[PREV - FUTURE_FRAGMENTS]    [TOP]

DARKWOOD

 I really like this            
 rhetorical dodge:      (from LOST_WORLDS_OF_UNKNOWN_TOMORROWS) 
 

    "Science Fiction" was            
    the dark wood, a              
    hideout for an outlaw             
    band that remains                 
    nameless.                             
                                          
       Jesters taken refuge                  
       in a parade of clowns              One problem: The    
                                          suggestion here is 
                                          that there were the 
But I fear that this is a rather          good guys, the heavy         
florid way of admitting that I            thinkers; hiding out    
don't know what I'm talking               amongst a bunch of     
about.  I don't mean plain old            bozos, those damn       
SF, I mean *something else*               light weights hacking
which remains unnamed, hiding             out popular crap. 
within the walls of SF.                   
                                             There may be some truth in 
   What would that be?                       that model, but when you      
                                             get down to specific cases  
                                             you often find mixtures       
Later I go on with                           that defeat generalization:
circumlocutions like                         heavy ideas mixed with         
                                             romantic claptrap; escapist
  "the literature of change"                 hackwork that nevertheless     
  "the fiction of possibilities"             hits a point that really      
                                             resonates...                
There's an intentional
ambiguity there: I                                HEINLEIN
might still be talking
about Science Fiction     
in general there *or*    
I might be speaking of   
some subset of SF.        

                                          
                                                                               
In context, maybe                                                
it's clear I'm after a                                           
sub-set. But what                         
sub-set?  That's the                      
real question, and                        
it's one I've been                        
dodging.                                  
                                          
Answering it could be a problem           
fully as tedious as arguing
about the definition of science
fiction itself...
                 
But I've got a name
I'm kicking around:

  Deep SF

All it needs is a manifesto.         
                                     IN_DEEP


--------
[NEXT - NEOLOOGIES]