Sci-fi soul

Science fiction is a higher exploration. If, for a moment, you'd be willing to forget that it's the product of scientific notions and fantastic depictions, what you'll see is nothing less than the ultimate expression: good writing, good thinking, good creating and good exploring. There's an unfortunate conception associated with sci-fi, that its readers are geeks, that he who enjoys science fiction will also enjoy fiddling with computers, toying with codes, and so on; the fact of the matter is, however, that it's not false.

In the beginning, such impressions could've easily been false considering sci-fi didn't originate in esoteric laboratories and into cult-hungry groups of people but simply out of the discovery of possibilities (as is the case with everything). In the beginning, sci-fi was but literature's response to mankind's entry into the Information Age. When the free distribution of and access to information transcended cultural and social boundaries that were till that moment pertinent as information barriers, when the technology became available to speculate on the possibilities of the future with that kind of information, science fiction was born.

[caption id="attachment_20793" align="aligncenter" width="270" caption="Philip K. Dick's 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale' was adapted for the silver screen as 'Total Recall'. The story is a good example of all that's sci-fi, including the psychological effects of false memories (something that could get lost in the technicalities of normal fiction)."][/caption]

It was rooted in the ability to shrink distances, to expand those horizons in the ambit of which foreign agents of influence existed, to reach out farther and beyond charted territories to evangelize the human condition across the universe. I don't want to list works now not because I suck at remembering what I've read but because it doesn't matter what "kind" of science fiction has been read: it's the sci-fi soul that matters. Like all works of literature, sci-fi labours under the onus of repairing the bad and basks in the glory of preserving the good, and even then, things are very subjective.

For instance, even Asimov and Clarke are leagues apart despite both being greats: Asimov is a philosopher, a man given to technique and process, whose worlds are ripe with intent and purpose, a world where ends justify means, whereas Clarke is a dreamer, a creator of worlds that don't seek to precipitate order out of chaos but art, whose characters revel not just in humanism but existentialism. In fact, such leagues span the differences between the likes of Verne, Gernsback, DNA, Stapledon, Aldiss, PKD, Vonnegut, Le Guin, Pohl, Herbert and Niven.

[caption id="attachment_20792" align="aligncenter" width="529" caption="Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' was situated on a massive ring that encircled a star, the light from which was periodically blocked by an intervening ring to give rise to night and day."][/caption]

The sci-fi soul will not regret reading any of them irrespective of whether it thought they were good or bad because it exists in a world filled with more variables than equations, and any shortcomings it thinks it sees are essentially a paucity of its own imagination. Because you've lived on Planet Earth, because you've lived for quite some time in a house that had trees around it, because you know that they're so commonplace and how they are what they are, there's not much you can dispute about a leaf. On the other hand, what are the chances that all sci-fi readers would've interpreted Pandora from Avatar similarly were it a book? You'll agree the chances are less than slim.

To the sci-fi soul, reading sci-fi is a process of self-discovery, a rudimentary rite of passage through which it attempts to understand the working of a universe that is conducive to human consciousness, an initiation into a realm beyond the vestiges of laws and forces where absolutely nothing is impossible. There are no leaves to define green, there are only exploding stars and drifting clouds of intergalactic dust from which beryl, aquamarine and chartreuse must be strained, must be purchased at some cost other than that of droll sight.

Science fiction, by mandating utmost obedience to its doctrine of freestyle, is the ultimate rebellion: it is where stagnation and mediocrity are interred in their crypts, where even convenient innovations are put to the test of participation. The sci-fi soul is what it is because sci-fi is what it is - an open forum to conceive, appellate, repair and conclude, a court of dialectics adjudicated by the scientific method.

Writing for science

Writing for science is no simple task. It requires a proficiency at writing to not only write well but also to know what bad writing is so that one can stay away from it. That’s only obvious considering a majority of the population isn’t scientifically aware, per se, and therefore, the product of the process should be both informative as well as instructive. The science writer’s task doesn’t stop at appraising the reader – while the news writer’s does – but includes the responsibility to make the reader understand what one’s writing about at all.

The audience for science writing is limited in the sense that its expansion is difficult and often expensive. On the one hand, there is the science writer herself: she must be versed enough with the subject to know what she’s talking about and its impact on the people (if any – and thus the sensitivities involved). On the other, there’s the reader, who must know of the event/phenomenon being written about, any significance associated with it that is being expounded on, and what stands to be taken away from the literary product.

In order to expand this entire sub-system of journalism and ensure that important scientific concepts and events penetrate the masses, there must be a simultaneous increase in commitment to the task on the science writer’s hand and another similar commitment on the reader’s hand.

