Intro Post

Names? SciFilosophy, Novel Philosophies, The Philosophy of Science Fiction

Hi everyone who’s reading this. My name is Mike, I’m a senior majoring in biology here at SC. I’ve never written blogs or followed someone’s blog posts before, but I’m interested to try it out and see what it’s like. So… let’s begin!

   At the first day of class I really didn’t have a coherent idea for my possible blog topic, but since then the ideas I’ve jotted down have all sort of merged together in what I think is an interesting way. But I did know that I wanted to either write about science fiction novels or certain aspects of philosophy since I’ve always been interested in both subjects. I used to be an avid reader of Costco and Border’s bestseller novels all throughout elementary and high school, but at some point before college I stopped reading books for fun. Which I feel is kind of unfortunate because I really enjoyed reading all different kinds of books, not just science fiction but thrillers and adventure stories. Even if Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series where formulaic and predictable they were a heck of a lot of fun back then and it was easy to get lost in the adventure with Dirk as he escaped the bad guys in his vintage hot rod cars. Another great author I used to read, who wrote a good deal about the ethics of cutting edge science and technology, was Michael Chricton. Most people know him as the guy who created Jurrasic Park (…which I’ve never read surprisingly!), but I knew him as the author of Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, Congo, NEXT, Sphere, Timeline, State of Fear, Prey… the list just goes on and on.

   The other possible topic I wanted to pursue for this blog was philosophy, but this just by itself seemed like a very daunting task to write about each week. So I figured why not combine my two ideas and write a blog about the philosophy of science fiction novels. And as corny as they are, SciFilosophy and Novel Philosophies were two possible blog titles that sprung into my mind. (I guess a third would be just a boring one, ie; The Philosophy of Science Fiction)

   Anyway… in regards to which novels I would write about, I had just re-read Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which inspired the making of the movie Bladerunner) before summer ended and it was a fantastic book. P.K.D. brings up ideas such as what it means to be human, the meaning of existence, and morality in a very fresh and unique perspective which completely captivated my interest as I read his book. I definitely want to discuss the ideas from this novel in my next blog post. In addition to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I think I’d like to look at Slaughterhouse 5, Cat’s Cradle, Ender’s Game, A Scanner Darkly, State of Fear, and Cell. I’m trying to come up with more, but if you can recommend another SciFi novel that I can add to this list please let me know! I’ve read all of these except for A Scanner Darkly so new books would be more than welcome. It’d be awesome to check out something new.