In the Company of Others
Sometimes I think that if I could be any one person in the world, aside from myself, I would be Julie E. Czerneda. And then other times, I think that even if I could be anyone, I'd be myself, because then I could continue to read and love Julie's work in the way that I do now, and she probably doesn't enjoy what she does the same way that I enjoy it.
So much of what I know about the emotional dynamics of the universe has been elucidated through literature. That's not to say that my experiences in the real world are so limited or unimportant as to result in my reliance upon the fictional; rather, it is to say that fiction provides an ideal training ground -- a practice universe, if you will -- to allow you to experience things outside of yourself as being nonetheless internal. Literature's power is generated by its ability to make the strange, the outside, the other, into a part of the self.
I could go on for ages about the purpose of literature being a reversal of the processes of human alienation, but right now I think I'll save that for the thesis I plan on writing, incorporating most of Julie's works and discussing her viewpoint on what it is that makes humans human, or special, or necessary in a future of alien species galore (or even in a not-so-distant future, where the sphere of explorable space is very large, and very empty).
At the end of the day, I feel simple amazement and wonder at the universe that has such writers, and such writing, in it.
So much of what I know about the emotional dynamics of the universe has been elucidated through literature. That's not to say that my experiences in the real world are so limited or unimportant as to result in my reliance upon the fictional; rather, it is to say that fiction provides an ideal training ground -- a practice universe, if you will -- to allow you to experience things outside of yourself as being nonetheless internal. Literature's power is generated by its ability to make the strange, the outside, the other, into a part of the self.
I could go on for ages about the purpose of literature being a reversal of the processes of human alienation, but right now I think I'll save that for the thesis I plan on writing, incorporating most of Julie's works and discussing her viewpoint on what it is that makes humans human, or special, or necessary in a future of alien species galore (or even in a not-so-distant future, where the sphere of explorable space is very large, and very empty).
At the end of the day, I feel simple amazement and wonder at the universe that has such writers, and such writing, in it.