New Kay Book
David T. Bilek
Light of the Sun_. No other information.
The name is intriguing and doesn't immediately lend itself to any
historical period, unlike Kay's last few efforts. An early 18th
century France analogue maybe? Or perhaps a fall-of-the-Roman Empire
kind of thing? Yes, I know I'm doing a horrible disservice by
reducing Kay's works to thumbnail summaries...
-David
John S. Novak, III
The fall of Byzantium (which puts us uncomfortably back in the
Sarantine/al-Rassan world, which I don't really favor.)
Ancient Egypt, around Akhnetan's time.
Historic Japan.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Mornir
wrote:
>I'm thinking it leads to all too many possible historical periods:
>The fall of Byzantium (which puts us uncomfortably back in the
>Sarantine/al-Rassan world, which I don't really favor.)
There were a few people saying that Kay mentioned his next
book was in the Sarantium/Al-Rassan world. If so, this is _probably_
dealing with the fall of Jad. If so, it can be quite a few eras in
history that could be said to be the 'fall' of Christianity.
--
<Mornir - mor...@despammed.com - http://www.livejournal.com/~booklog/>
Kate Nepveu
>On 2 Aug 2003 20:01:43 GMT, j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III)
>wrote:
[_The Last Light of the Sun_]
>>I'm thinking it leads to all too many possible historical periods:
>>The fall of Byzantium (which puts us uncomfortably back in the
>>Sarantine/al-Rassan world, which I don't really favor.)
> There were a few people saying that Kay mentioned his next
>book was in the Sarantium/Al-Rassan world. If so, this is _probably_
>dealing with the fall of Jad. If so, it can be quite a few eras in
>history that could be said to be the 'fall' of Christianity.
My other guess would be something northern. I'd seen it mentioned as a
Spring 2004 release, but now I can't find the reference.
--
Kate Nepveu
E-mail: kne...@steelypips.org
Home: http://www.steelypips.org/
Book log: http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/
Jim
that it's coming is good news to me! <g>
Jim
Elio M. García Jr.
> My other guess would be something northern. I'd seen it mentioned as a
> Spring 2004 release, but now I can't find the reference.
http://www.brightweavings.com/news/index.htm
--
[Upon a Dzurlord learning of the murder of a critic by a painter]
"And it was well done, too. I'd have done the same, only-"
"Yes?"
"I don't paint." (Steven Brust, _The Phoenix Guards_)
Elio M. García, Jr. (el...@tele2.se) -- www.westeros.org
Griffith
jme...@aol.com says...
> I couldn't care less what world it's set in. Just the announcement
> that it's coming is good news to me! <g>
I'd go along with that. His books are just getting better and better.
Al
Terry Lago
Griffith wrote:
Has he managed to get over writing pseudo-historical fantasies with
protagonists who act like they're from the late 20th century?
T.
Andrew Plotkin
>
>
> Griffith wrote:
>
> > In article <881f114d.03080...@posting.google.com>,
> > jme...@aol.com says...
> > > I couldn't care less what world it's set in. Just the announcement
> > > that it's coming is good news to me! <g>
> >
> > I'd go along with that. His books are just getting better and better.
>
> protagonists who act like they're from the late 20th century?
Well, honestly, yes.
I can see describing _Tigana_ that way -- although I think it would be
an exaggerated criticism -- but the recent Sarantium two-ology gets
away from that. It uses its alternate-historical setting in an
interesting and aware way, and the mindsets seem right for their era.
To me, anyway.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Terry Lago
Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> Here, Terry Lago <terry...@utoronto.ca> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Griffith wrote:
> >
> > > In article <881f114d.03080...@posting.google.com>,
> > > jme...@aol.com says...
> > > > I couldn't care less what world it's set in. Just the announcement
> > > > that it's coming is good news to me! <g>
> > >
> > > I'd go along with that. His books are just getting better and better.
> >
> > Has he managed to get over writing pseudo-historical fantasies with
> > protagonists who act like they're from the late 20th century?
>
> Well, honestly, yes.
>
> I can see describing _Tigana_ that way -- although I think it would be
> an exaggerated criticism -- but the recent Sarantium two-ology gets
> away from that. It uses its alternate-historical setting in an
> interesting and aware way, and the mindsets seem right for their era.
> To me, anyway.
>
> --Z
>
>
I'm glad to hear that. I've had book I of the Sarantine Mosaic sitting around for
awhile, so I may dive into it. It was actually _The Lions of Al-Rassan_ that put me
off Kay. I used to gobble up everything he wrote, but I couldn't get through the
first few chapters of _Lions_. It just seems to me that Kay generally has a bone to
pick in many of his stories and he often makes his characters embody what he
considers to be the best of the modern philosophies that are on th eopposite side
of this contention and sets them up as 'forward-thinking' and ahead of their time
individualists. I just generally get the feeling that his characters think and act
a heck of a lot more like post-moderns than members of whatever era they are based
on.
T.
William December Starr
j...@cegt201.bradley.edu said:
>> So the title of Guy Kay's next book has been announced: _The Last
>> Light of the Sun_. No other information.
> I'm thinking it leads to all too many possible historical periods:
>
> The fall of Byzantium (which puts us uncomfortably back in the
> Sarantine/al-Rassan world, which I don't really favor.)
>
> Ancient Egypt, around Akhnetan's time.
>
> Historic Japan.
Or maybe he's decided to change his modus operandi entirely and write
a hard sf epic set N billion years in the future, where N is however
long it takes for the Sun to finally go out.
Or maybe not. :-)
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
John S. Novak, III
>> Ancient Egypt, around Akhnetan's time.
>> Historic Japan.
> Or maybe he's decided to change his modus operandi entirely and write
> a hard sf epic set N billion years in the future, where N is however
> long it takes for the Sun to finally go out.
> Or maybe not. :-)
Collaboration between Kay and Vinge.
Well, allrighty, then.
Captain Button
>
>>> Ancient Egypt, around Akhnetan's time.
>>> Historic Japan.
>
>> Or maybe he's decided to change his modus operandi entirely and write
>> a hard sf epic set N billion years in the future, where N is however
>> long it takes for the Sun to finally go out.
>
>> Or maybe not. :-)
>
>Collaboration between Kay and Vinge.
>Well, allrighty, then.
Vinge, or Stephen Baxter?
(Reading _ Manifold: Space _ right now)
--
American Express says I'm deceased. Boo! Consider yourself haunted.
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Andrea Leistra
I'd buy it.
I do hope that this isn't a return to the Sarantine world.
--
Andrea Leistra
Griffith
alei...@ptah.u.arizona.edu says...
> I do hope that this isn't a return to the Sarantine world.
I loved the Sarantine world. What did you dislike about it?
Al
Andrea Leistra
Nothing. I just want to see Kay do something different, and preferably
farther afield from Southern Europe, for his next work. Three books in
the setting is enough, I think; I don't want it to get stale.
--
Andrea Leistra
Ethan Merritt
For what it's worth (idle speculation, mostly) Kay seemed rather
taken with early Russian history when he spoke in Seattle a while back
about the Sarantine Tapestry. As I recall, the text of _StS_ mentions
in passing that some of the historical detail of Sarantine society was
preserved in accounts by a [whatever the Russian-equivalent was]
ambassador. That apparently was a reference to real world Russian
historical records Kay drew upon in writing the books.
--
Ethan A Merritt
John S. Novak, III
>>> I do hope that this isn't a return to the Sarantine world.
>>I loved the Sarantine world. What did you dislike about it?
> Nothing. I just want to see Kay do something different, and preferably
> farther afield from Southern Europe, for his next work. Three books in
> the setting is enough, I think; I don't want it to get stale.
There's that, and there's the opinion (in this case, mine) that the
Sarantine/al-Rassan world is too close to our own to be as interesting
as, say, Tigana.
Thomas Lindgren
j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) writes:
> There's that, and there's the opinion (in this case, mine) that the
> Sarantine/al-Rassan world is too close to our own to be as interesting
> as, say, Tigana.
Yeah. I found LIONS by turns boring and irritating, and the Sarantine
books a bit ... mundane. When the 2nd book ended, I thought, "Whew, finally
things are getting rolling. Wait, it's over?"
Kay still is some way off the Greg Bear Precipice -- those books were
still good enough for me to finish -- but I'd prefer it if he made his
way back up the slopes, so to speak. There's something missing from
his more recent stuff that was there in spades for TIGANA and (yes)
those FIONAVAR books.
Best,
Thomas
--
Thomas Lindgren
"It's becoming popular? It must be in decline." -- Isaiah Berlin
David T. Bilek
<***********@*****.***> wrote:
>j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) writes:
>
>> There's that, and there's the opinion (in this case, mine) that the
>> Sarantine/al-Rassan world is too close to our own to be as interesting
>> as, say, Tigana.
>
>Yeah. I found LIONS by turns boring and irritating, and the Sarantine
>books a bit ... mundane. When the 2nd book ended, I thought, "Whew, finally
>things are getting rolling. Wait, it's over?"
>
>Kay still is some way off the Greg Bear Precipice -- those books were
>still good enough for me to finish -- but I'd prefer it if he made his
>way back up the slopes, so to speak. There's something missing from
>his more recent stuff that was there in spades for TIGANA and (yes)
>those FIONAVAR books.
>
The newer books are more mature and subtle. What's "missing" is Kay
slopping emotion onto the pages with a bucket. I think the change is
a vast improvement.
I mean... sure, Paul on the Tree and Diarmuid's fate are moving. But
you can see Kay pulling the strings from a mile away. It's sheer
manipulation.
-David
Thomas Lindgren
Well, I suppose my gripe with the later books in that case is that the
string pulling has not disappeared, but become a bit perfunctory.
Those various religious scenes with bulls and hawks and whatnot in the
Sarantine books just don't come alive; nor does, in the end, the rest
of the work. Likewise, I had a hard time with the ending of LIONS OF
AL-RASSAN. In contrast, TIGANA or the Fionavar books somehow
worked. (When I summarize Fionavar to myself, it sounds like utterly
trite kitchen-sink fantasy and I can't quite understand why I like
them, but there you are.)
It might be that Kay hasn't quite decided whether to keep slopping on
those emotions (which, it should be said, makes for good if possibly
unsophisticated fantasy) or to move on. If it's the latter, I think he
should cut the moorings and sail off for somewhere more exotic than
what we have seen so far. Write something less GGK. Or, just to be
contrary, write GGK turned up to eleven but in a different key.
jere7my tho?rpe
David T. Bilek <dtb...@comcast.net> wrote:
> The newer books are more mature and subtle. What's "missing" is Kay
> slopping emotion onto the pages with a bucket. I think the change is
> a vast improvement.
>
> I mean... sure, Paul on the Tree and Diarmuid's fate are moving. But
> you can see Kay pulling the strings from a mile away. It's sheer
> manipulation.
Well said. I couldn't finish the Fionavar Tapestry due to
triteness; the Sarantine Mosaic is one of the best things I've read. If
he continues getting "worse" at this rate, he'll be the best writer on
the planet before too long.
----j7y
--
**************************************************************************
jere7my tho?rpe / 734-769-0913 "There is no spoon." "SPOON!" "There
>>> j...@liws.org <<< is no spoon." "SPOON!" "There is no
invert liws to reply via email spoon." "SPOON!" -- The Tick vs. Neo
Kate Nepveu
>So the title of Guy Kay's next book has been announced: _The Last
>Light of the Sun_. No other information.
According to a LiveJournal post by someone who gets the site
newsletter (I don't),
"The novel will be published around March/April of next year. Other
details we know are that it is a single-volume work, and that it takes
place in the same world as that of The Lions of Al-Rassan and The
Sarantine Mosaic."
Early speculation is leaning heavily towards 1453 and the fall of
Constantinople, but I'll read it no matter what it's about.
Robert A. Woodward
Kate Nepveu <kne...@steelypips.org> wrote:
> David T. Bilek <dtb...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >So the title of Guy Kay's next book has been announced: _The Last
> >Light of the Sun_. No other information.
