Abstract
This paper analyses the concept of thrownness and the related notions of immediacy and actuality in a 1961 short science fiction story “Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night” by Algis Budrys. It first defines the concept of thrownness (Geworfenheit), created and coined by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his classic book Being and Time, and it explains how this notion can be employed in literary analysis in general and applied to this work in particular. The article then analyses how certain stylistic devices in the short story, namely similes, change of pace and the presentation of an inner conflict in the main character, contribute to the feeling of authenticity. In other words, it attempts to exhibit the means used in a prose work to make it seem more realistic and immediate. Finally, the work also argues that science fiction is in many ways more real than other fictional works. Although it belongs to the genre that has traditionally been denied serious literary merit, the novel view and interpretation of this story aims to disclose new horizons of artistic expression that illuminate human mental and physical frailty and stimulate a valuable inquiry into the meaning of life.
Highlights
Algirdas Jonas Budrys (1931–2008), better known by his pen name Algis Budrys, was a highly influential, award-winning Lithuanian-American science fiction writer, critic and editor
Budrys published about 100 short stories and eight novels. He was recognised as one of the best teachers of fiction writing in the United States
The concept of “thrownness” is well known by theorists specializing in metaphysics and epistemology
Summary
Algirdas Jonas Budrys (1931–2008), better known by his pen name Algis Budrys, was a highly influential, award-winning Lithuanian-American science fiction writer, critic and editor. The main themes in his stories and novels are isolation, exile, identity, nature of reality, artificial intelligence and mastery over technology and other humans His stories have been anthologised in many collections, and his name figures prominently on every list of the most significant science fiction writers of the 20th century. The concept of “thrownness” is well known by theorists specializing in metaphysics and epistemology It has even been used in hermeneutics, especially to explain the role of social constructs in language use, but it has never been linked to immediacy and actuality to analyze a work of fiction. The novelty of this paper consists in modifying a philosophical idea to make it suitable for explaining the use of language in a literary work, in analysing Budrys’ stylistics and in applying a multidimensional notion and its conceptual interpretation to evaluate a work of science fiction
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