Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Category Archives: The Book
The Understanding of Human Nature, and Its Relationship to Science Fiction
Here’s a draft of another essay trying to summarize my take on science fiction and my provisional conclusions on the topics I’ve been reading about over the past couple decades.
Posted in Personal history, Psychology, science fiction, The Book
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The Broadest Possible Terms
Let’s return to yesterday’s item from OnlySky, which strikes me as a way to expand one of my key themes. In fact, perhaps we can build one of my hierarchies to begin with the most basic conception of what science … Continue reading
Posted in Narrative, science fiction, The Book
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Notes for the Book: Magical Thinking, Cognitive Dissonance, Group-Thinking
Extending thoughts from previous posts about the future of enlightenment and similar matters. About group-thinking and how people get along in their lives just fine without understanding how the world actually works (as well-established by physics, chemistry, biology including evolution, … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Psychology, Religion, The Book
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Notes for the Book: Deutsch on Reality
I’m still, intermittently, reading my way through David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality, and today came across these passages, that echo and underscore my thoughts in Notes for the Book: Hierarchy of Knowledge and Human Affairs. I said in that … Continue reading
Notes for the Book: The Future of Enlightenment
More thoughts coming together. A famous quote is this from SF author William Gibson: “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” (There are variants of this phrase around the web also.) Then there was a video … Continue reading
Notes for the Book: Timelines
I love timelines, especially those scaled depictions of the progress of time from left (the past) to right (the present and the future). Back in the 8th grade, I think it was, I constructed such a timeline on a scroll … Continue reading
Notes for the Book? Certainly Excerpt from the Memoirs. Hierarchy of Process Management: CMMI
I’m frequently fascinated by trying to recreate my train of thought — or perhaps I should say, I occasionally realize how my train of thought came about and am fascinated by the realization. For five or six weeks now I’ve … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history, The Book
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Notes for the Book: Hierarchy of Morality
This one isn’t mine; this is Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, which I first became aware of in Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), page 624, and later recalled when I reread E.O. Wilson’s foundational On … Continue reading
Posted in Morality, Social Progress, The Book
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Notes for the Book: Hierarchy of Attitudes about Gender and Sex
I’m rethinking a lot of matters, about epistemology, about culture and politics, as ranges of attitudes, from the intuitive and simplistic, to the informed and complex. Are some of these spectra, rather than hierarchies? A hierarchy implies that the top … Continue reading
Notes for the Book: Hierarchy of Science Fiction
(updated 8jul20, with additional para’s at the end) What is science fiction? Many things, and what interests me about science fiction is not reflected in all its forms, any more than any particular music fan, interesting in dance, say, or … Continue reading
Posted in science fiction, The Book
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