Old Tea Leaf Reviews 1: 1981 Locus Poll Best First Novel
James Nicoll
The Locus Polls Best New Novel catagory is not intended as a predictor of
future performance but I think it's interesting enough to see who was
hot and popular in the past and what happened to them to justify using this
catagory in the Locus Polls for yet another series of posts about old books.
Best First Novel 1981
1 Dragon's Egg Robert L. Forward
Humans discover that a neutron star has intelligent life. Since
the inhabitants live more quickly than humans, the equivilent of thousands
of years pass for the aliens while the humans experience a few weeks or
months.
This launched a reasonably successful career for Forward, one that
was ended only by death.
2 The Orphan Robert Stallman
This was the first in the Beast trilogy but while I remember
enjoying it a lot, I don't recall the particulars.
Unfortunately, Stallman died about the time this was published
and the next two books had to be published posthumously.
3 Sundiver David Brin
This is the first Uplift novel (although references to a previous
case led some readers to think that there had been an earlier book). I know
this is generally thought of as a lesser book but in 1980 I thought it
was great.
It unleashed an unfortunate meme on SF, that lasers can be
used to radiate away heat. The reason that this will not work is too
obvious to mention.
Brin has had a successful career. I believe that his most
recent novel was 2001's KILN PEOPLE (also released as KIL'N PEOPLE).
4 Beyond Rejection Justin Leiber
A murder victim wakes to find that their old body has been stolen
and they are now a memory imprinted on a vacant body. I bear this book no
hostility but neither do I remember it very clearly.
As I recall, Justin Leiber (son of the more famous Fritz Leiber)
did not have a particularly long career in SF. If I recall correctly
there were three books in this series and two in a fantasy series, all
published before 1988.
5 The Gates of Heaven Paul Preuss
The crew of a lost space craft, long thought dead, turn out
to have inadvertently discovered what amounts to a wormhole and are
alive and well on a planet orbiting Tau Ceti. A recue mission is
launched. This is another book I remember being fond of back when
although I liked the sequel more (I also remember the sequel more
clearly).
With all due respect to the author, it looked to me like
working on Arthur C. Clarke's VENUS PRIME derailed his career. I
have not seen anything by him since 1997's SECRET PASSAGES. Still,
1997 - 1981 is sixteen years and longer than a lot of authors get.
6 Master of the Five Magics Lyndon Hardy
I never read this. It's fantasy.
I believe that this and the two sequels are all that Hardy
has written to date. There was supposed to be something called MAGIC
IN TRIPLICATE but it does not look like he ever began writing it.
7 Hawk of May Gillian Bradshaw
I did not read this.
Bradshaw is prolific and successful.
8 Still Forms on Foxfield Joan Slonczewski
A community of Quakers living on a planet orbiting Tau Ceti is
recontacted by Earth, which to everyone's surprise survived its nuclear
wars. Earth's new culture is not compatable with that of the Quakers or
that of their alien neighbors but it is not practical to try to be a
hermit kingdom. This is one of the few Quaker-oriented SF novels that
I own and I liked it a lot.
Slonczewski wrote about six novels over the next 20 years
(None of which quite hit the same sweet spot for me as STILL FORMS)
but I think the most recent one was 2000's BRAIN PLAGUE.
9 Yearwood Paul Hazel
I did not read this and I do not know anything about his career.
10 Scavengers David J. Skal
I remember this as unpleasant but skillfully written. I don't
seem to remember anything more than that.
I don't think Skal produced a lot of SF novels. IIRC there were
only three.
11 Web of Angels John M. Ford
This was a pre-Cyberpunk cyberpunk coming of age novel. This is
where I admit I am horrible person, that I prefered his short stories
and subsequent novels to this one and that I forgot exactly what happens
in this book about five or six years ago.
Ford was not a particularly prolific author (or at least not
as prolific as I would have liked) but his career continued until his
recent untimely death.
12 White Light Rudy Rucker
I know I read this but I have no memory of it.
Rucker's career continues to the present day. His most recent SF
novel is POSTSINGULAR, I believe.