>
> According to a LiveJournal post by someone who gets the site
> newsletter (I don't),
>
> "The novel will be published around March/April of next year. Other
> details we know are that it is a single-volume work, and that it takes
> place in the same world as that of The Lions of Al-Rassan and The
> Sarantine Mosaic."
>
> Early speculation is leaning heavily towards 1453 and the fall of
> Constantinople, but I'll read it no matter what it's about.
Perhaps it is across the Ocean and is set in an alt-Aztec empire.
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw
Joe Bernstein
> I'm glad to hear that. I've had book I of the Sarantine Mosaic sitting
> around for awhile, so I may dive into it. It was actually _The Lions of
> Al-Rassan_ that put me off Kay. I used to gobble up everything he wrote,
> but I couldn't get through the first few chapters of _Lions_. It just
> seems to me that Kay generally has a bone to pick in many of his
> stories and he often makes his characters embody what he considers to
> be the best of the modern philosophies that are on the opposite side
> of this contention and sets them up as 'forward-thinking' and ahead of
> their time individualists. I just generally get the feeling that his
> characters think and act a heck of a lot more like post-moderns than
> members of whatever era they are based on.
There's probably an element of personal taste involved; standards for
how strange people in the past are vary a *great* deal among readers
of historical fiction. But there's something else involved too.
At least Kay's last four books have all been specifically concerned
with periods when something usually seen by relatively recent historians
as a Golden Age was lost. In each case, while the books turn out very
differently for Our Heroes from book to book, it's fairly easy to argue
that the *historical* outcome is in some measure improved.
In other words, Kay has been ringing changes on what exactly a glorious
culture *is*, and how it can be saved.
Well, given this, it's not terribly surprising that many of the
characters he deals with look a lot like us. He's writing about
people we praise today, or anyway praised a generation or so ago
when he was in school, and who are we more likely to praise than
people we have a lot in common with?
In <The Lions of Al-Rassan>, we have maybe four *main* viewpoint
characters, along with several others. I think it can fairly be
said that their religions are not especially well developed; since
the book revolves around differences understood as religious ones,
this is unfortunate, but I don't think it's a matter of Kay being
incompetent. On the one hand, I think he *wanted* to reduce the extent
to which we think about (in this case) the Reconquista as a specifically
religious story. On the other, I think he wanted to emphasis the range
of possibilities in human beings. There *were* a lot of rather secular
people in the Muslim world back then, probably more than there are now
(there were specific anti-secular trends that set in among the Muslim
literati in around 1100 in Iraq, and didn't hit Spain until later).
It *was* possible for people in the Christian world to be pretty secular
too; the character the main Jaddite hero whose name I'm blanking is
based on was in fact someone who switched sides a *lot*. I'm less
clear on Jewish history, but anyway, I think part of Kay's point in
that book is that warfare on religious grounds tends to make it less
possible for people to be as secular as they could otherwise be; that
if you define your struggles in religious terms you reduce the world
to a world of religious identification alone.
That said, yes, the major characters in <Lions> look fairly modern.
It helps that he insists on the doctor's concern with astrological
omens, but I'm not sure it's enough.
In the Sarantine books, this is less the case. I think his research
for these was deepened somewhat by his access to the nets. (We were
on a couple of the same mailing lists, in fact, and I pointed him to
some sources on Persia, though I don't know if he actually used those.)
At any rate, there are specifics that are definitely more coherent.
Where Jehane and her father in <Lions> are Very Good Doctors trained
at working schools and so forth, we hear a fair amount about the actual
*mechanics* of learning in Sarantine society - how mosaicists, chariot
drivers, cooks, *and* doctors learn their trades. This may not make
the characters less modern-seeming - though it's worth noting that few
of these characters in fact *go* to school - but it does wonders for
seeing them as part of their setting, not as people who stand out so
much from it. We hear a *GREAT* deal more about religion, though in
this case not Kindath or Asharite religion; there are, however, some
seriously handled struggles between Jaddite faith and paganism going
on in major characters.
Ultimately, I don't think Kay is going to start writing books with
*really* *WEIRD* past characters in them. I'd be willing to bet he
doesn't think past people *are* so radically different from people
today, at least not as far past as he's been writing to date. (All
of his books postdate the rise of Christianity, after all.) So if
this is a matter of taste, then maybe you'll never end up liking Kay.
But I do think he's getting better at showing ways in which people
in his pasts were different; and I think you *might* find it different
if you can get your head around the fact that he's focusing on parts
of the past in which the similarities with the present are relatively
strong, and on aspects of the past that emphasise those similarities
[1], because of the particular theme (preservation or loss of cultural
glories) with which he's been working.
Joe Bernstein
[1] Given both Kay's portrayal of Justinian I in the Sarantine books,
and Gillian Bradshaw's in <The Bearkeeper's Daughter>, I was
thoroughly taken aback to find classical scholars laying much
of the blame for the dark ages of Byzantine history at his feet.
Apparently someone did a study a few decades ago of dated
manuscripts, and found *none* surviving from between AD 512 and 800;
Justinian reigned from something like 527-565, so this is not a
compliment to him. At least one of these novels mention his closing
the pagan schools, but neither focuses on the fact that he didn't
set up any Christian replacements. It can fairly be said, then,
that the possible preservation of culture the Sarantine books
point to is based on an incomplete evaluation of what happened,
and who was responsible. My main reference is Paul Lemerle, <Le
premier humanisme byzantine>, which has been translated as
<Byzantine Humanism> though I haven't seen that version.
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://these-survive.postilion.org/> At this address,
personal e-mail is welcome, though unsolicited bulk e-mail is unwelcome.
Terry Lago
Joe Bernstein wrote:
Thanks for the thoughtful reply Joe. Some thoughts:
<snip some stuff>
>
> There's probably an element of personal taste involved; standards for
> how strange people in the past are vary a *great* deal among readers
> of historical fiction. But there's something else involved too.
Ok...I don't know that I'd say basic human nature is so very alien from any
one era to another, especially those closer to each other in the continuum,
but I still think that our very 'modern' or 'post-modern' ways of thought that
many of Kay's characters (the 'good guys' anyway) seem to take for granted are
the result of major upheavals in thought that don't seem to have taken place
in his worlds, and yet he has these characters acting *so* modern without
batting an eyelash.
>
>
> Well, given this, it's not terribly surprising that many of the
> characters he deals with look a lot like us. He's writing about
> people we praise today, or anyway praised a generation or so ago
> when he was in school, and who are we more likely to praise than
> people we have a lot in common with?
Yes, or put another way: gee look at how savage and wrong-headed those silly
people in the past were. To an extent this judgement may be true, but I'm not
sure if it's as cut-and-dried as all that. I know Kay can be a nuanced writer,
but in this area I think he paints with strokes that are far too broad: the
good guys are forward-looking moderns who disdain all of the superstition of
the past and the bad guys are traditionalists who want to opress everyone. Now
he has had villains who are not cut out of whole cloth (esp. in _Tigana_), but
in _Song for Arbonne_ and esp. _Lions_ I started to see this habit noted above
starting to form and it turned me off immediately.
>
>
> In <The Lions of Al-Rassan>, we have maybe four *main* viewpoint
> characters, along with several others. I think it can fairly be
> said that their religions are not especially well developed; since
> the book revolves around differences understood as religious ones,
> this is unfortunate, but I don't think it's a matter of Kay being
> incompetent. On the one hand, I think he *wanted* to reduce the extent
> to which we think about (in this case) the Reconquista as a specifically
> religious story. On the other, I think he wanted to emphasis the range
> of possibilities in human beings. There *were* a lot of rather secular
> people in the Muslim world back then, probably more than there are now
> (there were specific anti-secular trends that set in among the Muslim
> literati in around 1100 in Iraq, and didn't hit Spain until later).
> It *was* possible for people in the Christian world to be pretty secular
> too; the character the main Jaddite hero whose name I'm blanking is
> based on was in fact someone who switched sides a *lot*. I'm less
> clear on Jewish history, but anyway, I think part of Kay's point in
> that book is that warfare on religious grounds tends to make it less
> possible for people to be as secular as they could otherwise be; that
> if you define your struggles in religious terms you reduce the world
> to a world of religious identification alone.
I think the problem may be that I'm not sure if Kay really understands
religion. If he thinks he can both set it up as the main motivator of the
conflicts and foundation of a society (as in _Lions_) and at the same time not
trouble to be nuanced about his portrayal of it then he has fundamentally
failed in an important way. To simplistically say: "Modernism and secularism
are good" is as bad as to simplistically say: "Religion and tradition are
good", just from the other side.
I feel let down because I *know* that Kay can do better, thus I felt that he
had an axe to grind which caused him to feel satisfied with a simplistic
characterization of religion and tradition as opposed to the 'new' secularism,
et al.
> Ultimately, I don't think Kay is going to start writing books with
> *really* *WEIRD* past characters in them. I'd be willing to bet he
> doesn't think past people *are* so radically different from people
> today, at least not as far past as he's been writing to date. (All
> of his books postdate the rise of Christianity, after all.) So if
> this is a matter of taste, then maybe you'll never end up liking Kay.
But I used to love his stuff so much. It's not that I don't get Kay, I think,
but that I have a slightly different viewpoint from him on this issue and feel
that he is unfair in the way he characterizes it.
I just think that even though *he* can take certain modern ideologies for
granted his characters can't.
T.
Elio M. García Jr.
> I think the problem may be that I'm not sure if Kay really understands
> religion. If he thinks he can both set it up as the main motivator of the
> conflicts and foundation of a society (as in _Lions_) and at the same time not
> trouble to be nuanced about his portrayal of it then he has fundamentally
> failed in an important way. To simplistically say: "Modernism and secularism
> are good" is as bad as to simplistically say: "Religion and tradition are
> good", just from the other side.
I'm not sure this is what he's saying. He's aimed squarely at
religious _zealotry_ in _Song_, _Lions_, and the Sarantine Mosaic, but
religion itself is never targetted. In fact, I don't believe there are
any secularists in his books, are there? Rodrigo was an unabashed
Jaddite, but his time in Al-Rassan taught him tolerance. This has a
historical analogue in the court of Alfonso X, which had Christian,
Muslim, and Jewish scholars working side by side. The same goes for
Ammar, who makes a very good case for the Asharite faith being rather
beautiful.
In fact, they only real secularists in the books are ... not
entirely bad guys, but cast in a negative light in part because of what
their secularism entails. In _Lions_, at least, Almalik and his heir pay
only lip service to religion as they go about their tyrannical reigns,
which is part of the reason the Muwardis are so hot to get them. I'll
note, also, that the Muwardi chieftain is shown in a light that I would
not call negative. He is ignorant and intolerant, but he is not self-
serving in his zealotry, unlike the High Cleric of Jad who serves as an
interesting contrast to him.
One of the many touching scenes (IMO) in _Lions_ is Ammar
speaking to a distraught Fernan after they find Diego with his skull
smashed in:: "Let us walk over to the river and sit a moment. Perhaps we
can each pray, after our own fashion."
Andrew Plotkin
> In other words, Kay has been ringing changes on what exactly a glorious
> culture *is*, and how it can be saved.
So, here I am in Toronto, and yesterday (or Saturday or something),
GGK read from his upcoming book.
By way of introduction, he pointed out that his past several books had
all about about "sophisticated cultures". He didn't go into what he
meant by "sophisticated", but he gave Arbonne's Court of Love as an
example. It's not something that a low-literacy, bare-bones-
agricultural society could support. Ditto for educated doctors,
professional muralists, etc. And Byzantium is the archetype of
pre-Renaissance sophisticated civilization.
So with the next book he wants to do something different. It's
post-Roman Britain, with Celts and Saxons and so on. The scene he read
had kids out on a raid against a nearby fort. There was obviously
still *art* -- poetry, music -- but it wasn't troubadors.
We'll see how different it turns out. The part he read gave no sense
of who the "Romans" had been, or how the protagonists viewed them.
(The only reference to previous civilizations was indirect -- someone
mentioned the Wall of Hadrian-or-whoever.)
Joe Bernstein
Terry Lago <terry...@utoronto.ca> wrote:
> Joe Bernstein wrote:
> Ok...I don't know that I'd say basic human nature is so very alien from
> any one era to another, especially those closer to each other in the
> continuum, but I still think that our very 'modern' or 'post-modern'
> ways of thought that many of Kay's characters (the 'good guys' anyway)
> seem to take for granted are the result of major upheavals in thought
> that don't seem to have taken place in his worlds, and yet he has these
> characters acting *so* modern without batting an eyelash.
I'd have to know which attitudes you were talking about before I could
answer that in any useful way, but my general answer is that without
knowing a great deal about past views on X, you can't really say that
any particular modern version of X is actually something new on the
face of the earth, or not.
I mean, *so far* I haven't found any society that had its infants reared
largely by underpaid strangers, the way the United States, at least, has
been experimenting with the last couple of decades. So I *think* the
odds are that this is a New Thing we're doing. But I'm far from sure.
(And it strikes me as endlessly amusing that in my lifetime, encouraging
this trend to spread further has gone from being a "radical" thing to do,
which I think it really is, to a "conservative" thing to do, apparently
on the grounds that *anything* that will reduce the use of public money
is inherently "conservative"!)
I honestly don't know which attitudes you're talking about, hence I
don't know more specifically what to say. For example, you might be
objecting to the major characters' forthright acceptance that people
might love more than once in a lifetime. Given that the setting is
at least *approximately* contemporary with both the troubadours and
Rumi, I find such an objection unreasonable. Or you might be objecting
to Jehane doing abortions (she did, didn't she?). Here you're on at
least slightly safer ground, since Jewish tradition pretty consistently
banned abortions for century upon century, but until I knew whether there
was evidence on whether Jewish doctors in high mediaeval Spain obeyed
that ban, I wouldn't want to say one way or the other. Maybe you're
objecting to cross-religious marriages. I don't know that particular
period well enough to comment, but my understanding is that such
marriages were pretty common in earlier mediaeval Muslim societies.
So basically, you'll have to be more specific before I can answer.
But the objection you actually expand on below is more global than any
of these. So onward:
> > Well, given this, it's not terribly surprising that many of the
> > characters he deals with look a lot like us. He's writing about
> > people we praise today, or anyway praised a generation or so ago
> > when he was in school, and who are we more likely to praise than
> > people we have a lot in common with?
(By the way, could you please find some way to make your line lengths
shorter? I'm going to skip re-wrapping this paragraph, so maybe you
can see the difference.)
> Yes, or put another way: gee look at how savage and wrong-headed those silly
> people in the past were. To an extent this judgement may be true, but I'm not
> sure if it's as cut-and-dried as all that. I know Kay can be a nuanced writer,
> but in this area I think he paints with strokes that are far too broad: the
> good guys are forward-looking moderns who disdain all of the superstition of
> the past and the bad guys are traditionalists who want to opress everyone. Now
> he has had villains who are not cut out of whole cloth (esp. in _Tigana_), but
> in _Song for Arbonne_ and esp. _Lions_ I started to see this habit noted above
> starting to form and it turned me off immediately.
As already pointed out, Almalik in <Lions> is a bad guy and he's quite
modern.
As it happens, Galbert in <Song> is also modern, and also a bad guy.
He's trying to engineer a major upheaval in world politics for the
sake of his faith, for crying out loud. That's something *new* in
context. It is not obvious to me that *anything* matters to him out
of the existing traditions of that faith, either, except for the god
himself whom he serves; that is, he's not only remaking politics, he's
also remaking religion. (Can you name me one single superstitious thing
he ever does?) This is a standard-issue mediaeval *superstitious* fool?
Bad guys do oppress people. This is pretty much a given, isn't it?
I think it's worth noting the extent to which Valerius in Sarantium
is an oppressor, though, something you don't seem to be speaking to
(I'm guessing because you haven't read those books?). My own take
on things is that Kay has gone in three books from a fairly black-and-
white situation (<Song>) to a far more complex and painful one
(Sarantium), while still working a single theme. So Valerius is a far
*nicer* oppressor than Galbert or Almalik, and he's actually the
*sponsor* of the wonderful sophisticated court this time; but he's
still not a nice ruler, and the improved world-historical outcome
does not result from his policies being carried through as he intends.
> > In <The Lions of Al-Rassan>,
> > I think part of Kay's point in
> > that book is that warfare on religious grounds tends to make it less
> > possible for people to be as secular as they could otherwise be; that
> > if you define your struggles in religious terms you reduce the world
> > to a world of religious identification alone.
> I think the problem may be that I'm not sure if Kay really understands
> religion. If he thinks he can both set it up as the main motivator of
> the conflicts and foundation of a society (as in _Lions_) and at the
> same time not trouble to be nuanced about his portrayal of it then he
> has fundamentally failed in an important way. To simplistically say:
> "Modernism and secularism are good" is as bad as to simplistically say:
> "Religion and tradition are good", just from the other side.
In the Sarantine books, there are a number of major characters whose
religious concerns are treated in some detail, and are not minor; the
main point of view character is one of these. There are some major
characters for whom religion seems a much smaller thing; one major point
of view character in the second book in fact changes religions without
any real explanation to the reader. I don't see any way in which these
characters sort into more and less good or bad, that breaks along the
religious-secular divide. The character I think can most fairly be
called a villain in those books is one whose religion we *don't* learn
much about, and certainly doesn't do the villainous deeds out of any
particular religious motivation; it's fairly clear that one of this
person's co-conspirators is motivated, at bottom, by a perverse form
of lust alone. (But we don't see into either of their heads, so who
knows?)
That said, I have a really basic objection to make. You assume that
people in the past are uniformly religious, and that what the past
hands down to us is religious in character. Otherwise you wouldn't
present the *tradition* of goddess-worship in Arbonne as modern and
secular, nor the *tradition* of tolerance towards other faiths than
the ruling one in Al-Rassan. Until the twentieth century, the
percentage of non-Muslims in nearly every Muslim land was *much*
higher than the percentage of non-Christians in most Christian lands.
Do you think this means the Muslims were less serious about their
faith than the Christians? Until the last few *decades*, there was
not such a thing as a persecuting, intolerant Hinduism, not in all
the centuries of which we have records. Are you really buying the
propaganda put out by the Arya Samaj and its pals, that you can't
be a Real Hindu unless you firebomb churches and mosques? In the
sixth century B.C., the poet and philosopher Xenophanes wrote that
all the Greeks revered Homer, but from the fourth century B.C. until
the second century A.D., it's hard to find *any* prose writer in
Greek who took Homer literally. So was it *traditional* when
Christians started doing so, in about the sixth century A.D., at
about the same time that the school of thought that emphasised
literal interpretation also of Scripture began to win out?
It is consistently popular with people in political struggles to
present themselves either as bold innovators or as reverent
respecters of tradition; and in most societies, most of the time,
the latter is a lot more successful. Hence, for example, the effort
to present separating infants from their mothers as a "traditional"
thing to do, in both the slave camps run by the Catholic Church in
20th-century Ireland, and the setup of welfare reforms in the
US in the past decade. You are not obligated to be taken in by
this propaganda. From everything I can see, the bad guys in <A
Song for Arbonne> are almost the only people who despise actual
traditions, and the changes in Blaise show him coming to terms
not only with the traditions of other countries, but also of his
own. In <The Lions of Al-Rassan>, I think the diagnosis of various
major characters is correct, that Al-Rassan was already doomed before
the prologue began, and change is unavoidable; but the auctorial
sentiment is *very* clearly opposed to change in most forms - to
Jaddite conquest, to Muwardi conquest, to crusading spirit on
either side; the only change unequivocally approved is the progress
of medicine, and yet that same progress does much to enable the
ultimate catastrophe of the book.
Maybe I'm missing something here; maybe you can explain what you
really meant, and it'll be something a lot more insightful than
this. So maybe I shouldn't have preached so hard, but I do try to
take every opportunity I can get to try to break the hold certain
kinds of propaganda have gotten in recent decades, the assumption
that fundamentalism is an old and traditional thing, instead of the
radical innovation it usually is; that only one side in any battle
can ever have tradition behind it. It just ain't so. And one of the
things I think Guy Gavriel Kay is good at doing is *showing* that.
Joe Bernstein
David Dyer-Bennet
> I mean, *so far* I haven't found any society that had its infants reared
> largely by underpaid strangers, the way the United States, at least, has
> been experimenting with the last couple of decades. So I *think* the
> odds are that this is a New Thing we're doing. But I'm far from sure.
The upper classes in Victorian England did this pretty uniformly. The
upper classes in the American South did this both before and after the
American Civil War. And royalty has nearly always done this.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <dd...@dd-b.net>, <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <noguns-nomoney.com> <www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net> Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera mailing lists: <dragaera.info/>
James Nicoll
David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> writes:
>
>> I mean, *so far* I haven't found any society that had its infants reared
>> largely by underpaid strangers, the way the United States, at least, has
>> been experimenting with the last couple of decades. So I *think* the
>> odds are that this is a New Thing we're doing. But I'm far from sure.
>
>The upper classes in Victorian England did this pretty uniformly.
Leading to something called 'hospitalization', a rare example
of something that killed upper class kids more than lower class ones.
Upper class children who were sick were given what medical treatment
existed at the time (1) and ignored. The poor savage working classes
had no idea that emotional support was bad for children so they didn't
ignore their sick kids (and as per 1, the lack of professional help
may have not been so bad a thing). It turns out if you ignore kids,
sometimes they just die.
James Nicoll
1: Which if I recall the stats would likely have had a neutral or negative
effect on the patient, medicine not hitting the 50% chance of actually
helping the patient until, if memory serves, the 1930s (2).
2: Isn't that an astounding thing, that the development real medicine is
within the memory of people on the ng (3)? What really gobsmacks me is that
NorAmians only began to have a better than average chance of an adequate diet
when I was a child. Unrelated events, I assume but still the idea that
it wasn't until Nineteen Bloody Sixty that Sam and Sue North America
could be born and not expect a run in with rickets or something similar
amazes me.
3: Jack Williamson had been getting published for a year at that point.
--
It's amazing how the waterdrops form: a ball of water with an air bubble
inside it and inside of that one more bubble of water. It looks so beautiful
[...]. I realized something: the world is interesting for the man who can
be surprised. -Valentin Lebedev-
Terry Lago
Joe Bernstein wrote:
> In article <3F4F61A0...@utoronto.ca>,
> Terry Lago <terry...@utoronto.ca> wrote:
>
> > Joe Bernstein wrote:
>
> > Ok...I don't know that I'd say basic human nature is so very alien from
> > any one era to another, especially those closer to each other in the
> > continuum, but I still think that our very 'modern' or 'post-modern'
> > ways of thought that many of Kay's characters (the 'good guys' anyway)
> > seem to take for granted are the result of major upheavals in thought
> > that don't seem to have taken place in his worlds, and yet he has these
> > characters acting *so* modern without batting an eyelash.
>
> I'd have to know which attitudes you were talking about before I could
> answer that in any useful way, but my general answer is that without
> knowing a great deal about past views on X, you can't really say that
> any particular modern version of X is actually something new on the
> face of the earth, or not.
>
I'm likely being very unfair to Kay. I only got a few chapters into _Lions_ before I
decided not to continue. It just rubbed me the wrong way. In terms of what I meant
explicitly it was probably the liberated female doctor who was (by all appearances)
a post-modern liberal in medieval drag. As far as I could tell she would have been
as equally at home, as written, in a modern novel...maybe this changed as things
progressed.
My main point against Kay vis a vis religion is simply that I think he painted all
three religions in strokes that were far too broad, at least as much as I saw of
what he did, though he may have become more nuanced as the book continued. I just
didn't see much promise in the first few chapters to make me want to read the rest
and find out if this was the case.