As far as the writer is concerned, there are two important problems she faces.

Language

The language used in scientific writing can be of two kinds: technical and instructive. As far as technical writing is concerned, it can be repeatedly broken down to simpler and simpler points, rendering it fully instructive.As for the purely instructive parts – the parts in which the writer is educating the reader about an idea – the writer does not have to concern herself with conceptual barriers but only barriers pertaining to memory and cognition. Each sentence must not be more than 12 words long, each word must not have more than 3 syllables, and the flow of logic should be step-wise, linear and not convoluted.

Logic

Basically, the writer has the advantage of knowing what the big picture is. While trying to understand a smaller aspect of it, she has the benefit of drawing upon her knowledge in similar areas to construct a logical framework that she thinks explains the phenomenon. The reader may or may not know these other things, and since every writer writes to address the weakest link, she must start from scratch.For example, while attempting to explain topology, she cannot take the example of sets and set theory but instead must take the geometry path – more arduous but less complex.

*

A third and less-evident problem is that of choosing what to write about. Considering that the audience for science writing is, as such, small, and keeping in mind how easy it is for those numbers to dwindle, the reader must bear in mind that writing about concepts that are not directly impactful can be attractive only to those who are curious, don’t mind knowing or pursue a hobby in that direction. The writer may be curious but writing for the weakest link entails writing for a reader who is not curious.

This is not an interpretation that goes against any kind of scientific literature; there are different forums for different kinds of writing. When writing for newspapers and/or magazines, the value of the space which is being filled (by the piece) must be borne in mind: the priority is to familiarize the readers with a common scientific concept rather than going on about obscure phenomena. Once a sufficient guarantee is purchased toward retaining a section of the audience, other things can follow.

The reader making an effort in this direction – to somehow mobilize his resources toward acquiring scientific knowledge – only makes the writer’s tasks simpler. Even though it is not for the writer to ask of such things at any stage, a general awareness regarding science is mandated by other things, such as one’s livelihood and one’s responsibility toward the environment.

Thus, looking at this writer-reader interface from the reader’s side, the writer can be understood as fulfilling certain needs of the reader, needs that are defined by the latter’s lifestyle and interests, and in some cases, traditions as well as nationality.

"It shall be the duty of every citizen of India to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform"

- 51(A), Indian Constitution

The difference between science news and other kinds of news is that the pervasion and penetration of science is 100 per cent as opposed to other events, whose impacts are determined by proximity, beliefs, professional interests and other such things. Even then, the situation is that the necessity for that kind of knowledge is mitigated by social and economic circumstances. For instance, a farmer who uses pesticides can be happy knowing which chemicals go well with the soil content, his crop and the kind of pests in his farm. He may not want to know the ingredients of the pesticides or the consequences in case of an overuse at all.

So, the responsibility to enhance the awareness of such a population can be bifurcated: as one-half is attended to by the media and the quality and quantity of stories they choose to address, the other half should be exposed to the technical aspect of their daily lives through programmes, workshops and field-trips (at the school level) as may be suitable. In other words, without knowing of the pertinence of a science column in newspapers, the value of that knowledge is next to nothing even as its necessity grows.

Disaster's signature

The following is an exercise in descriptive writing.

--

The pleasure from pain is the greatest pleasure of all; the colour of blood when it drips from a vein is the most splendid sight of all. I’d like to have my face ripped open by shrapnel, shard after hot shard piercing into the soft skin of my face, facing no resistance whatsoever in its path toward my brain, toward turning me into a disfigured and gruesome beast.

I’d like for the heat and sound waves from the explosion to charge blisters to rise and pop, the water beneath my skin boiling into steam and forcing its way through miniscule pores like painful childbirth. As the sound pours into the canals of my ears, I want to listen to the intricacies of every small bone in there be quickly torn down from its gracious installation until the tinnitus of their annoying clamour is no longer audible. I want to be surprised by the double-pop of my eardrums giving way, the membrane quickly rupturing from the centre-out as the energy of its vibrations orgasms at the centre, and the sounds of my own screams are lost to me.

Desperate for some respite, I want to struggle against my bonds and I will, only to find that every breath of air that I inhale into my lungs is teeming with the malicious stench of sulphurous gases, slowly corroding my tongue, turning it into a parched mockery of muscle, and then my throat, leaving behind in its wake only the clear memories of water.

Like a pathetic being retching and defiling itself, I totter to the ground, helpless like a little lamb on the dressing table, somehow knowing pain but not the perpetrator... seeing both the gloved hand and the sharpened blade but not the swing soon to follow. The unanticipated dissonance still lingering in the air begins to quieten and the previously-still evening cautiously settles down around me, all the dust and grime of the neighbourhood gently forming a neat patina on the gouged floor.

