[ExI] Fwd: story

[William Flynn Wallace]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 3:40 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

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> *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On
> Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Fwd: story
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> >>…My notion is that the best fantasy is vaguely based on reality in a
> sense.  That might apply to SciFi as well.spike
>
> >…The hardest thing in scifi is to make up an alien culture.
> Understandably.  You can see human parallels in all of them.  I am not sure
> it is even possible to totally get out of the human ways of seeing things,
> but the best writers do a credible job…
>
> Consider for a moment the way men and women interact with each other, and
> the dopamine surges that are available from that (do pardon my heterosexual
> view here, it’s only view I know well enough to write about.)  If one were
> an AI, or even a pre-pubescent child, there would be a dimension there
> completely mysterious, unfathomable.  The child does not understand why an
> attractive man and an attractive woman behave the way they do toward each
> other upon meeting, the things they say and do.
>
> I have the notion that we could extrapolate this to an alien
> civilization.  The interactions would be sufficiently mysterious and
> foreign to us that we cannot really write a story about them unless we
> anthropomorphize the alien intelligence.
>
> >…Notice how plays and musical and movies often take off from earlier
> works, making sequels, rewriting them and so on.  How many works are, in
> fact, thinly disguised versions of Romeo and Juliet?  bill w
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> Ja, special case BilW: Romeo and Juliet is a work of literature filled
> with all the universal themes that never change.  All you sophisticated
> hipsters here, all you future-minded transhumanists and post human this and
> that, turn the dial over to the local AM radio country station and listen
> to the words of the songs.  Go ahead, don’t be afraid, it will not harm
> you; sneak off in your car so your friends won’t find out.  You can
> actually understand what those songs are saying, the words, the thoughts,
> the feelings.
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> Those songs haven’t changed much since we were children and our
> grandparents were children.  They hit on all the old familiar human themes,
> and it still works.  Better yet, don’t bother with AM radio, just Google
> randomly on some country singer who knows how to do it, such as Randy
> Travis:
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> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTvbKVcxWEg&list=RDoTvbKVcxWEg#t=0
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> There you go, if Romeo had sung this to Juliet, and she would have melted
> all over the floor in a sticky puddle of sugary dopamines.  Even if we are
> aware of how our brains work, sweet and gooey still works just as well (may
> it ever be so.)  Come on, you smart people, it doesn’t matter if this isn’t
> your genre, it still works, does it not?
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> spike
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​Can't handle it. I love hillbilly, bluegrass, hammered dulcimer and banjos
etc. , but just hate the Nashville sound.  "Find the note.  PLEASE   find
the note and get some treatment for your sinus condition."

Just too formulaic for me.  I do love many lyrics in country songs.  Some
just hilarious (If fingerprints showed on skin whose would I find on you?)
bill w​


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