:The Sparrow: - Condemnation with mild spoilers
Jo Walton
:The Sparrow:
Mary Doria Russell
Black Swan, UKP6.99.
Every so often people who don't read any SF write an SF novel, and they
think of all these cool things nobody's thought of before which have been
trite and commonplace within SF for years. But oh no, everyone assured me
that :The Sparrow: was different. It isn't. There are a lot of mistakes
that an SF reader wouldn't likely have made, there are a fair few
square wheels, though it's not as bad as some such books.
But that's not what's wrong with it.
The absurdities of the science - they don't even use handwavium to get
the characters in an asteroid from Earth to Alpha Centauri - is equalled
only by the idiocy of the characters. An "idiot plot" is one where the
characters have to act like idiots in order for the plot to work. This
is all well and good if your characters _are_ idiots, but these are a
group of intelligent people except where Russell's pushing them about
like puppets to make the plot work.
You're on an alien planet, right? You land your lander, right? (It's
some sort of space shuttle best flown by an ex Harrier pilot, but
let's just handwave that bit out of existence.) So, you have a light
airplane that can only carry two people. You land your lander in the
wilderness, then when you've got used to the wilderness you ferry
the people to a village in the light plane, leaving the airstrip by
the lander to _get overgrown_ so you have no safe way of getting back
to your lander. How were they _ever_ going to get back to it? These
are supposedly clever experienced people, sheesh already. OK, the
next bit is _worse_ they ferried those people there _without taking
a first aid kit_. So when someone gets ill all they can do is boil
water and pray, and go back to the lander the next day to get it.
They didn't even take what I'd take going camping in Britain, heck
_aspirin_ would have got the fever down and who the hell leaves the
wide spectrum antibiotics back at base camp? Well, an idiot, and the
doctor's one of the least idiotic characters in the book. (They test
the alien food by taking a bite and waiting an hour, too. Um. This
twenty years from now and on a planet of Alpha Centauri, not in 1600
in SoAm.)
I liked the characters. I _wanted_ to like them and sympathise with
them in their predicament, but every time I got into a good long stretch
of liking them some ghastly thing like that would come along and jerk
my suspension of disbelief about like a yo-yo.
OK, so they go back to the lander in the little plane and, yes, the
strip's overgrown and they crash the plane. So they fly the lander
back to where the others are, thus using all the fuel so they can't
get back to the ship in orbit _ever_. Ahem.
So they're all in the situation Russell wanted to set up with seven
people, three of them priests, colonising an alien planet and trying
to get on with the aliens and having a bad time.
They don't think of making more fuel for _weeks_ and it is two years
before they ask the aliens about the possibility. (The fuel's some
brand of handwavium, it isn't mentioned what but their puters and VR
are still working no problem after a couple of years, and they have
seemingly infinite supplies of coffee.)
The structure of the book - with the one survivor back on Earth in a
wrecked condition and the suspense of discovering what actually
happened to get him there, through half his life and the life of the
friends who died on the planet - is good. Yet the climactic events
are dealt with much too quickly. I can't believe that if my favourite
character is going to perish horribly for being an idiot (in a rather
unlikely way - by which I mean that what she does to get herself killed
is very uncharacteristic for her as a character, it _could_ have been
justified, I can justify it for her, but the text doesn't, not one bit)
she's only going to get two lines to do it in. Also what actually happens
to the central character, while awful, doesn't quite make sense for the
person who does it to him. This is character torture by the author, not
by the other characters, the deus ex machina motivations ruin the
otherwise really good characterisations. The torture to make the metaplot,
the plot of "does God make sparrows fall or do they just fall or what"
work, doesn't fit with everything else. This is a cookie of good story
drowning in a beer barrel of Point.
I said I wasn't going to go on about the absurdities of the science, and
I'm not. I'm prepared to accept the handwaves to make the plot work,
bad as it is. So no other scientific absurdities are going to be mentioned.
But there is, in a book about theodicy, an unforgiveable mistake in a
_biblical reference_. If anyone would like to pass this on to Ms. Russell
or the publishers for correction in a later edition that's fine. It's
on page 137 of the British (Black Swan) edition, and it states about
Jesus' miracle with the loaves and the fishes that there were seven
loaves and seven fishes. There were, as recorded in the gospels, just
five loaves and two fishes.
