Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

M urray Bail, Peter Carey, David Foster, David

Ireland, Victor Kelleher and others besides.)

W hat’s more, much of the important genre sf has been seen outside Australia. Turner is published by Faber in the U K , I by Pocket Books and Avon in the USA, David Lake by DAW, W ilder by

Atheneum, H arding by H arper & Row, all of us, as well, in multi-

tongued translation . . . Often our books have been funded generously in their creation by the Literature Board (funding which has paid off amply in the world-class work produced under its

patronage).

In 1985, with this book and AussieCon II — the second international sf Convention to be held in Australia — talents old and new are tearing up out of the ground even as we watch.

Newcomers like Greg Egan, Yvonne Rousseau, Tim Dell,

Norman Talbot and Tony Peacey craft lovely, various tales quite as

if they had been doing so for decades. Turner extends his range

with each story. M urnane meditates on the very nature of books,

and the brain, and the memories held (to ransom?) by both. Lucy

Sussex and Carmel Bird prove once more how badly sf maimed itself by excluding women writers in their own voice from the centre

Introduction

9

of its canon, Foster, Blackford, W ilder and Playford are distinctive,

telling, fierce. We have a rich harvest.

But before we turn to the stories themselves, let us pause to

meditate on the Strange Attractor, on Chaos, and Order, and the

Void . . .

W hat we fear and desire is Chaos, wild craziness, anarchy and joy.

When guns flash and thump from broken apartments, our flesh

thrills, it creeps. That is why advertisers sponsor news programs

full of blood. That is why men and women kill instead of sharing

their poor short lives. For a little while, in the midst of it, brandishing bone-smashing weapons, the joy is all. Finally it is wearying and ruinous. Only psychopaths love endless cruelty and uncertainty, and are sullen at turbulence’s end.

W hat we crave and distrust is Order, sweet harmony, progression and smooth flow, predictability, dullness. The tanks rolling along the main street bring this sweetness and put Chaos in a

barred cell. Men without stubble apply electricity to soft places. O f

course, schoolchildren sing happily, playing ball games with their

friends.

W hat we cannot abide, what we dread and will not face, what

despite our terror we sense under turbulence and flow, is the Void.

Fifteen thousand million years ago, the Void erupted. It spat out

the universe. All was Chaos, all was Ordered. Bright pinpoint

traces of that violence roar in the sky, moving on paths ordained

across gulfs of time we cannot begin to comprehend.

Is there a link to be found here? Can Chaos and O rder both be

birthed from the Void? Might num ber and geometry yield up the

shapes of anarchy? Might Nothingness expel Being from its empty

centre?

This is sacred, terrible, hilarious ground we tread, ground suitable for mathematicians and jesters; for — surely — science fiction writers.

The mathematicians brooded on the face of the waters and what

they saw there finally was the ghostly imprint of the Strange

Attractor. W hat is it? Why, a phenomenon where a given point can

be made to jum p about in mathematical ‘phase space’ in a perfectly

random fashion . . . under the direction of a simple, determining

rule.

Think about it. It’s very strange; almost as strange as it would be

10

Introduction

if 2 + 2 equalled a different num ber each time you worked it out.

Douglas Hofstadter speaks of this wondrous numerical entity

creating a ‘delicate filigree’ as its equation graphs it out. David

Ruelle wrote that ‘these systems of curves, these clouds of points,

sometimes evoke galaxies or fireworks, other times quite weird and

disturbing blossomings’. Pythagoras in his dreams of a crystalline

order to the universe never saw such loveliness as the dance of the

lacy Strange Attractor, the principle of Chaos bringing forth

Order.

I find myself strangely attracted to this image as a figure for the

creation of science fiction.

Here we have grown men and women