ALL SCI-FI

Robert (Butch) Day · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 7:34 am Post subject: The Purpose of Science Fiction

This essay by Robert J. Sawyer is essential.

http://iscroll-primary.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/01/the_purpose_of_science_fiction.html
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

Andrew Kidd · Planetary Explorer Joined: 20 Feb 2016 Posts: 43

Rob happens to be a friend of mine. Great guy as well as a great writer.

Robert (Butch) Day · Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 5:20 am Post subject:

Same here! Many years ago I was in Vancouver, BC for a VCon and I brought my entire collection of in-scale dinosaurs and created a diorama of each era.

We've been friends ever since.

Because of health issues I won't make it to this year's VCon. If you go, say "hi" from Butch!
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

Steve Joyce · Solar Explorer Joined: 14 Dec 2013 Posts: 57

Nice essay.
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"There is a planet in the Solar System where the people are so stupid they didn't catch on for a million years that there was another half to their planet." - Kilgore Trout.

Zackuth · Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:08 pm Post subject:

Good article, I enjoyed reading it. Science fiction could also be used to point us in directions. While Frankenstein is a cautionary tale about playing God, it could also be said it pointed to the medical practices of transplants. Arthur C. Clarke pointed the world to satellite technology. Isaac Asimov gave us the three laws of robotics (something I'm sure will be installed when AI robots are created) and psychohistory which (I am as sure as I can be without actually knowing) is being worked on today.

Brent Gair · Mission Specialist Joined: 21 Nov 2014 Posts: 465

I've read the theory that the appetite for science fiction was born out of the industrial revolution.

For generations society evolved very slowly and people often lived lives not much different than their fathers and grandfathers. If your father was a farmer, chances are that his father was a farmer, you would be a farmer and your son would be a farmer.

With the coming industrial age, people began to take notice of the fact that things were changing more quickly and there would be a future that they would not live to see. If a man came from generations of (horse) teamsters, he realized his son might be a steam train engineer. The curiousity about the coming age helped fuel the rise of the new literary genre.

Bud Brewster · Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 8:40 pm Post subject:

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Gentlemen, this is exactly the kind of discussion I created this board for! In other words, this is the purpose of All Sci-Fi.

Thanks, guys. Very Happy

PS: I couldn't resist sticking this very old drawing of mine here, partly because I'm so glad Photobucket seems to be working again.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

Custer · Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2016 7:35 am Post subject:

And let us not confuse this subject with David Brin's meeting here with not a porpoise, but a dolphin of science fiction... Smile