final lecture 2015, with Ted Chiang (2)

A memory of the future.

The shape of things to come.

One shape into which sf fits.

One governing metaphor for sf in general.

One complement to that metaphor.

Single-novum sf, as in Powers.

Or new worlds, far-future or otherwise.

One novum after another.

Another model for sf.

Fabula and sujet: a refresher. A metaphor.

One subgenre of sf.

Another subgenre of sf.

What happens to time?

A detailed but outdated nonacademic Ted Chiang fan site.

An interview with Ted Chiang from 2010 (at Boing Boing).

A more recent interview with Chiang (Asian American Writers Workshop). Another interview (Clarion Writers' Workshop).

Oh, the Clarion Workshop itself, and the associated Clarion Foundation.

Want more book-oriented SF? Go here. Or, closer to home, here.

Analyzing aspects of language.

No substitute for face to face interaction. Not that face. Maybe that face?

What about that face?

The old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. No, that face.

A real-life spatial language. With its own literature.

Other sf protagonists unstuck in time, for example.

The ideal unity of the work of art. And of the poem, in particular.

Nietzschean Eternal Return.

Ideas about characters.

Narrative usually works like that. Real life works like that.

What if we could see our lives like that? Or see that? Or that?

QOTDs & a trip to Hell

Is "Hell" SF? How is "Hell" SF?

Do any real members of real Abrahamic faiths believe in a God like that?

How are the faiths in "Oceanic" like our faiths?

Is the world of "Oceanic" less sexist than our world?

Do they really switch genitalia?

Is faith the evidence of things not seen?

Can experiments have negative results?

Emily Dickinson's opinion.

Are we looking at nonoverlapping magisteria?

Does "Liking" take a position? (See Chiang, p.331; also some YA SF.

Should we talk world-building, rather than seeking one novum?

Some 1980s music.