Technique and Politics in Hard SF

In his famous Harper’s piece,“Perchance to
Dream: Reasons to Write Novels in an Age of Images”, the now oft-discussed
Jonathan Franzen articulates his personal motivation for writing literature
in an age where the most powerful media is not print but image-based technology
like TV and film. He starts out the description of a retreat from the world
— a world that his persona in the essay feels has gone mad. He writes:
“I began to think that the most reasonable thing for a citizen to
do might be to enter a monastery and pray for humanity.” This, from
a man who describes his connections with the outside world as “the
twin portals of my TV set and my New York Times subscription.” He
decants nightmares of a Silicon Valley VR-helmet plague, and derides rampant
multiculturalism…

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Hamlet’s age, mirror neurons, immersive realism, and imagination

Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 09:58:46 -0400 To: (deleted) From: Gord Sellar Subject: Hamlet’s age, mirror neurons, immersive realism, and imagination CC: (deleted) BCC: (deleted) X-Attachments: Hey. I know, I know, this is long . . . Some of you might remember me asking you a question about Hamlet’s age. Others of you are having this inflicted on your for the purpose of farming out the ideas in the end of the thing, and hopefully eliciting responses. I have the answer to the Hamlet question, now, so I thought I would share what I found. But a much more difficult …

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