tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post5985059409937515327..comments2024-03-28T16:39:46.847-04:00Comments on Tellers of Weird Tales: A Future Without HopeTerence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-15587979461522708452014-11-18T21:42:44.125-05:002014-11-18T21:42:44.125-05:00Dear Marzaat,
Welcome to my blog, and thanks for ...Dear Marzaat,<br /><br />Welcome to my blog, and thanks for reading.<br /><br />You make a good point that steampunk is fun. I have been around steampunk people and they invariably seem to be having fun. When it gets down to it, maybe steampunk is dress-up, a child's game, fun and innocent. So are fun and decadence incompatible? The decadent poets and writers of the nineteenth century seem to have been a dreary and dissipated bunch. I wouldn't rule out fun in decadence, though.<br /><br />In your third paragraph, you have hit upon a science-fictional idea: Can human nature--our need to love or our desire to be free--be engineered away? The materialist might say yes. The totalitarian, consumed by his Utopian vision, wants to try. The rest of us rebel against the idea. (As I have said, the totalitarian Utopia is a dystopia for the rest of us.) It all comes down to the question, Is there a human soul, or are we simply a soup of chemicals? If we have souls or are souls, then the good stuff in us can't be engineered out. Not that we will stay our hands, for when have we ever stopped what we are doing, saying, "No more"?<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-87938063656981993432014-11-18T21:24:09.131-05:002014-11-18T21:24:09.131-05:00Having discovered your blog recently, I'm read...Having discovered your blog recently, I'm reading and enjoying some old posts.<br /><br />I would definitely agree that steampunk is a decadent movement. (Sometimes fun but still imaginatively decadent as science fiction though not as fantasy.) <br /><br />As to "even in the future we will be human", that's a very open question. As we learn more about the human genome and what part it plays in human thought and emotions, engineering human nature away seems a possibility even if not necessarily desirable. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-62739611177557046862014-09-25T15:57:26.456-04:002014-09-25T15:57:26.456-04:00Dear El Vox,
I agree with you that things don'...Dear El Vox,<br /><br />I agree with you that things don't change very much, even after centuries or millennia. My argument is that if human nature changes, we would not be able to understand the Iliad or the Odyssey. Also, I question whether people of a given age were more or less happy than people of today. I doubt that they were.<br /><br />In every Golden Age, there is a worm, or, by the Latin phrase, "Et in Arcadia Ego." Conversely, there is yet life (and hope) even in a concentration camp. The original Star Trek I think dealt well with the idea that even in the future we will be human. Star Trek: The Next Generation seems to take place in a future perfected by the removal of human emotion. It all goes to the idea of progress: Is there such a thing or no? I say no (for the most part). The person with a Utopian vision says yes. Too often, that person is willing to sacrifice the rest of us for his vision.<br /><br />Thanks for writing.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-55250511969024164562014-09-25T12:35:38.414-04:002014-09-25T12:35:38.414-04:00Is the glass half full or half empty? I guess it&...Is the glass half full or half empty? I guess it's an age old question, and depends on one's perception. I tend to think, the more things change, the more they stay the same. If Star Wars, Trek--or some other futuristic world did exist wouldn't it still have problems? Was the Golden Age all that golden? I have nostalgia for some of that too, but I prefer living now in this age, with whatever problems we may face. El Voxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05985563041511492981noreply@blogger.com