Forgotten a couple of things...

From:    Matthew Webber <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: about technology

> Okay, in ten thousand years a person's legs are crushed in
> an accident. Advances in cloning technique allows doctors to
> grow new legs for the victim within a week. OR they attach
> cybernetic limbs (as is done even today). OR the victim
> suffers the accident and mysteriously wakes up in the
> hospital the next morning, alive and whole. I can play with
> facts all I want, it is after all a universe of my creation.
> Take the value of Pi -- a 'fact', an absolute mathmatical
> concept. Yet in the "Ragged Astronaughts" the author (whose
> name currently eludes me), just to show that his created
> universe was different, changed its value. as a writer the
> world about which I'm writting becomes my plaything and the
> facts become as I choose to make them. What matters is, to
> the writer who is trying to get published, is that enough
> people by her facts and accept her created world as a
> reality.

        Cloning is today's facts: you don't introduce anything new. Not after
Dolly. Same for cybernetic limbs. In both cases it's just a refinement of
current technology. Hard won facts are still respected. If it's cloning
though,
        The mysteriously awakened patient in a hospital after an accident has two
outcomes: either you explain it afterwards, or you don't. If you explain
it, I think it's likely you'll use one of the above, provided that you're
writing SF and not fantasy. If you don't, you leave the reader free to
imagine it's one of the two above possibilities.
        It could also be said that not explaining how the patient is sound after
such an accident is cheating, but this depends on the story.

#########################

From:    Stephen Clark <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Alien axiom sets

> In After Doomsday (spoiler coming up) the earth is
> destroyed, leaving only two shiploads of humans to find out
> what happened, preserve the species and perhaps avenge the
> destruction. It eventually turns out that the destroyers
> needed a cause celebre to motivate war against another
> power. The destroyers in question have specialised in
> biological science, and have a culture founded on the
> manipulation of genetic material to engineer whatever
> subjects and tools they wish. Anderson suggests that the
> attitude required to do this, and encouraged by this, has
> led them to see other living creatures, including those of
> Earth, as merely means to their own ends, rather than as
> ends-in-themselves.

        Hmm, I suppose I see what you are aiming to: that is that ethics and
technology influence each other, but not necessarily in a positive way.
Advanced science and technology might actually impede ethical advancement
and viceversa. If so, a novel that demonstrates the point is Liege-Killer
by Christopher Hinz.

        Nicola
        [log in to unmask]



        BIBIANA: A monstruous bird said to have been living near Milano. It stinks
and its main food was human brains taken from people it killed. It
apparently disappeared after 1599 when people exorcised it with processions
and prayers.