>
> In the Sarantine books, there are a number of major characters whose
> religious concerns are treated in some detail, and are not minor; the
> main point of view character is one of these. There are some major
> characters for whom religion seems a much smaller thing; one major point
> of view character in the second book in fact changes religions without
> any real explanation to the reader. I don't see any way in which these
> characters sort into more and less good or bad, that breaks along the
> religious-secular divide. The character I think can most fairly be
> called a villain in those books is one whose religion we *don't* learn
> much about, and certainly doesn't do the villainous deeds out of any
> particular religious motivation; it's fairly clear that one of this
> person's co-conspirators is motivated, at bottom, by a perverse form
> of lust alone. (But we don't see into either of their heads, so who
> knows?)
Mayhap I should re-read _Lions_ and see whether my opinion has changed any. By your
account I've certainly been unfair to Kay. We'll see once my to-read list gets a
little bit smaller.
>
>
> That said, I have a really basic objection to make. You assume that
> people in the past are uniformly religious, and that what the past
> hands down to us is religious in character. Otherwise you wouldn't
> present the *tradition* of goddess-worship in Arbonne as modern and
> secular, nor the *tradition* of tolerance towards other faiths than
> the ruling one in Al-Rassan.
Um, I wasn't aware that I *had* presented either of those things, but if I did I
didn't mean to. I did get the impression though, that regardless of how devout,
fanatical, or even tempered individual characters may have been in regards to their
religion, Kay's point was that religion itself, regardless of the flavour they
inclined to, was a bad thing. While it certainly can be, I don't think that it's as
uniformly a 'bad idea' as (I felt) Kay presented it. This is what rubbed me the
wrong way.
T.
Captain Button
>
>> I mean, *so far* I haven't found any society that had its infants reared
>> largely by underpaid strangers, the way the United States, at least, has
>> been experimenting with the last couple of decades. So I *think* the
>> odds are that this is a New Thing we're doing. But I'm far from sure.
>
>The upper classes in Victorian England did this pretty uniformly. The
>upper classes in the American South did this both before and after the
>American Civil War. And royalty has nearly always done this.
Did the caregivers count as "strangers" in those cases? Was there a high
turnover in nannies?
My impression [1] was that such children were generally raised by a one or
a few servants who stayed with them throughout childhood. So there would
be consistency and potential for emotional bonding [2]. Obviously such
surrogate parents might be bad parents, but so can real parents.
The question with modern US society is one where children are being raised
in day care centers, where there is a larger children to caregiver ratio
and there may be frequent staff turnover.
[1] Based fictional sources almost entirely, and therefore completely
unreliable, granted. Except for the personal case, whereby I ended up with
three grandmothers for practical purposes.
[2] I've a vague impression of various characters in Victorian fiction who
were always going off to visit their dear old ailing Nanny, but can't cite
examples.
ObSF: The Draka defector in _ The Stone Dogs _ who was "raised by the
serfs even more than most" and who defected to the Alliance when he
realized that "everyone I cared about had a number on their neck" and that
his life was based on "grinding them down".
(Quotes from memory.)
ObOtherSF: VorMuir's baby girl production project had "two full-time
nurturers for every six children, in shifts."
And there are various SF stories where interstellar ships carry only
embryos or sperm and eggs, and then incubate them in exowombs after
planetfall. The children are then necessarily raised by robots and/or
computers. Which stories deal with this directly?
"Silver Shoes for a Princess" by James P. Hogan does, and Ben Bova's _ End
of Exile _.
Stories where this is just backstory are Arther C. Clarke's _ The Songs of
Distant Earth _ and Hogan again in _ Voyage from Yesteryear _.
Others?
Danny Sichel
> ObSF: The Draka defector in _ The Stone Dogs _ who was "raised by the
> serfs even more than most" and who defected to the Alliance when he
> realized that "everyone I cared about had a number on their neck" and that
> his life was based on "grinding them down".
> (Quotes from memory.)
> ObOtherSF: VorMuir's baby girl production project had "two full-time
> nurturers for every six children, in shifts."
... and don't forget the clone farms on Jackson's Whole, where they also
raise supersoldiers.
Oh, and Kagan's _Mirabile_, where the population is too small to risk
losing someone's genes just because they're not suited to be parents, so
everyone gives their kids to professional Raisers.
"Elly, you're a genius!"
"No, I'm just good at raising small mammals."
- Annie Jason Masmajean and Elly Raiser Roget
Dorothy J Heydt
Captain Button <but...@io.com> wrote:
>
>[2] I've a vague impression of various characters in Victorian fiction who
>were always going off to visit their dear old ailing Nanny, but can't cite
>examples.
Almost anything by Angela Thirkell. Nanny, whether ailing or
not, usually lives in a cottage on or near the estate, and not
only do her grown-up charges visit her (and she addresses them as
"Miss or Master Personalname" whatever their age and marital
status, and commands them to eat their bread and butter neatly),
and their children too, but also all their children's friends.
The latter politely call her "Mrs. Allen" for the first ten
minutes, until given permission to call her "Nanny," which they
then do for the rest of their lives.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Dorothy J Heydt
Danny Sichel <dsi...@canada.com> wrote:
>
>Oh, and Kagan's _Mirabile_, where the population is too small to risk
>losing someone's genes just because they're not suited to be parents, so
>everyone gives their kids to professional Raisers.
And the children know who their parents are, and who their
raisers are, and seem tolerably fond of both sets.
lal_truckee
>
> Oh, and Kagan's _Mirabile_, where the population is too small to risk
> losing someone's genes just because they're not suited to be parents, so
> everyone gives their kids to professional Raisers.
Varley uses the "professional childraiser" premise in a couple of his 8
Worlds stories.
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>The question with modern US society is one where children are being raised
>in day care centers, where there is a larger children to caregiver ratio
>and there may be frequent staff turnover.
Didn't the Israelis in the early years raise a lot of children in
"kibbutz" creches, because every adult hand, male and female, was
desperately needed to fight off the enemy and to support the fighters?
The main psychological consequence, if I recall correctly (this is
vague memory of casual reading) was that when they grew up,
biologically unrelated men and women from the same kibbutz didn't
marry because the rearing together triggered the "don't mate with
siblings" instinct. (Fortunately this wasn't particularly harmful,
since there were lots of other kibbutzim (sp?).)
--
"Sore wa himitsu desu."
To reply by email, remove
the small snack from address.
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace
Joe Bernstein
<jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> In article <m2wucqa...@gw.dd-b.net>, David Dyer-Bennet
> <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> >Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> writes:
> >> I mean, *so far* I haven't found any society that had its infants
> >> reared largely by underpaid strangers, the way the United States, at
> >> least, has been experimenting with the last couple of decades. So I
> >> *think* the odds are that this is a New Thing we're doing. But I'm
> >> far from sure.
> >The upper classes in Victorian England did this pretty uniformly.
(Further examples of upper-class people doing this already snipped. I
think Captain Button's objection that nannies and foster parents and wet-
nurses and so on don't really qualify as "underpaid strangers" is
legitimate, so I don't think I've lost my bet on that basis, although
Israel might be a stronger disproof. But it's interesting to me that
to the extent that the cases *are* similar, it means that the child-
care explosion is yet another example in American society of something
starting at the top and eventually being extended to everyone. Hum.)
> Leading to something called 'hospitalization', a rare example
> of something that killed upper class kids more than lower class ones.
snipping, this time myself, much development of this.
Which, amusingly enough, offers me an almost ObSF. When I ran a
role-playing game set in a city with a sort of oligarchic noble
houses government (ripped off from M. K. Wren's Phoenix trilogy,
so hah! full ObSF), I eventually needed family trees for some of
the noble houses. I figured it'd be easy enough just to rip them
out of <Burke's Peerage>. Oops. For the medical level I was
projecting, that book didn't have *remotely* enough family trees;
it tended to be mercilessly brief about a lot of folks. Other books
that might've done better by me weren't available. I eventually
located the one family tree that was fully worked through in <Burke's>,
and so my noble houses ended up being modeled on a dozen or so
different septs of the descendants of William the Conqueror.
So, getting back to James Nicoll's point, now I know why the
descendants of royalty had families that kept dying out *much* faster
than I would've thought. (Which is why I remember all this: even
among William's descendants, it was *really hard* to find a dozen or
so early modern groups of decent size that I could snip off and use.)
In turn, I suppose this means I should forgive at least one class
of Major Mistakes fantasy writers seem to make. I should probably
look at upper-class child-rearing practices first, before assuming
that the lack of anything remotely resembling real-world politics
in World X is a mistake. Maybe it just reflects upper classes with
a better survival rate.
Joe Bernstein
<terry...@utoronto.ca> wrote:
> Joe Bernstein wrote:
>
> > In article <3F4F61A0...@utoronto.ca>,
> > Terry Lago <terry...@utoronto.ca> wrote:
> >
> > > Joe Bernstein wrote:
> I'm likely being very unfair to Kay. I only got a few chapters into
> _Lions_ before I
> decided not to continue. It just rubbed me the wrong way. In terms of
> what I meant
> explicitly it was probably the liberated female doctor who was (by all
> appearances)
> a post-modern liberal in medieval drag. As far as I could tell she would
> have been
> as equally at home, as written, in a modern novel...maybe this changed as things
> progressed.
Not re-wrapped, again. Ouch. It looks like you're posting from
Netscape 4 or one of the programs that claim to be Netscape 4. Does
anyone reading this know how to convince Netscape 4 to produce sane
line lengths?
As for substantive comments? Ouch again. I'd forgotten (though you
said it in the first post of yours I answered in this sub-thread) that
you hadn't finished the book.
I think something like the charge you're making about modern-seeming
characters is *precisely* where <Lions>, especially, is most vulnerable.
Jehane, the doctor in question, is Exhibit A for the prosecution. So
I've tried to deal with it partly by pointing out things which make it
obvious that you can't tar all of Kay's writing with one brush (that is,
by bringing in <A Song for Arbonne> and the Sarantine books), and partly
(but less) by focusing on <Lions>.
But it's more difficult to do this if all you know of the book is
its opening.
Anyway, I've gone and gotten the book out of storage. I doubt I'll
actually take time to re-read it in full soon, but I'll see what
the first few chapters point me to and go from there.
> My main point against Kay vis a vis religion is simply that I think he
> painted all three religions in strokes that were far too broad, at least
> as much as I saw of what he did, though he may have become more nuanced
> as the book continued. I just didn't see much promise in the first few
> chapters to make me want to read the rest and find out if this was the
> case.
I'm just mystified. I honestly don't remember any all-out attacks on
religion in the opening chapters of that book. Or, for that matter,
in any of the rest of it. Later in the book, we in fact get several
sections from the POVs of the crusaders, both Asharite and Jaddite,
and they are not presented as utterly unsympathetic people.
The standard complaint about <Lions> isn't that it's an *attack*
on religion, but that the religions in it don't have any substance;
that "Asharite" and "Jaddite" and "Kindath" are just names, and
don't seem to have any real meaning, point to anything deeper than
slogans. The way each one revolves around a celestial phenomenon
rather than the ideas that their historical analogues revolve around
has something to do with that.
So basically, I've been trying to deal with what you've been saying
with *that* complaint in mind, and making other assumptions either
in error (thinking you'd read the whole book when you'd *said*
you hadn't) or out of carelessness (I thought I remembered you from
this group, and since nothing I remembered was bad, I assumed you
were a clear thinker). Now I'm not sure what to think.
See, here's what I'm reacting to:
> > > I think the problem may be that I'm not sure if Kay really
> > > understands religion. If he thinks he can both set it up as
> > > the main motivator of the conflicts and foundation of a
> > > society (as in _Lions_) and at the same time not trouble to
> > > be nuanced about his portrayal of it then he has fundamentally
> > > failed in an important way. To simplistically say: "Modernism
> > > and secularism are good" is as bad as to simplistically say:
> > > "Religion and tradition are good", just from the other side.
