it took time away from more productive reading and blogging;
some conspiracy theories are science fictional;
Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling imported a conspiracy theory into Larry Niven's Man-Kzin Wars.
Malign aliens secretly rule Terrestrial history in Poul Anderson's "Interloper" but, of course, that is fiction. Imagine if Anderson had misused his creative imagination by claiming telepathic contact with extra-solar aliens answering the descriptions of Merseians and Ythrians or by alleging that the parasitic aliens in "Interloper" really existed?
Most of us appreciate fiction and history and know the difference.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Ha! I have heard of the nonsense about how some people believe in shape changing "lizard people" secretly ruling the world! And I'm certainly glad Poul Anderson never fell for that kind of twaddle.
I believe Stirling was also using the idea of conspirators secretly ruling the world in his three Shadowspawn books. Except, in the world of those books, the sinister plotters were real and genuinely horrible!
I hope most people do grasp the difference between fiction and real history!
Ad astra! Sean
The difference between fiction and lies is that fiction aims at suspension of disbelief rather than belief -- it's the 'conditional hypothetical'.
Appreciating this difference actually requires a fairly sophisticated set of assumptions; in really primitive cultures, stories are not distinct from history. The Greeks went through this evolution, but it left tracks -- Homer, for example, was regarded as both a historian and a storyteller.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
The unknown author of the court history of King David in the Books of Samuel also wrote a true work of history. He was probably writing about the time Homer lived, circa 1000 BC.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment