Friday, October 28, 2011

in fiction


Talking to Gergana, a close friend of mine, has reminded me of something incredibly awesome.

We can manifest fiction in our heads - entire worlds and universes, filled to the brim with fantastic creatures and possibilities. We can build these worlds up from a creative nothingness, write their histories down in books, define the laws that govern these new realities.


Isn't that just fucking amazing? Think about it for a second. The world of Middle-Earth is a popular example of a world much unlike our own with its own history and lore - everything guided by the will of the author (Tolkien). What is he to the world he created if not some kind of God - the creative force which defines the laws of that world and guides its history?

I distinctly recall an experience among those who create these worlds - where these worlds have a semblance of life of their own, a story that writes itself, every page arising as a natural consequence of the previous pages.

With modern technology, we are able to emulate those worlds to a certain extent, as well. As I write this I'm logged into a game called World of Warcraft - which indeed has its own history and lore, its own set of physical rules.

There are some limits to that creativity, of course. We are subjected to a pre-existing reality with its own set of rules and limitations. We are a subset of that all-encompassing reality - and in a similar way, the realities we create are a subset of our own consciousness. We cannot imagine something we have never experienced, although we can take elements from our collective experience and rearrange them. Terry Pratchett, for instance, defines a completely new, eighth basic colour in the Discworld - octarine, one which does not exist in the spectrum of light that is visible to us. As such, he is forced to approximate it through two colours we can imagine - orange and purple, as far as I recall.

I would like to recommend a book called Sophie's World which beautifully demonstrates the point of this post. It's an amazing philosophy course as well.

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