[PREV - RUMPUS_ROSE]    [TOP]

FTL_ATTACK

                                                  March 23, 2022

More about Virginia Kidd on Benford
and Platt on Ursula Le Guin:

Virginia Kidd objects to:

  "...  the stern admonition not to present
  make-believe as real by a science fiction author
  whose work features faster-than-light starships"
                                                          
That's an objection near-and-dear to my
heart: long ago I concluded that the use of     You might be willing to go
FTL in nominally "hard" science fiction was     with an apparent impossibility
a hypocritical cop-out.                         like FTL as a wild premise, an
                                                extreme idea to be explored.

There's a problem though, in that while         This is not at all the way
both Benford and Platt wrote stories            FTL is used in SF: it's
incorporating FTL travel, those were            more of a genre convention,
pretty early in their careers and they          a commonly resorted to
weren't terribly memorable works.               absurdity that the readers
                                                have gotten used to swallowing.

Their later and more emblematic works               FTL
pointedly don't invoke "faster-than-
light" travel.  Platt was known for
writing some earth-bound scenarios like
"The Silicon Man", and I would call
Benford's major work his "Galactic Core"
series, which despite it's galactic
scope was using time-dialation to get
it's heroes to different stars.


So as an attack on Benford and Platt's grasp
of reality, this move is fairly weak, but even
if it scored it would just work as proof of
their own imperfection, it wouldn't be much of
a defense of Ursula Le Guin.

    Dismissing a hypocrite for hypocrisy
    is arguably just another ad hominem       Consistency is good, except when
    argument.                                 one is consistently wrong.
                                                                     
                                                  A hypocrite may be          
                                                  right on occasion          
                                                  inspite of themselves.     
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                            
                                                                        

--------
[NEXT - MONGOL_SPACE]