If you want a book about Judaeo-Christian theology and aliens, read
Blish's :A Case For Conscience:, hell, read :Speaker for the Dead:,
and certainly read :Hyperion:. :The Sparrow: is not worth the emotional
investment in the characters which is the only worthwhile thing in it.
I pray that next time Russell lets the characters have the story they
want to be in rather than the plot she wants to torture them into.
(And Kate, it's not that I'm _ungrateful_, I hope you understand... :)
--
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.
Mike Scott
On Fri, 26 Dec 97 21:48:41 GMT, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton) wrote:
>I said I wasn't going to go on about the absurdities of the science, and
>I'm not. I'm prepared to accept the handwaves to make the plot work,
>bad as it is. So no other scientific absurdities are going to be mentioned.
>But there is, in a book about theodicy, an unforgiveable mistake in a
>_biblical reference_. If anyone would like to pass this on to Ms. Russell
>or the publishers for correction in a later edition that's fine. It's
>on page 137 of the British (Black Swan) edition, and it states about
>Jesus' miracle with the loaves and the fishes that there were seven
>loaves and seven fishes. There were, as recorded in the gospels, just
>five loaves and two fishes.
Actually, as is so common in the Bible, there are two versions. Five
loaves and two fishes is in all four gospels, but Matthew 15:32 also
refers to seven loaves and an unspecified number of small fish, which
could as easily be seven as anything else. I'm ever so glad I managed to
find a biblical concordance I didn't know I had to look that up in, as
dictionaries of quotations aren't very good on loaves and fishes.
I do, however, endorse all your other comments about _The Sparrow_.
--
Mike Scott
mi...@moose.demon.co.uk
http://www.moose.demon.co.uk
Rich Horton
On Fri, 26 Dec 1997 22:22:27 GMT, mi...@moose.demon.co.uk (Mike Scott)
wrote:
>I do, however, endorse all your other comments about _The Sparrow_.
>
I do too (endorse Jo's comments, that is), though I found myself
caring so much about the characters that I forgave a lot, maybe more
than Jo did. In fact I commented on The Sparrow on SFF-Net a while
back, maybe I'll dig that out and add it here. And I did quite like
the relationship between the two alien species and the questions that
relationship raises. (Don't think that's too much of a spoiler,
anyway the thread title is a protection.)
--
Rich Horton
Rich Horton
>Every so often people who don't read any SF write an SF novel, and they
>think of all these cool things nobody's thought of before which have been
>trite and commonplace within SF for years. But oh no, everyone assured me
>that :The Sparrow: was different. It isn't. There are a lot of mistakes
>that an SF reader wouldn't likely have made, there are a fair few
>square wheels, though it's not as bad as some such books.
>
>But that's not what's wrong with it.
<good points snipped>
Very good points, Jo. Though I think Russell does read at least some
SF: at least, I seem to recall her speaking well of LeGuin in some
forum or other. (Possibly when she and Le Guin shared the Tiptree
award.)
With your indulgence, I'll repost something I posted on SFF-Net a few
months back, adressing some of the same questions:
In sum, I still like The Sparrow a good deal, but it does have some
fairly clear flaws. I jotted down a plus/minus list, which interested
me, so I'll post it here in the off chance that it interests anybody
else. As so often in reading an SF novel by a non-genre writer, some
of the flaws seem to be the sort of thing an SF reader would be more
bothered by than someone who "never reads the stuff". (The sort of
people who say of books like _The Sparrow_ "It's not really SF." (As
if it would be a crime if they actually liked an SF book.) Such a
statement, to me, is either a serious misunderstanding of what SF is,
by any reasonable definition, or of what _The Sparrow_ is.)
Anyway, here goes: (AND SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW)
Plusses first:
+ the central issue of the book, an investigation of "The Problem of
Pain", is an always interesting issue, IMO, and is well-handled here.
Especially the creation of the two intelligent races, one carnivorous
and one the prey of the other race, works very well to illuminate this
problem. And it's an interesting SFnal idea on its own.
+ the story reads well, and the characters are engaging and
interesting. (but see below about the characterization)
+ the view of religion and of religious people is honest and fair.
