[FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

[Steven A Smith]

> PS –One of the things I notice that I don’t share with you guys is a
> history of reading Science Fiction.  I read /Etoin Shurdlu/ when I was
> about 15, /Metamorphosis/ (Kofka) when I was about 17, and Shirley
> Jackson’s /The Lottery/ when I was in my 20’s and that’s about it. 
>
I don't know how strong of a correlation reading (early or otherwise) of
Speculative Fiction (of which Scientific Romance (Verne, et al),
Scientifiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy are the more extreme forms?)
is with various choices of technical/scientific profession/avocation,
but anecdotally it seems *very* strong.

I  only know of "/etoian shrdlu/" as something of the typesetting
equivalent of  "qwerty" on the conventional typewriter keyboard, or
Terry Winograd's AI he named SHRDLU. My previous partner had a large
collection of lead type and a small collection of the Linotype brass
"masters" used for the purpose, and they were arranged by
letter-frequency which is what "etoianshrdlu" reflected whenever that
convention was set. 

My internet friend Wikipedia shared a number of possibilities with me
however, and I'm wondering if you read the SF Fanzine by that name or
the "Black Hole Travel Agency" novels penned under the penname Etoian
Shrdlu?

I can imagine how Kafka and Jackson's _The Lottery_ might put you off
speculative fiction!   I was introduced through Jack London's
(singular?) tale about past-life regression with his protagonist under
psychoanalysis (hypnosis?) remembering his life as a "Cave Man" for the
entertainment of his Analyst (and the reader).   Not very Sci Fi, but
fascinating to an 8 year old considering the endless possibilities
implied by such a concept as past-lives.   The Tom Swift books my mother
found for me, gave me a sense of the fantastical facilitated by
technology and science and convolved with the empowerment of a young man
who couldn't qualify for a drivers license cavorting around the world
with a friend or to in his father's various creations like Atomic
Submarines.  Burroughs and Verne were shelved in the same section of the
tiny bookmobile that served our community, and the rest is history.

I would claim (for myself) however that the biggest influence on me was
not to feed my appetite for the endless possibilities of experience
offered up by scientific knowledge and technological capability, but the
*social* (and political?) alternatives offered to me in that format.  
Ursula LeGuin offered me an image of what it might be to live as an
ambisexual (on a planet faraway and a time long ago with a species
otherwise quite alien or not) in her _Left Hand of Darkness_ while the
likes of Robert Heinlein offered me ideas like "grokking" and "plural
marriages" and so forth.   While most Space Opera was not particularly
enlightened or progressive in it's tropes and characters and themes, the
remainder of SciFi was as likely to be as not.

My appetite for Speculative Fiction didn't blunt my appetite for more
conventional/celebrated literature.  I feel it gave me a broader ability
to read critically writers like Proust, or Borges, or Marquez to name a few.

- Steve

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