Manananggal biology and dwende physics

Science fiction versus science fact.

Not all science fiction becomes science fact, but all science stems from the same wellspring of imagination as science fiction.

Thoughts on Love and God

A good love story is like the idea of God: it inspires and sustains us; whether it's real or not is beside the point.

Kurt Vonnegut talks about the Bombing of Manila (sort of)

Earlier today (which, ironically enough, is the 70th anniversary of the Fall of Bataan), I came across this video of the Slaughterhouse-Five author talking about Allied carpet-bombing operations, which he wryly described as being like "giants walking" overhead.

   

 He was talking about Dresden, but it could well have been Manila.

 Similar carpet-bombing tactics were used in the "Liberation" of the Philippine capital in 1945, with disastrous consequences on the city's civilian population --to say nothing of the centuries-old architecture and historical heritage of the city.

 In fact, according to Time magazine, Dresden and Manila were the two most bombed-out cities in World War II --far more so than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 Vonnegut's remembrances of Dresden echo quite closely those of Filipinos who survived the Japanese Occupation: the rumbling of the giants' passing would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Why Pinoy Sci Fi?

There's a very real need for Pinoy Science Fiction, to tell us where we're headed and to dream where we might go. Science Fiction was born out of the need to understand the effects of new technologies and new scientific discoveries on society. It's no coincidence that the earliest writers in the genre --Shelley, Verne, Wells, and others-- wrote during periods of great scientific advancement and rapid social change. The Philippines, as a third-world country, is somewhat at a disadvantage because it does not have a major say in the development of new technologies; we are simply left to receive them and make sense of them howsoever we may. We may not own the means of production, but we should at least be able to imagine what's possible. And then, just maybe, we can reach for the impossible.