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Science
fiction's importance lies in its ability to allow us thought-experiments
for both society and the individual. We can try on different futures,
extrapolate trends, test for destruction, and find out what it might
be like if this, that, or the other things happens.
It's not important at all to the majority of readers, and to the
bigger majority of postliterates, except in the way its thinking
influences their lives in countless ways.
As a literary genre, science fiction exists because it must, as
a response to technological and scientific change. In attempting
to encompass these changes, it lets us begin to inhabit a world
we no longer can fully understand. It lets us find a place in complexity.
Ray Bradbury
has said that the ability to fantasize is the ability to survive,
and doing so as realistically as possible, which some forms of science
fiction seek to do, is a step toward making this ability into a
skill.
Finally, I would
quote André Carneiro, Brazilian poet, writer, film-maker,
photographer, and critic: Science fiction is not an escapist literature,
but a way for placing man inside the fantastic reality of technological
progress.
Again, a way
of colonizing the future. If that's not important, then we have
given up on ourselves entirely.
by
Gene Stewart
Well
known as a poet, André Cameiro writes Brazil's best and most
original science fiction. He doesn't like the science fiction
classification and prefers to call his works literature and to have
them judge on that basis.
His life style reflets a fierce desire for independence from all
superficially imposed values and limitations. He has entered a number
of artistic fields and has achivied sucess and recognition in all
of them. His experimental films have won prizes in Brazil and other
countries, and his artistic photographs have received awards in
intemacional exhibitions.
His stories and poems have been translated into Sweden, English,
French, ltalian, German, Spanish, Japonese etc. Recently his SF
writings have shown an intense interest in sexuality. He has written
two novels dealing with futuristic societies in which sexual arts
are taught, practiced and perfected as life's most precious and
rewarding activity.
In spite of his rejection of the term, André Carneiro uses
science fiction to alter man's circumstances and thus provide a
more adequate laboratory for the study of the
multifaceted dimensions of humanity. Although he does have space
ships and people
living on other planets, he often changes only one basic factor
or element.
In "Darkness" a story appeared in Putnam's "BEST
S-F- OF 72" and other anthologies and college texts, André
turns the light and energy rheostat down and over a period of days
plunges the world into darkness. What happens to men and women under
these altered circumstances reveals a great deal about mankind,
the fragility of his values and his carehlly ordered universe. Quite
naturally, within this altered reality, blind people become the
heroes and their leadership saves a number of lives. When light
retums the survivors rejoice in the simple fact of being alive and
grat1ttlde towards their blind benefators fades quickly into oblivion.
"Darkness" represents one of the classic short stories
of our times and illustrates André Cameiro's special use
of science fiction.
André
Cameiro essay on science fiction, "Introdução
ao Estudo da Science-Fiction" stresses three basic points:
I) Science Fiction is not an escapist literature, but a way for
placing man inside the fantastic reality oftechnological progress.
2) Science Fiction is above all literature and must be judged as
such.
3) The worst thing that happened to this genre was to call it "science-fiction".
The
prejudice that surround it may well come from the fear that man
fears toward science. Man loves stability and science is constantly
changing ourworld and our way oflife.
Anyone interested in the uniqueness of Cameiro's science fiction
should consult David Dunbar's doctoral dissertation, "Uniqiue
Motifs In Brazilian Science Fiction", University of Arizona.
by
Leo L. Barrow
André
pode ser contactado pelo e-mail: andrecarneiro77@hotmail.com
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