Both religious and non-religious people are presented and treated as
"good guys". (There really aren't any bad humans in the story, with
the possible exception of a minor character.) The presentation of the
Jesuits was sympathetic and never veered to caricature.
+ the societal and biological setup of her alien planet, Rakhat, was
interesting and rang reasonably true to me. Russell is, IIRC, an
anthropologist, and has studied carnivorous animals, and in these
areas she is on solid scientific ground. (The linguistics seems
pretty neat as well.)
Then Minusses:
- the mission to Rakhat is set up on rather "pulpish" lines: the
Jesuits decide to go, and they build their spaceship and form their
team and set off just like that. It read like one of those "Scientist
builds Spaceship in his Garage" stories that used to be staples of SF.
(I consider this, though, to be a niggling complaint.)
- there are some scientific howlers. F'rinstance, the spaceship has
been under 1g acceleration for a few hours, it seems, and the crew is
already noticing significant time dilation effects. (I need to do
some calculations here, I suppose.) (On the one hand, this is also
niggling. On the other hand, this could easily have been fixed.)
- the "worldbuilding" of Rakhat is not convincing. I don't believe
that she actually computed a reasonable orbit about any of the three
stars of the Alpha Centauri system that would result in such a planet.
Moreover, the explorers, again like in the old pulps, land on the
planet, jump right out and breathe the air, no problems, and start
tasting the food almost right away. And it's nourishing! (Yes, she
does take a bit of care with the food tasting: and she suggests at
least the possibility of subtle deficiency diseases.) (Russell does
suggest, in various places, that God has arranged everything so
conveniently for his own mysterious purposes.)
- the characterization is "bestsellerish": everyone is a superstar in
their field, everyone is virtuous (on their own terms), and sexy
(natch), and so on. This kind of character is kind of fun to read
about (that's why bestsellers have characters like this, I guess) but
not very real.
- some really wrenching, tragic, events occur. Russell doesn't shy
from killing off her characters, nor does she pull rabbits out of a
hat to save the overall situation, which is good, but some of the
worst events occur offstage, and the effect is thus muted.
- all the above minuses, though to some greater or lesser extent
annoying, are kind of minor in the overall picture. But the final
minus I will mention is a bigger deal. The plot is very contrived to
1) maintain a sense of mystery in the reader, and 2) to land the main
character in the major fix he's in for most of the "present day"
section of the book. I'll crudely summarize here (REALLY MAJOR
SPOILER): the main thread of the action involves the Jesuits
interrogating (not really the right word) the only survivor of their
mission to Rakhat: the most important member, and the book's
protagonist, Father Emilio Sandoz. He is physically severely damaged
(the aliens have ruined his hands: and I thought this touch, and the
reasoning behind it, was really pretty good), but also psychologically
damaged. He has been accused of murder (of intelligent aliens) and
prostitution, and he has refused to defend himself in any fashion.
(And the report that a Jesuit mission has acted in such a way, and
apparently screwed up our first contact with aliens, has supposedly
almost completely ruined the order, though there is no real evidence
of any decline in Jesuit power in the glimpses we see in the book.)
Throughout the book, until the end, any details of what actually
happened are withheld. But it turns out, sort of obviously, that the
"prostitution" was rape (and Sandoz refused to admit that because he
is a Latin male and this would violate his sense of machismo), and the
"murder" was in self-defense (and pretty contrived anyway).
Furthermore, the members of the expedition which "rescues" Sandoz and
reports those horrible events jump rather ridiculously to the worst
possible conclusions, then they send Sandoz home alone!
This structure causes the central mystery of the book to seem to be
"what happened to Emilio: why did he become a murderer and a
prostitute", when it is really: "what is the relationship between the
two species on Rakhat? And what are the moral implications of the
relationship we are shown: between a predator and prey species, both
sentient?" These last questions, to me, are the interesting
questions, and Russell faces them well, and doesn't come to any easy
answers. (Another, also interesting, question is "How can humans
understand alien art?")
As I said, I still recommend _The Sparrow_, and I think Russell is an
author worth watching. But it's not a perfect book.
