Subject: science, fiction, and science fiction From: Thane E. Plambeck Date: 1990-10-10, 00:04 To: plambeck@neon.Stanford.EDU fiction, then, is false; science, explaining; science fiction, explaining the false. we are not interested in science because it explains, but because it delineates the unexplained more clearly. we would see the ufo photo, but not a description of what these extra-T's really are, because then we have science, we have an explanation, and we are not interested in explanations, and particularly in explanations of what we already understand to be in false framework (art is representational). there are riddles of this sort---``a man is dead in a closed room and the floor is wet''---for which we are asked to guess an explanation---and the so-called answers go something like ---``he tied a rope around his neck while standing on a block of ice and as it melted he strangled.'' I would say that to the extent one is interested in these sort of riddles, one is unable to adopt what I would call the True Critical Viewpoint: art is what it offers, and no more, and the greatest sin is to bring one's own biases or inventions to the critical effort. Such a riddle could in effect have any solution: why am I being asked to provide one?///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////