Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: amused

Of Linguistics and Lampshades

We're less than two weeks to the Level 6 deadline for the Grey School of Wizardry, and there are several classes that need to be finished by then. We've had some teachers drop classes they had promised to write. Finally I decided that it would be easier to write the Magickal Practices class myself than keep trying to flog someone else into doing it. "What the heck," I said to myself, "I've got materials on xenolinguistics, I'll just whack out something on Linguistics in Science Fiction." (MP houses our language program, so this counts.) And among other things, what fell out of my brain onto the keyboard was this:

Science fiction is the artistic shadow of science. It’s what you get when you take science out, get it good and drunk, and convince it to dance on the coffeetable dressed in a lampshade. It’s weird and wild, but underneath the entertaining trappings, you can still see the science.


Strangely, this explains much.
Tags: education, linguistics, science fiction, writing
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  • 4 comments
anamacha

anamacha

January 19 2008, 02:36:24 UTC 13 years ago

I rather like that quotation. It seems apropos, especially when applied to the works of one Douglas Adams.
spicables_sings

oooh what can happen when you get it good and drunk

spicables_sings

January 19 2008, 06:45:01 UTC 13 years ago

It'll dance with toffeecables -the sweet-necklace-disguise...
*hiccup

:)
ysabetwordsmith

Re: oooh what can happen when you get it good and drunk

ysabetwordsmith

January 19 2008, 06:48:17 UTC 13 years ago

... and then of course items of clothing start flying around the room, and we arrive at erotic science fiction; but that's another class topic, and not one suitable for the Apprentice school.
knightbluerose

knightbluerose

January 21 2008, 16:00:11 UTC 13 years ago

This is a terrific and fun description of Sci-fi, free to roam the fringes of hyperspace possibility and not feel guilty about it in the morning.