Pynchon & SciFI

[Gillies, Lindsay]

Bonnie states:
> Broadly defined, Science
>Fiction seems, for me, concerned more with encounters with the alien
>"other" (which is not necessarily our traditional "alien," i.e., e.t..)
>The author's work is to forge a negotiation between our relatively static
>ontological and epistemological realities with other, more shattering
>worlds

I can agree with the second sentence,  but the first may not be the most 
useful supporting specific...I say that because it seems to me that the 
dramatic force of most sci fi comes from a narrative strategy where the 
"others" are (and also have been for some time) implicit in our own world. 
 Its not that they came from far away, but that they're here now.  And we 
see now that they could have come at any time. What the plot accomplishes is 
the revelation of a relationship to otherness, not its inception.

What this leads to, I think, is an amazing amount of politics inside this 
genre.  Anything that superficially is an account of another world system is 
of course nothing but comment on our own.  There is certainly a negotiation 
being forged.  Though, it seems to me, more shattering worlds than our own 
are hard to conceive.

To bring this to GR:  obsessed myself since childhood with the WWII "era", 
its amazing how specific TRP is in his portrayal of e.g. London late in the 
war.  Everything can be corroborated from first hand accounts, even the 
shortage of golf balls.  He seems to love this particular shattered world. 
 This might be a much more sophisticated form of what you're defining as Sci 
Fi----the aliens are Nazis, and the shattered world we must negotiate with 
is that of the war and the world that TRP shows emerging from it.  Who needs 
spaceships.

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Lindsay Gillies                           FMR Corp.
lindsay.gillies at fmr.com         82 Devonshire Street, R22A
617-563-5363                              Boston, MA 02109
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