Another kind of translation is a one-to-one conversion of some episode of human history to science fiction. Isaac Asimov did that in his Foundation series, which was based on the division of the Roman Empire into eastern and western halves. Randall Garrett, in his 1959 story "Despoilers of the Golden Empire," offered a tongue-in-cheek specimen that begins with the resonant Asimovian lines, "In the seven centuries since the Second Empire had been founded on the shattered remnants of the First..." and tells a tale of the conquest of a powerful alien empire by a handful of Earthmen, only to reveal in the final sentence that he has simply been retelling Pizarro's conquest of Peru. But also I cited a few stories, like Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson's Hoka series and my own "The Secret Sharer," that seem to be translations but in fact actually play by the rules of science fiction.Has anyone ever invented a truly original science fiction concept, though, one that—underneath all the flamboyant special effects—isn't just some sort of translation from our mundane reality?
What do You think about Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013?
