Timeline for What does the end of "The Nine Billion Names of God" signify?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 11, 2020 at 0:04 | comment | added | Acccumulation | Why would the simulation simulate the stars going out? If the simulation quits, then there would be no one in the simulation to observe anything. | |
| Sep 17, 2015 at 14:13 | history | edited | JDługosz | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 42 characters in body
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| Sep 17, 2015 at 13:32 | comment | added | Jay | Umm, you certainly could write such a story, but none of that is in the story under discussion. | |
| Sep 17, 2015 at 12:46 | comment | added | JDługosz | I think this idea can be explored more on Worldbuilding SE and blog. | |
| Sep 17, 2015 at 12:44 | comment | added | JDługosz | The kind of story telling, not the nature of the fictional changes to the universe, is more definitive as to whether a story is Science Fiction or Fantasy. The story under discussion doesn't involve fictional-rules-world until the very end, and the characters are engineers not wizards, and the association with the author's normal material makes you think it must be science fiction when you start and really at any time up to the end. | |
| Sep 17, 2015 at 12:40 | comment | added | JDługosz | I was originally writing a tounge-in-cheek comment until I noticed the parallel with newer stories with this explicit plot. A different answer touches on the more general speculative fiction: fantasy is really science fiction if it follows its internal rules carefully? I've read a novel with Jabberwocks that started out seeming fantasy but turned out to be SF through "the world is a stage" trope. HP and Alice both move from the normal world to the different-rules world, so such ideas could be explored. But... | |
| Sep 17, 2015 at 10:23 | comment | added | user14111 | If that';s a "hard SF" explanation, then what's an example of a story that can not be interpreted as hard SF? Surely Harry Potter or Alice in Wonderland could just as well be interpreted as computer simulations? | |
| Sep 17, 2015 at 8:46 | history | answered | JDługosz | CC BY-SA 3.0 |