John Carlos BaezMar 14

RE: https://universeodon.com/@lovableweirdo/116222224444635795

I hadn't known about Margaret Cavendish writing SF in 1666, back when Newton was coming up with calculus. For more, check out the whole conversation here and also Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Cavendish,_Duchess_of_Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Show threadSylvia Wenmackers 🦉🍀
@johncarlosbaez My late philosopher-friend Helen De Cruz wrote a very cool paper called "Cosmic Horror and the Philosophical Origins of Science Fiction" https://helendecruz.net/docs/DeCruz_horror.pdf, in which Cavendish's Blazing-world is a key example (in addition to Fontenelle’s Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686)). They also illustrated the Blazing-world here: https://helendecruz.substack.com/p/illustrated-edition-of-margaret-cavendish
Mar 14 at 5:54pmWeb
Show threadJohn Carlos BaezMar 15

@SylviaFysica - cosmic horror? Interesting. That makes me think of some passages in Lovecraft and There is No Antimemetics Division, which portray the universe as a fundamentally evil place. But maybe she's talking about some other sort of horror.

"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."

Oh, that kind of horror.