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The Only Game in Town Fallacy

April 18, 2018

What Is the Only Game in Town Fallacy

Suppose we’re in my living room, watching TV. We suddenly hear a peculiar noise, one we have never heard before. We are completely baffled about its origin. “It must be a unicorn flying over the house,” I say. “Get out of here!” you reply. “Well, do you have another explanation?” I retort. You shake your head, at loss for words. “Then I’m right, it’s a unicorn,” I say. Welcome to the only game in town fallacy.

The only game in town fallacy is essentially a placeholder. It is not a valid argument, because it is nothing more but an ad hoc explanation. In other words, it’s something you come up with to simply avoid saying “I don’t know”. The idea of divinity is essentially nothing more but the only game in town fallacy. “God did it” – another version is “Aliens did it”.

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Authors Talk: A Discussion with Davyne DeSye

April 13, 2018

Author Interview, Literature

author, Davyne DeSye, fiction, interview, literature, science fiction, writing

This article introduces a new series of blog entries, which I refer to as “Authors Talk”. You can think of it as an author interview and, indeed, that is the name of the blog category. However, I prefer to see it as a friendly chat between fellow authors. Today I’m having this virtual chat with Davyne DeSye, author of Carapace. If you’re a science fiction fan (and even if you aren’t), this novel is a must-read. Easily one of the best science fiction works I’ve read lately (you can read my review of Carapace here). A detailed list of useful links to Davyne DeSye’s work can be found at the end of this article.

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Knowledge in Frankenstein

April 11, 2018

Criticism

academia, creativity, criticism, Gothic, knowledge

Note: the following article on the element of knowledge in Frankenstein is a modified excerpt (pp. 168-169) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the Tampere University Press pages. For a list of my other academic publications, see the related page of my website.

Knowledge in Frankenstein: a Central Element

One of the central themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the element of knowledge. Particularly, the novel is preoccupied with the connection between knowledge and quality of life. There are direct, dire consequences for all the characters of Frankenstein who seek knowledge, and the creature is explicit in regard to that: “Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was” (Shelley 1999, 101).

Indeed, in Frankenstein knowledge is clearly seen as a burden. This is particularly true for the creature, who describes how his sorrow increased along with knowledge. He adds that he wished to “shake off all thought and feeling”. He also pessimistically adds that the only escape to overcome pain was death (Shelley 1999, 93). It is a noteworthy detail that Paradise Lost is one of the books the creature reads that lead to his increase of knowledge (Shelley 1999, 100) – a subtle hint at the complex metatextual dynamics involved in Frankenstein.

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