original cover art |
Amplifying Science Fiction
I've spent decades developing my concept of what constitutes science fiction. As a relatively new literary genre, science fiction means different things to different people.
For Exode, I imagine that science fiction was brought to its greatest flowering in the Ekcolir Reality. In that Reality, science fiction remained in the hands of a small cadre of scientists and engineers. Still, it was proof of the concept that Earthlings could be prepared for First Contact. The roots of science fiction may never fully be known, but they can be traced into the First Reality (see also).
2008 edition |
If it was the analogues of Gernsback, Asimov, Vance and Clarke who created science fiction in the Ekcolir Reality, then who were the architects of the type of newfangled science fiction that arose in the Buld Reality?
last and first science fiction |
Even while science fiction was just being invented, some writers such as Olaf Stapledon were setting the foundation for what would become the "second wave" of science fiction, what we can think of as the pop culture domain of "anti-science fiction". Writers such as Stapledon, with no background in science, were able to spread the memes of science fiction to a wider audience. In the Exodemic Fictional Universe, both science fiction and anti-science fiction were carefully created and crafted for the great purpose of getting Earth out of its "trap" and liberating humans from the dead end existence that had been our original fate.
1971 - cover art by Edward John Jones |
My preference is for stories that show a high degree of interest from the author in science, but many people are happy to avoid the fussy constraints imposed by nature. An example: after the character was depicted on TV in 1954, many science fiction authors took Ian Flemming's James Bond into science fictional settings, often with only a minimalist's tip of the pen towards science. Vance's mature equivalent of Bond was Kirth Gersen. Marion Zimmer Bradley imagined her own version of the interstellar secret agent man.
1983 edition |
Apparently there is supposed to be future/alien science behind the psychokinetics in The Door Through Space, but Bradley could not be bothered to explain the fine details. In the story, the protagonist (living in a future with interstellar travel) is baffled by the question of how television signals might be sent to the far side of a planet. Bradley was no Arthur Clarke.
Lord of the Toads
1979 - cover art by Walter Velez |
A story from the Ekcolir Reality. Original cover art by Swen Papenbrock |
However, Gohrlay just informed me that science fiction was popular at Observer Base during her first life.
The science fiction game has probably been popular among Interventionists since the very beginning.
Related Reading: The Escapists
Next: The X-Files Season 10 Finale
visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers |
No comments:
Post a Comment