Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Well, first of all, this is a tautology, with "sufficiently" being the weasel word....
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I think you're slightly missing the point.
One way of viewing it is: As a speculative author, don't let your current conceptions of what is possible or impossible limit your work.
If your characters encounter a super-advanced life form, it's better not to explain how the alien tech works. Leave it unexplained and unexplored, and perhaps beyond examination altogether -- e.g. the Monolith in
2001, or "The Zone" in Tarkovsky's film
Stalker.
I don't think he's proposing that an ultra-advanced society would in fact toss animal entrails into a hot brazier to power an interstellar spacecraft.
As to the value of the 3rd law, I guess that's up to the writer. I for one dislike pseudo-science, and find it exceptionally irritating; others prefer, expect and/or demand, an explanation for an imagined technology; it can also provide for a handy MacGuffin. At any rate, plenty of sci-fi authors seem to ignore it, so I guess it isn't much of a law after all -- or, of course, if it
was established as a fully validated rule, some author would flaunt it and thus "innovate" the genre. It doesn't seem much more useful to me than any other genre borders or restrictions.
By the way, Clarke's 3rd law isn't really a tautology. "All bachelors are married" is a tautology, i.e. a statement that is true in all possible circumstances. It sounds more to me like Clarke is proposing a rule of thumb than a definition.