13 The Man in the Darksuit Dennis R. Caro
All I remember about this was the unlucky guy whose job it was
to go in before the James Bond-style adventurer to set things up so that
the James Bond tactics would actually work. I think the darksuit granted
invisibility to the wearer at the cost of eventual insanity.
14 One on Me Tim Huntley
I am unfamiliar with both this book and this author. I think
he is the same person as Timothy Wade Huntley and that he has had other
works published.
15 A Lost Tale Dale Estey
Once again, I am unfamiliar with both the book and the author.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
David DeLaney
>6 Master of the Five Magics Lyndon Hardy
>
> I never read this. It's fantasy.
It's fantasy that digs into the basic engineering details of its magic; all
three books are set in the same world, though we get to explore other planes,
and this world has five different magical systems in use: alchemy, thaumaturgy
(principle of contagion), sorcery (mind magic), 'magic' (making enchanted
items), and ... warlockry? <wiki> No, "wizardry", the art of demon-summoning
through flames. (Literally through.) The protagonist gets rushed through all
five, for plot-related reasons. I found it interesting.
> I believe that this and the two sequels are all that Hardy
>has written to date.
I don't know of anything else either. The second book deals with what happens
when the Laws of Magic - there's seven, divided among the five systems -
start changing; the third explores the planar system around this world.
>12 White Light Rudy Rucker
>
> I know I read this but I have no memory of it.
This is the one with the guy who discovers a form of blobby matter with
transfinite numbers of 'atoms', and then takes a (mental?) journey to a
locale named Cimon, one side of which illustrates various transfinite numbers
in various ways, the other side of which is built out of finite amounts and
numbers only (decreasing as you get nearer the bottom edge). There's a giant
cockroach involved, and the climbing of Mount On, an post-transfinite mountain,
and a library of infinitely-long books.
It was pulpier than this makes it sound.
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Andrew Plotkin
>
> 1 Dragon's Egg Robert L. Forward
>
> Humans discover that a neutron star has intelligent life. Since
> the inhabitants live more quickly than humans, the equivilent of thousands
> of years pass for the aliens while the humans experience a few weeks or
> months.
>
> This launched a reasonably successful career for Forward, one that
> was ended only by death.
But I remember his career as a couple of entertaining stories followed
by a long, slow letdown as I realized that he couldn't write.
> 6 Master of the Five Magics Lyndon Hardy
>
> I never read this. It's fantasy.
>
> I believe that this and the two sequels are all that Hardy
> has written to date.
All I ever heard tell of.
He is the archetypical "Oo! Look at how clever my magic system is!"
fantasy author. This can be very satisfying reading -- Dave Duncan,
Brandon Sanderson -- but Hardy's prose and characterization was never
better than clunky.
> 9 Yearwood Paul Hazel
>
> I did not read this and I do not know anything about his career.
I read _The Wealdwife's Tale_. It went on my list of books which are
-- unpleasant but skillfully written, as you say in the next review. I
remember it as a story about the sins of the parents falling upon the
heads of their children, like giant red-hot boulders. With spikes.
I never read anything else by Hazel.
> 13 The Man in the Darksuit Dennis R. Caro
>
> 14 One on Me Tim Huntley
>
> 15 A Lost Tale Dale Estey
Never heard any of those names. Huh.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't thrown you in military prison
without trial, it's for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not
because of the Fifth Amendment.
Gene
news:slrng5djm...@gatekeeper.vic.com:
>>6 Master of the Five Magics Lyndon Hardy
>>
>> I never read this. It's fantasy.
>
> It's fantasy that digs into the basic engineering details of its magic;
all
> three books are set in the same world, though we get to explore other
planes,
> and this world has five different magical systems in use: alchemy,
thaumaturgy
> (principle of contagion), sorcery (mind magic), 'magic' (making enchanted
> items), and ... warlockry? <wiki> No, "wizardry", the art of demon-
summoning
> through flames. (Literally through.) The protagonist gets rushed through
all
> five, for plot-related reasons. I found it interesting.
The five magics lined up with, more or less, major areas of science,
including mathematics which equated to magic.
Gene
@reader2.panix.com:
> But I remember his career as a couple of entertaining stories followed
> by a long, slow letdown as I realized that he couldn't write.
