Roy writes:

> 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?

One easy way to judge the value of any attribute on society -- in a
completely unbiased manner -- is to somehow measure the rate at which the
attribute is regarded, not in a manner where people tell you what they're
doing or what they believe, but in how they act.

After attending now 40 years worth now of scientific conferences, military
and NASA planning sessions, at a rate of anywhere from two to five a year, I
cannot ever remember a single line being quoted on any slide from a science
fiction author.

There are authors of course who are widely quoted: William Blake, T.S. Eliot,
Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, etc. (indeed, Eliot's quatrain, "We shall not
cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive
where we started and know the place for the first time" and Jefferson's
instructions to the Corps of Discovery are among NASA's favorite current
authors), but no one, to the best of my recollection, has ever gotten up in
front of his peers, when discussing a subject of some real importance, and
ever quoted Asimov, Clarke, Dick, or even Kim Stanley Robinson. When Arthur
C. Clarke is mentioned, it is for his contributions to communications
satellites, not for his science fiction.

The only exceptions to that statement that I can remember are HAL of "2001"
and, to a lesser degree, Ellie Arroway of Carl Sagan's "Contact". Those
subjects and visions struck a deep resonant chord with a great many people,
primarily because they posed deep technical challenges and fundamental
philosophical questions regarding the evolution of machine intelligence and
our approaches towards the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Science fiction books aren't spat upon by "real" scientists, as some of you
seem to believe. Virtually every scientist and engineer that I know read them
extensively when they were young, and most credit the books as being *the*
primary influence on them in their becoming a scientist. Carl Sagan used to
like to talk about the influence that the Edgar Rice Burroughs series of
Barsoom (Mars) had on him when he was a child right up to the point of his
death. But as you become older and begin the understand the significance of
the problems and what you can and can't do, you grow out of them.


In addition, Stan wrote:

> > There are legitimate approaches to the analyses of complex problems.
> > Quoting science fiction authors is not one of them.
>
>  To the contrary...it's the best kind of literature to find possible
>  solutions to problems, by *definition*.

I'm tempted to ask what planet you're living on, but I won't. It seems too
cheap a shot :-).

Wirt Atmar

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