Science fiction

this message is for you. maybe

Patrick Parrinder

pp. 3-6

in: Joseph Agassi, Science and culture, Berlin, Springer, 2003

Abstract

There is a mood often enough conjured in science-fiction literature to be familiar to fans, the mood of seemingly intentional yet probably random contact between individuals across immense space-time expanses. After along, complicated chase story, the chased person has long ago lost contact with the mother planet and drifted into a strange planet. And there, right now, just walking across the plaza, the drifter is casually glancing at a huge poster displaying a piece of commercial advertisement or some similar message of purely local import. On the margins of the poster runs a puzzling arabesque that quickens the drifter's pulse. It intrigues and fascinates — until it hits instantaneously in full force: the arabesque is a message in the drifter's long-neglected native language. It conveys instructions as to how to reestablish contact.