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HUMAN_WONDER

                                                   March     6, 2004
                                          Revised: November 17, 2004


Damon Knight lead off the pack
with his "In Search of Wonder".               Blish/Atheling responded
                                              with the Sophocles line:
David G. Hartwell continues this
tradition in "Age of Wonders":                  "Wonders are many, but
                                                none so wonderful as man."

Hartwell discusses the Niven story
"Inconstant Moon" as arousing
the sense of wonder, but to me
it's really clear that the
central feature is not amazement
at that abnormally bright moon,
but the comprehension of the
person staring at it. It's a
story about a man who
immediately realizes something        LUCIFERS_HAM
that takes everyone else a long
time to understand.

    The point of the story is *not*
    wondering at the cosmos... this
    is the old fantasy of being the          "Nightfall" and "Universe" are
    Competent Man.                           less celebrations of wonder
                                             than cautionary tales.

The central concern of SF is not             Each is a story about a
just "wonder", but wonders that              people who are without
are comprehended, wonders tamed.             mental flexibility, who
                                             have let circumstance
  As Hartwell himself puts it:               narrow their vision.
  "What makes the story Sf is
  not the magic but the                        The reader, it is
  explanation that suggests                    understood, is not
  that the magic is actually                   one of them.
  possible."  p. 83
                                                    EXPOSURE_TO_VACUUM
Not just possible, but
tameable, within human
scope.

    Blish's remarks
    are apropos, but
    can be flipped:

    One wonderful thing        (Yes, Feynman's
    about humanity is the      doggerel is also
    very sense of wonder       apropos.)
    under discussion...

    The human                                          I had an English
    engagement     Not just the                        teacher once that
    with the       cosmic ballet,                      talked about the
    wonder is      but a human dance                   experience of looking
    the real       with the cosmos.                    up at the sky:
    focus.
                                                         "It makes you feel
         Ah, the extreme                                  very small,
         dissapointments of the                           doesn't it?"
         sulfuric acid of Venus,
         the sterilizing                                  While the class
         radiation of Jupiter...                          nodded, I thought
                                                          "Actually, no,
                                                          it doesn't"
         And then, Varley's
         suburbanization of                               SF does not
         Mercury via personal                             celebrate the
         force field...                                   majestic, it
                                                          insists that
         Need we resort to that?                          humanity is as
                                                          great as any
                                                          wonder.

                                                          The jesters...

                                           LOST_WORLDS_OF_UNKNOWN_TOMORROWS

                                                          The deep ones...

                                                     IN_DEEP

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