mean something to
  everyone, not just about                    The technological content
  whether or not a match will                 is important because it
  stay lit in free fall, which is             amplifies those possibilities.
  a gimmick and nothing else."
                                                      FANTASTIC_VEIL

Blish's idea seems to be that real
literature must be about eternal
human verities, as opposed to the
merely technological realm that SF
champions.

But I would say that it's not clear
that "eternal human verities" are
eternal, human, or true; and the
technological realm definitely has
some bearing on these issues.

    The concept of "eternal human
    verities" has many, many fuzzy
    edges and cracks, and I submit that
    the true province of what we often
    call "science fiction", is to drive
    wedges into those cracks:

       The meaning of the "human"

       The way spirit is rooted
       in the physical

       The ways humanity might
       transform itself.            (or be
                                    transformed...)
           perhaps even
           obviating some
           verities.

                                                transitory
                                                sentient
                                                conveniences



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