Deflating Hyperspace

[Monte Davis]

Joseph T. 
> I personally think Pynchon is less interested in coordinating  a sci- 
> fi multiverse than in exploring this very real interaction between  
> fiction and reality...

Word -- this and the companion post both. I like science fiction, and was
certainly shaped in important ways by reading mostly SF from age 10 into my
20s. I'm as far as anyone could be from asserting any programmatic "there we
have serious literature, and over here we have lightweight escapist genre
stuff..."

But time machine and hollow earth and all, AtD simply isn't SF to me in any
useful sense -- no more than it's a Zane Grey western, a Black Mask
detective story about hard-boiled Lew Basnight, or (later) a Henry James
tale of a fresh American princess in Venetian drawing rooms. Its "what ifs?"
are central -- but posed from a radically different angle than the "what
ifs?" of SF.