Literal or metaphor?

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 11 Apr 2013, 20:23 · from 2013-April.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:23:15 -0700
Subject: (urth) Literal or metaphor?
Message-ID: <CAJ8=rtjznQ0m5GzkwrnBh1dtvm1+e8z=v7PM652-DDP022wf7g at mail.gmail.com>

Without wanting to take any position on the current discussion, a metapoint:

Samuel R. Delany (a writer of Wolfe's "generation" of SF writers) points
out in several places that one of the powerful "features" of science
fiction is to literalize metaphors.

For example, in a mundane novel "He turned on his left side" means someone
rolled over in bed; in an SF novel it may mean that someone threw a switch
to activate half their body. Or the muzzy metaphor "Her world exploded" may
mean that a planet belonging to some woman blowed up real good.

The point here is that saying that something is a metaphor doesn't mean
that it isn't also literally true -- or even _primarily_ literally true.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
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