In message <[log in to unmask]>, Wirt Atmar
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Jeff writes:
>
>> A few radical ideas from Robert Heinlein:
>
>There are of course some differences between science and science fiction. In
>the latter, you can choose for yourself whichever form of escapist literature
>you prefer and live in that world for your entire life, if you care to.
>Unfortunately, at best, it is only a form of mental masturbation, perhaps
>momentarily pleasureable but otherwise completely nonproductive. But once you
>go so far as to adopt philosophies taken from dime store novels, you've
>almost certainly abrogated any possibility of your making reality any the
>better for your doing it.
>
>There are legitimate approaches to the analyses of complex problems. Quoting
>science fiction authors is not one of them.

Wirt, are you really serious?

I guess you don't think *any* fiction has anything to teach us then...

Austen, Shakespeare, Steinbeck - all available in dime stores. So they
can't be any good, can they?

And what can any of them say about the human condition?

Nothing I guess. Emotions, pah. Mistrust them.

Let's stick with science. Cold, hard science. We know where we are with
that. None of this squishy human stuff - yuck.

But you don't think science fiction can tell us anything about the human
condition? Perhaps these are lesser authors, because of the realm they
have chosen to play their ideas out in?

And if thought 'lesser', who judges them so? You?

Or perhaps they have chosen that realm precisely because it lets you
play out ideas about who we are, and what we are, and why we are here,
and what our value systems should be, in ways we can only experience in
the conjectured worlds of science fiction?

Asimov, Clarke, Dick, Heinlein, Vonnegut? All contemptuously dismissed?
Seems harsh.....

Maybe you should seek out and read 'The Cold Equations', by Tom Godwin.

and 'The Light of Other Days', by Bob Shaw, which is at:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/shaw/shaw1.html

and if these contrasting examples of really thought-provoking SF don't
stir some reaction in you, and make you re-evaluate your unworthy
comments above, I don't know what will.....

--
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  Wm Morris

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