“Asur, I take your point, but I think sometimes trying to work out what, say, Wittgenstein thought, opens up new interpretations.

I agree that this is true. It would be worthwhile if both 1) it resulted in a new interpretation that was valuable beyond simply being a new interpretation, and 2) the philosophical insight produced by this new interpretation was novel.

I don’t think (1) and (2) obtain very often, so I see effort in understanding the biography of an author as–most likely–’time lost’ as far as doing philosophy goes.

“The room itself was lined throughout with the delicate green jade-enamel prescribed by the Board of Health, and was suffused with the artificial sunlight discovered by the great Reuter forty years before; it had the colour tone of a spring wood, and was warmed and ventilated through the classic frieze grating to the exact temperature of 18 degrees Centigrade. Mr. Templeton was a plain man, content to live as his fathers had lived before him.”

You can find it on Gutenberg Project in various formats. Obviously a book that ends with the Second Coming doesn’t have a great outcome for socialists and other malefactors.

How could S.F. be anything but bleak when ordinary science tells us that climate change is an inevitablity if we don’t change our ways. Does that seem likely when a drop in growth is always presented as bad news?

And the overriding feeling that after all, Conan the Barbarian is not set in the past, but in the future, so post apocalyptic that he doesn’t even remember what happened a thousand years before.

In short we lack any coherent vision of a better future. And certainly not one created by science and technology.

Thanks for the catch. Doing a quick check I see it should have been “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” as well.