Why

[james_davis_nicoll]

Do SF authors make up new elements? The elements don't seem to be in Seaborg's island of stability, either.

Actually, what I really mean is why would the sort of person who can't be bothered to look at a table of elements or think about the general decline in half-lives as atomic mass increases past a certain point bother with SF? What's the attraction for them?

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that there are people who actually can have an "alien color" experience, such as colorblind synaesthetes. But it doesn't happen in the usual science-fictional way...

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it, blindsight (if it exists) might be another real example, and some brain injuries (to the corpus callosum, I think) can leave some perceptual effects which seem pretty alien when described.