10.14.2014

Ursula K Le Guin on Science Fiction

"Truth is a matter of the imagination" - Ursula K Le Guin
Image Credit - The Left Hand of Darkness by David Lane






I recently read Ursula K Le Guin's legendary novel The Left Hand of Darkness. In the introduction she lays out a really compelling meditation on the role of science fiction in culture.  As we are ever more altered by our technology, it bears repeating that the metaphors of science fiction might help us create a more intelligent society.

Introduction
"Science fiction is often described, and even defind, as extrapolative. the science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. "If this goes on, this is what will happen." A prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large doses of a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life.

This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as "escapist," but when questioned further, admit they do not read it because "it's so depressing." Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic.

Fortunately, though extrapolation is an element in science fiction, it isn't the name of the game by any means. It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether the writer's or the reader's. Variables are the spice of life.

This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought-experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the second world war; let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens.... In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed. The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future - indeed Schrodinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to shwo that the "future," on the quantum level, cannot be predicted- but to describe reality, the present world.

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.

9.26.2014

The Universe is a Small Hat - BABYCASTLES RESIDENCY

The Universe is a Small Hat is a multiplayer immersive musical that tells the story of a space colony leaving earth in order to devise a more rational society. I've been developing this piece for two years now, and it isn't quite like anything I've ever created or experienced. Part game, part performance, part social experiment, part Utopian concept album, part party. We can't make the piece without willing participants. Come out and play.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Trailer HERE

An Octoroon

From left, Chris Myers, Danny Wolohan and Amber Gray. Credit Pavel Antonov 




Composing for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' An Octoroon at Soho Rep this past spring was one of the most exhilarating artistic experiences of my life. The song I wrote for the end was meant to be a moment of healing or reflection after the intense discomfort and insane melodrama that the play intentionally creates. Lester St. Louis is the fantastic cellist who makes it happen in the show.

NY times Review HERE.

Here's my original demo of the closing song:

"When You Burn It Down."
Music and Lyrics by César Alvarez