= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Gavin comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (725)
I would like to know what would have happened if, sometime during the Dark Ages let's say, benevolent and extremely advanced aliens had landed with the intention to fix everything. I would diligently copy and disseminate the entire Wikipedia-equivalent for the generously-divulged scientific and sociological knowledge therein, plus cultural notes on the aliens such that I could write a really keenly plausible sci-fi series.
A sci-fi series based on real extra-terrestrials would quite possibly be so alien to us that no one would want to read it.
Not just science fiction and aliens either. Nearly all popular and successful fiction is based around what are effectively modern characters in whatever setting. I remember a paper I read back around the mid-eighties pointing out that Louis L'Amour's characters were basically just modern Americans with the appropriate historical technology and locations.
I've found that Umberto Eco's novels do the best job I've seen at avoiding this.
I'd love to see an essay-length expansion on this theme.
As I wrote, I read it in something in the 1980s. Probably, but I 'm not sure, in Olander and Greenberg's "Robert A Heinlein" or in Franklin's "Robert A Heinlein: America as Science Fiction".
I might have to mess with them a bit to get an audience, yes.