#91 Tu (9/20/22) - Marvelous realism

Lucian of Samosata was one of the earliest novelists in Western civilization. In A True Story (Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα), a fictional narrative work written in prose, he parodies some of the fantastic tales told by Homer in the Odyssey and also the not-so-fantastic tales from the historian Thucydides. He anticipated modern science fiction themes including voyages to the moon and Venus, extraterrestrial life, interplanetary warfare, and artificial life, nearly two millennia before Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. The novel is often regarded as the earliest known work of science fiction. (wikipedia)

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At some point less than 150 years ago, it was decided that all genres of fiction had to include realism as a central pillar.  Even fantastic, speculative, science fiction needs to be grounded in reality. Either this reality or one that is internally consistent. People often remark that The Expanse is hard sci-fi because there is no FTL (reality breaking physics) in it unlike Star Trek or Star Wars. Yet, all fiction creates an imaginary version of the world to set itself in.  Realism may mean in obedience to a set of rules that govern that reality, (i.e. world-building). Is Dune realistic?  Some would say yes, it is bound by very strict rules, and they are well laid out in the many texts.  Others would say it is fundamentally 'silly.' (Although few who like sci-fi would say that, some might say it is unrealistic to think there could be giant worms.)

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A fantastic story written in the second century AD, about a voyage to the Moon, remains a fantastic story even after 1969 AD when the Moon is not longer an imaginary place, but is now an attainable locale, known, measured, understood.  Does this change in our knowledge, our reality, diminish or discount the work of fiction containing an imaginary Moon? I don't see why it should.  The fantastic or marvelous contained in the story remains the same.  What has changed I think is us.  We have become indoctrinated to the dictates of realism that require that any magical or marvelous elements be constrained within shackles of realism. The alternative seems to be to admit of the fantastical, free from constraint, and accept the mantle (tarnish) of Surrealism.   

Surrealism, noun
1. a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.


 

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