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Bob Shaw
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 Bob Shaw is the author of a significant body of successful science fiction novels and stories and is
one of the leading science fiction personalities in the UK. Perhaps his most famous novel is Orbitsville (1975),
a spectacular vision of a complex artificial habitat comparable to Larry Niven's
Ringworld (1970). But his most famous single story is "Light of Other Days," containing his powerfully evocative invention of "slow
glass," later used in several other stories that all together form his book,
Other Days, Other Eyes (1972). One might compare the story to Isaac Asimov's "The Dead Past" in its investigation of the human meaning of our
individual life experiences. But Shaw's plausible construction, so simple and logical on the surface, teases
the reader with the idea that it might really work.
From Newton's Optics, which had such a profound effect on art and science in the 18th century, to
the present, that branch of physics has had a continuing impact on visual and literary art. Shaw extrapolates "slow
glass" from the indices of refraction of glass and crystal, and from the simple fact that all of our sensory
input is delayed by a tiny interval. In Remembrance of Things
Past, Marcel Proust's central character becomes
a writer by learning to represent life through reflection. Shaw's slow glass can recall images of the past,
allowing Shaw to show the consequences of attaining the state to which Proust's protagonist aspires -- through
the imagery of hard science fiction, Shaw binds the fact of the speed of light to our most intimate experiences.
Years ago, in a class taught at Stevens Institute of Technology, Samuel R. Delany had to explain to
a student who had done the math proving that slow glass didn't work that it was science fiction, not fact; if it did
work, then the story would no longer be sf but merely literary realism. It is the rigor with which the conceit
is plausibly depicted that underpins the imaginative force of all hard science fiction -- particularly "Light of
Other Days." It is an interesting contrast to the jammed-with- ideas-and-wonderful-gadgets hard sf of,
say, Robert L. Forward, in which no one idea but rather the constant introduction of new ideas and things
carries the story. Here Shaw presents the "one big idea" story in its classic form. All other details of setting
that ground the world of the story and make it distinct from the present world are made secondary by Shaw, so
that the central image and idea is foregrounded and highlighted, its surprising implications and deep complexities
investigated.
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The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. | ||
Cramer: On Science & Science Fiction || Hartwell: Hard Science Fiction
David G. Hartwell || Kathryn Cramer || About Tor Books || Ordering Info
Interactive Intoduction to THE ASCENT OF WONDER copyright © 1995-1997 by Kathryn Cramer.