FAUST%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP (09/02/83)
From: Gregory Faust <FAUST%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC>
I am surprised that with all this alternate universe talk, noone
has mentioned "CITY" by Clifford Simak. CITY is written as a series
of short story length myths which are chronologically related.
Alternate universes do not play that large a role in the myths; the
interesting part is the contention that man will only think about
things that are confirmable, can be reproduced, in short can be
studied by science. The existence of alternate universes is
accomplished by dogs (which are sentient in the myths) because they
spend lots of time thinking about less confirmable events, in
particular "things that go bump in the night" (manifestations of
visitors from the alternate universes). It is not that the dogs just
happen to discover the alternate universes first, but that man, by his
very thought patterns, is INCAPABLE of EVER discovering them! All in
all, CITY was immensely enjoyable, even if the presentation is a
little juvenile. I recommend it to all.
On the topic of fictional characters that have a life of there
own, the TZ episode shown here in Boston last night involved a writer
(Keenan Wynn) who can create live people by describing them into a
tape recorder. Those characters that he describes often become
increasingly independant of him, until eventually he can no longer
control them at all. Lucky for him he has a way out. By burning the
mag tape on which the description of the character is described, the
character disappears back into never-never land (or whereever). In an
interesting ending, Rod Serling comes on for the postscipt, claiming
that what we have just seen is the most ridiculous story ever
presented on TZ. At that point, Keenan Wynn say "Oh Yeah?", takes an
envelope out of his wall safe with "ROD SERLING" written on it which
contains a piece of tape, and throws it into the fire. Puff ....
Greg