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What Zander was writing
Mar. 8th, 2016 11:18 amIntroduction to The Hedgehog Dialogues
This book arose out of a vast impatience on my part with a tendency I have noticed among people of scientific bent; a tendency to invent what are called "thought experiments" and then to take them seriously.
Thought experiments in themselves are a harmless enough pastime. If, for whatever reason, you are unable to mount a particular experiment that you have in mind, there is no possible harm in imagining what would happen if you did. Imagination is our greatest gift and has been immensely useful to us as well as entertaining. It enables us to conceive all sorts of things, both plausible and implausible, and some of the more implausible things we have imagined have indeed come to pass, much to our surprise. This does not mean, however, that anything we can imagine can exist; and this is where the game of thought experiment comes drastically unstuck.
( The boring bit: optional... )
Thus these dialogues, which began as an exercise in turning what would otherwise have been tedious rants like the aforegoing into light comedic vignettes. Whether the exercise has been successful is not for me to say.
The scene is a large marquee which has been erected in the garden of the house called Narrowgate, on the outskirts of the village of Avevale. The marquee is filled with all manner of circus paraphernalia, plus a number of deck chairs and trestle tables. The cast of characters is as follows:
ZANDER. Me and not me. Me as a character I write, who also writes. Mine host.
ETHAN POWERS. Uncommitted demiurge and pub bore par excellence. The informed idiot.
ROBIN FAYNE. Everyman figure, the stooge to Powers' Socrates. The uninformed non-idiot.
TIMMAEUS AGRAEL, GAUTAMA R MELIES and MAGUS A REALTIME. Three of the four archangels of my narrative universe, experts in their fields, there to offer alternative viewpoints and probe more deeply, when they're not arguing among themselves.
GROVEL and MASTER. General factotums, there to keep the domestic side running.
And lastly and most importantly, THE HEDGEHOGS. Named U, V and W for reasons that are unlikely to become apparent again at this stage, they play a vital role in the business that follows. Their only utterance is "whee," but far more than that goes on in their heads.
Okay. Roll the drums, focus the spotlights, strike up "Entry of the Gladiators," and away we go...
This book arose out of a vast impatience on my part with a tendency I have noticed among people of scientific bent; a tendency to invent what are called "thought experiments" and then to take them seriously.
Thought experiments in themselves are a harmless enough pastime. If, for whatever reason, you are unable to mount a particular experiment that you have in mind, there is no possible harm in imagining what would happen if you did. Imagination is our greatest gift and has been immensely useful to us as well as entertaining. It enables us to conceive all sorts of things, both plausible and implausible, and some of the more implausible things we have imagined have indeed come to pass, much to our surprise. This does not mean, however, that anything we can imagine can exist; and this is where the game of thought experiment comes drastically unstuck.
( The boring bit: optional... )Thus these dialogues, which began as an exercise in turning what would otherwise have been tedious rants like the aforegoing into light comedic vignettes. Whether the exercise has been successful is not for me to say.
The scene is a large marquee which has been erected in the garden of the house called Narrowgate, on the outskirts of the village of Avevale. The marquee is filled with all manner of circus paraphernalia, plus a number of deck chairs and trestle tables. The cast of characters is as follows:
ZANDER. Me and not me. Me as a character I write, who also writes. Mine host.
ETHAN POWERS. Uncommitted demiurge and pub bore par excellence. The informed idiot.
ROBIN FAYNE. Everyman figure, the stooge to Powers' Socrates. The uninformed non-idiot.
TIMMAEUS AGRAEL, GAUTAMA R MELIES and MAGUS A REALTIME. Three of the four archangels of my narrative universe, experts in their fields, there to offer alternative viewpoints and probe more deeply, when they're not arguing among themselves.
GROVEL and MASTER. General factotums, there to keep the domestic side running.
And lastly and most importantly, THE HEDGEHOGS. Named U, V and W for reasons that are unlikely to become apparent again at this stage, they play a vital role in the business that follows. Their only utterance is "whee," but far more than that goes on in their heads.
Okay. Roll the drums, focus the spotlights, strike up "Entry of the Gladiators," and away we go...
