From: Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 25 1997 - 11:15:17 MST
Damien Broderick writes:
>Yawn. I've been grimly entertained by most media commentators (sorry Ravn)
>making such remarks, including the scientist in the original news report who
>told us he had this *great new sci fi idea* for cloning Jesus. ...
>Sorry, team, it's all been done. ... My point?
>Not just justice to my fellow sf laborers in the fields, but a pointer to a
>vast ream of elaborate material where many of the worst and best scenarios
>have long since been amusingly explored.
This case illustrates some of the strength & weakness of sf. Yes, sf
authors have considered these subjects in some depth, and their
writings contain many insights worth attending to. But these insights
are not very well summarized and commented on.
In other intellectual areas, people write review articles and books,
and textbooks, to summarize and critique the insights so far. In sf,
these insights are left scattered among hundreds of long novels,
novels mostly devoted to plot and (sometimes) character development.
It would be a great service if someone could write academic quality
summaries of the insights into the future contained in the existing sf
literature. One article per topic, such as cloning, would be fine.
Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/
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