In Poul Anderson's Murder In Black Letter, the detective work is done not by the detective, Trygve Yamamura, but by his friend, Robert Kintyre, who:
consciously reasons about possible motives and suspects in a murder case;
but also feels or intuits that he already knows more than he has as yet consciously realized;
has perhaps three moments of sudden realization.
We have already seen that moments of realization are frequent experiences for Anderson's problem-solving characters. Yamamura is a Buddhist and a practitioner of judo who knows about Zen. Thinking about Yamamura and Kintyre, I suddenly made a link with my own three main interests from earlier in life:
philosophy - intellect;
spirituality - intuition;
science fiction - imagination.
Philosophy is analysis of concepts or thought about thought.
Zazen is "neither trying to think nor trying not to think; just sitting with no deliberate thought."
Hard sf = imagination + intellect.
I find that coherent and comprehensive.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I really HATE it when people clip the corners of jacket covers! Alas, some of the books I amassed into my PA collection came with clipped jacket covers. GGGRRRRRR!!!
And I would define "spirituality" differently from you, to mean seeing answers to the ultimate questions. Or to seek for the Creator.
Sean
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