Practically All Sf Is Trash.

Practically All Sf Is Trash.

Not Far From Here, By A White Sun, Behind A Green Star, Lived The Steelypips, Illustrious, Industrious, And They Hadn't A Care: No Spats In Their Vats, No Rules, No Schools, No Gloom, No Evil Influence Of The Moon, No Trouble From Matter Or Antimatter - For They Had A Machine, A Dream Of A Machine, With Springs And Gears And Perfect In Every Respect. And They Lived With It, And On It, And Under It, And Inside It, For It Was All They Had - First They Saved Up All Their Atoms, Then They Put Them All Together, And If One Didn't Fit, Why They Chipped At It A Bit, And Everything Was Just Fine.

There Are Friends With Whom We Share Neither Interests Nor Any Particular Experiences, Friends With Whom We Never Correspond, Whom We Seldom Meet And Then Only By Chance, But Whose Existence Nonetheless Has For Us A Special If Uncanny Meaning. For Me The Eiffel Tower Is Just Such A Friend, And Not Merely Because It Happens To Be The Symbol Of A City, For Paris Leaves Me Neither Hot Nor Cold. I First Became Aware Of This Attachment Of Mine When Reading In The Paper About Plans For Its Demolition, The Mere Thought Of Which Filled Me With Alarm.

Each Civilization May Choose One Of Two Roads To Travel, That Is, Either Fret Itself To Death, Or Pet Itself To Death. And In The Course Of Doing One Or The Other, It Eats Its Way Into The Universe, Turning Cinders And Flinders Of Stars Into Toilet Seats, Pegs, Gears, Cigarette Holders And Pillowcases, And It Does This Because, Unable To Fathom The Universe, It Seeks To Change That Fathomlessness Into Something Fathomable.

So One Must Be Resigned To Being A Clock That Measures The Passage Of Time, Now Out Of Order, Now Repaired, And Whose Mechanism Generates Despair And Love As Soon As Its Maker Sets It Going? Are We To Grow Used To The Idea That Every Man Relives Ancient Torments, Which Are All The More Profound Because They Grow Comic With Repetition? That Human Existence Should Repeat Itself, Well And Good, But That It Should Repeat Itself Like A Hackneyed Tune, Or A Record A Drunkard Keeps Playing As He Feeds Coins Into The Jukebox.