And this:
> > > but in this area I think he paints with strokes that are far
> > > too broad: the good guys are forward-looking moderns who disdain
> > > all of the superstition of the past and the bad guys are
> > > traditionalists who want to opress everyone. Now he has had
> > > villains who are not cut out of whole cloth (esp. in _Tigana_),
> > > but in _Song for Arbonne_ and esp. _Lions_ I started to see this
> > > habit noted above starting to form and it turned me off immediately.
> > That said, I have a really basic objection to make. You assume that
> > people in the past are uniformly religious, and that what the past
> > hands down to us is religious in character. Otherwise you wouldn't
> > present the *tradition* of goddess-worship in Arbonne as modern and
> > secular, nor the *tradition* of tolerance towards other faiths than
> > the ruling one in Al-Rassan.
>
> Um, I wasn't aware that I *had* presented either of those things, but
> if I did I didn't mean to.
Unequivocally, goddess-worship in Arbonne in <A Song for Arbonne> is
a Good Thing. It is not neutral, it is not bad. It saves the life
of a sympathetic character. It turns a buffoon into the saviour of
his nation. It brings peace to its practitioners (through three of
whose eyes we see; the most troubled is the one who has to give that
up). And unequivocally, the good guys in <A Song for Arbonne>, other
than the main character, are nearly all goddess-worshippers. Yet you
say that in that book, "the good guys are forward-looking moderns who
disdain all of the superstition of the past".
Whereas in fact the person most disdainful of superstition in that book
- the person who burns priestesses alive, who kills a man in violation
of the codes both of duelling and of heraldry - is the chief villain.
> I did get the impression though, that regardless of how devout,
> fanatical, or even tempered individual characters may have been in
> regards to their religion, Kay's point was that religion itself,
> regardless of the flavour they inclined to, was a bad thing. While it
> certainly can be, I don't think that it's as uniformly a 'bad idea'
> as (I felt) Kay presented it. This is what rubbed me the wrong way.
No, I don't think it is, or you wouldn't have been so put off by it.
Because he doesn't present things that way.
He comes closest in <Lions>, and for good reason. Official religion
around the time of the Crusades is *not* a pretty sight. You have
the Christians getting out of their sins by going and raping Muslim
women; you have the Muslims declaring that it's fundamentally evil
to have a brain. I don't know as much about the Jews (though I
think they actually present a marginally better picture, as one would
like to think any human group would). But anyway, I think most of the
representatives of official religion in <Lions> - the priests at the
Jaddite court we see, the wadjis in the Asharite cities, the leaders of
the Kindath Quarter in the not-Toledo - do look pretty bad. And the
good guys' faith is consistently downplayed, with the result that the
three religions are criticised as paper religions, as noted above.
Maybe this is because Kay wanted to de-emphasise any religious
justification for the politics of the time, as I speculated earlier
in this thread; maybe this is characterisation, "how will these people
learn to think seriously about their faith if the serious thinkers of
their day are all bloodthirsty fiends?" I don't know.
But if you saw this in <Song> too, you *massively* misread the book.
You saw a villain who was a high priest, and took that as a reason
to ignore the devout worshippers of the goddess who were good guys
*AND* the devout worshippers of the god who were good guys. Kay
never, in that book, presents the worship of the god as anything but
good. He *emphasises* how wrong rape, pillage, murder, and burning
people alive seems to the corans who ride in the invading army.
He shows his protagonist seeking the god out at every turn, and he
*also* shows the sympathetic Arbonnais doing similar things. When
our villainous high priest starts using a curse, those he is cursing
attack him not as superstitious, nor as simply inimical, but as
*blasphemous*; they think his using that curse in that context
*profanes the god*. The protagonist is shown knowing, and quoting,
sacred texts.
I think it can fairly be said that Kay often presents official
religion in a bad light. There is a sympathetic high priest in
Sarantium, but he's not a major character, and his deputy is Bad.
But there are many sympathetic Jaddites in those books, and they
(unlike their counterparts in <Lions>) *frequently* think about
what they believe. We may not know much more about the Kindath
and Asharite faiths at the end of the Sarantine books than we did
at their start, but the Jaddite one is *far* from remaining a paper
religion.
So my take on things, based on what you now tell me you've read and
based on what you've said so far in this thread, is that you probably
don't like how Kay has presented some priests and other such
representatives of organised religion, and for whatever reasons
of your own, you've ignored the fact that he presents other
representatives of organised religion differently, and the fact
that he doesn't confuse churches with faiths.
And you've *combined* all that with a legitimate beef against <Lions>
and said, OK, this is enough of this particular secular humanist.
But, um, no. I don't know whether he's a secular humanist, but his
books certainly aren't devoted to preaching that, he *does* have at
least some clues about religion, and I think you need to think some
more about what really bothers you in his books (which may well be
something quite different from what I'm guessing) before any of us
can tell you whether the Sarantine books will bother you in the
same way.
Dark Lensman
> On Wed, 03 Sep 2003 18:07:02 -0400, but...@io.com (Captain Button)
> wrote:
>
> >The question with modern US society is one where children are being raised
> >in day care centers, where there is a larger children to caregiver ratio
> >and there may be frequent staff turnover.
>
> Didn't the Israelis in the early years raise a lot of children in
> "kibbutz" creches, because every adult hand, male and female, was
> desperately needed to fight off the enemy and to support the fighters?
>
> The main psychological consequence, if I recall correctly (this is
> vague memory of casual reading) was that when they grew up,
> biologically unrelated men and women from the same kibbutz didn't
> marry because the rearing together triggered the "don't mate with
> siblings" instinct. (Fortunately this wasn't particularly harmful,
> since there were lots of other kibbutzim (sp?).)
I'd heard this too.
Anyone got any data on how closely you have to be raised to triger this?
David Silberstein
"Kibbutzim" is indeed the correct Hebrew plural of kibbutz, and is
probably easier to pronounce that "kibbutzes".
>I'd heard this too.
>
>Anyone got any data on how closely you have to be raised to triger this?
More data than you will ever need:
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/Biologyandmorality.pdf
Apparantly the phrase to Google on is "Westermarck effect" & "kibbutz".
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect
Louann Miller
wrote:
>My impression [1] was that such children were generally raised by a one or
>a few servants who stayed with them throughout childhood. So there would
>be consistency and potential for emotional bonding [2]. Obviously such
>surrogate parents might be bad parents, but so can real parents.
>[2] I've a vague impression of various characters in Victorian fiction who
>were always going off to visit their dear old ailing Nanny, but can't cite
>examples.
In the first volume of William Manchester's biography of Winston
Churchill, there's a lot about WSC's bonding to his Scottish nanny
including quotes from Churchill's writings later in life. He continued
to visit her frequently after she retired, until she died.
Jim Cambias
<davids_aat_k...@foilspam.invalid> wrote:
> "Kibbutzim" is indeed the correct Hebrew plural of kibbutz, and is
> probably easier to pronounce that "kibbutzes".
>
Is this kind of advice considered kibbutzing?
Cambias
Mark Atwood
> >
> >Anyone got any data on how closely you have to be raised to triger this?
>
> More data than you will ever need:
> http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/Biologyandmorality.pdf
> Apparantly the phrase to Google on is "Westermarck effect" & "kibbutz".
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect
One thing I've occationally wondered about the Westermarck effect is,
how complex is the genetic machinery under it. If it can be KO'ed by
a relatively (bad pun) simple mutation, that would
have... implications.
--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right,
m...@pobox.com | people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Terry Lago
Joe Bernstein wrote:
>
>
> Not re-wrapped, again. Ouch. It looks like you're posting from
> Netscape 4 or one of the programs that claim to be Netscape 4. Does
> anyone reading this know how to convince Netscape 4 to produce sane
> line lengths?
Yes, it's Netscape I'm using. I'm afraid I don't know how to reset the line
lengths...any advice on that?
Sorry for the hard to read display, though.
> As for substantive comments? Ouch again. I'd forgotten (though you
> said it in the first post of yours I answered in this sub-thread) that
> you hadn't finished the book.
>
> I think something like the charge you're making about modern-seeming
> characters is *precisely* where <Lions>, especially, is most vulnerable.
> Jehane, the doctor in question, is Exhibit A for the prosecution. So
> I've tried to deal with it partly by pointing out things which make it
> obvious that you can't tar all of Kay's writing with one brush (that is,
> by bringing in <A Song for Arbonne> and the Sarantine books), and partly
> (but less) by focusing on <Lions>.
Yes, I think this is primarily what triggered my reaction and dislike for the book and
I may have just run with the complaint and tarred Kay unfairly with the secularist
brush myself.
> So basically, I've been trying to deal with what you've been saying
> with *that* complaint in mind, and making other assumptions either
> in error (thinking you'd read the whole book when you'd *said*
> you hadn't) or out of carelessness (I thought I remembered you from
> this group, and since nothing I remembered was bad, I assumed you
> were a clear thinker). Now I'm not sure what to think.
Um...thanks? I think.
I like to think I'm a clear thinker, though I must admit with this issue I may have
let my emotions and assumptions overtly colour my reaction to _Lions_.
Alright. You've certainly given me more than a little to chew on. I'll have to rethink
Kay...which is a good thing really since I used to love reading his books before I hit
this stumbling block with _Lions_.
You may be right, but I had taken this type of characterization to mean that Kay felt
that it was because of their religion, and devotion to it, (however wrong-headed) was
the cause of all of the evils in they committed. Mea culpa...maybe.
> So my take on things, based on what you now tell me you've read and
> based on what you've said so far in this thread, is that you probably
> don't like how Kay has presented some priests and other such
> representatives of organised religion, and for whatever reasons
> of your own, you've ignored the fact that he presents other
> representatives of organised religion differently, and the fact
> that he doesn't confuse churches with faiths.
>
> And you've *combined* all that with a legitimate beef against <Lions>
> and said, OK, this is enough of this particular secular humanist.
>
> But, um, no. I don't know whether he's a secular humanist, but his
> books certainly aren't devoted to preaching that, he *does* have at
> least some clues about religion, and I think you need to think some
> more about what really bothers you in his books (which may well be
> something quite different from what I'm guessing) before any of us
> can tell you whether the Sarantine books will bother you in the
> same way.
>
> Joe Bernstein
Fair enough. Thanks for the thoughtful replies Joe. I still have the sneaking feeling
that Kay *does* have a real scepticism about religion that causes him to be more
likely to make a representative of a particular faith, especially if their role in the
story is to be a representative of that faith, tend to the dark side of religious zeal
as opposed to the opposite end of the spectrum.
Of course it appears I have my own axe to grind here so maybe I should cut Kay some
slack.
T.
Adam Canning
> Captain Button wrote:
>
> > ObSF: The Draka defector in _ The Stone Dogs _ who was "raised by the
> > serfs even more than most" and who defected to the Alliance when he
> > realized that "everyone I cared about had a number on their neck" and that
> > his life was based on "grinding them down".
> > (Quotes from memory.)
>
> > ObOtherSF: VorMuir's baby girl production project had "two full-time
> > nurturers for every six children, in shifts."
>
> ... and don't forget the clone farms on Jackson's Whole, where they also
> raise supersoldiers.
And the original Quaddie production facility. And Mark and Terrance C.
--
Adam
Adam Canning
> In turn, I suppose this means I should forgive at least one class
> of Major Mistakes fantasy writers seem to make. I should probably
> look at upper-class child-rearing practices first, before assuming
> that the lack of anything remotely resembling real-world politics
> in World X is a mistake. Maybe it just reflects upper classes with
> a better survival rate.
OBSF Robert Jordan.
House Trakand. The Queen's Nanny is out of retirement and ready for the
challenge of a third generation. [And one of the Heroines is conspiring
to marry her off.]
