Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Scientifiction: Deeper Than You Thought



I know because the "New York Times" told me so:

Stone Links: Philosophical Fictions

By MARK DE SILVA
...
Many works of substantial philosophical content are equally well considered pieces of speculative fiction: Thomas More’s “Utopia,” Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” and Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” The essay also manages to draw a line of influence from Plato’s Cave to the work of Philip K. Dick, and to the movie “The Matrix.”

I have now retroactively won 100 arguments with an entire menagerie of professors of philosophy, literature and writing.

So I've got that going for me.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

...which is nice!

Anonymous said...

In my experience, the majority of people I hear winge and moan about what a horrible pollutant science fiction is to the collective body of literature (as opposed to people who simply don't care for it), are people who are classicist purists. They think there is no music genre after "classical" (except rarely perhaps early jazz), no history after 1910, and any book written after 1850, with the exception of books written about books written before 1850, is horse flatulence put to print.

When I bring up that genre and someone starts to moan and wail, I ask them their favorite genre of music. If "classical" or "opera" is mentioned right off, I just change the subject.

There really seems to be a notion among some that only the nobility of history can give literature validation.

Mike.K.

Batocchio said...

In a screenwriting class in college, I started to adaptThe Demolished Man. Bester remains one of my favorites.