This morning I looked at images of Pluto sent back by the New Horizons NASA spacecraft. This afternoon, as I was narrating my novel Black Hole Butterfly, I read the line:
"The men of Gasland did not know time was not - and in fact never had been - linear. It was concentric, like the rings of a tree, organically evolving around its once seeded core."
I could also have written it is like a planetary system, circling around the center of its origin.
The question I have for you today: what is time to you?
NPR just measured the time it took for New Horizons to make it to Pluto, using as its stick the complete Harry Potter audio books, which one would have to listen to over and over and over again to span a decade. No thanks!
Well, without our lives being that repetitious, that is what we do. We impose a seven day week on ourselves and pretend that the cycle is a straight line marked by our own aging.
The great thing about science fiction as opposed to science fact is that I can use the language fueled by imagination to alter my perception of time. Think about it. We aren't going anywhere. Ever. The best we can do is go in circles. Time is not, and in fact, never has been linear. It's concentric.
Put that in your Pluto, and crank it.
No comments:
Post a Comment