Pynchon & SciFI

[Burgess, John]

Sorry, gotta reiterate:  SF works perfectly well without aliens or "the 
other," if  by "other" we mean people.  It's fiction that is built around 
science, usually streching the science so that consequences and 
ramifications can be explored.  That "stretch" often includes things like 
time travel, faster-than-light travel, mutations, breakthroughs in 
physics or chemistry or medicine, etc.

Aliens play a very small part in SF, usually only as a cover for other 
humans or human traits.  Even in the "space operas," aliens and their 
territories are only a stand in for cowboys and indians.  Very few SF 
writers (good 'uns as well as hacks) could deal with true alien-ness.  
Maybe the Polish writer, Stanislaw Lem handles it best: there's just no 
way you can communication with something that's truly alien.  

GR isn't SF because, while TRP deals very much with science and its 
ramifications, he doesn't extrapolate to new consequences from new 
science.  Because GR is a history, it loses out on the future.  His 
aliens are quite well known to us, with none -- possibly excluding his 
theosophist spirits -- outside humanity's range and our individual ken.

Pynchon's great; SF is great.  They influence each other, but they're not 
the same.

IMO, of course....