From: Ross A. Finlayson (raf@tiki-lounge.com)
Date: Sun Dec 24 2000 - 18:38:18 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 03:22 AM 24/12/00 -0500, "Ross A. Finlayson" <raf@tiki-lounge.com> wrote:
>
> >An ontology of all the various forms of speculative science
> >fiction, even space opera and fantasy, can be designed to some extent and
> >utilized.
>
> >By classifying science fiction information, then we can talk about a Dyson
> >Sphere or a Niven Ringworld or something made by Asimov [final name
> deleted out of squeamishness]
>
> This would be a sub-part of what I call the sf megatext (in READING BY
> STARLIGHT and elsewhere), the received virtual encyclopaedia and dictionary
> generated and recirculated by tens of thousands of fiction texts during the
> last century or so. The job has already been sketched to some extent in the
> canonical and magisterial ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION, edited by John
> Clute and Peter Nicholls. They include a number of special chapters in
> specific topics such as Time Travel, Space Flight, and Big Dumb Objects,
> which track the development of these tropes across time, place and authors.
>
> Damien Broderick
Hi,
This looks very much like something of which I described, about a science
fiction ontology. Besides an encyclopedia, it would also be good to have a
dictionary.
I read some things about it on the Internet, and it says to have over 4,500
entries. I am thinking more. Also on the Internet from searching are SF
anthologies, collections, reading lists, and CD-ROMs.
For example, it might be convenient to know every book, movie, cartoon, or
television show that ever used a laser gun.
Many SF fan communities have deeply fleshed the technology surrounding their
universe. For example, there are the "Trekkers" or "Trekkies" that are fans of
Star Trek, books about the technology of that universe have specifically been
written.
Because most of the books aren't in readily-available machine-readable form, it
would take actual people to collate this information or arrange it put in
machine-readable form.
Ross
-- Ross Andrew Finlayson Finlayson Consulting Ross at Tiki-Lounge: http://www.tiki-lounge.com/~raf/
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