On Wed, 3 Sep 1997, Neil Rest wrote:
> Please be careful. Many ecological stories are not technically possible.
> A good example is _Ecotopia_ which depends on imaginary, impossible
> technology.
Just how are we defining 'impossible' here!? I mean that both critically
and as a genuine question. I'm also doing work on sf and eco/techno
themes, and I now shamefacedly admit that my scientific eduction is not
all it might be...My point is, do you mean impossible as in not currently
possible, or impossible as in against known understandings of physcial
laws? Can we talk of either with any certainty? I need to be enlightened
here..! Second, isn't there a way in which it doesn't matter? In the
particular case of Callenbach's _Ecotopia_, my feeling is that its main
function is a propogandist one (I don't actually like it that much as a
novel; as I remember it has all the formal defects of the static,
blueprint
utopia that a lot of feminist - and other - utopian fiction began to
challenge in the seventies) - as such, it's an attempt to break us out of
received ways of thinking and in fact demand the impossible (thanks to the
Situationists..), consider what other possibilities are out there, and how
technology (and society) might best be modified in the light of
unreasonable aspirations...
Lisa
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