map. In this connection, I think of Jorge Luis Borgesâs one-paragraph fiction, âOn Exactitude in Science,â that contains this sentence: âIn time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographersâ Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.â
(CollectedFictions,
225).
Outline or not, the only way to discover the ending of a truly living book is to set yourself in motion and think constantly about the novel for months or years, writing all the while. The characters and gimmicks and social situations bounce off each other like eddies in a turbulent wakes, like gliders in a cellular automaton simulation, likevines twisting around each other in a jungle. And only time and extensive mental computation will tell you how the story ends. As I keep stressing, gnarly processes have no perfectly predictive short-cuts.
SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION AND THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS
What stampedes are to westerns or murders are to mysteries,
power chords
are to science fiction. Iâm talking about certain classic tropes that have the visceral punch of heavy musical riffs: blaster guns, spaceships, time machines, aliens, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, faster-than-light travel, immersive virtual reality, clones, robots, teleportation, alien-controlled pod people, endless shrinking, the shattering of planet Earth, intelligent goo, antigravity, starships, ecodisaster, pleasure-center zappers, alternate universes, nanomachines, mind viruses, higher dimensions, a cosmic computation that generates our reality, and, of course, the attack of the giant ants.
When a writer uses an SF power chord, there is an implicit understanding with the informed readers that this is indeed familiar ground. And itâs expected the writer will do something fresh with the trope. âMake it new,â as Ezra Pound said, several years before he went crazy.
Mainstream writers who dip a toe into what they daintily call âspeculative fictionâ tend not be aware of just how familiar are the chords they strum. And the mainstream critics are unlikely to call their cronies to task over failing to create original SF. They donât have a clue either. And we lowly science-fiction people are expected to be grateful when a mainstream writer stoops to filch a bespattered icon from our filthy wattle huts? Oh, wait, do I sound bitter?
When I use a power chord, I might place it into an unfamiliar context, perhaps describing it more intensely than usual, or perhaps using it for a novel thought experiment. I like it when my material takes on a life of its own. This leads to the gnarly zone. As with plot, itâs a matter of working out unpredictable consequences of simple-seeming assumptions.
The reason why fictional thought experiments are so powerful is that, in practice, itâs intractably difficult to visualize the side effects of new technological developments. Only if you place the new tech into a fleshed-out fictional world and simulate the effects on reality can you get a clear image of what might happen.
In order to tease out the subtler consequences of current trends, a complex fictional simulation is necessary; inspired narration is a more powerful tool than logical analysis. If I want to imagine, for instance, what our world would be like if ordinary objects like chairs or shoes were conscious, then the best way to make progress is to fictionally simulate a person discovering this.
The kinds of thought experiments I enjoy are different in intent and in execution from merely futurological investigations. My primary goal is not to make useful predictions that businessmen can use. Iâm more interested in exploring the human condition, with literary power chord standing in for archetypal psychic forces.
Where to find material for our thought experiments? You donât have to be a scientist. As Kurt Vonnegut used to remark, most
(CollectedFictions,
225).
Outline or not, the only way to discover the ending of a truly living book is to set yourself in motion and think constantly about the novel for months or years, writing all the while. The characters and gimmicks and social situations bounce off each other like eddies in a turbulent wakes, like gliders in a cellular automaton simulation, likevines twisting around each other in a jungle. And only time and extensive mental computation will tell you how the story ends. As I keep stressing, gnarly processes have no perfectly predictive short-cuts.
SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION AND THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS
What stampedes are to westerns or murders are to mysteries,
power chords
are to science fiction. Iâm talking about certain classic tropes that have the visceral punch of heavy musical riffs: blaster guns, spaceships, time machines, aliens, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, faster-than-light travel, immersive virtual reality, clones, robots, teleportation, alien-controlled pod people, endless shrinking, the shattering of planet Earth, intelligent goo, antigravity, starships, ecodisaster, pleasure-center zappers, alternate universes, nanomachines, mind viruses, higher dimensions, a cosmic computation that generates our reality, and, of course, the attack of the giant ants.
When a writer uses an SF power chord, there is an implicit understanding with the informed readers that this is indeed familiar ground. And itâs expected the writer will do something fresh with the trope. âMake it new,â as Ezra Pound said, several years before he went crazy.
Mainstream writers who dip a toe into what they daintily call âspeculative fictionâ tend not be aware of just how familiar are the chords they strum. And the mainstream critics are unlikely to call their cronies to task over failing to create original SF. They donât have a clue either. And we lowly science-fiction people are expected to be grateful when a mainstream writer stoops to filch a bespattered icon from our filthy wattle huts? Oh, wait, do I sound bitter?
When I use a power chord, I might place it into an unfamiliar context, perhaps describing it more intensely than usual, or perhaps using it for a novel thought experiment. I like it when my material takes on a life of its own. This leads to the gnarly zone. As with plot, itâs a matter of working out unpredictable consequences of simple-seeming assumptions.
The reason why fictional thought experiments are so powerful is that, in practice, itâs intractably difficult to visualize the side effects of new technological developments. Only if you place the new tech into a fleshed-out fictional world and simulate the effects on reality can you get a clear image of what might happen.
In order to tease out the subtler consequences of current trends, a complex fictional simulation is necessary; inspired narration is a more powerful tool than logical analysis. If I want to imagine, for instance, what our world would be like if ordinary objects like chairs or shoes were conscious, then the best way to make progress is to fictionally simulate a person discovering this.
The kinds of thought experiments I enjoy are different in intent and in execution from merely futurological investigations. My primary goal is not to make useful predictions that businessmen can use. Iâm more interested in exploring the human condition, with literary power chord standing in for archetypal psychic forces.
Where to find material for our thought experiments? You donât have to be a scientist. As Kurt Vonnegut used to remark, most
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