|
|
|
|
|
|
itselfyou can find that in other types of stories. To my mind it is because science fiction has as its strongest factor the single thing that separates the human race from other animalsI refer to a quality which has been termed "time-binding." With a hyphen. It's a term that may not have come to your attention. It is a technical term invented by Alfred Korzybski, and it refers to the fact that the human animal lives not only in the present, but also in the past and the future. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The human animal differs from all other animals only in this respect. The definition includes both reading and writing. That is the primary technique whereby we are able to make records, to gather data and to look into the future. (. . .) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Time-binding consists of making use of the multitudinous records of the past that we have. On the basis of those records, the data we have collected directly and the data that we get from others by means of time-binding techniques, including reading and writing, we are able to plan our future conduct. It means that we have lived mentally in the past and in the future, as well as in the present. That is certainly true of science fiction fans. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I like the term Future Fiction that Charlie Hornig gave it. It seems to me a little broader than Science Fiction because most of these stories are concerned with the futurewhat will happen. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In taking the future into account, trying to predict what it will be, and trying to make your plans accordingly, you are time-binding. The child-like person lives from day to day. The adult tries to plan for a year or two at least. Statesmen try to plan for perhaps twenty years or more. There are a few institutions which plan for longer than the lives of men, as for example, the Smithsonian Institution and the Catholic Church, that think not in terms of lifetimes, but in centuries. They make their plans that far ahead, and to some extent, make them work out. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Science fiction fans differ from most of the rest of the race by thinking in terms of racial magnitudesnot even centuries, but thousands of years. Stapledon thinks in terms of . . . how many years? How far does his time scale go? I don't know: the figures mean nothing to me. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
That is what science fiction consists oftrying to figure out from the past and from the present what the future may be. In that we are behaving like human beings. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Robert A. Heinlein, "The Discovery of the Future" (1941), Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master, ed. Yoji Kondo (New York: TOR, 1992), pp. 15455 |
|
|
|
|
|