--
Adam
James Nicoll
I have a dystopian rpg setting called 'Junktown' I have stuck away
somewhile for future use. From a human POV it's a sweet set up, with
trillions of asimovian robots at the beck and call of a few billion
incredibly wealthy and pampered humans. The reason it's a dystopia is
because the PCs play the robots and not even ones being used. They're the
ones that weren't worth keeping and not worth destroying, living in
scrapyard towns that will be destroyed as soon as it is economical to
do so. This was a reaction to seeing _Metropolis_ and _Attack of the
Clones_ more or less back to back.
There aren't a lot of nannybots in the junktowns because one
of the rites of passage (to discourage humans who think it would be good
to encourage servile insurrection) humans go through is to physically
destroy their robo-amahs when they become adults. This has certain
unanticipated psychological effects on the humans but so far they are
seen as an acceptable cost and perhaps even desirable.
James Angove
news:MPG.19c168acb...@news.zen.co.uk:
Mark yes. Terrance C and his girlfriend, no. They were done by the
Centas in house, and raised by the people who built them. Not really
strangers, either, andy more than the persons who raised the quaddies can
properly be called strangers; the notion of "parent" gets a little fuzzy
when you have gene's from around the galaxy and come out of a uterine
replicator.
--
James Angove
This is a usenet post. It is likely you will be eaten by a grue.
David Cowie
[children raised by interstellar probes]
>
> Stories where this is just backstory are Arther C. Clarke's _ The Songs of
> Distant Earth _ and Hogan again in _ Voyage from Yesteryear _.
>
> Others?
It's in the backstory of some Alastair Reynolds. It's the method of
settling the system in the short "Spirey and the Queen", and is mentioned
in _Chasm City_ as being used after the generation ship experiment turned
out badly.
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
Adam Canning
Just a cultural point. In the 1980's in Hong Kong [i.e. when I was there]
Amah meant Maid/Home Help rather than Nanny. Don't know about how the
meaning has evolved in India.
I'm not sure executing your Nanny Robot at Maturity is going to
discourage potential AI rights campaigners so much as trigger people who
might otherwise have been blase about the concept.
--
Adam
Kate Nepveu
>So with the next book he wants to do something different. It's
>post-Roman Britain, with Celts and Saxons and so on. The scene he read
>had kids out on a raid against a nearby fort. There was obviously
>still *art* -- poetry, music -- but it wasn't troubadors.
Hmmm.
I don't know what to think. I'll read it, of course, but it's going to
be interesting.
--
Kate Nepveu
E-mail: kne...@steelypips.org
Home: http://www.steelypips.org/
Book log: http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/
Timothy McDaniel
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>So with the next book he wants to do something different. It's
>post-Roman Britain, with Celts and Saxons and so on. The scene he read
>had kids out on a raid against a nearby fort. There was obviously
>still *art* -- poetry, music -- but it wasn't troubadors.
I read too fast, and "poetry" was too physically close to "raid", so I
read it as "kids out on a panty raid against a nearby fort".
I'm now visualizing the collaboration between Guy Gavriel Kay and
Piers Anthony.
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com; tm...@us.ibm.com is my work address
John S. Novak, III
Kate Nepveu wrote:
>>So with the next book he wants to do something different. It's
>>post-Roman Britain, with Celts and Saxons and so on. The scene he read
>>had kids out on a raid against a nearby fort. There was obviously
>>still *art* -- poetry, music -- but it wasn't troubadors.
> I don't know what to think. I'll read it, of course, but it's going to
> be interesting.
I'm thinking this is going to end up being one I like more than you
like....
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Kate Nepveu
>In article <cqlflv8csrt23ve0e...@news.verizon.net>,
>Kate Nepveu wrote:
>>>So with the next book he wants to do something different. It's
>>>post-Roman Britain, with Celts and Saxons and so on. The scene he read
>>>had kids out on a raid against a nearby fort. There was obviously
>>>still *art* -- poetry, music -- but it wasn't troubadors.
>> I don't know what to think. I'll read it, of course, but it's going to
>> be interesting.
>I'm thinking this is going to end up being one I like more than you
>like....
I'm not sure your dislikes in Kay map to my likes.
(I work on an intensity-of-emotion axis, and probably another axis of
structural elegance.)
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <cqlflv8csrt23ve0e...@news.verizon.net>,
> Kate Nepveu wrote:
>
> >>So with the next book he wants to do something different. It's
> >>post-Roman Britain, with Celts and Saxons and so on. The scene he read
> >>had kids out on a raid against a nearby fort. There was obviously
> >>still *art* -- poetry, music -- but it wasn't troubadors.
>
> > I don't know what to think. I'll read it, of course, but it's going to
> > be interesting.
>
> I'm thinking this is going to end up being one I like more than you
> like....
Mind you, my summary (quoted above) is *highly* summarized.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
David T. Bilek
>j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) wrote:
>>In article <cqlflv8csrt23ve0e...@news.verizon.net>,
>>Kate Nepveu wrote:
>
>>>>So with the next book he wants to do something different. It's
>>>>post-Roman Britain, with Celts and Saxons and so on. The scene he read
>>>>had kids out on a raid against a nearby fort. There was obviously
>>>>still *art* -- poetry, music -- but it wasn't troubadors.
>
>>> I don't know what to think. I'll read it, of course, but it's going to
>>> be interesting.
>
>>I'm thinking this is going to end up being one I like more than you
>>like....
>
>I'm not sure your dislikes in Kay map to my likes.
>
>(I work on an intensity-of-emotion axis, and probably another axis of
>structural elegance.)
Hmmm. How do you feel about the in-your-face banshee screams of
emotion in _The Fionavar Tapestry_ versus the more polished and
reflective evocation of emotion in _The Sarantine Mosaic_?
-David
Mornir
McDaniel) wrote:
>I read too fast, and "poetry" was too physically close to "raid", so I
>read it as "kids out on a panty raid against a nearby fort".
>I'm now visualizing the collaboration between Guy Gavriel Kay and
>Piers Anthony.
That is ... sacriledge. *shudder* GGK ... Piers Anthony.
God. The mind cringes. And weeps in horror.
--
<Mornir - mor...@despammed.com - http://www.livejournal.com/~booklog/>
David Silberstein
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>David Silberstein <davids_aat_k...@foilspam.invalid> writes:
>> >
>> >Anyone got any data on how closely you have to be raised to triger this?
>>
>> More data than you will ever need:
>> http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/Biologyandmorality.pdf
>> Apparantly the phrase to Google on is "Westermarck effect" & "kibbutz".
>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect
>
>One thing I've occationally wondered about the Westermarck effect is,
>how complex is the genetic machinery under it. If it can be KO'ed by
>a relatively (bad pun) simple mutation, that would
>have... implications.
>
Well, considering that it can be "KO'ed" by the simple effect of
not raising the kids together with their families...
One of the Google hits was on a Guardian article on what happens
when seperated family members (that is, the kids were adopted out
fairly shortly after birth) have reunions. I'll refrain from
going into the more lurid details, but it makes the last part of
Heinlein's TEFL seem a whole lot more plausible.
I rather suspect that whatever the mechanism for the Westermarck
effect is, it's been in place for a rather long time - certainly
before H. Sapiens achieved, well, sapience. And quite possibly
before that as well - I seem to remember reading that mice and
other animals have kin-recognition systems that affect mate
choice.
ObSF: Sturgeon's "If All Men Were Brothers (etc)"
Mark Atwood
> >
> >One thing I've occationally wondered about the Westermarck effect is,
> >how complex is the genetic machinery under it. If it can be KO'ed by
> >a relatively (bad pun) simple mutation, that would
> >have... implications.
> >
>
> Well, considering that it can be "KO'ed" by the simple effect of
> not raising the kids together with their families...
>
> One of the Google hits was on a Guardian article on what happens
> when seperated family members (that is, the kids were adopted out
> fairly shortly after birth) have reunions. I'll refrain from
> going into the more lurid details, but it makes the last part of
> Heinlein's TEFL seem a whole lot more plausible.
Heh, I've read the same stuff, but from a more academic viewpoint (my
ex got her degree in a school that churned out social workers, so I
took the opportunity to inhale their textbooks.)
Similar situations are not all that uncommon in melded families (lets
just say that the winkwink nodnod fanfic about the Brady Bunch is not
too far off the mark), and for kids that move back and forth between
Mom's house and Dad's house in their teens.
Kate Nepveu
The Sarantine Mosaic is probably my favorite, as it rates high on the
second axis and in a moderate position on the first, which is my
personal preference.
I love Fionavar when the fraught bits work, and when they don't, it
makes me wince.
Nancy Lebovitz
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <m2wucqa...@gw.dd-b.net>,
>David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>The upper classes in Victorian England did this pretty uniformly.
>
> Leading to something called 'hospitalization', a rare example
>of something that killed upper class kids more than lower class ones.
>Upper class children who were sick were given what medical treatment
>existed at the time (1) and ignored. The poor savage working classes
>had no idea that emotional support was bad for children so they didn't
>ignore their sick kids (and as per 1, the lack of professional help
>may have not been so bad a thing). It turns out if you ignore kids,
>sometimes they just die.
OBSF: Sawyer's dinosaur trilogy, in which a way of treating children
which seemed reasonable at the time turns out to be a bad idea.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Genevieve
> David T. Bilek <dtb...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >Kate Nepveu <kne...@steelypips.org> wrote:
> >>j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) wrote:
>>
> I love Fionavar when the fraught bits work, and when they don't, it
> makes me wince.
I know you've probably answered this somewhere else and I just
couldn't find it, but could you say what fraught bits you don't think
work? I'm curious, becaue I tried to think of some that didn't work
for me, and couldn't and now I'm wondering if I just am a big sucker
for emotion or if I'm just not remembering very well. It's probably a
combination of the two...
Genevieve
John S. Novak, III
>> I love Fionavar when the fraught bits work, and when they don't, it
>> makes me wince.
> I know you've probably answered this somewhere else and I just
> couldn't find it, but could you say what fraught bits you don't think
> work? I'm curious, becaue I tried to think of some that didn't work
> for me, and couldn't and now I'm wondering if I just am a big sucker
> for emotion or if I'm just not remembering very well. It's probably a
> combination of the two...
The Arthurian bits-- particularly the Jennifer/Guinevere bits-- don't
work for me at all.
Mornir
wrote:
>The Arthurian bits-- particularly the Jennifer/Guinevere bits-- don't
>work for me at all.
Agreed here, as well. Strike that. Just Jennifer. She was
so pale-feeling. Arthur and Lancelot worked really well for me, but
Jennifer's tragedy was kind of overdone considering what parts of her
character we saw. To use a metaphor, Arthur and Lancelot were
beautifully-done stained glass and Jennifer was pale ice. Just didn't
feel like it had the same strength of writing. I loved the trilogy,
however.
John S. Novak, III
>>The Arthurian bits-- particularly the Jennifer/Guinevere bits-- don't
>>work for me at all.
> Agreed here, as well. Strike that. Just Jennifer. She was
> so pale-feeling. Arthur and Lancelot worked really well for me, but
> Jennifer's tragedy was kind of overdone considering what parts of her
> character we saw. To use a metaphor, Arthur and Lancelot were
> beautifully-done stained glass and Jennifer was pale ice. Just didn't
> feel like it had the same strength of writing. I loved the trilogy,
> however.
Much of the Arthur bits seemed... tacked on... to me. Arthur fit
fairly well. Jennifer was never developed enough for me to really
empathize. One minute she's Jenny, the next she has all this
undeveloped but important memory and baggage from Guinevere. Bah.
And then, "Oh, hey! Here's Lancelot!"
It just plain didn't work for me.
Joe Bernstein
<davids_aat_k...@foilspam.invalid> wrote:
> I rather suspect that whatever the mechanism for the Westermarck
> effect is, it's been in place for a rather long time - certainly
> before H. Sapiens achieved, well, sapience. And quite possibly
> before that as well - I seem to remember reading that mice and
> other animals have kin-recognition systems that affect mate
> choice.
I kept mice for a year and some months, and I can assure you, they
have no taboos against either matrigamy or parricide. (They aren't
too concerned about sibling relationship either.)
-- JLB
David Silberstein
Did they have a *choice* of who they could mate with? I assume they
were all raised together in the same cage or containment system.
I am not in the mood to go into all of the research, but I note that
with many social animals, adolescents either are forced to leave, or
leave on their own steam, from the herd/pack/pride/troop/whatever,
which I would suggest would have the effect, and purpose, of preventing
inbreeding if any other possibility exists.
Thomas
> >
> >> I mean, *so far* I haven't found any society that had its infants reared
> >> largely by underpaid strangers, the way the United States, at least, has
> >> been experimenting with the last couple of decades. So I *think* the
> >> odds are that this is a New Thing we're doing. But I'm far from sure.
Well. The Swedes where the first modern society to go this way,* and
being, well, swedes, they have done fairly extensive statistical
studies on the consequences of most children being raised by working
parents and the creche system. Specifically they compared juvinile
delinquanciy, academic achivement, suicide rates, and so forth, for
youth rared by working parents with youth raised with at least one
stay-at-home parent (A.K.A: A housewife.) The results should soothe
the conciences of ambitious women everywhere (or, at least, in sweden)
since the study rather convincingly demonstrated that children raised
in the creche system did better by any objective standart you care to
apply.
Of course the swedish system is very well run, and similar studies from
other countries aren't as encouraging, but they've been raising children
this way for generations now, and Sweden isn't exactly showing signs of
social disintegration.
*which reportedly is the explaination for the period in the 70'ies
where they had the highest GDP per head on the planet.
Much higher labour-force participation than anybody else and decent
productivity = Serious wealth creation. They still have the highest
labour-force participation on the planet, but it isn't by a 20 %
margin anymore.
Scott Robinson
The other side of the coin appears that if humans are raised apart
from their family to the point of eliminating the Westermark effect,
there is often strong attraction between family members.
Scott
Mark Atwood
>
> The other side of the coin appears that if humans are raised apart
> from their family to the point of eliminating the Westermark effect,
> there is often strong attraction between family members.
We are attracted to that which looks like us.
We are attracted to that which looks different.
We are upset when our neightbors and family members are attracted
to something that is different.
The tension between these three... is one part of the insanity that is
the evolved human mind.
Kate Nepveu
>Kate Nepveu <kne...@steelypips.org> wrote in message news:<j87ilv41eidljheei...@news.verizon.net>...
>> I love Fionavar when the fraught bits work, and when they don't, it
>> makes me wince.
>I know you've probably answered this somewhere else and I just
>couldn't find it, but could you say what fraught bits you don't think
>work? I'm curious, becaue I tried to think of some that didn't work
>for me, and couldn't and now I'm wondering if I just am a big sucker
>for emotion or if I'm just not remembering very well. It's probably a
>combination of the two...
It's been a while since I read these, so only one thing really comes
to mind.
SPOILERS for Fionavar.
The boat scene at the end--it just feels overdone. (This isn't a
problem with the Arthurian stuff in general; I was affected by
Arthur's line to Lancelot when L. awoke, for instance.) Caroline
Stevermer's _When the King Comes Home_ redoes that scene brilliantly
and, to me, more affectingly; I'd love to know if it was on purpose.
Nathan Leahy
> being, well, swedes, they have done fairly extensive statistical
> studies on the consequences of most children being raised by working
> parents and the creche system. Specifically they compared juvinile
> delinquanciy, academic achivement, suicide rates, and so forth, for
> youth rared by working parents with youth raised with at least one
> stay-at-home parent (A.K.A: A housewife.) The results should soothe
> the conciences of ambitious women everywhere (or, at least, in sweden)
> since the study rather convincingly demonstrated that children raised
> in the creche system did better by any objective standart you care to
> apply.
> Of course the swedish system is very well run, and similar studies from
> other countries aren't as encouraging, but they've been raising children
> this way for generations now, and Sweden isn't exactly showing signs of
> social disintegration.
Point me to these studies please, I'm writing a fantasy where the
ruling people are basically raised in a communal creche as soon as
they're weaned and I need studies so I can prevent other people saying
"It's not possible!"
Elaine Thompson
wrote:
>gen...@yahoo.com (Genevieve) wrote:
>>Kate Nepveu <kne...@steelypips.org> wrote in message news:<j87ilv41eidljheei...@news.verizon.net>...
>
>>> I love Fionavar when the fraught bits work, and when they don't, it
>>> makes me wince.
>
>>I know you've probably answered this somewhere else and I just
>>couldn't find it, but could you say what fraught bits you don't think
>>work? I'm curious, becaue I tried to think of some that didn't work
>>for me, and couldn't and now I'm wondering if I just am a big sucker
>>for emotion or if I'm just not remembering very well. It's probably a
>>combination of the two...
>
>It's been a while since I read these, so only one thing really comes
>to mind.
>
>SPOILERS for Fionavar.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>The boat scene at the end--it just feels overdone. (This isn't a
>problem with the Arthurian stuff in general; I was affected by
>Arthur's line to Lancelot when L. awoke, for instance.) Caroline
>Stevermer's _When the King Comes Home_ redoes that scene brilliantly
>and, to me, more affectingly; I'd love to know if it was on purpose.
Given the context of the Fionavar scene, three people caught for
thousands of years in a painful triangle, the boat scene as a
resolution and promise of not only future freedom from that pain ,but
actual happiness doesn't strike me as overdone.
Besides, I like the Cavall (sp?) bit.
Whereas the Stevermer fell flat. The whole book did. I think Rich
Horton (?) who remarked on the difficulties of getting involved with
such a distant narrator had his finger on part of the problem there.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Katherine F.
I'd recommend _Children of the Dream_ by Bruno Bettelheim
-- an account of Bettelheim's study of children raised in Israeli
kibbutzim, which have almost exactly the same child-rearing
system as the one you describe. Bettelheim discovered some
interesting and non-obvious effects: the kibbutznik children had
a very strong sense of solidarity or "groupishness" among their
peer-group (i.e. the children the same age as them) but a
relatively low capacity for intimate one-on-one relationships.
They had difficulty comprehending the possibility that anyone
might have different opinions than them about anything -- though
that might have more to do with the political and cultural
homogeneity of the kibbutzim than the collective rearing as such.
However, they were very well-adjusted and almost entirely
free of neurosis. The typical inter-generational conflict and
teenage angst that was considered normal and unavoidable in the
USA was completely absent.
--
Katherine F. http://puritybrown.diaryland.com
'We're in a crime club. It's like a chess club only with crime. And
no chess.'
-- dialogue, _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_
Ross TenEyck
I had trouble with it. In fact, I had trouble with the entire
Arthurian bit, on the grounds that it made an already-crowded story
even more crowded.
But as for three people caught for thousands of years in a love
triangle... my visceral reaction is, "Oh, get the fuck over it
already." Or, if you really enjoy wallowing in misery -- and
everyone deserves a good wallow from time to time -- then at least
act like an adult and don't let it cause you to commit tragedy.
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
Timothy McDaniel
Ross TenEyck <ten...@alumnae.caltech.edu> wrote:
>SPOILERS for Fionavar.
>
But as for three people caught for thousands of years in a love
>triangle... my visceral reaction is, "Oh, get the fuck over it
>already." Or, if you really enjoy wallowing in misery -- and
>everyone deserves a good wallow from time to time -- then at least
>act like an adult and don't let it cause you to commit tragedy.
Or at least make it a short tragedy, OK? As "The Maddy Groves Talking
Blues" ends (from memory),
Lord Arlen felt about himself to see where he'd been cut.
And he found, to his surprise, he'd lost his ... you know what.
And he said <falsetto>Ohhhhhhh, SHIT!</falsetto>
If Arlen hadn't let Maddy strike first, he'd have never lost his dong,
If Lady Arlen hadn't let the page boy know,
you'd never have heard this song.
So now the Arlens sit around, becoming nervous wrecks,
Which goes to show: discretion is the better part of sex.
So the moral of the story is ...
Be good.
If you can't be good,
Be careful.
And if you can't be careful,
Try to keep it down to five or six verses, huh?
Mark Atwood
>
> Homogeneity is one of my principle objections to a creche system,
> particularly a government-run one. If the government raises all the
> children, they will all be told and taught exactly the same things.
> Everything about their upbringing will be chosen and decided by
> government appointees, and presumably will have been selected so
> as to avoid offending any significant voting block. Subclutures,
> ethnic groups, etc. would cease to exist.
If you read the writings of the heavy proponents of social creches,
they consider that THE MAIN DESIRED FEATURE, not a bug.
Like you, I disagree with them. You can have my (currently
hypothetical) offspring when you drag them out of my flaming teargased
house, over my dead body.
Niall McAuley
news:bjlifa$e8$1...@pcls4.std.com...
> If the government raises all the
> children, they will all be told and taught exactly the same things.
> Everything about their upbringing will be chosen and decided by
> government appointees, and presumably will have been selected so
> as to avoid offending any significant voting block.
Yeah, keep those Washington goombahs from preaching tolerance and
multiculturalism to my kids!
>Subclutures, ethnic groups, etc. would cease to exist.
It'd be like putting all the kids into a big pot, and melting them!
--
Niall [real address ends in net, not ten.invalid]
Elaine Thompson
McDaniel) wrote:
>In article <bjlhef$che$1...@naig.caltech.edu>,
>Ross TenEyck <ten...@alumnae.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>SPOILERS for Fionavar.
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>But as for three people caught for thousands of years in a love
>>triangle... my visceral reaction is, "Oh, get the fuck over it
>>already." Or, if you really enjoy wallowing in misery -- and
>>everyone deserves a good wallow from time to time -- then at least
>>act like an adult and don't let it cause you to commit tragedy.
Haven't seen the original message yet. I *did* have that reaction to
Arbonne, and what's her name who died in the opening of that. She was
a fool and died. That's cause for so many agonies later?
In Fionavar, - On screen they don't commit tragedy, which is one
reason the closing scene with them is effective on me, probably.
>
>Or at least make it a short tragedy, OK?
When the Fates demand that you replay it over and over, there's not
much shortening possible. .... Fionavar gives the impression that
none of the three liked it, enjoyed it, sought out their tragedy.
It's just a long hurt, over and over. Within the context of such fate
it works - better than going hard would, I think, as that would cause
wondering whether it was such an awful punishment - and the ending is
fine also within that context.
None of this helps those who don't like the context, of course.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Kate Nepveu
[snip spoilers]
[re: _When the King Comes Home_]
>Whereas the Stevermer fell flat. The whole book did. I think Rich
>Horton (?) who remarked on the difficulties of getting involved with
>such a distant narrator had his finger on part of the problem there.
This definitely seems to be one of those polarizing books, like Sean
Stewart's _The Night Watch_ and, err, some other things that I'm not
thinking of now. People just either love it or think it's rotten.
Steve Coltrin
> when you have gene's from around the galaxy and come out of a uterine
http://www.angryflower.com/aposter.html
--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org WWVBF?
"Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product."
- Ferenc Mantfeld
Ewa Pawelec
> Homogeneity is one of my principle objections to a creche system,
> children, they will all be told and taught exactly the same things.
> Everything about their upbringing will be chosen and decided by
> government appointees, and presumably will have been selected so
> ethnic groups, etc. would cease to exist.
Erm, are you talking about the day-care system of France or Poland? If
so, I don't see how you have imagined such a thing...
EwaP HF FH
--
Ewa Pawelec, Zakład Fizyki Plazmy UO
Power corrupts, but we all need electricity
Linux user #165317
Nancy Lebovitz
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>
>Whereas the Stevermer fell flat. The whole book did. I think Rich
>Horton (?) who remarked on the difficulties of getting involved with
>such a distant narrator had his finger on part of the problem there.
I rather liked her. There aren't enough cranky narrators.
Karl M Syring
>
> Homogeneity is one of my principle objections to a creche system,
> particularly a government-run one. If the government raises all the
> children, they will all be told and taught exactly the same things.
> Everything about their upbringing will be chosen and decided by
> government appointees, and presumably will have been selected so
> as to avoid offending any significant voting block. Subclutures,
> ethnic groups, etc. would cease to exist.
Surely you are joking, Mr Ciszek?
Karl M. Syring
Niall McAuley
> There aren't enough cranky narrators.
Bellis Coldwine from _The Scar_.
--
Niall [real address ends in com, not moc.invalid]
Mike Kozlowski
Kate Nepveu <kne...@steelypips.org> wrote:
>[re: _When the King Comes Home_]
>
>This definitely seems to be one of those polarizing books, like Sean
>Stewart's _The Night Watch_ and, err, some other things that I'm not
>thinking of now. People just either love it or think it's rotten.
I don't think it's rotten, I just thought it was wildly over-praised.
If I'd heard nothing about it before reading it, I would have classed
it as one of those mildly interesting but wholly forgettable fantasies
like Meynard's _The Book of Knights_, Ford's _The Last Hot Time_,
Pierce's _The Door to Ambermere_, or McKillip's _Riddlemaster of Hed_.
(The attentive, and perhaps psychic, reader will note that I actually
like the Pierce and Meynard books better than the McKillip and Ford;
and that this is almost certainly because I had much lower
expectations for them.)
--
Mike Kozlowski
http://www.klio.org/mlk/
Elaine Thompson
Lebovitz) wrote:
>In article <prvrlv0eifk7hqi16...@4ax.com>,
>Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>>
>>Whereas the Stevermer fell flat. The whole book did. I think Rich
>>Horton (?) who remarked on the difficulties of getting involved with
>>such a distant narrator had his finger on part of the problem there.
>
>I rather liked her. There aren't enough cranky narrators.
I wasn't saying I didn't like her. In fact the only parts that really
stick from that book are when she was talking about her art. I just
didn't much care about the story she was telling and I think her
distanced voice was part of that. Her passion was for art, not the
story and it showed. Which may be good characterization but hurt the
.... mmm... engagingness of the book.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Richard Horton
<Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>Whereas the Stevermer fell flat. The whole book did. I think Rich
>Horton (?) who remarked on the difficulties of getting involved with
>such a distant narrator had his finger on part of the problem there.
I think Joe Bernstein gets the credit for the initial diagnosis,
though I responded immediately praising him for putting his finger on
one of my problems with the book.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Richard Horton
wrote:
>Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>
>[snip spoilers]
>
>[re: _When the King Comes Home_]
>>Whereas the Stevermer fell flat. The whole book did. I think Rich
>>Horton (?) who remarked on the difficulties of getting involved with
>>such a distant narrator had his finger on part of the problem there.
>
>This definitely seems to be one of those polarizing books, like Sean
>Stewart's _The Night Watch_ and, err, some other things that I'm not
>thinking of now. People just either love it or think it's rotten.
Though I must say I didn't think it ROTTEN. I enjoyed reading it OK
-- I just thought it fell far short of its potential, and rather short
of my expectations based on other folks reaction.
It's a book that fits into the category "I didn't love it, and I know
why, but I can see that others might love it." That's in contrast to
_Hominids_, which is the category "I rather disliked it, for good
reasons, and I quite fail to understand why anyone would see it as
Hugo worthy. (I can see why people would =enjoy= it -- but not vote it
a Hugo!)
Katherine F.
(Paul Ciszek) wrote:
>In article <0j8slvgbs32ep5837...@4ax.com>,
>Katherine F. <kathe...@softhome.net> wrote:
>>
>> I'd recommend _Children of the Dream_ by Bruno Bettelheim
>>-- an account of Bettelheim's study of children raised in Israeli
>>kibbutzim, which have almost exactly the same child-rearing
>>system as the one you describe. Bettelheim discovered some
>>interesting and non-obvious effects: the kibbutznik children had
>>a very strong sense of solidarity or "groupishness" among their
>>peer-group (i.e. the children the same age as them) but a
>>relatively low capacity for intimate one-on-one relationships.
>>They had difficulty comprehending the possibility that anyone
>>might have different opinions than them about anything -- though
>>that might have more to do with the political and cultural
>>homogeneity of the kibbutzim than the collective rearing as such.
>
>particularly a government-run one. If the government raises all the
>children, they will all be told and taught exactly the same things.
Er... The homogeneity of the kibbutzim as described by
Bettelheim has nothing to with the creche system, and everything
to do with the fact that all the kibbutzim were founded by Jewish
socialists shortly after Israel gained its independence. The
kibbutzim were designedly self-contained, so that the kids got
virtually no exposure to other opinions or other cultures --
except through visitors, who mostly thought the kibbutzim were a
great idea (otherwise they wouldn't have been there). One could
argue that the creche system perpetuated this homogeneity, or
reinforced it, but it certainly didn't create it: the kibbutzim
were homogenous from the beginning, and in all likelihood they
couldn't have survived as long as they did if they hadn't been.
In any case, if the government raises all the children,
they will certainly all be told and taught things along the same
lines, but this doesn't mean they'll be taught and told the same
things. Ireland's education system has a nationwide curriculum
and standardised exams for second-level education: every kid who
does the Junior Certificate or Leaving Certificate exam for a
given subject in a given year is faced with exactly the same exam
paper. Yet when I moved from one school to another during my
third year (the year I took the Junior Cert), I found that my old
school and my new school had somehow managed to do *everything*
differently. And I mean *everything*. It rather amazed me. Within
the confines of the state-mandated system, there was room for
many, many possible variations. I don't think there's a school in
the country that doesn't put its own stamp on the Certificates.
I think this is a specific instance of a general
principle: where human beings are involved, standardised systems
don't stay standardised, because it's virtually impossible to get
two humans to do something in exactly the same way. Thing is,
while it's possible in theory to create a docile and culturally
homogenous population through collective state-controlled
child-rearing, in practice, in the world we actually live in, it
wouldn't be worth it. It would require far, far too much effort.
In practice, if you want to control people, burning heretics in
public[1] is quicker and more cost-effective.
[1] Or whatever the civilised equivalent is these days.
--
Katherine F. http://puritybrown.diaryland.com
'This is an omen! It's a higher power trying to tell me through bunnies
that we're all going to die!'
Ewa Pawelec
>>> as to avoid offending any significant voting block. Subclutures,
>>> ethnic groups, etc. would cease to exist.
>>
>>Erm, are you talking about the day-care system of France or Poland? If
>>so, I don't see how you have imagined such a thing...
>
> but since France has forbidden Islamic girls from wearing headscarves to
> school (because it made them look different) and legally forbids the
And you think, that they succeed? :> I was just asking, if you think
about complete detachment of the children - as in the orphnanage - or
the normal day-care system, 8am-3pm or 9am-5pm, popular in the creches
and kindergartens of France or many other countries. Becausee the second
one simply does _not_ result in the described uniformity.
> introduction of any foreign words into its language, I wouldn't trust a
> creche run by the French government to preserve cultural and ethnic
> diversity. (Note: I wouldn't trust a creche run by *any* national
> government to do this.)
Why _they_ are to preserve? They preserve itself very well themselves,
these diversities. You seem to me a completely 1-0 person (black-white,
on, off) - day-care system leaves definitely enough time for parents to
imprint their children with their own ideas.
> My understanding is that the system of childrearing in kibutzim, and the
> system advocated by many socialist utopians, goes beyond mere daycare.
> In the more extreme socialist utopias, parental involvement would be
> minimized or even forbidden.
This could _perhaps_ result in the homogeneity. Or not. As a woman
living for many years in pseudo-socialist country I know how it looks in
reality :>
Ewa Pawelec
>>Nope. It's forbidden because it's viewed as a form of religious
>>expression, which is not allowed in State-run organisations (France
>>has strict rules about the separation of Church and State).
>
> Do they let the Jewish kids wear yarmulkes? If so, then some religions are
> more separate than others. If not, that's getting pretty repressive.
Didn't hear about Jews, but catholics are treated the same way as
muslims (visible religious accents are forbidden).
Ewa Pawelec
> The original topic was, as the subject line states, "Children raised by
> strangers". Someone else brought day care into the discussion.
The original post was about the changes in child-raising now in US. Are
there really 24/7?
> *If* the parents are allowed to have some role in raising the children.
And if the child-raising persons are not robots. _They_ also are
different, as was stated in the post just by, and the diversity still
exist.
> Right. But the original discussion was not about daycare.
Original discussion was about nearly everything :>
> Someone has already said that in the case of the kibbutzim, it does. Of
> course, the source from which the participants are drawn is already
> constrained, which probably has a lot to do with it.
If you chose the white object and then chalk them white they does not
change significantly...
>>living for many years in pseudo-socialist country I know how it looks in
>>reality :>
>
> Hopefully it is "pseudo" enough to avoid implementing the wackier Utopian
> socialist concepts.
Oh, in the uniformity definitely they _did_ try to implement. Very
strongly. Much more than anything else. It was a pseudo-socialism, but
totalitarism didn't have any "pseudo" in it. So what? People _are_
inherently different and so even if someone try to supress diversities,
they spring from the other side. Many times stronger.
Karl M Syring
>
> My understanding is that the system of childrearing in kibutzim, and the
> system advocated by many socialist utopians, goes beyond mere daycare.
> In the more extreme socialist utopias, parental involvement would be
> minimized or even forbidden.
Uh, the problem with you USians is that you are too obsessed
with ideologies. We have got much more pragmatic, although
basically I would prefer when the parents could spend more time
with their children, but modern lifestyle does not work that way.
Karl M. Syring
Captain Button
Were children raised on kibbutzim isolated from their parents? The vague
impression I'd had was that while they lived in the children's house they
still saw their parents every day and spent time with them.
I vaguely recalling that there were some attmepts in the USSR under Stalin
to have children raised by the State and cut the parents out of their lives
entirely or almost entirely, but that people just wouldn't go along with
it.
ObSF: In _ The Ice People _ by Rene Barjavel we find later in the book
that the supposed utopia of Gondawa has secret units of troops raised from
birth to serve the state (by disintigrating rioters).
--
American Express says I'm deceased. Boo! Consider yourself haunted.
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Karl M Syring
>
> In article <bjrmas$kp8$1...@galaxy.uci.agh.edu.pl>,
> Ewa Pawelec <e...@from.hell.pl> wrote:
>
>>living for many years in pseudo-socialist country I know how it looks in
>>reality :>
>
> socialist concepts.
Oh my, the system has gone since 13 years now. Did this
information somehow circumvent your attention?
Karl M. Syring
Mark Atwood
>
> I vaguely recalling that there were some attmepts in the USSR under Stalin
> to have children raised by the State and cut the parents out of their lives
> entirely or almost entirely, but that people just wouldn't go along with
> it.
I'm vaugly recalling that the same thing happens in North Korea, not
of the whole population, but instead just to the children of upper
party officials and military officers. I suspect that it's more to
prevent any other trace of any other dynasty from froming that, doesnt
center on the Madman Leader.
Katherine F.
Button) wrote:
<snip: kibbutz-raised children>
>Were children raised on kibbutzim isolated from their parents? The vague
>impression I'd had was that while they lived in the children's house they
>still saw their parents every day and spent time with them.
Not necessarily every day, but yes, they did spend time
with their parents. But Bettelheim observes that the time the
kibbutz kids spent with their parents was often awkward and
uncomfortable for everyone involved. The kids didn't really have
much of an emotional attachment to their parents; they'd rather
have been with their friends. Likewise, the parents couldn't
really relate to their kids much either. It was felt that it was
Important for kids to spend time with their parents, and thus the
time spent at the parent's quarters was Quality Time, and thus it
was an immense relief for everyone when it was over and they
could get back to their "real" lives -- which were spent with
their peer groups. This applied as much to the adults as the
kids.
Kibbutzim are fascinating in many ways.