I lie there like disaster’s signature.

Language and technique

In an institute of journalism, journalism is going to get skewed: it's internal constitution is going to be fiddled with for the sake of exposing its innards, it's histrionic framework is going to be altered for the sake of learning more about its history, and its perception by the students is going to be shaped by one painful case study at a time.

What must not be done at such an institution is get the language wrong.

Speaking the English wrong doesn't mean not knowing where to use which word and so forth - just the repeated (and increasingly frequently wrong) usage of a word will accomplish it. It doesn't do for the language itself to be the source of a journalist's delegitimization. Journalism is hinged upon the construction of meaning, and using the language awkwardly within the classrooms is only going to enforce the belief that for as long as the technical and more formally structured aspects of each story is got right, the journalist's job is done.

It's not even half-done. Good language and no technique always pays off more than good technique and no language.

Language and technique

In an institute of journalism, journalism is going to get skewed: it's internal constitution is going to be fiddled with for the sake of exposing its innards, it's histrionic framework is going to be altered for the sake of learning more about its history, and its perception by the students is going to be shaped by one painful case study at a time.

What must not be done at such an institution is get the language wrong.

Speaking the English wrong doesn't mean not knowing where to use which word and so forth - just the repeated (and increasingly frequently wrong) usage of a word will accomplish it. It doesn't do for the language itself to be the source of a journalist's delegitimization. Journalism is hinged upon the construction of meaning, and using the language awkwardly within the classrooms is only going to enforce the belief that for as long as the technical and more formally structured aspects of each story is got right, the journalist's job is done.

It's not even half-done. Good language and no technique always pays off more than good technique and no language.

Untitled, 29052011

Disease is also one's material.

Graham Greene

That a man of my age remains limited by his lack of experiences and hardship to understand, agreeably, the significance of literary masterpieces is simply the mark of a bias hoisted upon the associations of age, the confabulation of bygone memories, and the indulgence in literary excesses.

Untitled, 29052011

Disease is also one's material.

Graham Greene

That a man of my age remains limited by his lack of experiences and hardship to understand, agreeably, the significance of literary masterpieces is simply the mark of a bias hoisted upon the associations of age, the confabulation of bygone memories, and the indulgence in literary excesses.

Untitled, 28052011

Why does literary theory seem so esoteric?

Why do all great novels seem to have been steeped in sorrowful and injurious experiences? It's as if they are all reflections, didactic in some part, seeking to provide literary form to anguish experienced in the way of knowing the "perfect" life. In the same vein, is there no literary form for non-reactionary, non-adventurous emotions? What about day-to-day activities? What about the small things that cledonistically put together the mind of a man who goes to sleep at night with it? All the literary exercises past with desperation as motive are tiring on the senses.

Boredom is a perfect start.

Untitled, 28052011

Why does literary theory seem so esoteric?

Why do all great novels seem to have been steeped in sorrowful and injurious experiences? It's as if they are all reflections, didactic in some part, seeking to provide literary form to anguish experienced in the way of knowing the "perfect" life. In the same vein, is there no literary form for non-reactionary, non-adventurous emotions? What about day-to-day activities? What about the small things that cledonistically put together the mind of a man who goes to sleep at night with it? All the literary exercises past with desperation as motive are tiring on the senses.

Boredom is a perfect start.

Visions of a beach

*

Look at it! Two eyes, two eyes. I sit pinned down, stunned silent. Some dualism of vision. One eye sees while the other observes. While this observes, that sees. This and that. The palm knows everything, I suppose!

*

*

Fishes inside my head. My lover in the water and I can't swim. She swims away while only the blood flows this way. It is a beautiful cosmology where imitations galore. What one eye sees is what all eyes must see!

*

*

Stories abound in this Universe. Opinions are injected into each page, into every page, all going in, in and in. Limitless volume... or really? There are no ears and no eyes, no flavours and no odours. The fabula must live and the sujet must die. It must, expended, die!

*

*

Why must I listen? There are stories everywhere, characters, plots, words, ideas, people, their avarice... their avarice! Idiots! Demons! The inheritance of loss is scarring, the reward for neonatality! Steps and ladders, snakes and bosoms, where are my fortunes?

*

*

Skin and bones, wherewith there struts a holy cleavage, the thin line between illusion and the eternity of godliness! Am I there? I must be there. It is as what I imagined it to be. Be blessed, my child! You are no longer polluted. You are the polluting all-dirt.

