[CT] Resublimated Handwavium

[Daniel Moran]

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Science fiction is what I'm pointing at when I talk -- that's not mine, of 
course, but it's the only thing that works. Reality is fuzzy and writing, 
being a representation of reality, is even fuzzier. Any definition you come 
up with I'll name an exception (or a dozen.)

I had an argument with a young writer once who argued that there were rules 
as to how you had to write a story. There aren't -- not one. After we'd 
been at it a while it became clear to me that writing, any writing, is 
simply an example of Goedel's theorem at work. Goedel's theorem states that 
self-contained systems cannot be perfect -- i.e., a representational system 
is either unable to make certain true statements, if it's consistent, or it 
is able to make statements that contradict, or are unresolvable, if it's 
powerful. That's in _math_ .... writing is merely English and vastly 
fuzzier. "There have to be people in a story" -- there very nearly isn't, 
in On Sequoia Time. "Stories can't be boring." Says you -- plenty of 
stories other people enjoyed, bored me to tears. Stories can't be 
_intentionally_ boring -- tell it to Samuel Beckett.

Try this: hard SF is what people who understand science write, if they feel 
like it. Unsatisfactory definition, isn't it? But it's as close to being 
accurate as anything else I can come up with.

At 02:45 PM 1/31/2002 -0800, you wrote:

>In one of Isaac Asimov's essays on Science Fiction, he proposed a 
>categorization of terms, reserving "Sci Fi" for stories with the running & 
>the shooting & the spaceships & the what & the hey & the glaybin but which 
>had no interest at all in being speculative or tying themselves in anyway 
>to the possible, and "SF" for the stuff that actually attempts to at least 
>derive the handwavium from something plausible.  So by this judgement, 
>there are alot of "Sci Fi" TV shows & movies, but very little SF, which is 
>mostly written.
>
>Have others run across this distinction, and do you find it useful?
>--
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