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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PaulKemp" data-source="post: 2337568" data-attributes="member: 2809">Conceded that you must stretch your imagination some to see the fantasy connection but when she says:"They can explore the consequences of new and proposed technologies in graphic ways, by showing them as fully operational. We've always been good at letting cats out of bags and genies out of bottles, we just haven't been very good at putting them back in again. These stories in their darker modes are all versions of The Sorcerer's Apprentice: the apprentice finds out how to make the magic salt-grinder produce salt, but he can't turn it off."To my mind, any genie-out-of-the-bottle story set in a fantasy setting is really a metaphor for knowledge exercised without wisdom, which is the general case of "consequences of new and proposed technologies" being explored in graphic ways.  True, the fantasy "genie" is more likely to be an actual genie than a new technology, but the point of the exploration is the same.   She says:"They can explore the nature and limits of what it means to be human in graphic ways, by pushing the envelope as far as it will go." And"They can explore the relationship of man to the universe, an exploration that often takes us in the direction of religion and can meld easily with mythology - an exploration that can happen within the conventions of realism only through conversations and soliloquies."Any good book does this, but both f and sf do it particularly well.  Science fiction juxtaposes man's existence (and its meaning) against the universe and technology, while fantasy juxtaposes man's existence (and its meaning) against the supernatural and metaphysical.  The tools are somewhat different, but I'd argue that the exercise is the same.   She says:"They can explore proposed changes in social organisation, by showing what they might actually be like for those living within them. Thus, the utopia and the dystopia, which have proved over and over again that we have a better idea about how to make hell on earth than we do about how to make heaven." Countless fantasy novels create hypothetical worlds with different social organizations than our own and explore the consequences for those within them.  Then again, maybe I'm seeing to much in it.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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