Visions of a beach

*

Look at it! Two eyes, two eyes. I sit pinned down, stunned silent. Some dualism of vision. One eye sees while the other observes. While this observes, that sees. This and that. The palm knows everything, I suppose!

*

*

Fishes inside my head. My lover in the water and I can't swim. She swims away while only the blood flows this way. It is a beautiful cosmology where imitations galore. What one eye sees is what all eyes must see!

*

*

Stories abound in this Universe. Opinions are injected into each page, into every page, all going in, in and in. Limitless volume... or really? There are no ears and no eyes, no flavours and no odours. The fabula must live and the sujet must die. It must, expended, die!

*

*

Why must I listen? There are stories everywhere, characters, plots, words, ideas, people, their avarice... their avarice! Idiots! Demons! The inheritance of loss is scarring, the reward for neonatality! Steps and ladders, snakes and bosoms, where are my fortunes?

*

*

Skin and bones, wherewith there struts a holy cleavage, the thin line between illusion and the eternity of godliness! Am I there? I must be there. It is as what I imagined it to be. Be blessed, my child! You are no longer polluted. You are the polluting all-dirt.

A posse ad esse!

Any reality is better than this one.

Nebula had lifted early, his sanguine underbelly hoisted with the rising currents of this cauterized morning. The blue and green rays of light sprang through the miasma of constriction, vacillating between some vague yellow of progress and another pink proclivous of preservation, infinite lines bent around a myriad wrong choices and half as many right ones, bastard bubbles of turbulence surfacing here and there, intermittently. I turned away, shielding my windows with two vulcanized tentacles that seemed to have prostituted their comfort for subconscious pleasure; despite the desuetude, they stiffened in a trice to their embryonic vigour.

Smoke was soon at hand, seeking some sign of a susurration, some sedulous sweep of season over my stirring silhouette. I was a weak guest, a mannequin doomed in the confines of her hospitality to announce prowess, to proclaim achievement, to provide attention, to attain perfection, the convolution conspicuous for everyone to contemplate on, for my soul to smoulder under, for in the absence of fight, I am slave - united not by blood to some ancient sinew of perseverance but by endurance to a thew of rebellion; unfortunately, the cerise fruit needed years to ripen, to turn chartreuse. Until that spell conceded, I could and would survive in that receptacle of patience, walled in by a past fecund with enlightenment. Also, coffee, fulminated.

Propaganda occluded, with errorless aplomb and occupation, every orifice of audacious idiocy in the abode, a wild lope across the thousand tiles leaving a spoor of precipitous overawe assured by augmented obeisance or a reservoir of obloquy accrued by authority, all so voluptuously asinine as to leave some Communist speaker tower somewhere horribly jaundiced. A momentous blow to the occiput being the cause, so astounding was the devotion to routine that all the reproofs of religion unduly lolled forgotten under mountains of conciliatory atrocities, held by the throat in the throes of commitment.

Mansuetude was marked the hour of the coming of Sister, a distant vengeance stained on the blunt side of a knife, dried like dead blood, and it was dusk. Any reality, was it prophesized, to have been better than this, for in this hour the verdict is altered: she is the first among equals and second to none. Nefariously humbling was the spirit encumbering my desuetude shoulders – as had advanced the quick night. I suddenly found myself rapt on the other end of the swing of time, nay, a pendulum, and all was reset, for what had commenced with putative note now had crescendoed with palliative counterpart. Servabo fidem! Hic sunt leones! A posse ad esse!

A posse ad esse! A posse ad esse!

Notes

The above is intended to be a work of surrealist creative writing. Each paragraph describes a different time of day, different people, different objects, different conflicts - all at the same time. Feel free to interpret, to deduce, to infer, to be offended even.

1. Most of the words in the second paragraph, commencing with "Nebula...", place a stress on the alveolar ridge when they're pronounced - making it sound reinvigorating and aggressive when read aloud (alveolar plosive, dental plosive, uvular trill).


2. The first line of the third paragraph has an obvious alliteration in the first line.


3. The second line of the third paragraph has an alternating alliteration ("announce prowess, proclaim achievement...").


4. The whole of the third paragraph is built to reduce the stress placed on the alveolar ridge, instead diverting the tip of the tongue to the alveolar process of the lower mandible (alveolar fricative).


5. The fourth paragraph involves frequent usage of the phonetic alphabet that describes the pronunciation of the word "awe" (/ɔ:/).


6. The penultimate paragraph ("Mansuetude was...") contains a prosaic acrostic - with an ambivalent dedication to a friend - as well as completes the chronological cycle begun in the second paragraph.