From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Dec 09 2001 - 00:15:35 MST
At 12:45 AM 12/9/01 -0600, Jeff Bone wrote:
>If you propose to use science fiction to support the
>plausibility of your suppositions about possible reality --- a valid
technique,
>as science fiction is the laboratory of possibility --- then one should
attempt
>to adhere to the rules of the form
This alleged `rule of the form' (`Introduce only one novelty per story')
worked moderately well for H. G. Wells, but has been the bane of
unsophisticated sf and `sci-fi' ever since. You *can't* just add one novum
and expect the world to proceed in a plausible way--that's not how
technology or sociology or psychology work.
Let's see, we'll have horseless carriages, but I won't allow those new
fangled highways, or if I do I certainly won't permit you to introduce
*heavier than air flying craft*, and if you claim that's implied by the
motors in the automobiles, then damme it, you *certainly* shan't have that
ridiculous *wireless telegraphy* in the same story. And for heaven's sake
put away those antibiotics, and contraceptive chemical preparations, and as
for that superpowerful explosive you're trying to work into the military
scenes... *Quantum* physics? Don't you know *anything* about the rules of
the form?
Damien Broderick
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