Sir Whiskers
First Post
Tiew said:Hey Sir Whiskers, I'm going to have to defend Arthur C Clark.
As a general statement his famous law is a bit meaningless. However taken in context, as comment on science fiction writting, it's a very concise summing up of the philosophy he held to.
...snip...
I think he liked to be able to give a reasonable explanation for how the technology he made up worked. I think he saw this as the superior way of writting science fiction. I don't think his law should be taken as a general philosophical statement. It's more of a subtle dig at a style of science fiction writing, and a defense of his own style of writting.
Yep, I'm disagreeing with the statement as generally used by folks who haven't read Clarke or delved into its context.
I agree with Clarke - I personally prefer my science fiction to be *science* fiction, meaning it's a reasonable extrapolation of known science. Timothy Zahn is my favorite author of this style of writing (IIRC, he has a degree in physics), but Robert Forward and others are just as good. The all-too-common style of sci-fi where the science is basically magic (Star Trek anyone?) is really just fantasy in space. Such stories can be a lot of fun, but they generally have little or no science in their science fiction.
As for the statement itself, it really depends on the assumptions we make in defining "technology" and "magic". Silveras has done an excellent job of summing up why the statement can be quite reasonable. Of course, if someone changes his definition of what distinguishes technology, it can fall apart.