Worst SF ever read
Tony R Leon
: In article <35F06C...@see.sig>, Richard Mason <add...@see.sig> wrote:
: >I wonder what happens to the teacup afterwards. Probably you have
: >to put it back in the replicator to be disintegrated.
: >
: >It's odd -- people are skeptical about there being no money in
: >Star Trek, but I haven't heard the same skepticism expressed about
: >Iain Banks' Culture. And yet, except in the matter of AI, the
: >Federation does not seem greatly behind the Culture in technology.
: >They have teleportation, replicators, force fields, FTL travel,
: >miracle medicine...
: >
: But the Culture's AIs are the ones that are clever enough to run
: a planned economy, and do all of the work. The Federation still
: needs skilled workers (doctors, technicians, starfleet captains...), and
: should
: have a medium of exchange to trade these skills. The Culture doesn't need
: it because it doesn't have skilled workers who want to be paid for their
: time.
In the Federation, skilled workers *want* to perform their jobs.
They do it because they like doing it, not because of monetary
compensation. I believe this works to the Federations advantage, because
you have people becoming doctors because they love being doctors, not
because it is a way to make lots of money.
As a member of the Federation, all material needs are provided,
so even if you choose to do nothing, you will not go hungry or be left
without shelter or clothing. This life (doing nothing) does not appeal to
most people, so the majority do find some sort of skilled work, just
because they want to be working.
--
Tony Leon
tony...@bc.seflin.org
Husband to She Who Must Be Obeyed
Thomas
Tony R Leon wrote:
This would require an incredebly fine control over the public preception
of what was a desireable job. Otherwise you are going to end up with
severe sortages and surpluses of skilled labor. The culture gets around
this because the majority of its AI´s enjoy the task for which they were
designed.
Ailsa Murphy
I wonder if the Federation really has enough work for all the people who want
to be potters or painters or makers of fine furniture or whatever. And I
wonder if the existence of replicators raises or lowers the value of goods
created thereby. (If they do, and it's the former, I wanna move there.)
-Ailsa
--
But to explicitly advocate cultural relativism ailsa....@tfn.com
on the grounds that it promotes tolerance is to Ailsa N.T. Murphy
implicitly assume that tolerance is an absolute value. If there are any
absolute values, however, cultural relativism is false. -Theodore Schick
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Nancy Lebovitz
Thomas <iced...@kampsax.dtu.dk> wrote:
>
>Tony R Leon wrote:
>
>> In the Federation, skilled workers *want* to perform their jobs.
>> They do it because they like doing it, not because of monetary
>> compensation. I believe this works to the Federations advantage, because
>> you have people becoming doctors because they love being doctors, not
>> because it is a way to make lots of money.
>> As a member of the Federation, all material needs are provided,
>> so even if you choose to do nothing, you will not go hungry or be left
>> without shelter or clothing. This life (doing nothing) does not appeal to
>> most people, so the majority do find some sort of skilled work, just
>> because they want to be working.
>
>of what was a desireable job. Otherwise you are going to end up with
>severe sortages and surpluses of skilled labor. The culture gets around
Not necessarily. If you assume that people pretty much want to do something
useful/respectworthy that uses their skills, then you'd expect them to
be flexible about taking jobs they'll like at least moderately well.
Most of them won't insist on The Perfect Job, and they'll work to
increase the number of jobs they'd like.
Robert Wolfe
> I wonder if the Federation really has enough work for all the people
> who want to be potters or painters or makers of fine furniture or
> whatever. And I wonder if the existence of replicators raises or
> lowers the value of goods created thereby. (If they do, and it's
> the former, I wanna move there.)
Our assumption, for what it's worth, is that hand-made goods, hand-
cooked meals with real ingrediants, etc, are highly valued in the
Federation. That's why Joseph Sisko's restaurant was a big deal and
why when Ben Sisko wants to do something nice for his friends/crew,
he cooks for them.
As to whether or not there're enough jobs to go around, hell,
someone's got to build all those replicators.
On the original subject, I'm afraid most of the Star Trek
novels I've attempted to read have been pretty dreadful.
Kevin Scott Eaches
>
> On the original subject, I'm afraid most of the Star Trek
> novels I've attempted to read have been pretty dreadful.
I'll admit that a good portion of them aren't the most inspired
writing, but Sturgeon's law fits here as in all things. There are a
number of good ones, in my opinion. Janet Kagan's _Uhura's Song_ is
excellent, as is _The Tears of the Singers_ (can't remember the author,
sorry). _How Much For Just the Planet_ had me crying, I was laughing so
hard at points. And Duane does a fine job with her books - _The Wounded
Sky_, _My Enemy, My Ally_, and _The Romulan Way_, to name a few (I think
I've got those attributed correctly). Worth checking out, at least.
Now...I've contributed to this topic before. My money is STILL on the
Mission Earth dekalogy. Trust me - I read the entire thing (I kept
hoping it would get better...it didn't). Nine books of loose threads,
and one book of knotting them into a ball that would require the
Alexandrian solution.
Kevin Eaches
kea...@infinet.com
Jay Random
>
> Ailsa Murphy wrote:
>
> > I wonder if the Federation really has enough work for all the people
> > who want to be potters or painters or makers of fine furniture or
> > whatever. And I wonder if the existence of replicators raises or
> > lowers the value of goods created thereby. (If they do, and it's
> > the former, I wanna move there.)
>
> Our assumption, for what it's worth, is that hand-made goods, hand-
> cooked meals with real ingrediants, etc, are highly valued in the
> Federation. That's why Joseph Sisko's restaurant was a big deal and
> why when Ben Sisko wants to do something nice for his friends/crew,
> he cooks for them.
Nice theory, but if you're not _the best_ cook in the Federation, or at
least the best at your personal recipe, why bother? George Orwell did a
lovely caustic analysis of this sort of thing -- `saving your soul by
fretwork', he called it -- in _The Road To Wigan Pier_. As he pointed
out, nobody makes two-day journeys on foot as a mode of transportation,
because with buses whizzing by every hour, such a journey would be
`intolerably irksome'. Nobody hand-stooks wheat who has access to a
combine. Nobody makes mouldings with a chisel who can use a router.
Nobody hand-copies books who can use a printing-press. And so down the
line.... As Orwell pointed out, eventually there comes a point where the
machine has freed you from all your labour, & no matter what you try to
do with your time instead, another machine has freed you from _that_.
But then, the more the producers of _Star Trek_ delve into details of
Federation culture, the more I don't believe a word of it.
> As to whether or not there're enough jobs to go around, hell,
> someone's got to build all those replicators.
If they can replicate anything, they can replicate replicators. So much
for those jobs....
Dave O'Neill
Robert Wolfe <rhwo...@diespamdie.ix.netcom.com> wrote in article
<3676FC...@diespamdie.ix.netcom.com>...
>
> On the original subject, I'm afraid most of the Star Trek
> novels I've attempted to read have been pretty dreadful.
>
Then try John M Ford's How Much For Just The Planet...
On the subject of which... that's another thread actually...
Brenda Clough
Jay Random wrote:
> But then, the more the producers of _Star Trek_ delve into details of
> Federation culture, the more I don't believe a word of it.
I wish Patrick would come on (are you there, Patrick?) and expound his
theory that the Federation is really Communism in its highest state.
Brenda
--
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
<clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Nancy Lebovitz
Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
>
>Nice theory, but if you're not _the best_ cook in the Federation, or at
>least the best at your personal recipe, why bother? George Orwell did a
You might be really good company. On the other hand, truly great
"characters" might be as rare as truly great cooks.
>lovely caustic analysis of this sort of thing -- `saving your soul by
>fretwork', he called it -- in _The Road To Wigan Pier_. As he pointed
>out, nobody makes two-day journeys on foot as a mode of transportation,
They don't make two-day journeys on foot as transportation, but quite
a few people do them as hobbies.
There's certainly no point in doing needlepoint to get ornaments--
but there are a lot of people who do needlepoint as a hobby or even
a compulsion.
I don't know how it will shake out, but I think there's a lot of
niches open for people to keep each other entertained. If we hit
the point where machines are better company than people, those
niches go away, too, but I don't know if that's likely to happen.
I don't know how much people actually need work. We've been subjected
to a *long* propaganda campaign about how important it is to be
useful and make a difference, but it may not be an innate part of human
psychology.
>because with buses whizzing by every hour, such a journey would be
>`intolerably irksome'. Nobody hand-stooks wheat who has access to a
>combine. Nobody makes mouldings with a chisel who can use a router.
This simply isn't true. No one does them for production, but plenty
do them as hobbies. (I've actually seen an article about a fellow
who makes round wooden objects with a chisel instead of a lathe.)
Martin Soederstroem
Ailsa Murphy skrev i meddelandet <756mes$eb$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>I wonder if the Federation really has enough work for all the people who
want
>to be potters or painters or makers of fine furniture or whatever.
Considering the severe lack of pots, paintings and fine furniture, it would
seem that all the potters and painters and makers of fine furniture have
been summarily disintegrated for their bourgeois interests. Remember the
thread a while back about Star Trek being communist propaganda?
--
Martin
Remove NOSPAM to reply
Louis Sivo
> They do it because they like doing it, not because of monetary
> compensation. I believe this works to the Federations advantage, because
> you have people becoming doctors because they love being doctors, not
> because it is a way to make lots of money.
> As a member of the Federation, all material needs are provided,
> so even if you choose to do nothing, you will not go hungry or be left
> without shelter or clothing. This life (doing nothing) does not appeal to
> most people, so the majority do find some sort of skilled work, just
> because they want to be working.
This reminds me of James P. Hogan's "Voyage to Yesteryear". In it a colony
has been established on another world. Since the machines are sufficiently
advanced the basics are provided for. Since the original colonist were
grown from a supply of eggs & sperms they did not have any tie to a
monetary system. They created a system that worked for them.
On this world the way to differentiate oneself was by one's skills, not by
the money you had. Since the basics are provided for, an individual
could focus on what they wanted to do and not what they had to do to provide
a certain lifestyle.
There was a mention in the book that if an individual did nothing at all
they were looked down on.
> --
> Tony Leon
> tony...@bc.seflin.org
> Husband to She Who Must Be Obeyed
--
Louis Sivo
lou...@nafohq.hp.com
The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not necessarily represent
those of Hewlett-Packard.
Jay Random
>
> Jay Random wrote:
>
> > But then, the more the producers of _Star Trek_ delve into details
> > of Federation culture, the more I don't believe a word of it.
>
> I wish Patrick would come on (are you there, Patrick?) and expound his
> theory that the Federation is really Communism in its highest state.
I've heard it before, & you know, I think he's right. I also like the
notion that _Star Trek_ is not a depiction of Federation society, but a
series of films made by the Federation Department of Propaganda.
Cosmin Corbea
>Robert Wolfe wrote:
>> Our assumption, for what it's worth, is that hand-made goods, hand-
>> cooked meals with real ingrediants, etc, are highly valued in the
>> Federation. That's why Joseph Sisko's restaurant was a big deal and
>> why when Ben Sisko wants to do something nice for his friends/crew,
>> he cooks for them.
>
>Nice theory, but if you're not _the best_ cook in the Federation, or at
>least the best at your personal recipe, why bother?
Because you may be the best cook in your town, or on your street, or in your
personal circle of friends; there are many people doing all kind of things
for fun, even if they sometimes look like hard work. For example, I like
photography, and I'm often asked by friends to cover various family events.
I'm not doing that professionally, and not charging them anything; as I
said, the fun is in the work.
>As he pointed
>out, nobody makes two-day journeys on foot as a mode of transportation,
>because with buses whizzing by every hour, such a journey would be
>`intolerably irksome'.
As work, but walking for entertainment is quite common. As Mark Twain said:
"work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of
whatever a body is not obliged to do." "There are wealthy gentlemen in
England who drives four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a
daily line in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable
money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it
into work, and then they would resign."
[...]
--
Regards,
Cosmin Corbea
*Please remove "nspam." from my address to e-mail*
Betsy Perry
>lovely caustic analysis of this sort of thing -- `saving your soul by
>fretwork', he called it -- in _The Road To Wigan Pier_.
Mr. Orwell, allow me to introduce Mr. Roy Underhill, of the PBS show
"The Woodwright's Shop". Mr. Underhill never uses a saw when he could
use an adze instead. I have often speculated on what would happen if
Mr. Underhill met Norm of This Old House; I'd expect large emissions
of energy.
>Nobody hand-copies books who can use a printing-press.
Perhaps, although I believe the Torah has to be handwritten.
Certainly even before Orwell's day, there were people who were
deliberately using more-primitive printing technology --hand-set text
instead of Linotype -- because they liked the way it looked. For that
matter, had Orwell never heard of the Arts and Crafts movement?
Now, nobody who has to compete on cost is going to hand-spin wool,
hand-set type, or hand-copy books. But that's a different statement.
--
Elizabeth Hanes Perry bet...@vnet.net
kens...@hotmail.com
clo...@erols.com wrote:
>
>
> Jay Random wrote:
>
> > But then, the more the producers of _Star Trek_ delve into details of
> > Federation culture, the more I don't believe a word of it.
>
> I wish Patrick would come on (are you there, Patrick?) and expound his
> theory that the Federation is really Communism in its highest state.
Almost socialist, I'd think, but pretty close anyway. Note that the material
utopia is only for full citizens, as it were, though. They have explicitly
said that basic needs and comforts are provided for all, and more is allotted
to those who want to be productive. What I like about it is that one of the
consequences of the material utopia is that the only personal possessions
people really have are souvenirs.
John Kensmark
kens...@hotmail.com
Mary K. Kuhner
>Nobody hand-copies books who can use a printing-press.
British Traditional Wicca often requires hand-copying of its
ceremonial texts by each initiate, as a devotional exercise. I
haven't done this, but from experience with shorter pieces I'll
say that copying a text out by hand leaves you with a different
appreciation of it than typing it, which in turn is different
from running a scanner over it.
No one would do this with text about which they didn't care
passionately, that's for sure. The Aztec prayer I hand-copied
took a couple of hours, compared to a couple of minutes to read
it. But I did have plenty of time to think about the thing,
and managed to commit hunks of it to memory, which I'd never done
in all the times I simply read it.
I'd expect hobbies to grow in importance in a post-scarcity
society: people would, I suppose, become unlikely to say "You're
wasting your time" or "What is that good for?" (I personally
believe the "What is that good for?" attitude is a mistake even
nowadays, but its problems would become a lot more obvious and
its advantages would tend to vanish.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Joseph Askew
>>Nobody hand-copies books who can use a printing-press.
>British Traditional Wicca often requires hand-copying of its
>ceremonial texts by each initiate, as a devotional exercise. I
Ultra-Orthodox Jews do too. Although why escapes me just at the
moment. And I don't know if it is a requirement, which you'ld
think because just about everything else is, or just something
they do for fun. We've got some posters from a Yeshiva don't we?
Nice to see the world's religions coming together like this but.
And, no offense or anything, but what the Hell is *Traditional*
Wicca? Is that pre-crystal or Welsh Druids?
Joseph
--
Reason Why I'm Never Going to Get an Academic Job Number Three:
"[Monsanto] said that they had carried out 'extensive safety
assessments of new biotech crops' including tests using rats
that have results published in journals" (http://news.bbc.co.uk)
Joe Slater
>[...] Nobody hand-stooks wheat who has access to a
>combine. Nobody makes mouldings with a chisel who can use a router.
>line.... As Orwell pointed out, eventually there comes a point where the
>machine has freed you from all your labour, & no matter what you try to
>do with your time instead, another machine has freed you from _that_.
>
>Federation culture, the more I don't believe a word of it.
You have discerned the truth about the Trek propaganda films. As I
said before, it is clear that the masses toil in lives of unspeakable
wretchedness while replicator technology, if it exists at all, is so
expensive that it can only be used to produce drugs and aphrodisiacs
for decadent officers. Note that it's too expensive even for
manufacturing liquor.
jds
Hugh Sider
Dave O'Neill <dav...@hotmXXl.com> wrote:
>
>
>Robert Wolfe <rhwo...@diespamdie.ix.netcom.com> wrote in article
><3676FC...@diespamdie.ix.netcom.com>...
>
>
>>
>> On the original subject, I'm afraid most of the Star Trek
>> novels I've attempted to read have been pretty dreadful.
>>
>
>Then try John M Ford's How Much For Just The Planet...
>
In general, I agree with the original sentiment. I did like Barbara
Hambly's "Ishmael". A good author can do good work in the Star Trek
universe, so I will follow them there. Other than that, I'll only read
ST novels under duress.
--
Hugh Sider r...@netcom.com
This is not a work account, so why do I need a disclaimer?
Contents sold by weight, not by volume. Some settling may
occur during shipment.
Mary K. Kuhner
>mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>>British Traditional Wicca often requires hand-copying of its
>>ceremonial texts by each initiate, as a devotional exercise. I
>And, no offense or anything, but what the Hell is *Traditional*
>Wicca? Is that pre-crystal or Welsh Druids?
There are four fairly distinct (at least to insiders) forms of Wicca
in the US: British Traditional, Dianic (or "feminist"), eclectic
and family-tradition. Operationally, I'd think of someone as Brit-
Trad if their rituals and coven rules seem more or less descended
from Gerald Gardner's. (Three degrees of initiation, particular
sets of ritual tools, specific coven officers, etc.)
"Traditional" is a funny word here, but Brit-Trad *is* old compared
to Dianic or eclectic Wicca--getting on towards its first century,
even if you don't believe it had any pedigree pre-Gardner (an argument I
personally stay out of). Eclectic Wicca (my own branch) has a
definite sense of being invented as it goes along.
Eclectic and Dianic groups are unlikely to have enough heirarchy to
require tasks like hand-copying, and the family traditions tend to
be exclusively oral in my experience.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
kens...@hotmail.com
bet...@katie.vnet.net (Betsy Perry) wrote:
[...]
> Now, nobody who has to compete on cost is going to hand-spin wool,
> hand-set type, or hand-copy books. But that's a different statement.
Actually, I used to know a fair number of people who made clothes for
themselves and who hand-spun the wool they'd cut off their own sheep. They'd
carded it themselves, too, and would dye it themselves (with Kool-Aid, most
often), and would make the clothes by hand. This usually started as an SCA
thing, but it's apparently really not that much work if you're not in a
hurry; most of it can be done while watching TV, over the course of a couple
of months.
As far as cost is concerned, it was cheaper than having custom period (ie,
authentic) medieval garb made professionally, and the clothes usually turned
out very nicely. On the other hand, it never turned into a cottage industry,
not with anyone I ever met.
But, certainly, people do things, by choice, that they could have machines do
for them. And homemade ice cream is still often more enjoyable than the real
thing, even if you screw up the recipe just a little. Turning the crank
does--*once* in a while--produce an inordinate amount of satisfaction.
Nancy Lebovitz
>
>Actually, I used to know a fair number of people who made clothes for
>themselves and who hand-spun the wool they'd cut off their own sheep. They'd
>carded it themselves, too, and would dye it themselves (with Kool-Aid, most
>often), and would make the clothes by hand. This usually started as an SCA
>thing, but it's apparently really not that much work if you're not in a
>hurry; most of it can be done while watching TV, over the course of a couple
>of months.
>
>As far as cost is concerned, it was cheaper than having custom period (ie,
>authentic) medieval garb made professionally, and the clothes usually turned
>out very nicely. On the other hand, it never turned into a cottage industry,
>not with anyone I ever met.
>
work to be worth making for money. (Anyone know if this is true?) Still,
there are plenty of Dr. Who scarves which are presumably produced outside
the money economy.
Gerry Quinn
=>Nice theory, but if you're not _the best_ cook in the Federation, or at
=>least the best at your personal recipe, why bother? George Orwell did a
=>lovely caustic analysis of this sort of thing -- `saving your soul by
=>fretwork', he called it -- in _The Road To Wigan Pier_. As he pointed
=>out, nobody makes two-day journeys on foot as a mode of transportation,
=>because with buses whizzing by every hour, such a journey would be
=>`intolerably irksome'. Nobody hand-stooks wheat who has access to a
=>combine. Nobody makes mouldings with a chisel who can use a router.