He started off not being able to write, with Dragon's Egg, although
admittedly the first chapter didn't make that clear.
Sea Wasp
Odd, he seemed quite able to write. I read several books by him, and
they all appeared to have been written.
Perhaps you didn't like the WAY he wrote, but clearly he could write.
Books are not printed without something written in them, as a general
rule.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Andrew Wheeler
Waspy, your average three-year-old can "write," in the sense you mean,
but he's not all that good at it.
Neither was Forward, and you know that's what people mean when they say
that.
--
Andrew Wheeler
picking fights unnecessarily
Wayne Throop
::: I never read this. It's fantasy.
:: It's fantasy that digs into the basic engineering details of its
:: magic; all three books are set in the same world, though we get to
:: explore other planes, and this world has five different magical
:: systems in use: alchemy, thaumaturgy (principle of contagion),
:: sorcery (mind magic), 'magic' (making enchanted items), and ...
:: warlockry? <wiki> No, "wizardry", the art of demon- summoning
:: through flames. (Literally through.) The protagonist gets rushed
:: through all five, for plot-related reasons. I found it interesting.
: Gene <ge...@chewbacca.org>
: The five magics lined up with, more or less, major areas of science,
: including mathematics which equated to magic.
Hm? What do wizardry and thaumaturgy line up with?
And for that matter, one can make a stab at sorcery, but
it's not all *that* unambiguous.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Gene
> Hm? What do wizardry and thaumaturgy line up with?
Sorry, I had a scheme worked out at the time but it's been too long.
Andrew Plotkin
Give me a break -- I was ten years old when _Dragon's Egg_ came out
(although I don't think I read it until I was twelve or so). It
took a while for me to pay attention to anything beyond the
wazoo-coolness of it all.
Sea Wasp wrote:
> Odd, he seemed quite able to write.
Didn't we have that gag once already this month?
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't thrown you in military prison without trial,
it's for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because you're an American.
Mike Schilling
Bujold wasn't all that much better in her first book. The difference
is that she got better by leaps and bounds, and Forward did not.
James Nicoll
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Here, Gene <ge...@chewbacca.org> wrote:
>> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in news:g36jis$hr0$1
>> @reader2.panix.com:
>>
>> > But I remember his career as a couple of entertaining stories followed
>> > by a long, slow letdown as I realized that he couldn't write.
>>
>> He started off not being able to write, with Dragon's Egg, although
>> admittedly the first chapter didn't make that clear.
>
>Give me a break -- I was ten years old when _Dragon's Egg_ came out
>(although I don't think I read it until I was twelve or so). It
>took a while for me to pay attention to anything beyond the
>wazoo-coolness of it all.
>
with native life? But I was more interested in worlds with tide-
locks others than 1:1, which that book also featured.
Joseph Nebus
>The Locus Polls Best New Novel catagory is not intended as a predictor of
>future performance but I think it's interesting enough to see who was
>hot and popular in the past and what happened to them to justify using this
>catagory in the Locus Polls for yet another series of posts about old books.
Oh, I'm sure it'll be interesting enough for that.
>Best First Novel 1981
>1 Dragon's Egg Robert L. Forward
> Humans discover that a neutron star has intelligent life. Since
>the inhabitants live more quickly than humans, the equivilent of thousands
>of years pass for the aliens while the humans experience a few weeks or
>months.
> This launched a reasonably successful career for Forward, one that
>was ended only by death.
Apparently there was an episode of Star Trek: Voyager which
used a similar premise where the people on the planet lived a couple
jillion times faster than humans did, and the holographic Doctor was
sent down to work out something or other, while the locals were glad
to have explained this weird starship thing hanging in their sky
since prehistory. As I understand it nobody was sure if it was a
deliberate steal^H homage or if it's just coincidence.
>4 Beyond Rejection Justin Leiber
> A murder victim wakes to find that their old body has been stolen
>and they are now a memory imprinted on a vacant body. I bear this book no
>hostility but neither do I remember it very clearly.
My impression while reading it was that Leiber was trying to
write a story with a bit of the pulpy adventure spirit -- the story
introduces stuff like space pirates apparently stealing bodies, for
example -- although it put in a couple bits that were weird or a bit
creepy. I'm thinking here of the murder victim's body coach, who has
a career of having her personality imprinted on infants, so she can
raise their bodies Correctly past the danger points of puberty to
deliver them to wealthy transplants. She goes back to an infant body
and works from the start again.
