Pynchon & SciFI

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

On Thu, 3 Aug 1995, Gillies, Lindsay wrote:

> 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.
This is precisely what I meant.  Maybe the parenthetical should've read, 
rather than "not necessarily," "not."
So Lindsay and I are, I think agreeing.  It's just my bad writing that 
got inthe way.

Bonnie
> 
> 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
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