[ExI] Defeatist Science Fiction Writers

[Stefano Vaj]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 5:35 PM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> Egan is defeatist.

Ambiguities in Egan definitely exist, and this may or may not have to
do with a rather paradoxical preach against transhumanism (!) by him
that was circulated on mls a few weeks ago.

>> OTOH, it might be argued, even though this is in my view a purely
>> nominalistic argument, that the destruction of a given, working copy
>> of your identity would be "death" and that your restored backup would
>> be an identical individual rather than your mythical "self", so that
>> the loss would be prevented for your community and/or the universe,
>> but not really for the "self itself".
>
> Well, some of us disagree  :-)

And so do I. Just for the record... :-)

>> The real issue, however, is that Egan's virtually "immortal"
>> characters, while being , do accept reasonable risks whenever
>> this is worth doing - or even chose to be terminated, sometimes,
>> as it happens in Diaspora.
>
> Yes, but from our point of view here, isn't that nuts? Whatever
> possesses Egan?  As I say, "where there is life and energy, there
> can be happiness" (unless something is medically wrong with you).

What I was saying is: "Even for virtually immortal characters as in
Egan's stories [and probably even more in Heinlein's stories] there
are risks worth taking". On the fact that Egan's characters
specifically seem more inclined to spleen and boredom than Belle
Epoque upper-middle class late teenagers we may well agree. :-)

> I think that I know what happened to Arthur Clark, Greg Egan,
> and many more (but didn't happen to the earlier Heinlein or Laumer).

Arthur C. Clarke? Which novels to you refer to?

Stefano Vaj