My other impression was that Leiber just hadn't worked out
the background for this universe at all. That's not a rare event,
but in this case it felt way wrong. As I recall, pretty much everybody
gets regular brain backups, but the only time anyone has chance to *use*
them is when someone else has the bad luck to have his or her brain
wiped completely clean while the body is intact. Murder victims are
entitled to one (1) new body, but they won't do anything like seeing
that the people who get these rare second chances are, like, the same
gender as the new body. Body parts can be grown from scratch -- the
new body for the protagonist has a prehensile tail added on around
puberty -- but besides the creepy body coach there doesn't seem to be
a blank-body market. It's all weird.
> As I recall, Justin Leiber (son of the more famous Fritz Leiber)
>did not have a particularly long career in SF. If I recall correctly
>there were three books in this series and two in a fantasy series, all
>published before 1988.
There were a couple more published. What I mostly remember
is they made a hash of the backstory so that *that* didn't make sense
either. If I remember it rightly, Leiber added in that, oh, up to a
couple decades before the world was ruled by a Religious Tyranny With
Technophobic Aims so that nobody was allowed to have a computer and,
I guess, all the interstellar spaceships were run by hand and the
brain transplants were done by analog recording methods for a warmer
body-brain experience.
>11 Web of Angels John M. Ford
> This was a pre-Cyberpunk cyberpunk coming of age novel. This is
>where I admit I am horrible person, that I prefered his short stories
>and subsequent novels to this one and that I forgot exactly what happens
>in this book about five or six years ago.
I read it at about the right age for a coming-of-age novel, but
I was not the most alert or careful reader and, surprisingly, I didn't
really get what was going on.
> Ford was not a particularly prolific author (or at least not
>as prolific as I would have liked) but his career continued until his
>recent untimely death.
Yeah. I liked his writing, although I have to admit that I'd
feel a lot more comfortable if there were annotations to go with it.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:
>
>
>>Best First Novel 1981
>
>>1 Dragon's Egg Robert L. Forward
>
>> Humans discover that a neutron star has intelligent life. Since
>>the inhabitants live more quickly than humans, the equivilent of thousands
>>of years pass for the aliens while the humans experience a few weeks or
>>months.
>
>> This launched a reasonably successful career for Forward, one that
>>was ended only by death.
>
> Apparently there was an episode of Star Trek: Voyager which
>used a similar premise where the people on the planet lived a couple
>jillion times faster than humans did, and the holographic Doctor was
>sent down to work out something or other, while the locals were glad
>to have explained this weird starship thing hanging in their sky
>since prehistory. As I understand it nobody was sure if it was a
>deliberate steal^H homage or if it's just coincidence.
>
Is it that uncommon a trope? If I recall, Eric Frank Russell used it:
"The report had just one word: Unconquerable" (approx)
Del Rey used a varient in "Instinct".
Schmitz's "Old Galactics" & Tolkien's Ents regard humans that way.
Analog had a very nice story I think more or less the same time as Forward's
about a mayfly race that maintained some continuity by drinking the "brain
blood" of their predecessors.
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
David DeLaney
>Sea Wasp wrote:
>> Odd, he seemed quite able to write.
>
>Didn't we have that gag once already this month?
Yes, but Sea Wasp may borrow from me any time he wants.
Dave "I'll make more" DeLaney
William December Starr
Gene <ge...@chewbacca.org> said:
And more importantly, it doesn't fit in the margin.
--
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
Sea Wasp
> Sea Wasp <seawasp...@sgeObviousinc.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Gene wrote:
>>
>>>Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in news:g36jis$hr0$1
>>>@reader2.panix.com:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>But I remember his career as a couple of entertaining stories followed
>>>>by a long, slow letdown as I realized that he couldn't write.
>>>
>>>
>>>He started off not being able to write, with Dragon's Egg, although
>>>admittedly the first chapter didn't make that clear.
>>
>> Odd, he seemed quite able to write. I read several books by him, and
>>they all appeared to have been written.
