"Captain Jack" <Cap### [at] comcastnet> wrote:room there.
>
> Also, I'm not sure "Devil In The Dark" is the best example of the point...
> the only important technology to the plot were A) what the miners were
> digging for, and B) the silicon cement used to bandage the Horta. If the
> creature were found in a Welsh coal mine in 1872 and one of the government
> folks sent in to investigate were a telepath, you could tell the same story.
> I think if you gave a logical enough explanation for how a silicon based
> life form could exist (and in Wales, no less) and let the telepathy go as an
> unexplained-but-taken-for-granted miracle (as it is in Star Trek) it would
> be still be science fiction. No gadgets, but still scientific.



Or you'd have the same theme if they went on a sailing ship to a faraway island,
found strange beastly apparitions that later turned out to be sentient men, and
then the ship's doctor's tobacco miraculously cured the chieftain of some
disease.

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