We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The (Science-Fiction) Reader and the Quantum Paradigm: Problems in Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.
- Authors
Bartter, Martha A.
- Abstract
In every age, the prevailing ‘world-view’ organizes cultural assumptions so thoroughly that they become invisible. Only when they change are they widely noticed. Readers of SF are experiencing such a change in world-view today—the third in recent history. From the Newtonian universe of absolute space and time, we moved to the relativistic universe in which space and time are functions of each other, energy and mass are interchangeable, and the relative position of the observer makes a difference. This Einsteinian universe has had considerable influence on literature. But we now find ourselves assimilating a third world-view, the most difficult literary world-view yet proposed: the radical uncertainty of the quantum universe. That quantum mechanics makes a difference to science is obvious. That it makes a difference to literature is less so. Yet the principles of uncertainty, simultaneity, and universal attraction do show up in post-modern fiction. Despite Einstein's protest that ‘God does not play dice with the universe.’ writers like Samuel Delany seem to produce literature, based on quantum mechanics, which does just that. The resulting works provoke admiration, protest, and bafflement from readers. An exploration of the quantum structure of Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand constitutes a way of reading it that may unpack some of Delany's enigmas.
- Subjects
SCIENCE fiction; LITERARY criticism; DELANY, Samuel R., 1942-; NOVELISTS; QUANTUM theory; LITERATURE &; science; AUTHOR-reader relationships; STARS in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (Book)
- Publication
Science Fiction Studies, 1990, Vol 17, Issue 3, p325
- ISSN
0091-7729
- Publication type
Literary Criticism