As I was watching 'Riddick', I remembered the original movie. 'Pitch Black'. I also remembered how the central premise of that movie was based on a short story written by Isaac Asimov called 'Nightfall'.
Nightfall is a critically acclaimed masterpiece by the Grandmaster of Science Fiction himself. It is a classical Asimov story with the core being sci-fi but Asimov explores humanity and how people react to the situation at hand. The brilliant fusion of sci-fi and psychosocialogy started right from Nightfall which he mastered in the Foundation series.
Now that I think of it, it's funny how it appears as a cycle. Science fiction turning into science which affects human behavior giving rise to more sci-fi. Even though it acts as the ultimate praise for science fiction, it raises a few questions.
When did it stop being serendipitous? When did it stop being a new idea or a discovery? Or was it never new? Do all things arise from the past? Like life arising from earlier forms of life?
Reminds me of the Great Conversation. My mentor told me how each author telling his story is not a monologue. It is in fact a conversation involving all the authors that have come before him, who speak through their works and the effect they had on the author in question. It is true indeed. One can easily identify writing styles of various great authors in their successors. An inadvertantly imparted piece of wisdom been passed down generations. Inspiration.
Now let us expand this idea a bit more. Let us count in every experience, every memory the author has. Also, all the factors that built those experiences and memories and the factors that affected those factors and so forth. To just imagine it creates an endless spiderweb of connections. Of relationships. To fully understand this idea, we can safely assume that every small piece of art, fiction and written history was in one way or the other affected by the sum total of humanity. The sum total of all human experiences that have ever existed since the beginning of time!
This opens up a completely different way of looking at things. The concept of cause and effect no longer remains linear. And this is when we are looking at things from the physical perspective.
What if we consider the temporal frame? What if we include time?
Unless you have had a clusterfuck in your head, like a whole new universe been opened in your mind, you don't get the idea.
And here's the best part. I wouldn't be talking about all this had it not been for my predecessors, my experiences and my memories. So actually, even describing human behavior and the evolution of humanity is a part of the human behaviour, is a part of the cycle. Had I not been sufficiently influenced, I wouldn't be describing how I was influenced. A complete different timeline.
And where did I get the idea for alternate timelines from? The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov.
Food for thought.
Nightfall is a critically acclaimed masterpiece by the Grandmaster of Science Fiction himself. It is a classical Asimov story with the core being sci-fi but Asimov explores humanity and how people react to the situation at hand. The brilliant fusion of sci-fi and psychosocialogy started right from Nightfall which he mastered in the Foundation series.
Now that I think of it, it's funny how it appears as a cycle. Science fiction turning into science which affects human behavior giving rise to more sci-fi. Even though it acts as the ultimate praise for science fiction, it raises a few questions.
When did it stop being serendipitous? When did it stop being a new idea or a discovery? Or was it never new? Do all things arise from the past? Like life arising from earlier forms of life?
Reminds me of the Great Conversation. My mentor told me how each author telling his story is not a monologue. It is in fact a conversation involving all the authors that have come before him, who speak through their works and the effect they had on the author in question. It is true indeed. One can easily identify writing styles of various great authors in their successors. An inadvertantly imparted piece of wisdom been passed down generations. Inspiration.
Now let us expand this idea a bit more. Let us count in every experience, every memory the author has. Also, all the factors that built those experiences and memories and the factors that affected those factors and so forth. To just imagine it creates an endless spiderweb of connections. Of relationships. To fully understand this idea, we can safely assume that every small piece of art, fiction and written history was in one way or the other affected by the sum total of humanity. The sum total of all human experiences that have ever existed since the beginning of time!
This opens up a completely different way of looking at things. The concept of cause and effect no longer remains linear. And this is when we are looking at things from the physical perspective.
What if we consider the temporal frame? What if we include time?
Unless you have had a clusterfuck in your head, like a whole new universe been opened in your mind, you don't get the idea.
And here's the best part. I wouldn't be talking about all this had it not been for my predecessors, my experiences and my memories. So actually, even describing human behavior and the evolution of humanity is a part of the human behaviour, is a part of the cycle. Had I not been sufficiently influenced, I wouldn't be describing how I was influenced. A complete different timeline.
And where did I get the idea for alternate timelines from? The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov.
Food for thought.
