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ELDER_DEPTHS

                                              March  6, 2004

Frederick Pohl once said:
                         
   "science fiction is            
   a way of thinking"             Some of Pohl's 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 critereon, that
  and that in this sense they               does little to explain why  
  fail Poul Anderson's unitary              anyone would care about a   
  test in the worst possible way.           literature of hypothetical  
  For all their ingenuities of              contingencies...            
  detail and their smoothness as                                        
  exercises, they show no signs  
  of thinking -- and by that I   
  mean thinking about problems   
  that mean something to         
  everyone, not just about       
  whether or not a match will    
  stay lit in free fall, which is
  a gimmick and nothing else."   


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 "eternal human verities"                    
    has many cracks and fuzzy edges, and                    
    I submit that the true province,                        
    the highest calling of what we often                    
    call "science fiction", is in                           
    attacking those boundaries.                             
                                                            
       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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