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LeMel's avatar

I've though about this a lot. What would a literary tradition that uses a common 'base state' as it's basis look like? Maybe something like Manuel DeLanda's "A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History"? Could it be argued that 'assumption-of-state' *is* the literature?

To me the best science fiction treads this line well - stories that don't spend half their text explaining things that the characters would likely take for granted.

I'm reminded of THX-1138, which George Lucas described as not a film about the future, but a "film *from* the future." It is meant for a fictional audience of that world, not us. The nature of characters' motivations, social organization, behavioral norms, economy and labor, law, even emotional experiences, are all gradually deciphered (or often, not) by the viewer.

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