"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand Of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

13. Down on the Farm
14. The Escape
15. To the Ice
16. Between Drumner and Dremegole
17. An Orgota Creation Myth
18. On the Ice
19. Homecoming
20. A Fool's Errand

The Gethenian Calendar and Clock
Introduction
SCIENCE FICTION ISoften described, and even defined, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer
is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for
dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. "If this goes on, this is what will happen." A


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prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large doses of
a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen to people
who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to be cancer.
So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally
arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human
liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life.
This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as 'escapist,' but
when questioned further, admit they do not read it because 'it's so depressing.'
Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic.
Fortunately, though extrapolation is an element in science fiction, it isn't the name of the game
by any means. It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether
the writer's or the reader's. Variables are the spice of life.
This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction,
as a thought-experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being
in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the second world war;
let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens... In a story so conceived, the moral
complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end;
thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which
may be very large indeed.
The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is
not to predict the future-indeed Schrodinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to show that
the 'future,' on the quantum level,cannot be predicted-but to describe reality, the present world.
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee,
and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried).
Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of
novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will
tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the
writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is
tell you what they're like, and what you're like-what's going on-what the weather is now, today,