I think Kingsley Amis remarks somewhere on how sf writers have run
through ideas at such a prodigal rate. The insistence on novelty plus
the sheer volume of output needed to make a living tends, one would
think, to lead to an exhaustion of creative ideas as a matter of
course. Fortunately, science has proven an inexhaustible source of
intellectual raw material, at any rate, although novel presentation
of those ideas remains, on the evidence, as much of a challenge as
ever.
The exhaustion, perhaps, is more in evidence among the older sort of
sf reader, such as myself. What William Gibson dubbed the "Gernsback
Continuum" remains, in one form or another, at the back of the mind.
The future, one feels, ought not to be as seedy as so much of modern
sf makes it out to be. Yes, yes, I know it's much more likely to be
that way than not, but the sublime visions of a simonized future
(sublime? well, maybe that's a matter of taste) are still there. The
immense popularity of Star Trek is surely in part a matter of it
building on that tradition. And then there's the relative decline of
space travel in sf. Well, enough.
A good example of someone who's running through ideas like nobody's
business is Greg Egan. I'm reading _Permutation City_ at the moment,
having lately finished the collection _Axiomatic_. Does anyone out
there share my enthusiasm for the man? Check out the story "Luminous"
in Gardner Dozois' _Year's Best_ anthology. Egan imagines a flaw in
mathematical logic which turns out to be analogous to the flaw in
spacetime represented by a cosmic string, and for ingeniously
anti-Platonic reasons! Also read Ian Macleod's "Starship Day" in the
same book. Who's read anything else by him? Bloody marvellous.
Cheers.
Wayne Daniels
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