Zeruel
20-Sep-2006, 08:03 AM (08:03)
I started reading a lot of science fiction books when I was young, very early.
I also found mythology fascinating. But like many in america, I grew up in a religious household. Unlike my relatives I could not take Church very seriously. You would find me in the back with a book to read.
After some time in reflection, I thought about my character and the interests I had during my childhood. Perhaps the fascination with fantasy was the reason why I did not find the stories of my religion very persuasive.
Do not misunderstand, I mean I did believe that my family or friends were sincere in their beliefs, some of them. I took them very seriously.
But my knowledge of the history of mythology always made me feel disappointed with the stories themselves. Nothing was truly divine or original. They are all just copies of each other, only distorted. I knew those stories were believed in the past by dead religions, and I had a hard time telling the difference between the dead myths and the stories in the bible.
Science fiction on the other hand, gave me a richer world of imagination that surpassed the childish fantasies of religion, of course, with even stranger stories about the future or the universe.
One book, The Last Man on Earth, had a charming story where a man invents a time machine. The catch is, he could not travel back in time without expending too much energy. The future did not require much energy, even millions of years, so the inventor tries to find the right time in the future when technology can solve his problem. But no matter what, even the most advanced technology from the greatest civilization did not have the answer. The inventor keeps jumping forward, all the way to the end of time itself where the universe is about to collapse. He takes the leap and gambles with the switch, to jump ahead.
The big crunch is the big bang. He lands in his past. :)
Maybe stories like that showed me how stranger truth is than fiction? Because science fiction drew from the speculations of the scientists?
I also found mythology fascinating. But like many in america, I grew up in a religious household. Unlike my relatives I could not take Church very seriously. You would find me in the back with a book to read.
After some time in reflection, I thought about my character and the interests I had during my childhood. Perhaps the fascination with fantasy was the reason why I did not find the stories of my religion very persuasive.
Do not misunderstand, I mean I did believe that my family or friends were sincere in their beliefs, some of them. I took them very seriously.
But my knowledge of the history of mythology always made me feel disappointed with the stories themselves. Nothing was truly divine or original. They are all just copies of each other, only distorted. I knew those stories were believed in the past by dead religions, and I had a hard time telling the difference between the dead myths and the stories in the bible.
Science fiction on the other hand, gave me a richer world of imagination that surpassed the childish fantasies of religion, of course, with even stranger stories about the future or the universe.
One book, The Last Man on Earth, had a charming story where a man invents a time machine. The catch is, he could not travel back in time without expending too much energy. The future did not require much energy, even millions of years, so the inventor tries to find the right time in the future when technology can solve his problem. But no matter what, even the most advanced technology from the greatest civilization did not have the answer. The inventor keeps jumping forward, all the way to the end of time itself where the universe is about to collapse. He takes the leap and gambles with the switch, to jump ahead.
The big crunch is the big bang. He lands in his past. :)
Maybe stories like that showed me how stranger truth is than fiction? Because science fiction drew from the speculations of the scientists?