=>Nobody hand-copies books who can use a printing-press. And so down the
=>line.... As Orwell pointed out, eventually there comes a point where the
=>machine has freed you from all your labour, & no matter what you try to
=>do with your time instead, another machine has freed you from _that_.
=>
ObBook: _Player Piano_ by Kurt Vonnegut.
- Gerry
----------------------------------------------------------
ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
----------------------------------------------------------
Brenda Clough
kens...@hotmail.com wrote:
> In article <7599ff$qu$1...@katie.vnet.net>,
> bet...@katie.vnet.net (Betsy Perry) wrote:
> [...]
> > Now, nobody who has to compete on cost is going to hand-spin wool,
> > hand-set type, or hand-copy books. But that's a different statement.
>
> Actually, I used to know a fair number of people who made clothes for
> themselves and who hand-spun the wool they'd cut off their own sheep. They'd
> carded it themselves, too, and would dye it themselves (with Kool-Aid, most
> often), and would make the clothes by hand.
You people do not move in the right circles. There is a knitting listgroup that
is so large they had to set up their own server for it, in excess of 2000
members. There are a half-dozen satellite knitting listgroups too, that spun off
to take off the load, devoted to subspecialities like lace knitting or
gay/lesbian knitters. There is an equally large spinning group, a huge one
devoted to sheep, and smaller ones for llama and alpaca raising, angora bunnies,
and so forth. This is not a rare or unusual hobby -- it's just not very obvious.
Brenda <went to a sheep-to-shawl demo once -- they spun the wool right off the
sheep's back and knitted it into a shawl in a couple hours>
Betsy Perry
Brenda Clough <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>kens...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
>> In article <7599ff$qu$1...@katie.vnet.net>,
>> bet...@katie.vnet.net (Betsy Perry) wrote:
>> [...]
>> > Now, nobody who has to compete on cost is going to hand-spin wool,
>> > hand-set type, or hand-copy books. But that's a different statement.
>>
>> Actually, I used to know a fair number of people who made clothes for
>> themselves and who hand-spun the wool they'd cut off their own sheep. They'd
>> carded it themselves, too, and would dye it themselves (with Kool-Aid, most
>> often), and would make the clothes by hand.
>
>
>You people do not move in the right circles. There is a knitting listgroup that
>is so large they had to set up their own server for it, in excess of 2000
>members.
Ahem. In the part of the posting the gentleman snipped, I was
_refuting_ the proposal that "Nobody copies books by hand if they have
access to a printer." I said,
>>Nobody hand-copies books who can use a printing-press.
>Perhaps, although I believe the Torah has to be handwritten.
>Certainly even before Orwell's day, there were people who were
>deliberately using more-primitive printing technology --hand-set text
>instead of Linotype -- because they liked the way it looked. For that
>matter, had Orwell never heard of the Arts and Crafts movement?
I then continued with the quoted statement, saying that people who
produce things by hand rarely compete on cost, a statement I stand by.
People who do sheep-to-shawl contests don't turn around and sell the
shawl in K-mart. If you want to buy a handspun, handknitted shawl,
you're going to pay a lot more than you'd pay for something done by
machine, because the spinner and knitter wants to make a living wage.
If you want to argue with somebody who thinks that nobody ever
deliberately builds low-tech objects for the pleasure of it, argue
with Jay Random (jra...@shaw.wave.ca), not me.
Lee Ann Rucker
>Nobody makes mouldings with a chisel who can use a router.
Actually, there are some who do, as many flamewars in rec.woodworking will
attest
--
Working at Apple for Javasoft
lru...@aruba.apple.com
Also at (but not very often) leeann...@eng.sun.com
Lee Ann Rucker
"Cosmin Corbea" <cos...@nspam.axion.net> wrote:
>As work, but walking for entertainment is quite common. As Mark Twain said:
>"work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of
>whatever a body is not obliged to do." "There are wealthy gentlemen in
>England who drives four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a
>daily line in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable
>money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it
>into work, and then they would resign."
I shall save that quote. I make 1:12 scale miniature furniture from
full-scale plans *without* cutting any corners. (yeah, little-bitty
mortises & everything) I'm often asked if I ever plan to sell, and I reply
that that would make it work. (http://members.aol.com/leeannr/minis.html)
I've already turned one hobby (computer programming) into work, and while
I still enjoy doing it, it does occasionally become stressful in a way
that it wasn't when it was a hobby.
Joe Slater
>>>Nobody hand-copies books who can use a printing-press.
jas...@chomsky.arts.adelaide.edu.au (Joseph Askew) wrote:
>Ultra-Orthodox Jews do too. Although why escapes me just at the
>moment. And I don't know if it is a requirement, which you'ld
>think because just about everything else is, or just something
>they do for fun.
Torah scrolls and other written religious artifacts have to be written
"with intent". That means writing everything by hand. I think there
may also be a requirement to write the words sequentially rather than
all at once.
This sofer (scribe) I knew allegedly started using that acme of hitech
writing: a fountain pen (instead of a quill or wooden pen). The head
of his congregation asked him to stop, because it just didn't feel
right.
jds
kens...@hotmail.com
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
[...]
> And I've been told that you can't buy a Dr. Who scarf--they're too much
> work to be worth making for money. (Anyone know if this is true?) Still,
> there are plenty of Dr. Who scarves which are presumably produced outside
> the money economy.
I dunno. I went to a Dr. Who convention in Boston about a zillion years ago
(and met Tom Baker, so it was a pretty good party), and I remember that many
folks were disappointed that there had only been about two dozen scarves for
sale by the hucksters. My sister knitted two of the things, one for me and
one for my brother, but they're the only ones I can remember seeing with my
own eyes (apart from the show itself, natch).
kens...@hotmail.com
> _refuting_ the proposal that "Nobody copies books by hand if they have
> access to a printer." I said,
>
>
> produce things by hand rarely compete on cost, a statement I stand by.
Sorry if it seems I'd snipped too much; I wasn't refuting your contention,
but merely offering a hoped-relevant perspective borne of personal
experience. Making things by hand rarely competes, in terms of cost, with
automation, which is one of the major advantages of automation, after all. I
certainly agree with that.
My only digression from agreeing with you was that the folks I knew produced
clothing, by hand, that it would have cost them more to have specially made
for them by professionals. Those professionals would, too, have made the
articles by hand, as there isn't an automated system (that I know of) that
can cheaply produce specially tailored wool clothing on demand.
> People who do sheep-to-shawl contests don't turn around and sell the
> shawl in K-mart. If you want to buy a handspun, handknitted shawl,
> you're going to pay a lot more than you'd pay for something done by
> machine, because the spinner and knitter wants to make a living wage.
Or at least wants to make a profit they feel is commensurate with the effort
they put into the product.
Progbear
>work to be worth making for money. (Anyone know if this is true?) Still,
>there are plenty of Dr. Who scarves which are presumably produced outside
>the money economy.
Yes. All you really need is a *lot* of yarn and a friend with a knack for
knitting or crochet.
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"The only completely consistent people are dead" --Aldous Huxley
N.P.:"Antarctica"- H a n d s
Nancy Lebovitz
Joe Slater <joeDEL...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>
>This sofer (scribe) I knew allegedly started using that acme of hitech
>writing: a fountain pen (instead of a quill or wooden pen). The head
>of his congregation asked him to stop, because it just didn't feel
>right.
>
Dave O'Neill
kens...@hotmail.com wrote in article <75caq1$olh$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> In article <75a7fr$c...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> [...]
> > And I've been told that you can't buy a Dr. Who scarf--they're too much
> > work to be worth making for money. (Anyone know if this is true?)
Still,
> > there are plenty of Dr. Who scarves which are presumably produced
outside
> > the money economy.
>
> I dunno. I went to a Dr. Who convention in Boston about a zillion years
ago
> (and met Tom Baker, so it was a pretty good party), and I remember that
many
> folks were disappointed that there had only been about two dozen scarves
for
> sale by the hucksters. My sister knitted two of the things, one for me
and
> one for my brother, but they're the only ones I can remember seeing with
my
> own eyes (apart from the show itself, natch).
I got my mum to knit one. :-)
Getting her to stop was the trick. Anyway, 2 metres of scarf is useful -
it can be a weapon, fanbelt, tow rope, survival tent....
Everybody should have one!
--
Dave
(do the necessary to get the email working)
If I could think of a witty sig line I'd be in advertising....
Dorothy J Heydt
Dave O'Neill <dav...@hotmXXl.com> wrote:
>
>
>Getting her to stop was the trick. Anyway, 2 metres of scarf is useful -
>it can be a weapon, fanbelt, tow rope, survival tent....
I seem to recall that's how the original one took shape.
Somebody decided the new Doctor should have a multicolored knitted
scarf as a distinguishing mark, so they told the wardrobe
mistress to procure one. Not finding anything suitable on the
market, she started knitting it herself out of scraps of yarn.
When the director came to look at it, it was already a few meters
long. "Stop! STOP!"
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
_A Point of Honor_ is out....
Bill Woods
Dave O'Neill wrote:
> kens...@hotmail.com wrote in article <75caq1$olh$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> > In article <75a7fr$c...@netaxs.com>,
> > na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> > [...]
> > > And I've been told that you can't buy a Dr. Who scarf--they're too much
> > > work to be worth making for money. (Anyone know if this is true?)
:
> > My sister knitted two of the things, one for me and
> > one for my brother, but they're the only ones I can remember
> > seeing with my own eyes (apart from the show itself, natch).
>
> I got my mum to knit one. :-)
>
> Getting her to stop was the trick. Anyway, 2 metres of scarf is useful -
> it can be a weapon, fanbelt, tow rope, survival tent....
>
> Everybody should have one!
'A scarf is the most massively useful thing a time traveler can have!'
