Thursday 20 April 2017

Unlimited SF

Consider, among many other works:

The Time Patrol series, Tau Zero and Genesis by Poul Anderson;
the Draka History by SM Stirling;
The Golden Age by John C. Wright (and how does Wright imagine all that?)

Is sf literally unlimited? Will the possibilities never be exhausted? Yes and no.

Sf does not just come out of anyone's head. The best head in the world would create nothing without input. Ex nihil nihil: from nothing nothing. The creators' inputs are:

the entire history of the universe, evolution and humanity to date;
all past literature;
an understanding of the universe that has been repeatedly transformed in the twentieth and twenty first centuries;
modern technology, its extrapolations and social implications;
what human beings have done and are capable of doing;
what other rational beings and their civilizations might be like...

In fact, we haven't even started yet.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I certainly you are right and that the branch of art and literature called science has not even STARTED yet. But, I still have concerns. Things like Political Correctness and various kinds of SELF censorship might still smother and stifle science fiction.

Sean