Tuesday 4 April 2017

The Range Of Science Fiction

About Everything
A Lens
A City And Ravens

These posts show that:

sf is not just about the future because it is about everything;
when sf is about the future, it is not just about one kind of future.

Speculative futures can be high tech or post-technological. There can be an urbanized Earth and a cosmic mind or ruined cities and struggling survivors; utopias, dystopias or business as usual scenarios. And Poul Anderson covered every possibility. However, his optimal state of humanity is dynamic and diverse, therefore not "Utopian" if this is taken to mean placidity or uniformity.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree, Poul Anderson's hopes and preferences lay in leaving options open for mankind. He distrusted one size fits all solutions or Utopian schemes for a perfect society.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Corvids are highly intelligent, almost spookily so; they can learn to recognize individual human beings, for example... and may be able to convey knowledge about individuals to other corvids. There's one well-known instance of a young girl feeding crows and the crows bringing her shiny or other interesting objects as "presents". They'd probably learn to recognize that large groups of humans with weapons mean a high probability of yummy carrion, in my opinion.

Vultures operate differently. They have "territories" in the sky which they patrol. Other vultures keep an eye on them, and if they see them circling something promising will fly over to check it out.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

I may have read else where of how intelligent corvids are, but I'm not sure. But what you said about how ravens and vultures behaved certainly fits what I recall both you and Poul Anderson writing in your stories.

Sean