[lit-ideas] Re: The power of fiction
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:10:01 +0900
Wow! What a blast from the past. I remember wanting to be a nexialist, too.
John M.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 1:31 AM, John Wager <jwager@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> O.K., I'll bite, at the expense of maybe having told this "story" before.
> At about 11 or 12, I came across a sci fi pot boiler by A. E. Van Vogt,
> VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE.
> It was an episodic book about a space ship encountering aliens aboard the
> ship, and a very strange floaty-spacey being
> that devoured whole worlds.
>
> The "hero" was a nexialist, a specialist whose specialty was the
> connections between everybody else's specialties. He was the "glue" between
> chemistry and exobiology, between sociology and nutrition.
>
> I wanted to be an nexialist.
>
> Instead, I became a philosopher in an interdisciplinary studies department
> of a college.
>
> This is pretty darn close!
>
> (Later, I realized what the allusion "space beagle" referred to, and got
> the Darwinian connection. I also found out that this book was the source of
> Sigourney Weaver's ALIEN films.)
>
> Stories indeed have power, but it's all in the
>
> timing.
>
> (By the way: My spell checker suggested "existentialist" as a correct
> spelling of "nexialist.")
>
> John McCreery wrote:
>
>> The following tickled my tease reflex.
>>
>>
>> http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/04/bedtime-stories.html
>>
>> --
>> John McCreery
>> The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
>> Tel. +81-45-314-9324
>> jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> http://www.wordworks.jp/
>>
>
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--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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