This blog is about WONDER, the fiction that explores it, and the speculation that derives from it.
Some embrace WONDER out of curiosity and an appreciation that we don’t know what we don’t know. Others believe that all things are knowable and most certainly controllable—to think otherwise would frighten them. So they name and catalog everything fixing its place on the shelf with the intent of diminishing its WONDER.
Is there intelligent life in the universe? From Drake’s equation we know there are an unknown number of unknowns that interact in unknown ways. Douglas Adams makes gentle fun of this in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — humans don’t even recognize that they are the third most intelligent life form on Earth—mice and dolphins being our superiors.
We don’t understand dark energy or matter, quantum entanglement, big bang(s), time, gravity, how any of this will end, the Cambrian explosion, ghosts, djinn, poltergeists, angels, demons, dreams, meditation, or many other things we think we understand but don’t.
Speculative fiction—science fiction, fantasy and horror—softens our resistance to WONDER and enables us to become more curious and creative, perhaps more wise. That is what I plan to embrace in this blog.
Strange Things Done 