>>
>>
>> Perhaps you didn't like the WAY he wrote, but clearly he could write.
>>Books are not printed without something written in them, as a general
>>rule.
>
>
> Waspy, your average three-year-old can "write," in the sense you mean,
> but he's not all that good at it.
I have a three year old, and no, she can't. Nor could any three year
old of my acquaintance.
>
> Neither was Forward, and you know that's what people mean when they say
> that.
I read several books by him, and clearly if that's what people mean,
they are wrong. He may not have written what they wanted to read, but
then by that standard there isn't any author, ever, who could write,
since you can always find someone who didn't like any given book.
He wrote competent hard-SF novels which focused on the idea(s) he
wanted to convey, and which had holes which would bother some people
and not bother others.
Walter Bushell
> Give me a break -- I was ten years old when _Dragon's Egg_ came out
> (although I don't think I read it until I was twelve or so). It
> took a while for me to pay attention to anything beyond the
> wazoo-coolness of it all.
Enough for science fiction, just like in mysteries an author can get
away with generally poor writing if the plot is good. Few writers I can
think of had his wazo-coolness. That's why they make both two and four
store motorcycles, different strokes for different folks. Or moods, I
wean.
--
What is done in the heat of battle is (normatively) judged
by different standards than what is leisurely planned in
comfortable conference rooms.
John M. Gamble
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>The Locus Polls Best New Novel catagory is not intended as a predictor of
>future performance but I think it's interesting enough to see who was
>hot and popular in the past and what happened to them to justify using this
>catagory in the Locus Polls for yet another series of posts about old books.
>
>
>Best First Novel 1981
>
>
>13 The Man in the Darksuit Dennis R. Caro
>
> All I remember about this was the unlucky guy whose job it was
>to go in before the James Bond-style adventurer to set things up so that
>the James Bond tactics would actually work. I think the darksuit granted
>invisibility to the wearer at the cost of eventual insanity.
>
Really. This was a most promising first novel?
I enjoyed it as a summer book (and it had a nice blurb by PKD if
I recall correctly), but didn't hang on to it.
Investigator with severe money problems (he invests in stocks that
tank with unseemly regularity) and something of a depression problem
is hired to either protect wealthy young woman from somebody, or to
investigate industrial espionage problem, I forget which. One leads
to the other, though. Industrial item in question is the darksuit,
which has practical invisibility but also leads to a similar mental
state described by Wells in *The Invisible Man*.
Plusses include some nice POV scenes from the darksuited character,
and some snappy dialogue between the detective and the wealthy
woman. Minuses were the lack of substantive plot (most of the action
is just reaction) and the interesting-in-a-different-book explanation
of how to buy stocks.
--
-john
February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.
John M. Gamble
Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan> wrote:
>
>Is it that uncommon a trope? If I recall, Eric Frank Russell used it:
>
> "The report had just one word: Unconquerable" (approx)
>
>Del Rey used a varient in "Instinct".
>
>Schmitz's "Old Galactics" & Tolkien's Ents regard humans that way.
>
>Analog had a very nice story I think more or less the same time as Forward's
>about a mayfly race that maintained some continuity by drinking the "brain
>blood" of their predecessors.
>
>
"Petals of Rose" by Marc Stiegler. November 1981 Analog. Good story.
news.iglou.com
news:g36hb2$r9c$1...@reader2.panix.com...
>
> The Locus Polls Best New Novel catagory is not intended as a predictor of
> future performance but I think it's interesting enough to see who was
> hot and popular in the past and what happened to them to justify using
> this
> catagory in the Locus Polls for yet another series of posts about old
> books.
>
>
>
> A murder victim wakes to find that their old body has been stolen
> and they are now a memory imprinted on a vacant body. I bear this book no
> hostility but neither do I remember it very clearly.
>
> As I recall, Justin Leiber (son of the more famous Fritz Leiber)
> did not have a particularly long career in SF. If I recall correctly
> there were three books in this series and two in a fantasy series, all
> published before 1988.
In Fritz'a last Fafhrd&Gray Mouser story, he introduced a couple of
characters, one clearly the son of Fafhrd and the other the son of the
Mouser. For some reason I thought he was wanting Justin to write about
them.
