[PREV - ELDER_DEPTHS] [TOP]
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."
He 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. He's a guy
who immediately realizes
something that it takes everyone LUCIFERS_HAM
else a long time to get.
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 actual central concern of SF Each is a story about a
is not just "wonder", but wonders people who are without
that 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
Not just possible, but
tameable, within human
scope.
Blish's remarks (Yes, Feynman's
are apropo, but doggerel is also
can be flipped. The human appropo.)
engagement
with the I had an English
wonder is teacher once that
Not just the the real talked about the
cosmic ballet, focus. experience of looking
but a human dance up at the sky:
with the cosmos.
"It makes you feel
very small,
Ah, the extreme doesn't it?"
dissapointments of the
Sulfuric Acid of Venus, While the class
the radiation of nodded, I realized
Jupiter... that it actually
didn't.
And then, Varley's SF does not
suburbanization of celebrate the
Mercury via personal majestic, it
force field... insists that
humanity is as
Need we resort to that? great as any
wonder.
The jesters...
LOST_WORLDS_OF_UNKNOWN_TOMORROWS
The deep ones...
IN_DEEP
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