Three Moons
Wells' Selenites;
Lewis' Sulva;
Anderson's evil Beings from Earth.
Three Earths
Anderson's goetics;
Blish's Armageddon;
our current crises.
The third Earth is the real one where the others are imagined. However, Steve Matuchek on the goetic Earth imagines two Earths similar to ours:
one without goetics;
another with what we recognize as Nazism and Stalinism.
Blish acknowledges Lewis who acknowledges his debt to Wells.
Demons speak in works by Lewis, Blish and Anderson although, of these three authors, only Lewis believed in their literal existence and did not claim to know any details.
Wells' The Time Machine was published in 1895;
Anderson's Genesis in 2000;
Anderson's Mother Of Kings in 2001;
Anderson's For Love And Glory in 2003.
With Lewis and Blish between, these four authors span the twentieth century.
The Time Machine and Genesis present alternative fictional accounts of the ultimate fate of mankind on Earth.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to disagree about "Stalinism." It was not that simple, blaming the horrors of the USSR on Stalin alone. Rather, it was MARXISM-LENINISM. Stalin merely extended and completed the system of tyranny Lenin BEGAN.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It was not one man alone but it was not just a set of idea, either.
Paul.
"Darwinism" is not just Darwin's ideas but a theory that others also expand and elaborate. The same applies to most "-ism" words.
Events in a country are the outcome not only of ideas in the heads of individuals but also of material and social conditions constraining and changing the policies and actions of groups and individuals. Some ideas are about emancipation, not about coercion, as their founding documents show.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course not. Lenin had many eager and willing associates in building up his totalitarian regime of secret police terror. To paraphrase Lenin, the purpose of terror is to terrorize.
And something as abstract and rootless as Marxism would never have to control Russia except by the unique abilities of Lenin, who quickly grasped when and where to apply pressure on all who opposed him.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
And I was thinking of Anderson's story "Details" when I wrote my previous comment.
Ad astra! Sean
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