Scientists are also criticized for having little facility with the language, for disregarding the genius of the language, and for lacking imagination, taste, grace, and so on, for example:Most of the students who have signed up for your course will have done so because they are afraid of and dislike writing: they have no instinctive feeling for the power and beauty of words and no gift for putting them together tellingly. They like science because it is full of experimental action and definite, verifiable facts; writing, on the contrary, seems to be a less exciting activity requiring intuition, for which they have very small use, and taste, for which they have no use at all.[Woodward, 1980, p. 3]
(Antoinette M. Wilkinson: The Scientist's Handbook for Writing Papers and Dissertations)
The book goes on to point out that scientists, at the very least, do use intuition when formulating their hypotheses. And that the lack of linguistic creativity in scientific papers is mostly a product of the rethorical setting.
Are there any science fiction stories written in the form of a scientific paper? Stanislaw Lem was fond of summarizing imaginary research in his novels. And then there's "The Discovery of the Nullitron", an early collaboration between John Sladek and Thomas M. Disch. A very slight story, midly entertaining at best.
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Are there any science fiction stories written in the form of a scientific paper?
From ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=26
'Mr. Tatsuaki Ishiguro (1961 -), an M.D. at Tokyo University, writes marvelous science fiction about biotechnology. He usually writes his story as a medical paper or a scientific review: they include some figures (such as DNA sequence data), tables, and photos.'
I'm not aware of any of his works' having been translated, though.
Thanks for the link. I'm surprised to learn that the market for science fiction books in Japan is small. All the anime they export would make you think otherwise!
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