--
Bill Woods
"And then I lull myself to sleep at night
with fantasies of learning to teleport,
so that I can appear in the offices of
the spammers and the telemarketers and
RAM A BLOODY GREAT BROADSWORD INTO THE
MOTHERBOARDS OF THEIR COMPUTER EQUIPMENT."
-- Andrew Plotkin
Jessica
> > > hand-set type, or hand-copy books. But that's a different statement.
> >
> > Actually, I used to know a fair number of people who made clothes for
> > themselves and who hand-spun the wool they'd cut off their own sheep. They'd
> > carded it themselves, too, and would dye it themselves (with Kool-Aid, most
> > often), and would make the clothes by hand.
>
> You people do not move in the right circles. There is a knitting listgroup that
> is so large they had to set up their own server for it, in excess of 2000
> members.
Could you post--or mail--the address for this?
Thanks
Jessica
Joe Slater
>>This sofer (scribe) I knew allegedly started using that acme of hitech
>>writing: a fountain pen (instead of a quill or wooden pen). The head
>>of his congregation asked him to stop, because it just didn't feel
>>right.
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>I wonder how they'd feel about a dip pen with a steel point.
I have no idea, but I suspect you need a specially-shaped nib to write
properly, and that's why it was so unusual for someone to use a
fountain pen. Whenever I've seen someone do it, it's been with a quill
or a stick.
jds
Nancy Lebovitz
shaped nib, though a quill has the advantage of being more flexible.
(I'm talking about broad nibs here--there are also pointed nibs, at
least for quills and dip pens--I don't know about fountain pens.)
If a stick is acceptable for Torah-inscribing, then I doubt that
the flexibility of the quill is essential.
Elrond Hubbard
Betsy Perry <bet...@katie.vnet.net> wrote:
>In article <367757...@shaw.wave.ca>,
>Jay Random <jra...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
>>
<snip>
>>Nobody hand-copies books who can use a printing-press.
I read _The Road to Wigan Pier_ for the first time a couple of years ago.
Eventually, Orwell muses, we will all have machines attached to us to work
our jaws up and down and save us the trouble of chewing our food (and, no
doubt, of wiping our arses as well). I remember thinking that he missed
the essential point: once we get *that* intimate with our machines, the
distinction between the machine and the human being starts to break down.
In other words, Orwell was not a cyberpunk. :-)
>Perhaps, although I believe the Torah has to be handwritten.
>Certainly even before Orwell's day, there were people who were
>deliberately using more-primitive printing technology --hand-set text
>instead of Linotype -- because they liked the way it looked. For that
>matter, had Orwell never heard of the Arts and Crafts movement?
That would have been too hippie-ish for Orwell. (Hippies did exist in his
time, although not by that name. More than once he refers to such people
disparagingly as "bearded fruit-juice drinkers".)
--
Elrond Hubbard, lbe...@mnsi.net
I may speak for my employer, but I post for myself.
Arthur Hlavaty
:>Nobody makes mouldings with a chisel who can use a router.
This sounds like something from a Lewis Carroll puzzle. The next sentence
would be something like, "But anyone who can use a router is despised
unless he can also manage a crocodile."
--
Arthur D. Hlavaty hla...@panix.com
Church of the SuperGenius In Wile E. We Trust
\\\ E-zine available on request. ///
Jo Walton
hla...@panix3.panix.com "Arthur Hlavaty" writes:
[attribution lost]
> :>Nobody makes mouldings with a chisel who can use a router.
>
> This sounds like something from a Lewis Carroll puzzle. The next sentence
> would be something like, "But anyone who can use a router is despised
> unless he can also manage a crocodile."
Crocodiles eat mouldings.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Blood of Kings Poetry; rasfw FAQ;
Reviews; Interstichia; Momentum - a paying market for real poetry.
Squirrel Police
by Harry Harrison.
sdti...@my-dejanews.com
jred...@hotmail.com (Squirrel Police) wrote:
> "Bill, The Galactic Hero, On The Planet Of Tasteless Pleasure."
> by Harry Harrison.
>
*The Z Effect*, by (I think) Marshall Laurens. Truly putrid. So bad, it
has to be a parody. Now that I think of it... heck, change this one to
"BEST" SF ever read.
And also under "worst": my own WIP. :/
Steve
--
It was the BATF in the vanguard, as usual, backed up by FBI shock
troops... I saw the gold flag of the IRS and realized we would doubtless
have to face flamethrowers and chemical-biological warfare shells.
-Doom: Hell on Earth
Dave O'Neill
sdti...@my-dejanews.com wrote in article
<76bhht$avm$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> In article <76a5q1$50p$2...@news.ptialaska.net>,
> jred...@hotmail.com (Squirrel Police) wrote:
> > "Bill, The Galactic Hero, On The Planet Of Tasteless Pleasure."
> > by Harry Harrison.
Weren't these Harry Harrison AND XXXXXX
Where XXXXX did the writing?
Never mind eh,
Mine, without a doubt was
Adrift in the Stratosphere by Prof E Lowe.
It's god awful!
Sea Wasp
VAN GOGH IN SPACE ! ! ! !
By Doug Bell.
Even for self-promoted internet fiction, this was BAD. I've read fanfic
that would make your eyeballs self-destruct, but VGiS made it look like
Shakespeare.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.html
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
Morgan E. Smith
The Sacred Seven by Amy Stout - absolutely too many viewpoints,
confusing naming practice, dumb add-ons (apparently to make it
"different"), a "lost heir" plot device blown apart at about chapter
three, a cutesy widdle dwarf-kid who annoys you and contributes absolutely
nothing to the book, as shown in a later book where she disappears and
nobody much cares, even though they have been caring madly about her
welfare all over the damned place up until that point...possibly the worst
trilogy in the history of fantasy up until I read
"The Duke of Sumava" - whoa, hey, I didn't get past chapter two,
actually. Sara Wrench manages in the first few pages to overwrite so much
that even a high school creative writing class would vomit. Apparently the
word "mud" was much to ordinary and mundane for Sara: we instead were
given "sodden duff". Leaves on trees were not content just to be moved by
the wind. They rustled, danced, fluttered and whispered all the way
through the duke-in-peril's outraged demands that the forest (apparently a
living, breathing and sentient entity) protect him in the manner of a
vassal - he is then quite flabbergasted when it does so.
I passed this one around to a bunch of people: three got no further than
I did, two skimmed through and reported that it got no better as time went
on, one woman skipped from page four to the end and noted that the
writing, if anything, got worse, and one martyred soul struggled through
to the end and said that given the choice of reading another book by Sara
Wrench and having a migraine headache, there was no question that the
migraine would be preferable.
In the case of merely disappointing SF reads, I can only say that, C.S.
Friedman's Intro to the contrary, "This Alien Shore" was the most
derivative and unhandy, overcomplicated rehash of "Kids in Space - Big
Trouble" plot that I've read this year. She may think she stumbled on
something new and different, but Charles Sheffield has been churning these
suckers out for years, and they're way, way better; (Largely because they
don't pretend to be something more than what they are...) and he didn't
pretend to be doing something new either.
But that's just my (crabby) opinion.
Morgan Smith
Rich Horton
>The worst SF I ever read...I tend to blurt out, "Rogue Moon" by Algis
>Budrys if I don't have any time to think this one over. I bought it used
>at a paperback sale in Jr. High and it was just the most dismal,
>claustrophobic thing I'd read to that point, so much so that it has become
>a kind of landmark in my mental SF-reading landscape.
Of course, it may just not be a book for you, but ... have you tried
rereading it? You never read the same book twice, and it strikes me
that Jr. High is a bit early to read a book like _Rogue Moon_. (It
would have been early for me, anyway.)
To be sure, _RM_ is a bit claustrophobic ... but that's part of the
point. It's also one of the finest SF novels of all time. It makes
my top ten, I'd bet it'd make a consensus top 20. But, YMMV.
--
Rich Horton | rrho...@concentric.net
Web Page: www.sff.net/people/richard.horton (New reviews of
_Halfway Human_ and _The Star Fraction_ and _Deepdrive_.)
Sea Wasp
> You never read the same book twice
??
That's odd. I could SWEAR I read "Lord of the Rings" more than once.
What the heck is that line supposed to MEAN?
Rick Rodrigues
>Rich Horton wrote:
>> You never read the same book twice
>
> ??
>
> That's odd. I could SWEAR I read "Lord of the Rings" more than once.
>
> What the heck is that line supposed to MEAN?
>
Isn't he saying the same "you" never reads a book twice, i.e., experience
constantly, though incrementally, changes your perspective and
understanding. You never step into the same river twice and all that.
"Words are birds, experience the tree they roost in. The birds come and go."
- Chinese Proverb
Jay Random
>
> In article <368EFD...@wizvax.net>, sea...@wizvax.net wrote:
>
> >Rich Horton wrote:
> >> You never read the same book twice
> >
> > ??
> >
> > That's odd. I could SWEAR I read "Lord of the Rings" more than once.
> >
> > What the heck is that line supposed to MEAN?
> >
>
> Isn't he saying the same "you" never reads a book twice, i.e., experience
> constantly, though incrementally, changes your perspective and
> understanding. You never step into the same river twice and all that.
He may indeed be _trying_ to say that, but he isn't succeeding. The referent
of `the same' is `book', not `you'. No matter how much you change, the book
itself always remains the same.
Steve Furlong
>> You never read the same book twice>
In article <368EFD...@wizvax.net>, Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> wrote:
> What the heck is that line supposed to MEAN?
When you're not looking, the Illuminati replace your books with near
copies. This also explains the common difficulty of finding your
place in the book you were reading last night.
Steve Furlong
Graham Head
>Rich Horton wrote:
>> You never read the same book twice
>
>
> That's odd. I could SWEAR I read "Lord of the Rings" more than once.
>
>
'You' change - so that the effect the words have in your head is
different with each rereading, (others have expanded on this) and
More physically, the text can be different. People skip -
particularly on rereading - parts of stories (dialogue, long
descriptions of landscape, whatever), and rarely do they skip the same
sections consistently; also, we are all prone to misread words and
sentences, particularly over a long stretch. Also, people may read
different sections at different speeds with different rereadings (eg
because the bus is coming, or its late at night) - so their impact can
change profoundly.
Both of these meanings are frequently used and intended, in my
experience. Far from uncommon.
--
Graham
Rich Horton
wrote:
>He may indeed be _trying_ to say that, but he isn't succeeding. The referent
>of `the same' is `book', not `you'. No matter how much you change, the book
>itself always remains the same.
Well, it's a quote, but I can't recall from who. At any rate, in this
sentence, "book" refers to the experience which reaches your brain.
You can be snippy and purposely try to misread the shorthand statement
I made if you wish: fine. (And I know you are a defender of the
English Language, and all that, Jay, so I forgive you.) Thus: any
rereading of a book will produce a different effect on any reader. In
particular, in the case cited, a Jr. High reader of _Rogue Moon_ (and
many another book) is likely to "read a very different book"
[metaphorically, blast you! <g>] than the same fellow 15 years later.
Michael Caldwell
>As always in these threads, I must direct your attention to
> VAN GOGH IN SPACE ! ! ! !
> By Doug Bell.
> Even for self-promoted internet fiction, this was BAD. I've read fanfic
>that would make your eyeballs self-destruct, but VGiS made it look like
>Shakespeare.
Please oh great one tell me where I may find it. (Glutton for punishment)
--
Michael Caldwell
>Rich Horton wrote:
>> You never read the same book twice
> That's odd. I could SWEAR I read "Lord of the Rings" more than once.
> What the heck is that line supposed to MEAN?
I imagine it's a statement of the type -
"You can never walk the same road in both directions."
"You can never go home."
etc
They're meant more to make a point about how the world/you change over time
than to be actually true (and ignore the ship of theseus objections as being
irrelevent). IMHO they don't really work as a metaphore either but...
--
Immortus45
>But actually the worst ever is the Gor series, hands down. It's just so
>offensive on so many levels, and so tedious in its monomania.
I've never read it . What makes it so bad ?
Sea Wasp
>
> On Sun, 03 Jan 1999 07:24:44 GMT, Jay Random <j.ra...@home.com>
> wrote:
>
> >He may indeed be _trying_ to say that, but he isn't succeeding. The referent
> >of `the same' is `book', not `you'. No matter how much you change, the book
> >itself always remains the same.
>
> Well, it's a quote, but I can't recall from who. At any rate, in this
> sentence, "book" refers to the experience which reaches your brain.
> You can be snippy and purposely try to misread the shorthand statement
> I made if you wish: fine. (And I know you are a defender of the
> English Language, and all that, Jay, so I forgive you.) Thus: any
> rereading of a book will produce a different effect on any reader.
I will concede that it is POSSIBLE for such a thing to happen. I will
not accept that it is either necessary or even tremendously likely. I
haven't noticed a "different effect" from reading LotR or any other book
that I can recall from the first "effect" it had on me.
Keith Morrison
Man goes to Gor. Man has a few adventures mixed with a great deal
of sex. Woman goes to Gor, dismayed to learn all females are sex
slaves, resists for a short time, finds she likes it. Author
blathers endlessly that this is the way the world should be.
Repeat 20+ times.
--
Keith Morrison
kei...@polarnet.ca
Unreadygal
'passage' in its title.
The premise was ... get this .. they set off an atomic bomb to blast a new
passage across the isthmus of Panama. All children born at the instant of the
blast were linked telepathically.
Cheesh!
And then there's THE CHILDREN OF MEN by P.D.James. What makes mainstream
writers think they can write SF?
Do they even read it?
Respond to Ali...@ix.netcom.com if you have comments. This is my Las Vegas
screen name and I'm going back to L.A.
Joseph Askew
>Repeat 20+ times.
Well the Gor series is one of those oddities in that how offensive
I find it tends to depend on how recently I've read one and how late
in the series it was. As it has been a while since I read one, and
it was an early one (the relatively harmless _Tarnsman of Gor_ I
think), I don't think you can judge the entire series like this.
Sure his later books are a rape every other page which the woman
comes to realise she loves, with a lot of preaching inbetween, but
the earlier ones are more in the Borroughs-Mars-tradition and aren't
all that bad. In fact I'm not sure there's much sex in the early ones
although lots of bad girls get taught through rougher than usual
handling to be good girls. Not much worse than what you'ld see in a
few Hollywood films before the 60s. I saw _Philadelphia Story_ the
other day which seems to think to be happy a strong woman needs to
be humiliated and brought to heel. But admittedly no one got beaten.
Joseph
--
Reason Why I'm Never Going to Get an Academic Job Number Three:
"[Monsanto] said that they had carried out 'extensive safety
assessments of new biotech crops' including tests using rats
that have results published in journals" (http://news.bbc.co.uk)
Nancy Lebovitz
Unreadygal <unrea...@aol.com> wrote:
>Let me nominate a book by a mainstream writer, Lawrence Schoonover. It had
>'passage' in its title.
>The premise was ... get this .. they set off an atomic bomb to blast a new
>passage across the isthmus of Panama. All children born at the instant of the
>blast were linked telepathically.
>Cheesh!
>
>And then there's THE CHILDREN OF MEN by P.D.James. What makes mainstream
>writers think they can write SF?
>Do they even read it?
>
Imho, when mainstream writers write sf, they're apt to write old-fashioned
anything-can-happen-as-long-as-it's-visually-or-philosophically-interesting
sf.
Has anyone read the new Walter Mosley book? The title is _Blue Fire_ or
somesuch.
John Boston
says...
>
>Let me nominate a book by a mainstream writer, Lawrence Schoonover. It had
>'passage' in its title.
>The premise was ... get this .. they set off an atomic bomb to blast a new
>passage across the isthmus of Panama. All children born at the instant of the
>blast were linked telepathically.
>Cheesh!
CENTRAL PASSAGE, a notoriously bad book until it was deservedly
forgotten.
>
>And then there's THE CHILDREN OF MEN by P.D.James. What makes mainstream
>writers think they can write SF?
>Do they even read it?
Some of them don't think they can "write SF." They think they
can borrow devices and techniques that antedate the SF genre and do or
say something worthwhile. Some of them, like Schoonover, are idiots who
wind up with nothing more than ignorantly bad imitation genre fiction.
Others spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel. Example: Marge Piercy's
HE, SHE AND IT (a/k/a BODY OF GLASS, if memory serves). Still others do
considerably better, even if what they produce doesn't correspond to genre
fashion. Examples: Denis Johnson's FISKADORO, Russell Hoban's RIDDLEY
WALKER, Ronald Wright's A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE.
As to whether they read SF: some do, some don't. The
late Baird Searles, who ran the SF Shop in NYC for many years,
said Marge Piercy was one of his best customers. And here's
what Doris Lessing says:
"I once thought of writing a book called _My Alternative Lives_,
using the conventions of space fiction, some of whose ideas are
the same as those on the frontiers of physics. But the plot
here would be that the lives of the doctor, the animal doctor,
the farmer, the explorer [that she might have been] would run
concurrently with my life, set in other parallel universes or
'realities,' continually influencing mine. . . ."
This is from the first volume of her autobiography, UNDER MY SKIN.
I'm up to about 1940, and she mentions reading and being pretty
heavily influenced by Stapledon's LAST AND FIRST MEN and Wells'
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, which she apparently read more or
less when they were published (early 1930s; she was born in 1919).
You may not like the results, but she has at least paid some
attention.
John Boston
William Clifford
wrote:
>In article <19990104124037...@ng08.aol.com>,
>Unreadygal <unrea...@aol.com> wrote:
>>Let me nominate a book by a mainstream writer, Lawrence Schoonover. It had
>>'passage' in its title.
>>The premise was ... get this .. they set off an atomic bomb to blast a new
>>passage across the isthmus of Panama. All children born at the instant of the
>>blast were linked telepathically.
>>Cheesh!
>>
>>And then there's THE CHILDREN OF MEN by P.D.James. What makes mainstream
>>writers think they can write SF?
>>Do they even read it?
>>
>I bet you wouldn't like the Canopus books by Doris Lessing, either.
>
>Imho, when mainstream writers write sf, they're apt to write old-fashioned
>anything-can-happen-as-long-as-it's-visually-or-philosophically-interesting
>sf.
A friend of mine has threatened to loan me the _Laws of Love_ by Laura
Esquivel (whatever, it the woman who wrote _Like Water For
Chocolate_). I found it in a bargain bin, read the dust jacket and am
truly frightened. My friend says it's brilliant. I believe her. It
would have to be.
-William Clifford
Know your fields before replying.
EllenDat
>unrea...@aol.com
says.....
>>
>>Let me nominate a book by a mainstream writer, Lawrence Schoonover. It had
>>'passage' in its title.
>>The premise was ... get this .. they set off an atomic bomb to blast a new
>>passage across the isthmus of Panama. All children born at the instant of
>the
>>blast were linked telepathically.
>>Cheesh!
>
> CENTRAL PASSAGE, a notoriously bad book until it was deservedly
>forgotten.
>
>>
>>And then there's THE CHILDREN OF MEN by P.D.James. What makes mainstream
>>writers think they can write SF?
>>Do they even read it?
>
>
And her visionary novel THE FOUR GATED CITY was pretty damned good. As is her
novel THE FIFTH CHILD( I think) which is a dark fantasy. I believe she'd
consider herself writing sf as well as other things. She gave out the Hugo
Award in Brighton several years ago.
John D. Owen
>
> Rich Horton wrote:
> > You never read the same book twice
>
>
> That's odd. I could SWEAR I read "Lord of the Rings" more than once.
>
> What the heck is that line supposed to MEAN?
>
That what you are changes with time and experience and what you bring to
the second reading of a book is different to the first. Therefore what
you see in the book on second reading is subtly changed from what you
saw in there in the first place. Even if you turn over the book on
completing the last page and start again with page 1, you are changed
enough by reading the book not to have the same view of it second time
around.
JDO
Jo Walton
jbo...@mindspring.com "John Boston" writes:
>
> Some of them don't think they can "write SF." They think they
> can borrow devices and techniques that antedate the SF genre and do or
> say something worthwhile. Some of them, like Schoonover, are idiots who
> wind up with nothing more than ignorantly bad imitation genre fiction.
> Others spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel. Example: Marge Piercy's
> HE, SHE AND IT (a/k/a BODY OF GLASS, if memory serves). Still others do
> considerably better, even if what they produce doesn't correspond to genre
> fashion. Examples: Denis Johnson's FISKADORO, Russell Hoban's RIDDLEY
> WALKER, Ronald Wright's A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE.
>
> As to whether they read SF: some do, some don't. The
> late Baird Searles, who ran the SF Shop in NYC for many years,
> said Marge Piercy was one of his best customers.
She lives on Cape Cod, it's strange she should buy SF in NYC rather than
Boston.
From what she says in her essays in :Parti-Coloured Blocks For A Quilt:
(which is quite old) she doesn't read SF, or rather, she has read some
but finds it unimaginative in general. IIRC she says something like
"The future, new planets, and all they can think to do with it is
empires and feudalism." I'd say from :Body of Glass: that she's read
Gibson. But reading Gibson and taking the tropes is what's wrong with
that novel.
:Woman on the Edge of Time: does work as SF, for me anyway. But utopian
SF is it's own genre in many ways and one where many of the forming
works are coming from outside SF.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
First NorAm Public Appearance: Imperiums to Order, Kitchener, March 20th
Freshly UPDATED web-page http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia;
RASFW FAQ, Reviews, Fanzine, Momentum Guidelines, Blood of Kings Poetry
Nancy Lebovitz
Rich Horton <rrho...@concentric.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 04 Jan 1999 10:37:13 -0500, Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net>
>wrote:
>> I will concede that it is POSSIBLE for such a thing to happen. I will
>>not accept that it is either necessary or even tremendously likely. I
>>haven't noticed a "different effect" from reading LotR or any other book
>>that I can recall from the first "effect" it had on me.
>
>All I can say is, you are not the same reader I am. It makes a
>difference to me, sometimes, whether I read a story in the morning or
>the night. (There is something about hormone levels or whatever that
>makes me more emotional in the morning, I used to purposely reread
>particularly moving stories or passages or poems in the morning
>because that seemed to enhance the effect.)
I either don't have those effects, or I'm not noticing them.
>
>I quite sincerely believe that it is very likely, for many readers,
>that 20 years life experience changes the effect of reading many
Very true in my case. LOTR has changed quite a bit for me.
On the other hand, I'm rather disappointed by my experience of reading
Sheckley's fiction not changing at all in 25 years.
>books. Moreover, it seems trivial that for many books, =knowing what
>is going to happen= profoundly changes the experience. And surely you
>will concede that rereading can help one pick up tricky details, or
>especially tricky foreshadowings?
>
Nancy Lebovitz
William Clifford <wo...@hooya.com> wrote:
>On 5 Jan 1999 03:53:43 GMT, na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
>wrote:
>
>>In article <19990104124037...@ng08.aol.com>,
>>Unreadygal <unrea...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>'passage' in its title.
>>>The premise was ... get this .. they set off an atomic bomb to blast a new
>>>passage across the isthmus of Panama. All children born at the instant of the
>>>blast were linked telepathically.
>>>Cheesh!
>>>
>>>writers think they can write SF?
>>>Do they even read it?
>>>
>>
>>Imho, when mainstream writers write sf, they're apt to write old-fashioned
>>anything-can-happen-as-long-as-it's-visually-or-philosophically-interesting
>>sf.
>
>A friend of mine has threatened to loan me the _Laws of Love_ by Laura
>Esquivel (whatever, it the woman who wrote _Like Water For
>Chocolate_). I found it in a bargain bin, read the dust jacket and am
>truly frightened. My friend says it's brilliant. I believe her. It
>would have to be.
>
but I'll grant that the psychic future where your house plants might
yell at you was kind of fun.
_Like Water for Chocolate_ was unique--tall tale story-telling used
to hyperbolize emotions, plus recipes.
Sea Wasp
> That what you are changes with time and experience and what you bring to
> the second reading of a book is different to the first.
I might accept that as a statement of something that MIGHT happen. I
certainly don't notice any difference in LotR, or any other book I've
reread; therefore I don't accept it as a general statement.
John Boston
>
>In article <76s640$3km$7...@camel29.mindspring.com>
> jbo...@mindspring.com "John Boston" writes:
>>
>> Some of them don't think they can "write SF." They think they
>> can borrow devices and techniques that antedate the SF genre and do or
>> say something worthwhile. Some of them, like Schoonover, are idiots who
>> wind up with nothing more than ignorantly bad imitation genre fiction.
>> Others spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel. Example: Marge Piercy's
>> HE, SHE AND IT (a/k/a BODY OF GLASS, if memory serves). Still others do
>> considerably better, even if what they produce doesn't correspond to genre
>> fashion. Examples: Denis Johnson's FISKADORO, Russell Hoban's RIDDLEY
>> WALKER, Ronald Wright's A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE.
>>
>> As to whether they read SF: some do, some don't. The
>> late Baird Searles, who ran the SF Shop in NYC for many years,
>> said Marge Piercy was one of his best customers.
>
>She lives on Cape Cod, it's strange she should buy SF in NYC rather than
>Boston.
This was 15-18 years ago when she lived in NYC. Now that I
am poking at this dusty memory, I think I probably mis-reported it;
the comment was more along the lines of "She stops in here all the
time." Not quite the same thing.
>
>From what she says in her essays in :Parti-Coloured Blocks For A Quilt:
>(which is quite old) she doesn't read SF, or rather, she has read some
>but finds it unimaginative in general. IIRC she says something like
>"The future, new planets, and all they can think to do with it is
>empires and feudalism." I'd say from :Body of Glass: that she's read
>Gibson. But reading Gibson and taking the tropes is what's wrong with
>that novel.
>
>:Woman on the Edge of Time: does work as SF, for me anyway. But utopian
>SF is it's own genre in many ways and one where many of the forming
>works are coming from outside SF.
Agreed. Ever read her first semi-SF novel, DANCE THE EAGLE
TO SLEEP (circa 1970)? It's about a sort of hippie rebellion, unsuccessful
of course, full of the spirit of the time. (Wish I remembered it
better.)
John Boston
Jay Random
>
> John D. Owen wrote:
>
> > That what you are changes with time and experience and what you bring to
> > the second reading of a book is different to the first.
>
> I might accept that as a statement of something that MIGHT happen. I
> certainly don't notice any difference in LotR, or any other book I've
> reread; therefore I don't accept it as a general statement.
Seconded.
John D. Owen
The fact that you don't notice it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
To take LOTR as an example -- no matter what, on the second reading your
perceptions of the book had to be different because you would have been
anticipating what comes next much more accurately (knowing instead of
guessing), which argues a different kind of experience from a first-time
read.
JDO
Jo Walton
jbo...@mindspring.com "John Boston" writes:
> In article <915533...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk says...
> Agreed. Ever read her first semi-SF novel, DANCE THE EAGLE
> TO SLEEP (circa 1970)? It's about a sort of hippie rebellion, unsuccessful
> of course, full of the spirit of the time. (Wish I remembered it
> better.)
It's not her best work, and politically _very_ sixties and more than a
little naive, but I sort of like it. I understand that it's a SFised
version of the same sort of political events she writes about in :Vida:.
I wouldn't call :Dance the Eagle to Sleep: SF, but it's hard to see what
else to call it.
It is unusual to read SF that is as well written as Piercy. SF that good
exists, but there isn't _much_ of it. So :Body of Glass: is a derivative
SF novel with clumsy incluing and bad pacing, but when you get away from
those flaws the characters are tremendously real.
The only novel of hers I really dislike is :City of Darkness, City of
Light: which is a historical about the French Revolution that's full of
huge literary flaws and people not behaving like real people. I can't
understand what happened there.
tomlinson
: The fact that you don't notice it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
: To take LOTR as an example -- no matter what, on the second reading your
: perceptions of the book had to be different because you would have been
: anticipating what comes next much more accurately (knowing instead of
: guessing), which argues a different kind of experience from a first-time
: read.
I know this happened to me, although it took a while for me to catch on.
When I first read the LOTR all the way through in junior high school,
I couldn't wait to get to all the scenes of battles and confrontations.
Now, I much prefer the first chapters of the story, which proceed at
a deliberate pace and brilliantly evoke a sense of place and atmosphere.
-tomlinson
--
Ernest S. Tomlinson - San Diego State University
------------------------------------------------
"I felt it was high time that someone did for Bach what Copland did for
Lincoln, what Beethoven did for Wellington, what Tchaikovsky did for
little Russians, and what Richard Strauss did for himself."
Eli Bishop
> Unreadygal wrote:
> >And then there's THE CHILDREN OF MEN by P.D.James. What makes
> >mainstream writers think they can write SF?
> >Do they even read it?
Are there really enough mainstream writers writing SF to make
generalizations about them? And if they bother you so much, what about
the vast numbers of bad SF writers who never wrote anything but SF?
I liked THE CHILDREN OF MEN a lot, but I think the good and bad things
about it have more to do with P.D. James than with whether it's SF or
not.
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> Imho, when mainstream writers write sf, they're apt to write
> old-fashioned anything-can-happen-as-long-as-it's-visually-or-
> philosophically-interesting sf.
Like, say, BRAVE NEW WORLD?
--
Eli Bishop / www.concentric.net/~Elib
"I been tryin' to put a chicken in the window,
to chase away the wolf from the door" - John Prine
Carl Lund
>Rich Horton wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, 03 Jan 1999 07:24:44 GMT, Jay Random <j.ra...@home.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >He may indeed be _trying_ to say that, but he isn't succeeding. The referent
>> >of `the same' is `book', not `you'. No matter how much you change, the book
>> >itself always remains the same.
>>
>> Well, it's a quote, but I can't recall from who. At any rate, in this
>> sentence, "book" refers to the experience which reaches your brain.
>> You can be snippy and purposely try to misread the shorthand statement
>> I made if you wish: fine. (And I know you are a defender of the
>> English Language, and all that, Jay, so I forgive you.) Thus: any
>> rereading of a book will produce a different effect on any reader.
>
>not accept that it is either necessary or even tremendously likely. I
>haven't noticed a "different effect" from reading LotR or any other book
>that I can recall from the first "effect" it had on me.
>
The transactional view of reading indicates that a person's _comprehension_ of
any work is a combination of that person's experiences (his/her "schema" is
education jargon) with the printed word. In other words, reading is not
just an act of assigning meaning to symbols, but rather a combination of
reader and author, each reader brings a unique interpretation to written
works.
Under this view, as a person's experiences change, so does his/her perceptions
of a book. This view does not mean that a reader will feel dramatically
different about the book, just that that reader's comprehension of the book
will be slightly different.
Anyway, I may have left out some of the finer details, but that's a brief
synopsis of the theory, at least what I remember from the last reading
education class I had that dealt with it at all.
The quote originally given, though, isn't all that different, in terms of
attitude, from the old adage that "you can't cross the same river twice."
--Carl Lund
William Clifford
wrote:
>In article <3691a6fa...@news.ionline.com>,
>William Clifford <wo...@hooya.com> wrote:
>>On 5 Jan 1999 03:53:43 GMT, na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
>>wrote:
[SNIP]
>>>Imho, when mainstream writers write sf, they're apt to write old-fashioned
>>>anything-can-happen-as-long-as-it's-visually-or-philosophically-interesting
>>>sf.
>>
>>A friend of mine has threatened to loan me the _Laws of Love_ by Laura
>>Esquivel (whatever, it the woman who wrote _Like Water For
>>Chocolate_). I found it in a bargain bin, read the dust jacket and am
>>truly frightened. My friend says it's brilliant. I believe her. It
>>would have to be.
>>
>Why would it have to be brilliant? I lost interest in _Laws of Love_ (?),
>but I'll grant that the psychic future where your house plants might
>yell at you was kind of fun.
That's even more discouraging. It looked so lurid, so outrageous, and
so brave that to hear that someone could lose interest... That's kind
of what I mean about it *having* to be brilliant. Right now I'm
reading Eddison's _The Work Ouroboros_ which is all of those things. I
can understand how someone might be turned off by it but once you get
in, to lose interest,... I just wouldn't know what to say to that.
>_Like Water for Chocolate_ was unique--tall tale story-telling used
>to hyperbolize emotions, plus recipes.
I saw the movie. Wow.
draenog
> I will concede that it is POSSIBLE for such a thing to happen. I will
>not accept that it is either necessary or even tremendously likely. I
>haven't noticed a "different effect" from reading LotR or any other book
>that I can recall from the first "effect" it had on me.
>
bother you at all?
Although I don't mind reading a series out of order, I do find that books
change with re-reading, especially if they're part of a series. The first
time I read Memory I thought "Hmm, well that was ok", but I had an idea
that I'd like it more as I got more used to the "author's voice". Which
turned out to be true.
Mind you, my books seem to have lost the knack they had of actually
changing what happened in them. As a child I often used to re-read books
holding my breath for the bit I knew was coming up, and *it wouldn't
happen*. Not then, or later. I don't know whether the Tooth Fairy swapped
my books for the abridged version while I was asleep or something, but
I had very clear memories of reading passages that just weren't there
later.
draenog
--
to reply by mail, replace nospam with yon dash net
Eli Bishop
draenog wrote:
>
> Mind you, my books seem to have lost the knack they had of actually
> changing what happened in them. As a child I often used to re-read
> books holding my breath for the bit I knew was coming up, and *it
> wouldn't happen*. Not then, or later. I don't know whether the Tooth
> Fairy swapped my books for the abridged version while I was asleep or
> something, but I had very clear memories of reading passages that just
> weren't there later.
I read so compulsively as a pre-teen that I often created alternate
versions of books just by skimming too fast.
I can't remember the title of this book or whether it was any good, but
the library had it in the young-adult SF section. Some college students
or young Red Cross workers or something were exploring a planet where
everything was generally very nice but people occasionally died of a
gruesome strangling disease (the word "tracheotomy" entered my
nightmares thanks to this writer). The narrator fell in love with
someone and then nearly died of the plague, but was saved just in time
when they discovered it was spread by butterflies(?).
The trouble was, somehow I either failed to read the last 5 pages, or
was so crushed by the narrator's apparent death (fade to black, mourning
the love he'd never have) that nothing else registered. All I knew was
that he died horribly and never got a girlfriend. For weeks, I was
totally depressed (and kind of mesmerized by the romantic tragedy aspect
too, I guess -- I was sort of impressed that the writer would dare to do
that to me) and stopped reading SF. Then some unknown time later, I
picked up the book again and was amazed to find a cheesy happy ending.
Sea Wasp
>
> In article <3690E0...@wizvax.net>, Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> wrote:
> > I will concede that it is POSSIBLE for such a thing to happen. I will
> >not accept that it is either necessary or even tremendously likely. I
> >haven't noticed a "different effect" from reading LotR or any other book
> >that I can recall from the first "effect" it had on me.
> >
> Hmmmm. Does reading a series back-to-front or otherwise out of order
> bother you at all?
I'm sure it would, if I ever did such a thing, which I wouldn't. This
assumes the series builds notably on each book; book "series" that
amount to separate stories in a loosely-connected framework are another
thing entirely.
Helen & Bob
Somebody posted an absolutly hilarious letter supposidly from a roman calendar maker to
Caesar regarding the new method of counting years, with Y0K as the problem. I wanted to
save it , it cracked me up. The problem is, I very intelligently hit the wrong damn key,
and lost it. Would wohever posted that please send it to me email. It is FUNNY.
Thanks in advance, Bob
Eileen Lufkin
> exists, but there isn't _much_ of it. So :Body of Glass: is a derivative
> SF novel with clumsy incluing and bad pacing, but when you get away from
> those flaws the characters are tremendously real.
>
> The only novel of hers I really dislike is :City of Darkness, City of
> Light: which is a historical about the French Revolution that's full of
> huge literary flaws and people not behaving like real people. I can't
> understand what happened there.
I think she identified so strongly with the revolutionaries that she
couldn't stand to imagine the degeneration into the terror realistically.
I would love to read an alternative history were the revolution didn't go
bad.
--
Eileen Lufkin Eileen...@dejanews.com
Dave Storey
since that was all my school library had. Took me 15 minutes to figure
out I had started in the middle, but it didn't put me off, I've since
read it in the right order ~20 times!
But then, we all read it before the 'earlier works' were published,
didn't we (anyone aged >20 anyway). Can you imagine trying to read the
Silmarillion BEFORE LOTR??
D
p.s. How come this NG is 30% Clinton, 30% Spam, and only 20% SF? Should
I be looking for rec.arts.sf.written.no_really ?
-----
In article <91589046...@Chaos.es.co.nz>, Michael Caldwell
<adsu...@es.co.nz> writes
>tomlinson wrote in message <7703jn$phk$3...@hole.sdsu.edu>...
>>John D. Owen (J.D....@open.ac.uk) wrote:
>
>>: The fact that you don't notice it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
>>: To take LOTR as an example -- no matter what, on the second reading your
>>: perceptions of the book had to be different because you would have been
>>: anticipating what comes next much more accurately (knowing instead of
>>: guessing), which argues a different kind of experience from a first-time
>>: read.
>
>>I know this happened to me, although it took a while for me to catch on.
>>When I first read the LOTR all the way through in junior high school,
>>I couldn't wait to get to all the scenes of battles and confrontations.
>>Now, I much prefer the first chapters of the story, which proceed at
>>a deliberate pace and brilliantly evoke a sense of place and atmosphere.
>
>
>I have no problem with this as I have always prefered the first chapters up
>to the inn at Bree, and the very end of the book where they travel to the
>grey shores and leave. The interlude with the Ents is great too.
>
>--
>
>
>
Rgds
Dave Storey
Sea Wasp
>
> Duh - I'm the idiot who read volume 2 of LOTR first, about 40 years ago,
> since that was all my school library had. Took me 15 minutes to figure
> out I had started in the middle, but it didn't put me off, I've since
> read it in the right order ~20 times!
>
> But then, we all read it before the 'earlier works' were published,
> didn't we (anyone aged >20 anyway). Can you imagine trying to read the
> Silmarillion BEFORE LOTR??
Sure. Why not? Heck, I'd have preferred it that way. At least if it had
been written "properly" (i.e., the mythology and background, but without
the spoilers for LotR that were in it the way it was published). One of
my favorite kinds of reading when I was a kid were collections of
mythological tales; "The Silmarillion" was nothing more than a more
adult-language version of "D'aulaires Greek Myths" for Middle Earth from
my point of view.
Brenda Clough
Sea Wasp wrote:
> Dave Storey wrote:
> >
> > Duh - I'm the idiot who read volume 2 of LOTR first, about 40 years ago,
> > since that was all my school library had. Took me 15 minutes to figure
> > out I had started in the middle, but it didn't put me off, I've since
> > read it in the right order ~20 times!
> >
> > But then, we all read it before the 'earlier works' were published,
> > didn't we (anyone aged >20 anyway). Can you imagine trying to read the
> > Silmarillion BEFORE LOTR??
>
> Sure. Why not? Heck, I'd have preferred it that way.
I had an even more trying first experience. My school library had THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE
RING and nothing else. It took me years to get my hands on the other two volumes.
Brenda
--
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD from Tor Books
<clo...@erols.com> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Michael Caldwell
>In article <3690E0...@wizvax.net>, Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net>
wrote:
>> I will concede that it is POSSIBLE for such a thing to happen. I will
>>not accept that it is either necessary or even tremendously likely. I
>>haven't noticed a "different effect" from reading LotR or any other book
>>that I can recall from the first "effect" it had on me.
>Hmmmm. Does reading a series back-to-front or otherwise out of order
>bother you at all?
