Themes in "Oh! You Pretty Things"

The resonance of “Oh! You Pretty Things” comes from how it uses these Nietzschean SF trappings as a metaphor for how a generation regards its successor with longing, fear and resentment (never more so than with the so-called Greatest Generation and their children the Boomers), or, even closer to home, how a parent can regard his or her children. Once you become a parent, you lose precedence in your own life—your own needs and desires are shunted aside, and you spend years as servant and...

 The Concept of the Chemical Bond

[The chemical bond] First, it is related to the disposition of two electrons (remember, no one has ever seen an electron!): next, these electrons have their spins pointing in opposite directions (remember, no one can ever measure the spin of a particular electron!): then, the spatial distribution of these electrons is described analytically with some degree of precision (remember, there is no way of distinguishing experimentally the density distribution of one electron from another!): concept...

 Chaos, Order and Snowflakes

In one of his most popular essays, "The Colloid and the Crystal," the nature writer Joseph Wood Krutch wrote about these opposing forces in nature. "Order and obedience are the primary characteristics of that which is not alive," he wrote. "Life is rebellious and anarchical." He was wrong to identify obedience and rebellion with nonlife and life. respectively. We now know that the inanimate snowflake crystal, so apparently lawful and static, grows its six-pointed form under the controlling in...