"Child of" stories somehow usually don't work well. Poul Anderson tried
to start a series about Diana Flandry, daughter of Dominic, but the first
book didn't do well as I recall.
> 6 Master of the Five Magics Lyndon Hardy
>
> I never read this. It's fantasy.
>
> I believe that this and the two sequels are all that Hardy
> has written to date. There was supposed to be something called MAGIC
> IN TRIPLICATE but it does not look like he ever began writing it.
As was said downthread he had problems with his style. He could
world-build and plot okay -- the scene at the end where the protagonist's
four enemies come begging to him is nicely done -- but it never quite came
together.
>
>
> 7 Hawk of May Gillian Bradshaw
>
> I did not read this.
>
> Bradshaw is prolific and successful.
And better known for historicals, i.e., _The Sand Reckoner_, about
Archimedes.
> 9 Yearwood Paul Hazel
>
> I did not read this and I do not know anything about his career.
Bastard heir becomes king after a long quest.
In the sequel he throws it all away to go look for the Queen under the
Sea.
In the third he is involved in university politics. !?
Hazel was one of those extravagantly praised authors (if you believe the
blurbs) that sort of faded away.
> 14 One on Me Tim Huntley
>
> I am unfamiliar with both this book and this author. I think
> he is the same person as Timothy Wade Huntley and that he has had other
> works published.
ISTR it was about the last child born in a immortal utopia. The blurb
was something like "After me, Utopia is filled up!"
>
> 15 A Lost Tale Dale Estey
>
> Once again, I am unfamiliar with both the book and the author.
A genie story set in a university town.
Don't think Estey did much else.
Joseph T Major
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
news.iglou.com <jtm...@iglou.com> wrote:
>
>
>"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
>news:g36hb2$r9c$1...@reader2.panix.com...
>>
>
>>
>> I never read this. It's fantasy.
>>
>> I believe that this and the two sequels are all that Hardy
>> has written to date. There was supposed to be something called MAGIC
>> IN TRIPLICATE but it does not look like he ever began writing it.
>
> As was said downthread he had problems with his style. He could
>world-build and plot okay -- the scene at the end where the protagonist's
>four enemies come begging to him is nicely done -- but it never quite came
>together.
>
I really liked these books. There were sort of "Unknown" stories of
logical magic. As for the style, at the time I thought Hardy was aiming
for Vancian "cool" characters and irony and that it worked well enough.
Richard Todd
Yeah, the notion of one group of beings coming into contact
with another group whose life runs much faster than the other is widely
used in science fiction. I can think of at least two examples from the
Perry Rhodan series alone, first with the encounter with the Druuf universe
(where time ran 72000 times slower than ours), and second in PR #1800 "Time
Lapse"/PR #1801 "The Herreach" by Robert Feldhoff, which involved a planet
deliberately placed by someone in a sped-up time field in order to evolve an
intelligent race which would, hopefully, help get that Certain Someone out
of a nasty jam, and how Terran observers got to see how that race evolved
before our very eyes. (Things didn't go as well as the being who planned
this project had intended.) Robert Charles Wilson's _Spin_ does something
similar, with the Martian colonization project designed to bring an entire
civilization and biosphere into being within what was, from the Earth POV,
a really short period of time.
I think most people guess that the Voyager episode in question, if it's
inspired by anyone, was inspired by the original TOS episode with the
Scalosians, the race that had accidentally tweaked themselves into running
much faster than normal. Note that the TOS question is titled "Wink of an
Eye", and the Voyager ep. was titled "Blink of an Eye", IIRC.
David DeLaney
>Gene <ge...@chewbacca.org> said:
>> thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote in news:12136...@sheol.org:
>>> Hm? What do wizardry and thaumaturgy line up with?
>>
>> Sorry, I had a scheme worked out at the time but it's been too long.
>
>And more importantly, it doesn't fit in the margin.
Just looking at them offhand, alchemy obviously = chemistry, and I'll accept
magic = mathematics; sorcery = psychology, and thaumaturgy may well = physics.
Wizardry is difficult; maybe applied sociology crossed with theoretical
astrophysics?
