Michael Johnson takes on science fiction

Olaf Stapledon 

Michael Johnson has pulled out his notebook, looked at the jottings there, and written "17 Disparate Riffs on Science Fiction." Quite a few Robert Anton Wilson references. 

A couple of riffs that I particularly liked included No. 11, which remarked that "that we inhabit a science fiction world, right where you are sitting now. If you don't often frame it this way for yourself - especially if you've never looked at your current "reality" this way - I urge you to do an experiment and "see" your world this way for seven days."

I sometimes feel this way, too, and I can't get over the fact that my smart phone lets me carry a little computer with me everywhere I go. I'm amazed by some of the apps, such as being able to use Shazam app when I don't recognize a tune. I can't imagine that there are many tunes that Michael doesn't know.

I also liked the reminder in No. 16 that RAW described Olaf Stapledon as "my favorite science fiction writer." It seems like I've heard about Stapledon all my life, without ever having gotten around to reading him! I'll get to it. I looked up the Stapledon entry in Wikipedia and learned that he wrote a novel called Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord.