I just finished Monstrous Regiment
Peter
definite plus as he was undoubtedly my favourite character in The Truth.
does anyone else have any idea if any of the new characters will appear in
later books or is it unlikely?
Richard Eney
I have no idea. I think some of them could since they have wandered
offstage so to speak. Of the new ones, though, the only one I think
I'd like to read more of might be Blouse. The main characters are
going to be busy and I think we may be done with Borogravia for a
while. Terry has said he wanted to explore new places, and there's
lots of room on the Disc.
=Tamar
robert craine
Well.... I'd say it would be pretty hard to write a book set in
(current day) A-M without including The Times, and Otto is the paper's
star photographer..... so I'd expect to see him again to some extent.
rob, who hasn't heard any official, or unofficial, information either
way
pure finder general
struggled to raise a smile - maybe it's just me getting jaded.
"Peter" <bulle...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bpb6c5$s7l$1...@hercules.btinternet.com...
Mike McKeown
> me too and I think TP has lapsed into inconsistency - I have to admit
> I struggled to raise a smile - maybe it's just me getting jaded.
>
While there has never yet, in my opinion, been a "bad" Discworld book,
there was a period - for me, running from /Interesting Times/ through
/The Fifth Elephant/, with a singular exception in /Feet of Clay/ -
where the books did feel a bit formulaic, where I got the feeling that
both writing and reading the books was harder work, if still ultimately
rewarding.
But from /The Truth/ onward, the books stepped back up a gear, and
/Night Watch/, /Wee Free Men/ and /Monstrous Regiment/ are all, for me,
among the finest yet. If I have a quibble with /Monstrous Regiment/,
then as I said in my review on The Alien Online, it's that it wasn't
really a Discworld novel at all (fantasy trappings notwithstanding).
Terry could have written this with very little effort as a 21st century
take on a Ruritanian satire. And with that, he could have broken into
the mainstream [and taken it by storm]. If he'd wanted to.
Mike M
--
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eBay http://tinyurl.com/g1jt
World Science Fiction Convention, Glasgow 2005.
http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/ Well, I'm going, anyway.
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Duke of URL
news:bpjjj5$1p0d8u$1...@ID-73063.news.uni-berlin.de
> pure finder general wrote:
>> me too and I think TP has lapsed into inconsistency - I have to
>> admit I struggled to raise a smile - maybe it's just me getting
>> jaded.
>>
> I have to disagree massively here.
> While there has never yet, in my opinion, been a "bad" Discworld
> book, there was a period - for me, running from /Interesting Times/
> through /The Fifth Elephant/, with a singular exception in /Feet of
> Clay/ - where the books did feel a bit formulaic, where I got the
> feeling that both writing and reading the books was harder work, if
> still ultimately rewarding.
>
> But from /The Truth/ onward, the books stepped back up a gear, and
> /Night Watch/, /Wee Free Men/ and /Monstrous Regiment/ are all, for
> me, among the finest yet. If I have a quibble with /Monstrous
> Regiment/, then as I said in my review on The Alien Online, it's
> that it wasn't really a Discworld novel at all (fantasy trappings
> notwithstanding). Terry could have written this with very little
> effort as a 21st century take on a Ruritanian satire. And with
> that, he could have broken into the mainstream [and taken it by
> storm]. If he'd wanted to.
Don't be foolish. All those booksignings, wine&cheeses with hobnobs,
the hassle of opening off-shore investment accounts, having to hire
Arthur Andersen to do his bookkeeping, the shear tedium of counting
all that money... Why would he want that?
Urquharts
<macbenahATkdsiDOTnet> wrote:
> the shear tedium of counting
>all that money...
He's going to become a hairdresser?
Steveski
Cutting edge humour . . . I'll get me coat . . .
Stacie Hanes
<snip the non-Discworldliness of MR>
> Terry could have written this with very little
> effort as a 21st century take on a Ruritanian satire. And with
> that, he could have broken into the mainstream [and taken it by
> storm]. If he'd wanted to.
>
Yeah... But the point, the big point, the great big honkin' HUGE point is
that fantasy is worth doing. I mean, I know (or think I know) that you
didn't mean it "that way," but talking about it that way is equating
literary with what's already mainstream. It reminds me of a Kath Pollit
essay (relevance here, wait for it) where she's talking about male and
female strength. When people talk about whether men or women are stronger,
they usually equate strength with the kind men have.
If you can make the leap with me (not because your're not smart enough, but
maybe I'm either not clear enough or just wrong), consider that taking the
mainstream by storm may not be worth doing, as you acknowledge with your
point of "if he'd wanted to."
Fantasy and SF shouldn't be in some literary ghetto might be what I'm trying
to get at. Please xcuse any rambling, as I had a *very* tough day. :-)
Stacie
John
"Duke of URL" <macbenahATkdsiDOTnet> wrote in message
news:vrql27n...@corp.supernews.com...
.. And then firing AA after the embezzling comes to light...
Daibhid Ceannaideach
>From: "Mike McKeown" mi...@xenocyte.org.uk
>Date: 20/11/03 23:43 GMT Standard Time
>Message-id: <bpjjj5$1p0d8u$1...@ID-73063.news.uni-berlin.de>
>
> If I have a quibble with /Monstrous Regiment/,
>then as I said in my review on The Alien Online, it's that it wasn't
>really a Discworld novel at all (fantasy trappings notwithstanding).
>Terry could have written this with very little effort as a 21st century
>take on a Ruritanian satire.
Someone on the group used "it's not really a Discworld novel" as a genuine
criticism, rather than a quibble with TNW. I also recall the "Pocket Essential"
book (which I massively disagree with on just about everything), giving
Pyramids two scores, a high one as a novel, and a low one as a Discworld novel.
I don't understand this at all. The Discworld is a setting. Any novel set on
the Discworld (and written by Terry) is really "a Discworld novel". If it's
good, as Butler presumably felt Pyramids was, given the high initial score,
it's "a good Discworld novel". Sure, TNW and MR *could* have been set in
fictitious European countries with no fantasy stuff at all. Maskerade could
have been set in the Paris Opera, if it comes to that. The point is, it
*wasn't*, it was set in Discworld and therefore had the benefits that a
Discworld background brings.
--
Dave
Now Official Absentee of EU Skiffeysoc for FOUR years
http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/sesoc
"Master Frodo, the power of the Ring 'as turned me into Pam Ayres!"
Daibhid Ceannaideach
>From: "pure finder general" homers...@hotmail.com
>Date: 20/11/03 23:17 GMT Standard Time
>Message-id: <bpji1p$plh$1...@titan.btinternet.com>
>"Peter" <bulle...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:bpb6c5$s7l$1...@hercules.btinternet.com...
>> and all i've got to say is... wow. having Otto Chriek(sp?) in the book was
>a
>> definite plus as he was undoubtedly my favourite character in The Truth.
>>
>> does anyone else have any idea if any of the new characters will appear in
>> later books or is it unlikely?
>
>me too and I think TP has lapsed into inconsistency - I have to admit I
>struggled to raise a smile - maybe it's just me getting jaded.
Two things. Firstly, don't top-post, please. It makes the conversation
difficult to follow.
Secondly, why have you replied to someone who liked the book saying "me too",
and then said you *didn't*?
Duke of URL
news:7idvb.12283$Wy4....@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net
True, but we'll never get proper recognition as long as the
"establishment" including the ALA thinks F&SF is "trash". Sigh...
Duke of URL
news:3fbd57c3...@news-server.optonline.net
DAMN! Right after I hit [send] I was afraid someone would notice that.
I should know that I can't get away with typos in a literate group...
Stacie Hanes
<snip>
>>
>> Fantasy and SF shouldn't be in some literary ghetto might be what
>> I'm trying to get at.
>
> True, but we'll never get proper recognition as long as the
> "establishment" including the ALA thinks F&SF is "trash". Sigh...
They don't, at least not all of them. Part of what I do, as an academic and
literary critic, is try to get my colleagues to notice that SF and Fantasy
has merit equal to anything written; the good stuff does, and I'm not
speaking for the actual dreck, of which there is plenty on other genres as
well.
The hard part is that some hardcore fans, one of my friends among them,
claims that when SF became acceptable, it died. I'm not sure I agree with
him, but I surely wouldn't want that.
The process does advance, though. In my department, a friend who graduated
last year did his thesis on (I think) the images in Tolkien. I know it was
Tolkien, but I can't remember the exact title. Now, we're talking about a
man who has the script from the One Ring tattooed around his bicep. The
thesis passed, and he teaches part-time at the university now.
I've mentioned before (I feel like I can't shut up about it) that I'm doing
my thesis on the Discworld books. Point is, it's being allowed and my
faculty advisors are very enthusiastic about it. The plan is for my doctoral
dissertation, when I get there, to be about some aspect of fantasy
literature. I applied to other programs, admitting on the application that I
wanted to study SF and Fantasy--we'll just have to wait and see if the
places I want to get into accept that.
Stacie
pure finder general
"Daibhid Ceannaideach" <daibhidc...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20031121102035...@mb-m13.aol.com...
Terry Pratchett
Ceannaideach <daibhidc...@aol.com> writes
>
>Someone on the group used "it's not really a Discworld novel" as a genuine
>criticism, rather than a quibble with TNW. I also recall the "Pocket Essential"
>book (which I massively disagree with on just about everything), giving
>Pyramids two scores, a high one as a novel, and a low one as a Discworld novel.
>I don't understand this at all. The Discworld is a setting. Any novel set on
>the Discworld (and written by Terry) is really "a Discworld novel". If it's
>good, as Butler presumably felt Pyramids was, given the high initial score,
>it's "a good Discworld novel". Sure, TNW and MR *could* have been set in
>fictitious European countries with no fantasy stuff at all. Maskerade could
>have been set in the Paris Opera, if it comes to that. The point is, it
>*wasn't*, it was set in Discworld and therefore had the benefits that a
>Discworld background brings.
Hmm. I don't think it'd be too easy even to de-Discworld MR. You could
set it in fictional countries -- you'd have to. How would you deal with
the Duchess at the end, and Nuggan throughout? You'd end up with a
fantasy whatever you did.
But if people are going to go down that road, what about Mort? One
reason why it has been of more interest to movie people is that most of
DW is mere background -- that is to say, the central story more or less
stands alone. Oh, you've got magic, but magic is generic. Wyrd Sisters
is another one such: the basic story requires a few common fantasy
elements but it does not uniquely rely on the Discworld of, say, TCOM.
It would be easy to write DW *out *of those books. Yet they would, I
suspect, be considered 'core' DW novels.
But how could you de-Discworld Night Watch? It's locked into many of the
earlier books and builds on themes developed in them -- History Monks,
the Watch, the A-M guilds and many of the characters. They're woven into
the story and don't have to be changed to fit it. Sure, it could be
done, but it would be perverse to attempt it.
I'm not at all certain what I know what people are referring to when one
book is considered 'more Discworldly' than another.
--
Terry Pratchett
PhantomSteve
news:VhWk6xZ+Brv$EA...@unseen.demon.co.uk:
> I'm not at all certain what I know what people are referring to when
> one book is considered 'more Discworldly' than another.
I thought that would be obvious... it is similar to narrativium or
phlogiston... there is fundamental "stuff" [1] called DiscWorldium.... and
some books have more of it than others... [2]
[1] sorry to get so technical here, folks!
[2] If you want to get *really* technical, the best way to describe it
would be... Oook!
--
__ _ __
o|\('')/|o |_)|_ _ __ _|_ _ __ _ _|_ _ _ o|\('')/|o
\_ _/ | | |(_|| | |_(_)|||_> |_(/_\_/(/_ \_ _/
/___/ (PhantomSteve - Design : Marion Koslowski) \___\
James Morrissey
> book is considered 'more Discworldly' than another.
SPOILER, i suppose
well, TCOM or TLH cannot happen anywhere else because somebody actually
falls off the edge. the ones centred mostly within ankh-morpork or lancre
are the ones that could be de-disceworlded most easily i think. not that i
can imagine why you'd want to do such a thing.
JQM
Alec Cawley
<mellon_c...@btopenworld.com> writes
That is to take a very technical view of the term "Discworld". Surely,
Ankh-Morepork is central to what we consider to be the Discworld. But
apart from TLH, very little of what happens in the Watch novels actually
depends upon the world being disk shaped. The Discworld to me means
Terry's interpretation of magic, dwarves, gods, witches, wizards etc.,
the city of A-M itself. WFM, for example, says nothing about the
astrophysics of the DW )or nothing that could not be removed) but is
saturated with Terry's view of what it is to be a witch. Whereas the Nac
Mac Feegle, though inherited form an early and much more Discworldly
book, do not depend upon that at all - you don't need to know anything
about L&L at all to enjoy the book fully. And the cameo at the end is
the better if you know thbe characters, but not necessary.
It is a Discworld book if
1. It is written by Terry Pratchett
2. He says it is.
--
Alec Cawley
Mike McKeown
> Mike McKeown wrote:
>
> <snip the non-Discworldliness of MR>
>
>> Terry could have written this with very little
>> effort as a 21st century take on a Ruritanian satire. And with
>> that, he could have broken into the mainstream [and taken it by
>> storm]. If he'd wanted to.
>>
>
> Yeah... But the point, the big point, the great big honkin' HUGE
> point is that fantasy is worth doing. I mean, I know (or think I
> know) that you didn't mean it "that way," but talking about it that
> way is equating literary with what's already mainstream.
Oh, yes. I don't, incidentally, think MR would have been as good if it
didn't have fantastical elements, some of which are core to the
narrative. The "feel" was just different, to the point where the most
familiar Discworld element - the Ankh-Morpork cameos - seemed extraneous
to some people. Anyway, anyone who believes SF can't be literary has
never read Gene Wolfe or Ray Bradbury (at the lyircal end). Or Kurt
Vonnegut (at the pretentious end). Or David Zindell. Or George RR
Martin. Or Terry Pratchett, for that matter - canonically Guilty of
Literature, as is occasionally acknowledged.
> If you can make the leap with me (not because your're not smart
> enough, but maybe I'm either not clear enough or just wrong),
> consider that taking the mainstream by storm may not be worth doing,
> as you acknowledge with your point of "if he'd wanted to."
Well, yes. Except that sometimes I think it would be nice if someone
frankly more deserving than Stephen King or Michael Crichton could get
in on the megabucks bestseller circuit. Someone who could, for example,
write the sort of comic novel that can be compared favorably to
Wodehouse. Someone who can combine literary and filmic references in
seamless pastiches while still delivering a damn good plot, and turn a
sympathetic eye on human nature and make us laugh with their creations,
not at them. Even if he won't write in chapters except when consciously
targeting the younger market.
> Fantasy and SF shouldn't be in some literary ghetto might be what I'm
> trying to get at. Please xcuse any rambling, as I had a *very* tough
> day. :-)
Fantasy and SF are in that ghetto, alas. I've "lived" in that ghetto
(OK, 75% in that ghetto) for over forty years. It'd be nice to see a
good loud ghetto blaster shake things up.
Mike M
--
Xenocyte Books. The future is now.
eBay http://tinyurl.com/g1jt
World Science Fiction Convention, Glasgow 2005.
http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/ Well, I'm going, anyway.
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Terry Pratchett
<mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> writes
>
I think I've assembled these quote correctly:
>>> Terry could have written this with very little
>>> effort as a 21st century take on a Ruritanian satire. And with
>>> that, he could have broken into the mainstream [and taken it by
>>> storm]. If he'd wanted to.
Hello? Anyone there? On what world would that ever happen?
Leaving aside other considerations (and there's plenty of them) do you
really think that any book I wrote now with even a hint of, shall we
say, magical realism about it would somehow magically become
'mainstream'? Would the critics[*] suddenly burst out saying 'well, he
fooled us all with that fantasy rubbish but, hey, he's a real writer
after all!'?
If PG Wodehouse had suddenly written the great 20th Century Novel it
would have been considered a bad Wodehouse book.
Besides, I am mainstream. Look what sells. In the hardback market [ie,
prone to literature] TWFM is the second best-selling fiction book of
2003. All the books are in print and sell well. As far as we can tell,
my readership may include many committed F/SF readers but is largely
made up of what F/SF fandom desperately and sourly calls 'mundanes'. I
know what you *mean*, but I can't see any way that my life and career
would be changed by 'mainstream acceptance', or even what that would
be.'
>Fantasy and SF are in that ghetto, alas. I've "lived" in that ghetto
>(OK, 75% in that ghetto) for over forty years. It'd be nice to see a
>good loud ghetto blaster shake things up.
That ghetto is only semi-real and its inhabitants sometimes conspire to
preserve it. It's a nice place up to a point, quite large and roomy, but
get too big in it and weird stuff happens.
It came as a shock to me recently to find out that Douglas Adams never
won a major genre award for HHGTTG. Obviously, the ghetto didn't
approve.
[*] Invariably quire friendly, over the years, with the occasional
stinker. MR picked up some very good reviews in big papers; the worst,
or least good, came from within the 'ghetto' from people who felt I
wasn't keeping to the rules.
--
Terry Pratchett
Tom McKeown
few things to say about this 'ghetto' concept of SF/Fantasy - as with
most things in life, it's not a case of one side being right and
another wrong; there are faults on both sides.
Firstly, I agree with the majority of posters to these discussions,
that SF/Fantasy does not get its due from 'mainstream' critics, which
is sometimes based purely on recieved ideas of what a typical
SF/Fantasy book is (or, worse, of what a typical SF/Fantasy reader
is). I say this despite my scant knowledge of the genre principally
because LOTR, HHGTTG and all Discworld stuff (which, aside from a
collection of Asimov's Mysteries, are my main connection with it) have
all impressed me, and yet can be looked down on by some because of
their origins in this particular genre.
Secondly, I think that part of the distaste of mainstream critics for
SF is in part due, not to the works themselves, but to the whole
nature of 'fandom', which is an integral part, it seems, of this
'ghetto culture'. Pterry has referred to the conventions etc. as part
of the package of being an SF author, paying your dues to the genre in
which you started out in etc, but I think that many 'literary'
novelists would regard it as rather distasteful. This is probably
because both writing and reading are solitary, individual activities -
the author wants to affect as many people as possible, but on a
personal level, and the reader, when reading, is not thinking at all
of all the other people in the world reading this particular book. But
once you get fandom, you get the fear that people are not reacting
individually any more, but as part of a herd -which means that people
are not reacting critically, which means (to the author) that they are
failing to understand or appreciate his/her work. As we can see from
this discussion group, the impression that fandom is uncritical is
clearly wrong, but it is one that can be got sometimes by the
enthusiasm of hardcore fans. For most people, if you read a book by,
say, Martin Amis or Julian Barnes, and you like it, your reaction
wouldn't probably be to attend a Martin Amis or Julian Barnes
convention, or even to write a letter to the author praising said
book. Therefore, for some literary novelists the whole fandom thing
seems like something from another world.
Thirdly (and finally), I have to say I'm not particularly in favour of
the 'acedemisation' of SF/Fantasy if by this is meant the use of
clever, but essentially false, arguments to prove that such-and-such
an author or such-and-such a book is SF/Fantasy, even when recieved
opinion has it that they are not. The author who seems to cause this
debate most frequently is Orwell, with the arguments that 1984 is SF
or that Animal Farm is a Fantasy. In my view, 1984 is probably SF of
the dystopian (sp?)variety, but Animal Farm is a political allegory,
and as a whole Orwell can't be considered an SF author. If this is an
over-the-top reaction to SF being for so long not respectable in
literary circles, then I can undertand it, though I think it is
essentially harmful to SF's overall standing.
Hope that nobody takes offense from all of the above, it's all offered
in a spirit of friendly debate. :-)
Thomas McKeown
Terry Pratchett
<gmaus...@hotmail.com> writes
>There's a word for non-rule-based learning, it comes up when people
>talk about neural networks, and my own neural network doesn't remember
>what it is -- let's have 'dacquisition'. Recognizing a face from
>across the room, or Mozart's style of composition, or the flavour of
>mustard or the colour of magic -- all these are examples of dacquired
>knowledge and can't easily be broken down into an itemized set of
>rules.
>
>Anyway, most DW books have the colour of magic. Some of them have a
>great deal of it. The midperiod books circa G!G! have so much of it
>that it positively rubs off on the mind, such that writing
>interpolated books of that era -- for example, of the class 'Moving
>Pictures with [fill in the blank]' -- would be relatively easy. (That
>class being deprecated by the creator quite possibly for that precise
>reason.)
You mean 'Asterix goes to [fill in country]'. If I didn't deprecate
them, then reader soon would. You may be interested in 'Going Postal',
because that's a return, at least in ostensibly format, to that (condemn
criminal given the choice of running the Post Office...)
>
>The current ones have got the setting and the characters, but the
>repainters have been through and covered over the octarine in a good
>solid respectable blue. Nothing wrong with a nice blue. I just
>prefer octarine. For a while I'd hoped for a clean split, the "Terry
>M. Pratchett" sort of thing -- Discworld in octarine, new series in
>blue, a separate section in my library -- but this is clearly not
>going to happen.
That was a good post. I just don't know what it meant.
--
Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett
>for SUPERMAN over HHG at that WorldCon. Christopher Reeve suggested
>there'd been a fix in and got a big cheer.
How does that statement change what I said? The ghetto is
international. Given the effect it has had in and outside the genre,
HHGTTG was certain without honour in its own 'country'.
--
Terry Pratchett
Stacie Hanes
> Terry Pratchett <tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<guKZ5Whw9Kw$EA...@unseen.demon.co.uk>...
>> In message <bpoqh1$1qv966$1...@ID-73063.news.uni-berlin.de>, Mike
>> McKeown <mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> writes
>>>
>> I think I've assembled these quote correctly:
>>
>>> Fantasy and SF are in that ghetto, alas. I've "lived" in that
>>> ghetto (OK, 75% in that ghetto) for over forty years. It'd be
>>> nice to see a good loud ghetto blaster shake things up.
>>
>> That ghetto is only semi-real and its inhabitants sometimes
>> conspire to preserve it. It's a nice place up to a point, quite
>> large and roomy, but get too big in it and weird stuff happens.
>>
>
> Speaking as a 'mundane' (a term I've never heard before), I have
> a
> few things to say about this 'ghetto' concept of SF/Fantasy - as
> with
> most things in life, it's not a case of one side being right and
> another wrong; there are faults on both sides.
I've seen fans who are just as snobbish as the "mainstream" people, and this
is what I'd call a fault of fandom. To a degree, there's the viewpoint of
keeping out the people who "wouldn't *really* understand."
<snip>
> Thirdly (and finally), I have to say I'm not particularly in favour
> of
> the 'acedemisation' of SF/Fantasy if by this is meant the use of
> clever, but essentially false, arguments to prove that such-and-such
> an author or such-and-such a book is SF/Fantasy, even when recieved
> opinion has it that they are not. The author who seems to cause this
> debate most frequently is Orwell, with the arguments that 1984 is SF
> or that Animal Farm is a Fantasy. In my view, 1984 is probably SF of
> the dystopian (sp?)variety, but Animal Farm is a political allegory,
> and as a whole Orwell can't be considered an SF author. If this is
> an
> over-the-top reaction to SF being for so long not respectable in
> literary circles, then I can undertand it, though I think it is
> essentially harmful to SF's overall standing.
>
And this is where I react. I'm a fan, an academic, and a critic. I do *not*
see writing papers about SF or Fantasy books as "use of
clever, but essentially false, arguments to prove that such-and-such an
author or such-and-such a book is SF/Fantasy."
Stay with me, I'm not mad.
Unless they've heads full of beans, academic critics know there's no
empirical "proof" of a literary interpretation. What a critical
interpretation is is what the author got out of it, mainly. It's an attempt
to point out ways of looking at a work that others perhaps haven't
considered. I've read 1984, and it answers my description of SF. If I cared
to, I could write a paper about it with a clean conscience. I haven't read
Animal Farm, but doing a paper which proposes that it's fantasy might be
useful--just off the cuff, fantasies often are allegories. They do some of
the same things. Fairy tales have always had value as teaching stories, and
if fairy tales aren't a part of fantasy (what with the princesses and all
that), then I don't know what is.
How can it be "harmful to SF's overall standing?" The way I see it is that
academic attention is no worse than neutral. I see the good stuff as
valuable, and I'd like to see my colleagues give it the respect it
deserves--that's all. I do a lot of pointing out how Fantasy Story
Such-and-Such has some of the same themes or points as Classic Canon Story
So-and-So. I don't think this ruins Fantasy or SF as a genre. "Look, The
Stranger deals with being mortal. And look, these books featuring Death as a
character *also* talk about mortality! How about THAT?" Wow."
My efforts have been focused on getting people who do not consider
themselves readers of Fantasy to accept interesting ideas from directions
they're not used to. To me, literary criticism is about making connections
between different areas of human knowledge--basically, one book often makes
me think of another. The connection may only exist in my own head--at first,
this is necessarily true, until I tell someone about it. But if I do a good
argument, and there is some resonance, the reader may see the connection,
too--whether or not the author was conscious of putting it there.
Stacie
Paul Wilkins
>>The current ones have got the setting and the characters, but the
>>repainters have been through and covered over the octarine in a good
>>solid respectable blue. Nothing wrong with a nice blue. I just
>>prefer octarine. For a while I'd hoped for a clean split, the "Terry
>>M. Pratchett" sort of thing -- Discworld in octarine, new series in
>>blue, a separate section in my library -- but this is clearly not
>>going to happen.
>
> That was a good post. I just don't know what it meant.
I think he meant that he was expecting for you to hang up your Discworld
hat, and so some respectable writings for responsible people, with
characters that won't leave people being (unjustly) sniggered at for
liking science fiction fantasy.
It'll never come to pass though. I *like* dwarfs, trolls and vampires
(hah! no 'ves or 'yres there!) for the provide such a wide breadth on
which to build from. You can only have so many tall blonde females
leading the story. But you have a vampire photographer who destroys
himself in chasing his art. Genius!
Those responsible people with their respectable writings, they can have
it. I like your writings as they stand.
--
Paul Wilkins
Richard Bos
> Anyway, anyone who believes SF can't be literary has
> never read Gene Wolfe or Ray Bradbury (at the lyircal end).
Bradbury at the lyrical end isn't SF. Bradbury at the Fahrenheit end,
however, is not very lyrical, but definitely SF _and_ literature.
> > Fantasy and SF shouldn't be in some literary ghetto might be what I'm
> > trying to get at. Please xcuse any rambling, as I had a *very* tough
> > day. :-)
>
> Fantasy and SF are in that ghetto, alas.
But less and less so.
Richard
cMAD
> It'll never come to pass though. I *like* dwarfs, trolls and vampires
> (hah! no 'ves or 'yres there!) for the provide such a wide breadth on
> which to build from. You can only have so many tall blonde females
> leading the story.
Erm, what's wrong with werewolfs?
cMAD
cMAD
That your work incites comments with witty, yea, poetic metaphors, but you
can't really figure out what the metaphors are actually supposed to mean?
I'd venture the guess that it means that your work is, indeed, serious
literature, because that's how critics usually treat serious literature.
cMAD
Stacie Hanes
> "Mike McKeown" <mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> Anyway, anyone who believes SF can't be literary has
>> never read Gene Wolfe or Ray Bradbury (at the lyircal end).
>
> Bradbury at the lyrical end isn't SF. Bradbury at the Fahrenheit
> end, however, is not very lyrical, but definitely SF _and_
> literature.
This is a very important point, whether I agree or not. Placing a particular
work in a category is one thing; placing a *writer* there seems wrong. Like
"you write a book with some speculative technology in it, make sure you
never write anything else, got it?" If a writer writes one SF novel, and the
others can't really be considered SF, I'd rather it wasn't characterized as
a "real" writer dabbling in SF. My personal feeling is that it shouldn't be
an issue.
>>> Fantasy and SF shouldn't be in some literary ghetto might be what
>>> I'm trying to get at. Please xcuse any rambling, as I had a
>>> *very* tough day. :-)
>>
>> Fantasy and SF are in that ghetto, alas.
>
> But less and less so.
>
I agree that it's only semi-real. I've never been involved in fandom, except
this--which *has* to be on the milder end. And I named my son after Robert
Heinlein, but you can safely consider that a one-time event.
The bookstore people don't look at me funny when I buy SF or Fantasy books.
I learned after the fact that one of the English faculty had tried to get
TAMAHER into the English Festival (a thing where high school students come
to the university and discuss bookks and do writing) but that the attempt
failed.
ANyway, the section at the bookstore is pretty damn big, after all, and
Discowrld sales seem to be at mainstream levels. Can't argue with that. Even
grouching about how few fellow American fans there are is beginning to seem
suspicious to me. What I find most of is that people don't quite get it;
there's no derison, just some bafflement--which may be confined to my
immediate surroundings, for all I know.
Stacie
Kegs
> Richard Bos wrote:
>> "Mike McKeown" <mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Anyway, anyone who believes SF can't be literary has
>>> never read Gene Wolfe or Ray Bradbury (at the lyircal end).
>>
>> Bradbury at the lyrical end isn't SF. Bradbury at the Fahrenheit
>> end, however, is not very lyrical, but definitely SF _and_
>> literature.
>
> This is a very important point, whether I agree or not. Placing a particular
> work in a category is one thing; placing a *writer* there seems wrong. Like
> "you write a book with some speculative technology in it, make sure you
> never write anything else, got it?" If a writer writes one SF novel, and the
> others can't really be considered SF, I'd rather it wasn't characterized as
> a "real" writer dabbling in SF. My personal feeling is that it shouldn't be
> an issue.
How did J G Ballard get out of the "ghetto" and into the "proper-fiction"
shelves then? Most of his stuff, that I have read, could be categorised as
science-fiction, although he concentrates more on the social effects of
technology and insular societies, rather than the cool toys.
Margaret Atwood was quite vocal in insisting that her last book "Oryx
and Crake"[1] was not science fiction, which is a bit debateable,
although it was very much in the same tradition of dystopian speculative
fiction that 1984, Brave New World and Handmaid's Tale occupy, and they
don't get dumped into the ghetto for some reason.
It does seem thaty authors or their works are put into categories like
science-fiction not because of their content, but for rather more
subjective but just as arbitrary reasons, and it is very difficult to
get out of whatever cubbyhole you have got put in, unless you add an
initial into your name for some of the books and get the publishers to
use soberer cover art.
[1] not, as I first put, "Oryx and Cake" ;)
--
James jamesk[at]homeric[dot]co[dot]uk
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to
keep. Scott Adams
Stacie Hanes
>>
>> Fantasy and SF are in that ghetto, alas.
>
> But less and less so.
>
On a personal note: academia, or at least the Youngstown State University
English Department section of it, is allowing a thesis on the Discworld. The
lack of resistance has been somewhat disappointing. "Excuse me, please. I'd
very much like for you to notice my rebellion. Erm? Hello?" Alas, they
persist in taking me seriously, at least when I'm in the room.
Stacie
Stacie Hanes
> "Stacie Hanes" <house_d...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> Richard Bos wrote:
>>> "Mike McKeown" <mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Anyway, anyone who believes SF can't be literary has
>>>> never read Gene Wolfe or Ray Bradbury (at the lyircal end).
>>>
>>> Bradbury at the lyrical end isn't SF. Bradbury at the Fahrenheit
>>> end, however, is not very lyrical, but definitely SF _and_
>>> literature.
>>
>> This is a very important point, whether I agree or not. Placing a
>> particular work in a category is one thing; placing a *writer*
>> there seems wrong. Like "you write a book with some speculative
>> technology in it, make sure you never write anything else, got
>> it?" If a writer writes one SF novel, and the others can't really
>> be considered SF, I'd rather it wasn't characterized as a "real"
>> writer dabbling in SF. My personal feeling is that it shouldn't be
>> an issue.
>
> How did J G Ballard get out of the "ghetto" and into the
> "proper-fiction" shelves then? Most of his stuff, that I have read,
> could be categorised as science-fiction, although he concentrates
> more on the social effects of technology and insular societies,
> rather than the cool toys.
I only read _Crash_ and found it, above all, weird. I dunno, I'd call it SF,
probably. I have no idea how he "got out." I don't really see a cnflict
between what you're saying and what I said.
>
> Margaret Atwood was quite vocal in insisting that her last book
> "Oryx
> and Crake"[1] was not science fiction, which is a bit debateable,
> although it was very much in the same tradition of dystopian
> speculative fiction that 1984, Brave New World and Handmaid's Tale
> occupy, and they don't get dumped into the ghetto for some reason.
Now *that* seems like a gay person's homophobia. I'm not being facetious. I
don't know why she'd say that. Either she really thinks it isn't, which
might point to simply a different idea of what SF *is*, or she believes in
the ghetto and doesn't want to be there.
>
> It does seem thaty authors or their works are put into categories
> like science-fiction not because of their content, but for rather
> more subjective but just as arbitrary reasons, and it is very
> difficult to
> get out of whatever cubbyhole you have got put in, unless you add an
> initial into your name for some of the books and get the publishers
> to use soberer cover art.
>
> [1] not, as I first put, "Oryx and Cake" ;)
Well, that's part of what I've been, clumsily, trying to get at. I'm not
crazy about pigeonholes. I'm a big fan of cross-referencing.
Stacie
Mike McKeown
>
> [1] not, as I first put, "Oryx and Cake" ;)
Which is, presumably, Ankh-Morpork's first corporate consultancy ("We
see the futures!")
Friar Sven
This seems like a good situation to enter my new found input
> It does seem thaty authors or their works are put into categories like
> science-fiction not because of their content, but for rather more
> subjective but just as arbitrary reasons, and it is very difficult to
> get out of whatever cubbyhole you have got put in, unless you add an
> initial into your name for some of the books and get the publishers to
> use soberer cover art.
>
I've been working at Waterstones lately and have become very
confused/interested in how the books are categorised.
Here are some examples
1984/Animal Farm by George Orwell: Neihter book is classified as
Sci-Fi/Fantasy, you find them either in the mian fiction section, or in the
"Classics Section"
Michael Crichton books are all in main fiction, most of his work I agree
belongs there, but Timline? A book about Time Travel to Medieval France not
being Science Fiction? That one I don't get.
But the real clincher that shows just how ludricous the labelling system of
books can be is The Princess Bride by William Goldman. It features Magic,
Giants, Rodents of Unusual Size, Miracles, Cliffs of Insanity and more
magic. But it's not fantasy (despite the author saying it is), it's "normal"
fiction.
What about the Discworld books? Well, TAMAHER and WFM are in the childrens
section (Who don't suffer the insanity of splitting their fiction into
genres), the rest of the books are SciFi/Fantasy, but in 100 years time,
they can join HG Wells, and Jonathon Swift in the classics section. (For
despite the presence of Alien invaders, time machines, floating lands and
talking horses, are also not Sci-Fi/Fantasy)
--
S: Not exactly the St Crispins Day speech, was it?
G: We few, we happy few
S: We band of buggered
Paul Wilkins
Absolutely nothing, and now we're going to representatives from other
factions going "Hoi! What's wrong with ________?" because we didn't
specifically include them.
--
Paul Wilkins
Steveski
That's it!!!!! (five exclamation marks) . . . smash the bookshops!!!!! (five
more) . . . they're the ones ghettoising the genres!!!!! (ok - enough with
the madness). (Note the full stop - an insane mind AND tidy with it . . .).
(HAHA!!!!! - should that one be there? ). (Or that one? etc. etc.).
:-)
Steveski
Steveski
. .
Mike Stevens
I disagree. HHGTTG's home country was UK radio. Among UK radio
enthusiasts it was and still is *very* highly regarded. The fact that
it later became a TV series and a series of books is fundamentally
irrelevant.
--
Mike Stevens, narrowboat Felis Catus II
Web site www.mike-stevens.co.uk
No man is an island. So is Man.
Richard Eney
Terry Pratchett <tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Daibhid Ceannaideach <daibhidc...@aol.com> writes
<snip>
>> Sure, TNW and MR *could* have been set in
>>fictitious European countries with no fantasy stuff at all. Maskerade could
>>have been set in the Paris Opera, if it comes to that. The point is, it
>>*wasn't*, it was set in Discworld and therefore had the benefits that a
>>Discworld background brings.
>Hmm. I don't think it'd be too easy even to de-Discworld MR. You could
>set it in fictional countries -- you'd have to. How would you deal with
>the Duchess at the end, and Nuggan throughout? You'd end up with a
>fantasy whatever you did.
<snip>
>But how could you de-Discworld Night Watch? It's locked into many of the
>earlier books and builds on themes developed in them -- History Monks,
>the Watch, the A-M guilds and many of the characters. They're woven into
>the story and don't have to be changed to fit it. Sure, it could be
>done, but it would be perverse to attempt it.
The whole book of NW would be very hard to de-Discworld. But what I think
people may be referring to when they consider that idea is the middle bit
- the part in which a man is trying to be a good cop in an evilly-run
city. There's relatively little magic, the assassins are skillful but no
more so than in many fantasy novels, and the bits with the monks could be
written out one way or another. Eliminate the "frame story" and there's a
central police procedural. Eliminate the foreknowledge and just have him
be the competent cop from another city who comes into town and takes over
the force - the story of Keel, in fact. It could even have the ending that
was not allowed by the monks because of the "frame story".
Fortunately, IMO, we got the Discworld story and not the strictly gritty
fantasy novel of police work in a mildly fantastic city. Other people are
writing that. I'll take Discworld over that, any day.
=Tamar
David Jensen
<bpuab0$6dt$3...@news1.radix.net>:
Speaking of police procedurals, why is Oxfordshire such a fine location
for them? I would think that the number of murders in the typical
Oxonian procedural tends to cover most, if not all, of the murders in
the county for the year, would it not?
Terry Pratchett
<dic...@radix.net> writes
>
>The whole book of NW would be very hard to de-Discworld. But what I think
>people may be referring to when they consider that idea is the middle bit
>- the part in which a man is trying to be a good cop in an evilly-run
>city. There's relatively little magic, the assassins are skillful but no
>more so than in many fantasy novels, and the bits with the monks could be
>written out one way or another. Eliminate the "frame story" and there's a
>central police procedural. Eliminate the foreknowledge and just have him
>be the competent cop from another city who comes into town and takes over
>the force - the story of Keel, in fact. It could even have the ending that
>was not allowed by the monks because of the "frame story".
>
But what you're saying is: take away the skin, the flesh and the wobbly
bits and , pff, you've got a skeleton which looks like every other
skeleton. Cut away everything that makes it a DW book and, blow me down,
it's not a DW book. But I'd say that the books that *would* work if
they weren't DW work better because they are.
No one has answered the Mort conundrum. There's a book which is
quintessentially DW yet at no point requires DW to exist -- you could
replace such bits as there are with other generic fantasy and it'd work
fine. On NW or ToT , on the other hand, the re-build would be quite
tricky.
Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett
<mike...@which.net> writes
>I disagree. HHGTTG's home country was UK radio. Among UK radio
>enthusiasts it was and still is *very* highly regarded. The fact that
>it later became a TV series and a series of books is fundamentally
>irrelevant.
>
Hmm. I know what you mean, but I think you're wrong. The books were
important. The whole *phenomenon was important. 'Uk radio
enthusiasts', while wonderful and discerning people, are only a subset
of DNA fandom. And I meant honour, not high regard
>
>--
>Mike Stevens, narrowboat Felis Catus II
>Web site www.mike-stevens.co.uk
>No man is an island. So is Man.
>
>
--
Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett
McKeown <ther...@yahoo.co.uk> writes
> Speaking as a 'mundane' (a term I've never heard before),
It's more a US thing. It bloody drives me mad.
>
>
>
>Secondly, I think that part of the distaste of mainstream critics for
>SF is in part due, not to the works themselves, but to the whole
>nature of 'fandom', which is an integral part, it seems, of this
>'ghetto culture'. Pterry has referred to the conventions etc. as part
>of the package of being an SF author, paying your dues to the genre in
>which you started out in etc, but I think that many 'literary'
>novelists would regard it as rather distasteful. This is probably
>because both writing and reading are solitary, individual activities -
>the author wants to affect as many people as possible, but on a
>personal level, and the reader, when reading, is not thinking at all
>of all the other people in the world reading this particular book. But
>once you get fandom, you get the fear that people are not reacting
>individually any more, but as part of a herd -which means that people
>are not reacting critically, which means (to the author) that they are
>failing to understand or appreciate his/her work. As we can see from
>this discussion group, the impression that fandom is uncritical is
>clearly wrong, but it is one that can be got sometimes by the
>enthusiasm of hardcore fans. For most people, if you read a book by,
>say, Martin Amis or Julian Barnes, and you like it, your reaction
>wouldn't probably be to attend a Martin Amis or Julian Barnes
>convention, or even to write a letter to the author praising said
>book. Therefore, for some literary novelists the whole fandom thing
>seems like something from another world.
I'm not at all sure you're right. There are more than 100 litfests in
the UK now, they mostly pay small or no fees, and they have no trouble
getting authors -- literary authors. They are human, and appreciate the
crowds. It just so happens that fandom has been ahead of the trend by
50 years.
At bottom most authors are the same -- insecure, insanely jealous of
rivals and as touchy as a shaved monkey. Show them a hall with 1,000
people in it and I doubt they'll worry too much about 'herd mentality'.
I go along to lit functions and get along fine with most other authors.
You'll find the real snobbery among journalists and critics.
--
Terry Pratchett
bigegg
Very Minor Spoiler for T5E, maybe
I think the point may have been that werewolves (or one at least) *was*
mentioned.
There aren't any other "tall blonde females leading the story" except Angua
in T5E. And you are mistaken - AFAIAC, you can't have too many tall
blonde females.
--
Big Egg
Hack to size. Bash to fit. Weld to join. Grind to shape. Paint to cover.
My name is not "news". If you reply to that address, I won't get it
Paul Wilkins
> Paul Wilkins wrote:
>> On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 15:38:01 +0000, cMAD wrote:
>>> Erm, what's wrong with werewolfs?
>>
>> Absolutely nothing, and now we're going to representatives from other
>> factions going "Hoi! What's wrong with ________?" because we didn't
>> specifically include them.
>
> Very Minor Spoiler for T5E, maybe
> I think the point may have been that werewolves (or one at least) *was*
> mentioned.
> There aren't any other "tall blonde females leading the story" except
> Angua in T5E. And you are mistaken - AFAIAC, you can't have too many
> tall blonde females.
Good catch there. I wasn't intending to go for that kind of link. Here's
the missing disclaimer.
Any reference to werewolfs alive or dead is pure coincidence and not
intended by the author of the message.
--
Paul Wilkins
bigegg
> Good catch there. I wasn't intending to go for that kind of link.
> Here's the missing disclaimer.
>
> Any reference to werewolfs alive or dead is pure coincidence and not
> intended by the author of the message.
You might be in trouble from the *un*dead ones :.)
Tom McKeown
>
Stay with me, I'm not mad.
>
> Unless they've heads full of beans, academic critics know there's no
> empirical "proof" of a literary interpretation. What a critical
> interpretation is is what the author got out of it, mainly. It's an attempt
> to point out ways of looking at a work that others perhaps haven't
> considered. I've read 1984, and it answers my description of SF. If I cared
> to, I could write a paper about it with a clean conscience. I haven't read
> Animal Farm, but doing a paper which proposes that it's fantasy might be
> useful--just off the cuff, fantasies often are allegories. They do some of
> the same things. Fairy tales have always had value as teaching stories, and
> if fairy tales aren't a part of fantasy (what with the princesses and all
> that), then I don't know what is.
>
subtitled 'A Fairy Story', so I'd better go and sit in the corner
wearing a pointy hat with a D on it.
> How can it be "harmful to SF's overall standing?" The way I see it is that
> academic attention is no worse than neutral. I see the good stuff as
> valuable, and I'd like to see my colleagues give it the respect it
> deserves--that's all. I do a lot of pointing out how Fantasy Story
> Such-and-Such has some of the same themes or points as Classic Canon Story
> So-and-So. I don't think this ruins Fantasy or SF as a genre. "Look, The
> Stranger deals with being mortal. And look, these books featuring Death as a
> character *also* talk about mortality! How about THAT?" Wow."
>
By 'harmful to SF's overall standing' I meant that it had the
potential to antagonise more 'traditional' critics. And I'm not sure
that academic attention is always 'no worse than neutral'. Reading
volumes of lit-crit written outside the academy (by 'literary
journalists' who write for non-specialised periodicals like the TLS)
there seems to be a fair amount of...shall we say 'antagonism'?
towards the universities - so critical attention from that quarter,
even if well done, will not necessarily increase SF's general
standing, and if badly done might be harmful. I'm not commending this
attitude, and I may be completely wrong about it, but it is the
impression that I get. The worst thing, to my mind, is that some
critics (Clive James, for instance) can be relative fair towards genre
writers as long as they don't have to accept them as equals - I read a
quote somewhere praising Raymond Chandler as 'a genre writer who knew
his place' - a double-edged compliment if ever there was one.
Thomas McKeown
Tom McKeown
Neither was I, to be perfectly honest - I was just developing an
argument based on a few hazy impressions in order to be part of an
interesting debate. I probably ought to preface my opinions with a
statement that I don't actually KNOW that much about what I'm talking
about. If only politicians would do the same...
Stacie Hanes
<snip>
> I go along to lit functions and get along fine with most other
> authors. You'll find the real snobbery among journalists and
> critics.
Let me point out that, along with getting your facts wrong and being
completely incomprehensible, that's another way of being a bad critic.
Stacie
Terry Pratchett
>argument based on a few hazy impressions in order to be part of an
>interesting debate. I probably ought to preface my opinions with a
>statement that I don't actually KNOW that much about what I'm talking
>about. If only politicians would do the same...
I think 'fandom' would freak lit authors right out, though. People
without qualifications, that learned their spelling via text messaging,
telling you what you should have written? The very idea!
--
Terry Pratchett
Richard Bos
> Richard Bos wrote:
> > "Mike McKeown" <mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> Anyway, anyone who believes SF can't be literary has
> >> never read Gene Wolfe or Ray Bradbury (at the lyircal end).
> >
> > Bradbury at the lyrical end isn't SF. Bradbury at the Fahrenheit
> > end, however, is not very lyrical, but definitely SF _and_
> > literature.
>
> This is a very important point, whether I agree or not. Placing a particular
> work in a category is one thing; placing a *writer* there seems wrong.
Indeed. And Bradbury is a good example of a writer who manages to write
stories (and books) in several genres, while remaining quite literary
and distinctly himself.
Richard
Richard Bos
> I've been working at Waterstones lately and have become very
> confused/interested in how the books are categorised.
> Here are some examples
> 1984/Animal Farm by George Orwell: Neihter book is classified as
> Sci-Fi/Fantasy, you find them either in the mian fiction section, or in the
> "Classics Section"
Well, 1984 is SF, but Animal Farm, despite appearances, is no more
Fantasy than Gulliver, or, for that matter, Jack and the Beanstalk.
We're not supposed to take the animals seriously _as_ talking animals;
they're clearly people in animal suits.
> Michael Crichton books are all in main fiction, most of his work I agree
> belongs there, but Timline? A book about Time Travel to Medieval France not
> being Science Fiction? That one I don't get.
Is the time travel essential to the plot, or is it merely a device to
get the cast to the Middle Ages where the real story starts? In the
first case it's SF, in the latter case it's Historical Fiction dressed
as SF.
Jurassic Park, of course, is definitely SF, even if unlikely SF.
> What about the Discworld books? Well, TAMAHER and WFM are in the childrens
> section (Who don't suffer the insanity of splitting their fiction into
> genres), the rest of the books are SciFi/Fantasy, but in 100 years time,
> they can join HG Wells, and Jonathon Swift in the classics section. (For
> despite the presence of Alien invaders, time machines, floating lands and
> talking horses, are also not Sci-Fi/Fantasy)
Discworld, of course, _is_ firmly Fantasy, as well as several other
categories, most importantly Humour and Social Satire.
Richard
The Death of Mayflies
> No one has answered the Mort conundrum. There's a book which is
> quintessentially DW yet at no point requires DW to exist -- you could
> replace such bits as there are with other generic fantasy and it'd work
> fine. On NW or ToT , on the other hand, the re-build would be quite
> tricky.
Well, I'd say that Death as a character (with all the paraphernalia)
is part of the DW physics/fabric/idea to such an extent as to render
the Mort story completely unthinkable in any other fantasy universe.
In other words, Death without DW doesn't work, and DW without Death
doesn't either (see Reaper Man, Hogfather et.c.). It's a bit like the
hen/egg conundrum in that neither can exist without the other, thus
making the whole question something of a non-starter (even though I
seem to recall that certain film makers wanted to take out Death from
the story. But there's no pleasing some people! *S*)
Personally, I think it's a lot more interesting to compare the stories
in terms of intrigue. The early ones often didn't have that many
twists and turns (and by saying this I by no means want to imply that
the twists that DID exist weren't great! I loved the grand finale of
both the first books, for instance), whereas now they are so very,
very cleverly thought out most of the time (MR is a bit of a backwards
step here, I'd say, compared with FoC or T5E) that I keep rereading
them over and over and over and over....
Chris, the Death of Mayflies
Daibhid Ceannaideach
>From: r...@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos)
>Date: 25/11/03 14:09 GMT Standard Time
>Message-id: <3fc361a2...@news.nl.net>
>
>"Friar Sven" <ste...@friarsven.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> Michael Crichton books are all in main fiction, most of his work I agree
>> belongs there, but Timline? A book about Time Travel to Medieval France not
>> being Science Fiction? That one I don't get.
>
>Is the time travel essential to the plot, or is it merely a device to
>get the cast to the Middle Ages where the real story starts? In the
>first case it's SF, in the latter case it's Historical Fiction dressed
>as SF.
Unless the real story starts with a mysterious murder that needs solved. In
which case it's Historical Detection, and gets put on the Crime shelves
(possibly with an Ellis Peters rip-off cover).
--
Dave
Now Official Absentee of EU Skiffeysoc for FOUR years
http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/sesoc
"Master Frodo, the power of the Ring 'as turned me into Pam Ayres!"
Daibhid Ceannaideach
>From: Terry Pratchett tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk
>Date: 25/11/03 05:05 GMT Standard Time
>Message-id: <IgJzKuI+Luw$EA...@unseen.demon.co.uk>
>
>In message <bpuab0$6dt$3...@news1.radix.net>, Richard Eney
><dic...@radix.net> writes
>>
>>The whole book of NW would be very hard to de-Discworld. But what I think
>>people may be referring to when they consider that idea is the middle bit
>>- the part in which a man is trying to be a good cop in an evilly-run
>>city.
>But what you're saying is: take away the skin, the flesh and the wobbly
>bits and , pff, you've got a skeleton which looks like every other
>skeleton. Cut away everything that makes it a DW book and, blow me down,
>it's not a DW book. But I'd say that the books that *would* work if
>they weren't DW work better because they are.
Well, yeah. Both Richard and I are saying "Sure, you *could* do this, but it
would be stupendously bad idea." Which you already know, which is why you
didn't.
Daibhid Ceannaideach
>From: "Stacie Hanes" house_d...@yahoo.com
>Date: 24/11/03 16:36 GMT Standard Time
>Message-id: <4sqwb.20011$Wy4....@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net>
>
>Richard Bos wrote:
>> "Mike McKeown" <mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Anyway, anyone who believes SF can't be literary has
>>> never read Gene Wolfe or Ray Bradbury (at the lyircal end).
>>
>> Bradbury at the lyrical end isn't SF. Bradbury at the Fahrenheit
>> end, however, is not very lyrical, but definitely SF _and_
>> literature.
>
>This is a very important point, whether I agree or not.
Bradbury does. He said recently that he was a fantasist, and "Farenheit" was
the *only* sf book he'd ever written.
Daibhid Ceannaideach
Or Brian Sewell, as we like[1] to call him...
[1] Or rather, "prefer not..."
Martin Instinsky
<tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I think 'fandom' would freak lit authors right out, though. People
> without qualifications, that learned their spelling via text messaging,
> telling you what you should have written? The very idea!
But... if they offered them chocolates?
--
Wenn du sie nicht überzeugen kannst - verwirre sie! (irisches? Sprichwort)
Stacie Hanes
It struck me that what goes on around here is lit. crit. We talk about
various aspects of your books in what I regard as critical ways; it's just
that most of us don't go write it down and try to get college credit for it.
It's backyard football instead of the pros.
I know I've seen interviews in which you talk seriously about writing. To
paraphrase, potential authors need to make spelling and grammar parts of
their lives. I've seen some writing in the last six months that proved to me
that an inability to spell doesn't always mean an inability to think--but
hasn't convinced me that learning spelling and grammar isn't important, not
that you said that it wasn't.
OTOH, I have also noticed that the worst spelling and grammar is often
matched with the least perception and organization. I think that having
someone who can't hold a thought for half a page correct one of my papers
might freak me out as far as it's possible to be freaked. There are lots of
things I do so badly I wouldn't venture to tell anyone else how to procede.
Now that I think about it, do you get much feedback on the structural level?
Not "write another one about Vimes," or "I think Granny should have done
this instead," but that getting to the point sooner in paragraph such and
such might have been better? I really can't imagine a whole lot of that
going around in fandom.
Stacie
Stacie Hanes
<snip>
> Discworld, of course, _is_ firmly Fantasy, as well as several other
> categories, most importantly Humour and Social Satire.
>
> Richard
I just realized that abp is a casual literary criticism group. There's no
denying it.
Stacie
Terry Pratchett
of Mayflies <chri...@hotmail.com> writes
>
>Well, I'd say that Death as a character (with all the paraphernalia)
>is part of the DW physics/fabric/idea to such an extent as to render
>the Mort story completely unthinkable in any other fantasy universe.
>
could just as easily be created in a story set in, oh, 17th C Germany.
It would have been EASY to set Mort on Earth in history, and certainly
in the classic 'fary tale' universe. Death as a walking, talking
character turns up in so much folklore.
--
Terry Pratchett
Richard Eney
Why ever would we deny it? It's what the group is for, after all:
discussing the books. We're not a casual editing group, so we don't go
down to criticizing on a paragraph-by-paragraph level like, say, a
writer's workshop.
=Tamar
The Death of Mayflies
> could just as easily be created in a story set in, oh, 17th C Germany.
> It would have been EASY to set Mort on Earth in history, and certainly
> in the classic 'fary tale' universe. Death as a walking, talking
> character turns up in so much folklore.
*embarrassed laugh* Well, I'm certainly not about to argue with YOU of
all people about this. You're correct, of course. Death does develop
in later books, as well as interfer more directly with the world as a
whole, but I still think it's fair to say that he came into being with
all the basic DW features in place (Albert, Binky, the hourglasses
a.s.o.), unlike, say, Granny, who had her entourage added on in later
books and her character fleshed out quite a lot (The fact that Death
could do with some fleshing out as well, being a skellington, is a
different kettle of scaly things altogether, of course!).