Dave
Wayne Throop
: Just looking at them offhand, alchemy obviously = chemistry, and I'll accept
: magic = mathematics; sorcery = psychology, and thaumaturgy may well = physics.
: Wizardry is difficult; maybe applied sociology crossed with theoretical
: astrophysics?
Or, given the way demons get used in one of the sequels, maybe it's
computer science. Even lacking that, one could say that having a
superhuman agent at your bidding, that you must dominate by sheer
willpower (and maybe follow commands literally so you have to be
careful?) might connote computers. Beastly, demonic things, computers.
As for thaumaturgy, with low of contagion and Iforgettheotherone
(maybe "law of similarity"?), note that it's a very near match to
the methods used in Keyes' "Newton's Cannon". Pretty much.
So maybe physics is not too inapropos.
Gene
> Just looking at them offhand, alchemy obviously = chemistry, and I'll
accept
> magic = mathematics; sorcery = psychology, and thaumaturgy may well =
physics.
> Wizardry is difficult; maybe applied sociology crossed with theoretical
> astrophysics?
That sounds like what I can recall, except for the part about astrophysics.
Andrew Plotkin
> : d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney)
> : Just looking at them offhand, alchemy obviously = chemistry, and I'll accept
> : magic = mathematics; sorcery = psychology, and thaumaturgy may well = physics.
> : Wizardry is difficult; maybe applied sociology crossed with theoretical
> : astrophysics?
>
> Or, given the way demons get used in one of the sequels, maybe it's
> computer science. Even lacking that, one could say that having a
> superhuman agent at your bidding, that you must dominate by sheer
> willpower (and maybe follow commands literally so you have to be
> careful?) might connote computers.
I was going to say "politics".
And magic feels closest to astronomy. Not so much the alignment of
various ritual elements with the calendar (although that is present)
as the medieval notion of astronomy -- the study of the perfect,
unalterable machinery of the heavens.
(Real astronomy is *much* more entertaining than that, of course.)
> As for thaumaturgy, with low of contagion and Iforgettheotherone
> (maybe "law of similarity"?)
Yes.
> note that it's a very near match to the methods used in Keyes'
> "Newton's Cannon".
Contagion and Similarity have been the mainstays of fantasy-magic law
since at least _The Dragon and the George_ (1976). I think they were
in the Incompleat Enchanter series too. Hm. Did _The Dark is Rising_
mention them? It had that *sort* of magic -- controlling someone with
a fallen strand of hair, or a monogram carved for the person's birth.
I don't think it named the laws, though.
Anyhow, regardless of who did it first, fantasy stole the laws
straight from _The Golden Bough_.
lal_truckee
Forward's contribution was his fasttime environment had a genuine hard
physics cause.
lal_truckee
> Here, James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>> 1 Dragon's Egg Robert L. Forward
>>
>> Humans discover that a neutron star has intelligent life. Since
>> the inhabitants live more quickly than humans, the equivilent of thousands
>> of years pass for the aliens while the humans experience a few weeks or
>> months.
>>
>> This launched a reasonably successful career for Forward, one that
>> was ended only by death.
>
> by a long, slow letdown as I realized that he couldn't write.
Not such an obstacle. Forward had ideas and physics on his side. Dull
prose but it sufficed for the tale.
I can't count the number of SF books that were well enough written that
I read well into them before throwing the book down in disgust at the
realization this doofus author thought character and style trumped
content and ideas, not having either of the later him(her)self. Much
like the promulgators of alternate history and milSF.
I don't understand it: do these guys (and their publishers) think
they're the new Nabokov were the beauty of the writing is the point and
all else secondary?
David Goldfarb
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Contagion and Similarity have been the mainstays of fantasy-magic law
>since at least _The Dragon and the George_ (1976). I think they were
>in the Incompleat Enchanter series too.
Yes, indeed; which makes me wonder why you mention the Dickson at all,
since de Camp and Pratt predate it by more than three decades.
>Hm. Did _The Dark is Rising_
>mention them? It had that *sort* of magic -- controlling someone with
>a fallen strand of hair, or a monogram carved for the person's birth.
>I don't think it named the laws, though.
No, it didn't.