No. I often start reading a series halfway through if I happen to find the
nth book before the 1st book. IMHO if the writng is clear you should be able
to pick up the gist of what has happened before, and if the story is
gripping it really doesn't matter. My favourite books are books which you
can open on any page and just start reading. Pratchett, Hughart, and
McCaffrey are good for this <although your milage may vary>.
Likewise when I need a book to read I often pick a book in a series that
isn't the first, just because I like that particular book. I tend to read 5
or 6 books at once, and this trains you up to accept narrative dislocation
in your stride.
>Although I don't mind reading a series out of order, I do find that books
>change with re-reading, especially if they're part of a series. The first
>time I read Memory I thought "Hmm, well that was ok", but I had an idea
>that I'd like it more as I got more used to the "author's voice". Which
>turned out to be true.
I *tend* to find no such thing, although I have noted that some books which
touched me very deeply as a child no longer do to the same extent (due to
being read a dozen times or so). I'm thinking especially of the book "The
High King" by Lloyd Alexander here, I actually cried at the end the first
couple of times I read it, now I just feel sad. It's only the really strong
reactions that change though, and even they don't really change, merely dull
due to repetition.
>Mind you, my books seem to have lost the knack they had of actually
>changing what happened in them. As a child I often used to re-read books
>holding my breath for the bit I knew was coming up, and *it wouldn't
>happen*. Not then, or later. I don't know whether the Tooth Fairy swapped
>my books for the abridged version while I was asleep or something, but
>I had very clear memories of reading passages that just weren't there
>later.
This used to happen when I was very young, but only because I would often
misread things. I had the experience recently of reading a book I read often
as a child and realising I'd misread certain words constantly, and also not
understood the way in which sentences with lots of commas fitted togeather
(I'd read them out of beat and gotten the wrong meaning).
--
Michael Caldwell
>Sea Wasp wrote:
>> John D. Owen wrote:
>> > That what you are changes with time and experience and what you bring
to
>> > the second reading of a book is different to the first.
>> I might accept that as a statement of something that MIGHT
happen. I
>> certainly don't notice any difference in LotR, or any other book I've
>> reread; therefore I don't accept it as a general statement.
>Seconded.
Thirded
Michael Caldwell
>Sea Wasp wrote:
>> John D. Owen wrote:
>> > That what you are changes with time and experience and what you bring
to
>> > the second reading of a book is different to the first.
>> I might accept that as a statement of something that MIGHT
happen. I
>> certainly don't notice any difference in LotR, or any other book I've
>> reread; therefore I don't accept it as a general statement.
>The fact that you don't notice it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
>To take LOTR as an example -- no matter what, on the second reading your
>perceptions of the book had to be different because you would have been
>anticipating what comes next much more accurately (knowing instead of
>guessing), which argues a different kind of experience from a first-time
>read.
IMHO, (and as a general philisophical point for this sort of assertion) in
subjective experience if you don't notice it, it hasn't happened.
Assertions to the contrary are literally meaningless as you are unable to
state what would act as a disproof of the statement "when reading a book for
the second time you read it differently" (It's like the concept of being in
denial really). As a matter of logic any statement that cannot possibly be
disproved (and isn't true by virtue of the meanings of the words (such as
the sentence "all bachalors are unmarried")) is meaningless.
--
Michael Caldwell
>John D. Owen (J.D....@open.ac.uk) wrote:
>: The fact that you don't notice it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
>: To take LOTR as an example -- no matter what, on the second reading your
>: perceptions of the book had to be different because you would have been
>: anticipating what comes next much more accurately (knowing instead of
>: guessing), which argues a different kind of experience from a first-time
>: read.
>I know this happened to me, although it took a while for me to catch on.
Jo Walton
Eileen...@dejanews.com "Eileen Lufkin" writes:
> Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
> > It is unusual to read SF that is as well written as Piercy. SF that good
> > exists, but there isn't _much_ of it. So :Body of Glass: is a derivative
> > SF novel with clumsy incluing and bad pacing, but when you get away from
> > those flaws the characters are tremendously real.
> >
> > The only novel of hers I really dislike is :City of Darkness, City of
> > Light: which is a historical about the French Revolution that's full of
> > huge literary flaws and people not behaving like real people. I can't
> > understand what happened there.
>
> I think she identified so strongly with the revolutionaries that she
> couldn't stand to imagine the degeneration into the terror realistically.
But she lived through a revolution that went bad, though in a different
way, and she wrote about that clearly in an SF setting in :Dance the
Eagle to Sleep:. That's what really got me, I wouldn't have thought that
would be the problem.
> I would love to read an alternative history were the revolution didn't go
> bad.
That's a _very_ interesting thought. With all the alternate histories
there are, I wonder why nobody's done that one. Gosh, I'm almost
tempted, though the volume of required research seems formiddable.
Joy Haftel
wrote:
>I had an even more trying first experience. My school library had
>THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING and nothing else. It took me years to get my
>hands on the other two volumes.
I had the opposite problem--my brother gave me _The Return of the King_
alone for Christmas. It's a step above the year he gave me (and everyone
else) a fly swatter, I suppose, but as it was in the years I had no money
to spend on books, it was yet another addition to the bizarre
circumstances which interfere with my attempts to read LOTR.
Hoping to finish it before the next millennium,
daniel patrick duffy
>
> The WorstOfShow award from me goes to a book named "Virus" by Graham
> Watkins. He managed to recreate the Good Times virus, but instead of
> merely deleting your hard drive, it KILLS you. And you can get it
> just by reading a text file.
>
> When a character is required to explain how it works, he states that
> though this is impossible, it is happening anyway. He also suggests
> that an AI has created 10:1 compression which makes 486 class machines
> run substantially better, in addition to hosting the deadly program.
>
> Sigh.
>
> Scott
>
> Scott Ellsworth sc...@eviews.com
> "When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment
> results" - Calvin Coolidge, (Stanley Walker, City Editor, p. 131 (1934))
> "The barbarian is thwarted at the moat." - Scott Adams
Perhaps it works like the old Monty Python skit "The Killer Joke"?
The Blue Rose
I have read LOTR more than twice, but it had been several years since
the last time I read it (at least 10) and then I bought the lovely
biblepaper version for my beloved (who had never read it!) and read it
again.
God it was SOOOOOOO depressing. I remember really enjoying it while a
youngster but as an adult it was entirely different. I am not sure if
I want to read it ever again now :-(
Stacey
Stacey Hill (note 2 spambusters in my address if replying by e-mail)
"A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument"
Check out my Gardening and Rose website at
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/9544/index.html
Creoso 79
The Blue Rose
>what did you find more depressing about it?
The whole hopelessness of it. Frodo's gradual depression as he
carried the Ring and it weighed upon him. The general feeling of
futility and lack of control of events and the way the characters
reacted. The ending was the most depressing of all. I would have to
read it again to remember more exactly but I just had this horrible
feeling of despair after reading it. "Like I should just go and slit
my wrists anyway" kinda feeling.
I have read some very sad books, or books with sad parts but none left
me with this kind of feeling before.
Mark A Mandel
: Duh - I'm the idiot who read volume 2 of LOTR first, about 40 years ago,
No, *I* am!!
Anyway, it was about 35-37 y.a., because I'm pretty sure it hadn't come
out yet in '59, and in my case vol.2 (TTT) was the only volume available
in the NYPL -- any branch that was open -- on the day after I was told
about it, which happened to be a Sunday. So I took the subway to Brooklyn
to get it.
-- Mark A. Mandel
--
If you're reading this in a newsgroup: to reply by mail,
remove the obvious spam-blocker from my edress.
Elethiomel
> Rich Horton wrote:
> > You never read the same book twice
>
> ??
>
> That's odd. I could SWEAR I read "Lord of the Rings" more than once.
Lucky you. The first time I read it, it was a wonderful book, a treasury
of feelings, imagery, wonder and fear. The second time, it was just this
rather stale fantasy book by an English professor. I'd give much to get
back the LOTR I first read.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan: substitute "tin" to "nit" to mail me
http://www.fantascienza.com/sfpeople/elethiomel
gur...@saruman.wizard.net
> creo...@aol.com (Creoso 79) wrote:
>
> >what did you find more depressing about it?
>
> The whole hopelessness of it. Frodo's gradual depression as he
> carried the Ring and it weighed upon him. The general feeling of
> futility and lack of control of events and the way the characters
> reacted. The ending was the most depressing of all. I would have to
> read it again to remember more exactly but I just had this horrible
> feeling of despair after reading it. "Like I should just go and slit
> my wrists anyway" kinda feeling.
Interesting, because I felt LOTR to be a fairly uplifting book: I was
inspired by Frodo's courage and determination; despite all the odds, he
*did* do what he had promised he would. And at least all the characters
didn't die at the end.
Then again, when I read LOTR I was used to more classical works of
fiction, which had no problems with killing characters, or slapping them
down in various ways, at the end of the novel.
> I have read some very sad books, or books with sad parts but none left
> me with this kind of feeling before.
LOTR didn't depress me nearly as much as Sturgeon's _More Than Human_, or
Pohl's _Gateway_.
The Professor
tomlinson
: Interesting, because I felt LOTR to be a fairly uplifting book: I was
: inspired by Frodo's courage and determination; despite all the odds, he
: *did* do what he had promised he would. And at least all the characters
: didn't die at the end.
Not too long ago I got into a ridiculous argument with a friend over
whether Frodo succeeded or failed in LOTR. I argued for failure, my
friend for success. What is more important, I wonder--that Frodo was
able to summon up enough strength and fortitude to get as far as he
did, or that when the crucial moment came, he could not do the job?
Frodo did _not_ do what he had promised he would, and he suffers the
consequences: Frodo in the last books of LOTR is walking wounded,
unable to take pleasure any longer in what used to be his home. By
his act of claiming the Ring, even for a moment, he (like Sauron)
invested something of himself in the Ring; its destruction left him
damaged ("it is gone, and now all is dark and empty").
-tomlinson
--
Ernest S. Tomlinson - San Diego State University
------------------------------------------------
"Holly? look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those
_dots_ stopped moving forever? If I said you could have twenty thousand
pounds for every dot that stops, would you really, old man, tell me to keep
my money? or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?"