{"id":1093,"date":"2008-11-17T00:41:40","date_gmt":"2008-11-17T04:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2008-11-17T00:41:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-17T04:41:40","slug":"karamazov-and-the-squinch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=1093","title":{"rendered":"Karamazov and the Squinch"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the \u201cthrowaway book\u201d I read on my recent business trip, for entertainment value I selected Walter Jon Williams Implied Spaces<\/a><\/em>. This book is a relatively straightforward science fiction far future book in the modern vein. The name of the book, \u201cimplied spaces\u201d is in away all about squinches<\/a>. The residents of this far future world live in and construct for their entertainment pocket universes designed to order. However, in designing your perfect fjords and vistas \u2026 between them what appears is not to design \u2026 and those pockets end up being, like squinches or being \u201cspaces who\u2019s construction is implied\u201d and not designed by intent. At the beginning, we find our somewhat implausible hero entertaining himself by personally exploring \u201cimplied spaces\u201d finding mostly deserts and spiders.\u00a0 (Note: spoilers ahead), but I\u2019d like to comment on some of implied spaces in Mr Williams story arc itself. <\/p>\n

One of the plot twists we find toward the end of the book, is that the villain discovers empirically that the universe of our origin is itself designed. It is a space which has been designed by some exterior and unknown entity. It is \u2026 made to design. But \u2026 this outrages our villain for our universe \u2026 unlike the universes which are constructed by design by his civilization seems sloppy. Our villain\u2019s rage and his driving force (creating the problem for our protagonists) \u2026 is in a sense the theodicy problem \u2026 or the Karamazov question returning in modern guise, except God is replaced by the unknown designers, but whom the villain is intent on recasting and reshaping humanity to the quest of confronting in person that errant creator. Why? Because in our universe he is finds it an extreme affront that man and the pain of humanity, for him a thing looming so large in the Universe \u2026 might be a squinch \u2026 just an implied space for the creator.<\/p>\n

Ultimately Mr Williams provides no good insights I think for confronting theodicy \u2026 but for the deist (not the Christian) is the \u201crage against the incompetence of of the designer\u201d truly a problem of that sort? I have not always been a Christian. That man might be an Creator\u2019s squinch? Is that really a problem for the non-believer?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the \u201cthrowaway book\u201d I read on my recent business trip, for entertainment value I selected Walter Jon Williams Implied Spaces. This book is a relatively straightforward science fiction far future book in the modern vein. The name of the book, \u201cimplied spaces\u201d is in away all about squinches. The residents of this far future […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-books","category-marko"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}