I would say that books like WFM or TAMAHER are more like Mort in that
you could see it as generic fantasy built with the same building
blocks as are used in DW (i.e. the same laws of physics and magic
apply (and aren't the two just impossible to distinguish between from
time to time?), but apart from certain guest appearances they don't
depend upon earlier books for their inherent logic), whereas it'd be
really difficult to de-DW a book set in Ankh-Morpork (even though I'd
say it COULD be done)...
Chris
Richard Eney
Terry Pratchett <tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Richard Eney <dic...@radix.net> writes
<snip>
>>The whole book of NW would be very hard to de-Discworld. But what I think
>>people may be referring to when they consider that idea is the middle bit
>>- the part in which a man is trying to be a good cop in an evilly-run
>>city.
>> Eliminate the "frame story" and there's a central police procedural.
>But what you're saying is: take away the skin, the flesh and the wobbly
>bits and , pff, you've got a skeleton which looks like every other
>skeleton. Cut away everything that makes it a DW book and, blow me down,
>it's not a DW book. But I'd say that the books that *would* work if
>they weren't DW work better because they are.
I think they do, too, but it's more because the Disc has more inherent
flexibility than most, because you set it up that way. See below:
>No one has answered the Mort conundrum. There's a book which is
>quintessentially DW yet at no point requires DW to exist -- you could
>replace such bits as there are with other generic fantasy and it'd work
>fine. On NW or ToT , on the other hand, the re-build would be quite
>tricky.
If Mort were set in a standard fantasy universe, which is basically earth
with a different history and magic added as an 'out' for things that can't
work by physics, then the end would involve making a major change to
earth's existence that is essentially permanent, and that IMO would
stretch suspension of disbelief too far. The change spell at the
beginning of TLF is specified to have caused almost no other changes
besides the essential one, but the changes to the Mort universe are shown
to be wide-reaching. Even though elements of it had been a significant
part of the story already, IMO making it permanent would snap the reader
out of the story-belief so suddenly as to be painful. Since the Disc had
already been set up as a place where major spells and changes could
happen, the stretch in Mort is less upsetting because it is on the Disc.
And that, I think, might be part of what makes a Discworld story what it
is; the physical Disc setting itself - Great A'Tuin and the elephants and
all - is scarcely mentioned in most of the books. The only stories that
absolutely depend on that are (in a quick recall) TCOM, TLF, and TLH. With
relatively few changes, the others could be set on a physically round
planet, but IMO that would tend to imply a kind of alternate earth, which
would drag its own history along. There would be the back-of-the-mind
question of 'is this an alternate universe, is it before our known
history, or is it after our known history' (all of which have been done).
The statement that the Disc exists at the far end of the reality continuum
allows the reader to accept the very high unreality quotient, and the
definite statement that it is not earth at all allows the reader to let
go of any need to connect it directly to the history of the earth.
(All of which is merely my opinion as a reader and may not have any
truth in reality.)
=Tamar
Stacie Hanes
It was only a flip comment. I occasionally sense that literary criticism
isn't held in high esteem by many fans or writers.
Stacie
John
IT ws th wrst of tmes it ws th bst of tmes :(
Forrest
> >Not so I hear; it was just that a large contingent of Americans voted
> >for SUPERMAN over HHG at that WorldCon. Christopher Reeve suggested
> >there'd been a fix in and got a big cheer.
>
> How does that statement change what I said?
Because HHG hadn't gotten to America back in 1979 and the American
contingent voted for what they knew.[1] Ignorance, not malice. The
first *book* -- which was only two-thirds of a book, really -- didn't
make it to America until fall 1980, it says here, and the awards were
in September, no? So it'd have fallen into the 1981 awards slot. The
actual 1981 Hugo nominees:
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl
Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg
Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven
The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge
Wizard by John Varley
Four established heavy hitters and a nova. Is it a surprise that an
incomplete book didn't get a nom, let alone a win, in that context?
Twenty years on things look different, of course; if they decided to
redo the 1981 awards today...
But no, I'd say the ghetto loves HHG as much as it loves anything.
Look how long it took to give Asimov a Hugo. Was there any author
more fondly regarded than Asimov? Asimov *was* the ghetto.[2]
If the forthcoming radio adaptation of LTUE is done well and published
in a nicely done and timely issued CD package, and *that* doesn't get
a media nom, now that'd be evidence of malice.
____________
[1] The fact that radio is dead in America doesn't help any. Radio
program listings in the newspaper? So you'll know what's on and
actually be able to make plans to listen? What a concept! It'll
never fly.
[2] "Ghetto? Country club!" -- Larry Niven
Richard Bos
> Richard Bos wrote:
> <snip>
> > Discworld, of course, _is_ firmly Fantasy, as well as several other
> > categories, most importantly Humour and Social Satire.
>
> I just realized that abp is a casual literary criticism group. There's no
> denying it.
Well, of course it is! We definitely do literary criticism, sometimes
more casual than others. What we don't do is lit-crit...
Richard
Terry Pratchett
<gmaus...@hotmail.com> writes
>But no, I'd say the ghetto loves HHG as much as it loves anything.
Fans are great. Fandom is weird.
--
Terry Pratchett
Morpheus
Would you have it any other way?
ppint.
tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk "Terry Pratchett" asserted:
>>for SUPERMAN over HHG at that WorldCon. Christopher Reeve suggested
>>there'd been a fix in and got a big cheer.
>
>international. Given the effect it has had in and outside the genre,
>HHGTTG was certain without honour in its own 'country'.
>
- ummm; iirc, neither the original radio series, nor the tv
adaptation/revised version of hitch-hikers were well-known
across merkia by the time of that brighton worldcon; others
may be able to provide chapter and verse for the dates of
first appearences in merkin radio & tv network schedules -
and the time slots in which they were run - but a *lot* of
the merkin fans i met had neither seen nor heard an episode
of thhgttg - and many had not heard of it, either.
- i should guess that merkin fandom accounted for about one
quarter or one third of those attending the con (guess only),
and of those who'll've voted, i'd expect the great majority
to have voted for the superman film; and of those con members
who did not attend but had every right to vote, as registered
full and supporting members, by far the greatest group will
have been merkins entirely innocent of thhgttg.
- the sf ghetto may be an international one, but - despite
jerry pournelle's dictum re the first moon landing - we live
in a world that is still only patchily post-modern.
- love, ppint.
[who greatly enjoyed both the radio and the tv series, but'd
far rather see robert sheckley honoured and remembered for his
1968 _Dimension of Miracles_ [1] as well as adams for thhgttg]
[1] - *and* _Mindswap_, *and* _The Journey of Joenes_, *and*
_Options_, *and* _The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair
Compton_.. *and* maybe a hundred or so shorter stories..
[the address from which this was posted bounces e-mail;
use the reply-to e-address, changing the "f" to a "g",
if you wish to cc. or e-mail me.]
--
"Incipient Doldrums."
- roger thomas, 19/3/97 (3/19/97 for merkins)
Vince
Fans ask you to sign books, fandom asks you to sign souls.
Still weird though.
--
Vince.
ZX9R, CBR250
Ex-SKoGA#3, YTC#13
BONY#47, SBS#22, BOTAFOF#26, BOTAFOT#102, MRO#23.
MIRTTH#19
"Vince: more repulsive than Ginge"
grahamafforda...@hotmail.com
On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 05:47:10 +0000, Terry Pratchett
<tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Speaking as a 'mundane' (a term I've never heard before),
>
>It's more a US thing. It bloody drives me mad.
I think it's a Piers Anthony thing which has spread across the general
area of Fandom. I've seen badges such as "Mundania? No thanks!"
It later leaked into B5 where telepaths divide the world into those
who have Psi powers and "Mundanes" who don't.
Cheers,
Graham.
grahamafforda...@hotmail.com
On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 10:10:43 +0000, Terry Pratchett
<tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>For a while I'd hoped for a clean split, the "Terry M. Pratchett" sort of thing
>>-- Discworld in octarine, new series in blue, a separate section in my library
>>-- but this is clearly not going to happen.
>
>That was a good post. I just don't know what it meant.
I presume he's referring to the dichotomy that some critics suffer
from when they're trying to talk about an Iain Banks book as opposed
to an Iain M Banks book, one being "mundane" (sorry!) and the other
being "SF".
It's the same author, writing the same sort of stories, just in
different "universes" and you can almost hear the gritted teeth
sometimes as the critic has to say something nice about "genre
fiction"!
Cheers,
Graham.
Len Oil
> "Terry Pratchett" <tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > I think 'fandom' would freak lit authors right out, though. People
> > without qualifications, that learned their spelling via text messaging,
> > telling you what you should have written? The very idea!
>
Or, closer to home...
C gr8 A2N th 2tl cms, swmng sl0li thru th NTstlR glf
Sorry.
I'll get my @
--
AFP Code 2.0: AC$/>M-UK d@(--) s:+>- a- UP+ R+++ F++ h- P3x= OSD+:-- ?C M--
L pp--- I->** W+ c@ B+ Cn::::+ CC- PT+>+++ Pu* 5+>++ X-- MT++ eV+(++-) r*
y+ end
Richard Bos
> "John" <ju...@junk.com> wrote:
> > "Terry Pratchett" <tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > > I think 'fandom' would freak lit authors right out, though. People
> > > without qualifications, that learned their spelling via text messaging,
> > > telling you what you should have written? The very idea!
> >
> > IT ws th wrst of tmes it ws th bst of tmes :(
>
> Or, closer to home...
>
> C gr8 A2N th 2tl cms, swmng sl0li thru th NTstlR glf
What's a tootle?
Richard
Carol Hague
<grahamafforda...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 05:47:10 +0000, Terry Pratchett
> <tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >> Speaking as a 'mundane' (a term I've never heard before),
> >
> >It's more a US thing. It bloody drives me mad.
>
> I think it's a Piers Anthony thing which has spread across the general
> area of Fandom. I've seen badges such as "Mundania? No thanks!"
I'm tolerably certain that the usage predates Anthony.
<googles> http://www.jessesword.com/SF/sf_fan.shtml says the use of
"mundane" to refer to non sf-fans predates 1950.
<googles some more> The first Xanth novel was published in 1977, so
that's one less thing to blame Anthony for... :-)
>
> It later leaked into B5 where telepaths divide the world into those
> who have Psi powers and "Mundanes" who don't.
I think this was probably deliberate on JMS' part, like calling the
itinerant population of the staion "lurkers"....
--
Carol Hague
"Sadistic little buggers, squirrels. I've always said so. Mind you,
rabbits are worse. Bastards!"
- Simon R. Green, _Beyond The Blue Moon_
Steve James
> In message <42409e36.03112...@posting.google.com>, Tom
> McKeown <ther...@yahoo.co.uk> writes
> >
> > Neither was I, to be perfectly honest - I was just developing an
> >argument based on a few hazy impressions in order to be part of an
> >interesting debate. I probably ought to preface my opinions with a
> >statement that I don't actually KNOW that much about what I'm talking
> >about. If only politicians would do the same...
>
>
> I think 'fandom' would freak lit authors right out, though. People
> without qualifications, that learned their spelling via text messaging,
> telling you what you should have written? The very idea!
> --
> Terry Pratchett
>
Me too! <fx>ducks</fx>
Steve (Steeljam) *BF DAcFD (UU) *
Resident Opsimath in Redivivus Studies
Steve James
> > Michael Crichton books are all in main fiction, most of his work I agree
> > belongs there, but Timline? A book about Time Travel to Medieval France
> > not
> > being Science Fiction? That one I don't get.
>
> Is the time travel essential to the plot, or is it merely a device to
> get the cast to the Middle Ages where the real story starts? In the
> first case it's SF, in the latter case it's Historical Fiction dressed
> as SF.
> Jurassic Park, of course, is definitely SF, even if unlikely SF.
>
Why.
Frankenstein is not classed as SF even though the two stories are very similar.
Mike Stevens
The sound of a flutle.
--
Mike Stevens, narrowboat Felis Catus II
Web site www.mike-stevens.co.uk
No man is an island. So is Man.
Duke of URL
news:bq8bh4$1vd2kf$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de
> Richard Bos <r...@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> wrote:
>> "Len Oil" <len...@lenoil.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>> "John" <ju...@junk.com> wrote:
>
>>> Or, closer to home...
>>>
>>> C gr8 A2N th 2tl cms, swmng sl0li thru th NTstlR glf
>>
>> What's a tootle?
>
> The sound of a flutle.
I worked my way through it, but am stuck. What's "NTstlR"?
Enteestwonner?
Steveski
Interstellar gulf
bewtifulfreak
Thanks, that's the only bit I was stuck on, too. :)
--
Ann
A California Yankee in Queen Elizabeth's Court
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/bewtifulfreak
Steveski
> Steveski wrote:
>> Duke of URL wrote:
>>> "Mike Stevens" <mike...@which.net> wrote in message
>>> news:bq8bh4$1vd2kf$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de
>>>> Richard Bos <r...@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> wrote:
>>>>> "Len Oil" <len...@lenoil.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>> "John" <ju...@junk.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Or, closer to home...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> C gr8 A2N th 2tl cms, swmng sl0li thru th NTstlR glf
>>>>>
>>>>> What's a tootle?
>>>>
>>>> The sound of a flutle.
>>>
>>> I worked my way through it, but am stuck. What's "NTstlR"?
>>> Enteestwonner?
>>
>> Interstellar gulf
>
> Thanks, that's the only bit I was stuck on, too. :)
And I don't even own a mobile phone . . . :-)
Duke of URL
news:bq8sls$1vkpc5$1...@ID-36653.news.uni-berlin.de
Grroooaannn...
Duke of URL
news:bq9s1m$1voepk$1...@ID-203359.news.uni-berlin.de
> Steveski wrote:
>> Duke of URL wrote:
>>> "Mike Stevens" <mike...@which.net> wrote in message
>>> news:bq8bh4$1vd2kf$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de
>>>> Richard Bos <r...@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> wrote:
>>>>> "Len Oil" <len...@lenoil.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>> "John" <ju...@junk.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Or, closer to home...
>>>>>> C gr8 A2N th 2tl cms, swmng sl0li thru th NTstlR glf
>>>>>
>>>>> What's a tootle?
>>>>
>>>> The sound of a flutle.
>>>
>>> I worked my way through it, but am stuck. What's "NTstlR"?
>>> Enteestwonner?
>>
>> Interstellar gulf
>
> Thanks, that's the only bit I was stuck on, too. :)
Hey, bewtiful, do you suppose that means you and I are irrevocably
mired in *real* language? Or maybe just too out-of-date to keep up
with the script-kiddies? Nahh...
bewtifulfreak
Could be....it's a nice thought. :)
Or maybe just too out-of-date to keep up
> with the script-kiddies? Nahh...
LOL....I'm afraid that's possible, too, as not only do I not own a cell
phone, but I've actually been faced with the first slang phrase in my life
that took me by surprise - i.e. that I wasn't using/didn't know about - that
being the slightly suggestive "I feel you"....
Duke of URL
??? Are you sure it wasn't "I feel FOR you"?
bewtifulfreak
Nope. But that's basically what it means (a bit of an cross-breed between
"I hear you" and "I feel for you", apparently). :)
Daibhid Ceannaideach
>From: "bewtifulfreak" bewtif...@hotmail.com
>Date: 29/11/03 10:23 GMT Standard Time
>Message-id: <bq9s1m$1voepk$1...@ID-203359.news.uni-berlin.de>
>
>Steveski wrote:
>> Duke of URL wrote:
>>> "Mike Stevens" <mike...@which.net> wrote in message
>>> news:bq8bh4$1vd2kf$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de
>>>> Richard Bos <r...@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> wrote:
>>>>> "Len Oil" <len...@lenoil.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>> "John" <ju...@junk.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Or, closer to home...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> C gr8 A2N th 2tl cms, swmng sl0li thru th NTstlR glf
>>>>>
>>>>> What's a tootle?
>>>>
>>>> The sound of a flutle.
>>>
>>> I worked my way through it, but am stuck. What's "NTstlR"?
>>> Enteestwonner?
>>
>> Interstellar gulf
>
>Thanks, that's the only bit I was stuck on, too. :)
<smug git mode>
I got the whole thing. Not through being particularly versed in textese or
L33+, but just through knowing the original passage off the top of my head...
</mode>
--
Dave
The Official Absentee of EU Skiffeysoc
http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/sesoc
Joe: What do you think *you* can do?
The Doctor: Resist them. Surprise them. Oh, and possibly perform a few show
tunes.
-Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka
Len Oil
> >>>>> C gr8 A2N th 2tl cms, swmng sl0li thru th NTstlR glf
> Grroooaannn...
And here was I worrying about whether it was "gr8 A2N", "...R2N", "...@uN",
"...82N", etc, never mind if I should have tried "NT*lar", and at least it
wasn't "Ttl".
Look, I'm a big fan of predictive text anyway, so don't blame me if I'm out
of touch with the youth of today <grumble grumble, mutter mutter, gripe
gripe gripe...>
Duke of URL
news:20031129123952...@mb-m12.aol.com
>> From: "bewtifulfreak" bewtif...@hotmail.com
>> Date: 29/11/03 10:23 GMT Standard Time
>> Message-id: <bq9s1m$1voepk$1...@ID-203359.news.uni-berlin.de>
>> Steveski wrote:
>>> Duke of URL wrote:
>>>> "Mike Stevens" <mike...@which.net> wrote in message
>>>> news:bq8bh4$1vd2kf$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de
>>>>> Richard Bos <r...@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> wrote:
>>>>>> "Len Oil" <len...@lenoil.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>>> "John" <ju...@junk.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Or, closer to home...
>>>>>>> C gr8 A2N th 2tl cms, swmng sl0li thru th NTstlR glf
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What's a tootle?
>>>>>
>>>>> The sound of a flutle.
>>>>
>>>> I worked my way through it, but am stuck. What's "NTstlR"?
>>>> Enteestwonner?
>>>
>>> Interstellar gulf
>>
>> Thanks, that's the only bit I was stuck on, too. :)
>
> <smug git mode>
> I got the whole thing. Not through being particularly versed in
> textese or L33+, but just through knowing the original passage off
> the top of my head...
> </mode>
Awri', awri' - dinna sprain yer elbow pattin' yersel on the back.
Richard Bos
Though really it should stand for _anti_-stellar gulf. NTrstlR would've
fit the requirements better, IYAM.
Richard