Phil-fi

Feh. I just wrote a whole post musing about Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, which, as I've mentioned, is supposed to be about, well, the world after humans, and which I haven't yet read. I talked about how difficult it must be to write fiction without human protagonists (or anthropomorphized ones, as in Paul Auster's Timbuktu, which sort of worked, though it wasn't notably better than my ancient memory of a Young Adult book on the same theme). And, as I enumerated and fleshed out the challenges and rhapsodized about their meaning, I started to get a little suspicious. A quick trip over to Amazon and its "peek inside" function, and, hey, whaddaya know, the frigging thing's a piece of journalistic expository science writing.

Which, really, does make more sense, when you think about it.

But, ok: say it were written in a story-telling format. It's not really sci-fi, is it? I mean, it's a what-if scenario, sure; but it's one that doesn't depend on altering a scientific or technological fact or invention, and the "futurity" of its premise is, sadly only about 20 minutes away on a good day. (On a day on which the TVs at work show Cheney muttering vague imprecations against Iran, less.) It'd be more sort of a "possible-worlds" story -- in the philosophical thought-experiment sense, not the sci-fi extraplanetary one.

As a genre, I think this has serious possibilities. Take something contingent -- better yet if it's generally regarded as necessary -- and, ceteris paribus, alter it.

What if Quine didn't have a taste for desert landscapes? Then universals exist, and how might that affect a tender coming-of-age story?

What if, contra Aristotle, the default state of matter was motion? Probably wouldn't hold up as a main story, but drop it in, for a giggle, as background to a modern retelling of the myth of Eurydice, and, box office gold; trust me.