--
David Goldfarb |From the fortune cookie file:
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu |"Sell your ideas -- they are totally acceptable."
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <g3948f$af1$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> >Contagion and Similarity have been the mainstays of fantasy-magic law
> >since at least _The Dragon and the George_ (1976). I think they were
> >in the Incompleat Enchanter series too.
>
> Yes, indeed; which makes me wonder why you mention the Dickson at all,
> since de Camp and Pratt predate it by more than three decades.
Because I live in my head, and Dickson is where I learned them. And I
couldn't remember if the laws were named in the de Camp/Pratt stories.
They weren't the *primary* laws of magic there -- just one of the
syllogismic mindsets that the characters travel to/with.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Bush's biggest lie is his claim that it's okay to disagree with him. As soon as
you *actually* disagree with him, he sadly explains that you're undermining
America, that you're giving comfort to the enemy. That you need to be silent.
David Goldfarb
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Here, David Goldfarb <gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>> In article <g3948f$af1$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
>> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>> >Contagion and Similarity have been the mainstays of fantasy-magic law
>> >since at least _The Dragon and the George_ (1976). I think they were
>> >in the Incompleat Enchanter series too.
>>
>> Yes, indeed; which makes me wonder why you mention the Dickson at all,
>> since de Camp and Pratt predate it by more than three decades.
>
>Because I live in my head, and Dickson is where I learned them. And I
>couldn't remember if the laws were named in the de Camp/Pratt stories.
>They weren't the *primary* laws of magic there -- just one of the
>syllogismic mindsets that the characters travel to/with.
As I recall it, they were pretty primary. They were mentioned in the
very first story, in which Harold Shea uses them to devise spells.
Later on stuff like set theory got brought in.
--
David Goldfarb | "No-one in the world ever gets what they want
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | And that is beautiful.
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | Everybody dies frustrated and sad
| And that is beautiful." -- TMBG
Joe Bernstein
> 6 Master of the Five Magics Lyndon Hardy
>
> I never read this. It's fantasy.
>
> I believe that this and the two sequels are all that Hardy
> has written to date. There was supposed to be something called MAGIC
> IN TRIPLICATE but it does not look like he ever began writing it.
I actually hated this for its style when I was a teenager, which is
saying something. All I remember is the extremely annoying way every
reference to the hero's inamorata had to mention her as "the fair lady".
Or something like that. Uck.
> 7 Hawk of May Gillian Bradshaw
>
> I did not read this.
>
> Bradshaw is prolific and successful.
Eh, well. If I ever see another book of hers in a bookstore I'll
believe she's still successful. (Her current publisher, Severn House,
seems unable to sell any of its books to bookstores in the US.)
It occurs to me that Bradshaw is actually an example of something I've
not seen much of: a writer who started out in fantasy but then moved
to science fiction. Difference is, she had a much longer and more
successful career in historical fiction between those two genres.
(She's actually writing both historicals and "thrillers", most with
at least some science fiction content, these days, but anyway.)
> 9 Yearwood Paul Hazel
>
> I did not read this and I do not know anything about his career.
I read this as a teenager and was bewildered; I read it again, also
the sequels this time, in my 20s, and was impressed. I have to admit
that the third book didn't work for me, though.
<A Wealdwife's Tale> is a book I intend to read someday when my life
is going well enough that I can deal with reading tragedies. I was
very impressed with the pages I managed to read when it came out.
On the Web there is a Paul Hazel who I'm fairly certain is *not* this
one, and there's a wedding announcement from the <New York Times>,
concerning a Paul Hazel 45 years old in 1990 (seems about right) who
is a novelist and "the personnel director of the Ridgefield (Conn.)
public schools". However, this Paul Hazel is actually "E. Paul Hazel".
OTOH, his wife (Faye Ringel) turns out to be a scholar of "New England
vampires, the American Gothic, urban legends, fantasy, demonic cooks,
current medievalism, neo-pagans, H. P. Lovecraft, Steven King, Tolkien,
mad scientists, Yiddish folklore, and The Three Stooges." This sounds
promising. That said, I see no sign that he has a web page, and he is
no longer Ridgefield CT Public Schools director of personnel.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, tax preparer, bookkeeper and writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/>