Kate Nepveu
Jo Walton (J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk) wrote:
[snippity-do-dah]
: The absurdities of the science - they don't even use handwavium to get
: the characters in an asteroid from Earth to Alpha Centauri - is equalled
: only by the idiocy of the characters. An "idiot plot" is one where the
: characters have to act like idiots in order for the plot to work. This
: is all well and good if your characters _are_ idiots, but these are a
: group of intelligent people except where Russell's pushing them about
: like puppets to make the plot work.
[snippity-day]
: I pray that next time Russell lets the characters have the story they
: want to be in rather than the plot she wants to torture them into.
: (And Kate, it's not that I'm _ungrateful_, I hope you understand... :)
And here I went out today and got a copy of _Downbelow Station_ just for
you... Well, look at it this way, you didn't waste your own money on it,
right? =>
As for your comments: Russell has said (and I'm paraphrasing heavily from
memory here) that she wanted to explore screwing up a first-contact
situation where the screw-ups are not from malice but innocence. If you
think they went past innocence into idiocy, I can understand your point (I
had some trouble with the "What the hell were you thinking?" myself), but
I could see it being idiocy on the part of the characters in a lot of
circumstances, not idiocy forced on them by the author. This is, I think,
a YMMV situation.
--
Kate
All I ask of you
Is that you remember me
As loving you
--Traditional Sufi song
John S. Novak
On 27 Dec 1997 00:34:57 GMT, Kate Nepveu <kne...@lynx.dac.neu.edu> wrote:
>Jo Walton (J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>As for your comments: Russell has said (and I'm paraphrasing heavily from
>memory here) that she wanted to explore screwing up a first-contact
>situation where the screw-ups are not from malice but innocence. If you
>think they went past innocence into idiocy, I can understand your point (I
>had some trouble with the "What the hell were you thinking?" myself), but
>I could see it being idiocy on the part of the characters in a lot of
>circumstances, not idiocy forced on them by the author. This is, I think,
>a YMMV situation.
Most of the, "What the hell were they thinking?" fell into the
category of things I could easily ignore. Forgot to take the medical
kit? Who cares-- it's easy enough to stipulate that the infection was
immune to whatever antibiotics they had, or the toxin had no readily
available antidote. (To be honest, I don't even remember that.)
Orbital mechanics? I. Do. Not. Care.
Unless there's something just grotesque and hideously wrong about
them, I'm just going to ignore them as being not germane to the story,
other than the effect they're going to have later.
Edible flora and fauna? Jesus Christ, you may as well condemn about
80% of _all_ SF on that one. I just started _The Reality Dysfunction_
a few days ago, and it notes in the back timeline a great number of
extra-terrestrial edibles. We're not even going to mention staples
like Star Trek, which not only presupposes cross-edible flora and
fauna, but apparently stipulates that all carbon-based life looks like
homo sapiens, except for the bumpy heads and the ears.
The method of testing the flora and fauna? Reasonable, since it was
stipulated that the "chew and wait" method was _after_ all available
chemical tests had been made, as well.
The only major fuckup-- and I'm usually willing to grant one or two in
a good disaster tale-- revolved around the lander and the ultralite.
Granted, it's hard to excuse that one, but I've seen people in real
life make howling, hideous mistakes that they just Should Have Known
Better. This is obviously personal taste, but I'm willing to allow
one.
I've seen Idiot Plots, and I really consider this to be far from one.
One major mistake does not make an intrepid band into a pack of
idiots.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cris.com
The Humblest Man on the Net
Jo Walton
In article <slrn6a9bn...@mariner.cris.com>
J...@mariner.cris.com "John S. Novak" writes:
> On 27 Dec 1997 00:34:57 GMT, Kate Nepveu <kne...@lynx.dac.neu.edu> wrote:
> >As for your comments: Russell has said (and I'm paraphrasing heavily from
> >memory here) that she wanted to explore screwing up a first-contact
> >situation where the screw-ups are not from malice but innocence. If you
> >think they went past innocence into idiocy, I can understand your point (I
> >had some trouble with the "What the hell were you thinking?" myself), but
> >I could see it being idiocy on the part of the characters in a lot of
> >circumstances, not idiocy forced on them by the author. This is, I think,
> >a YMMV situation.
>
> Most of the, "What the hell were they thinking?" fell into the
> category of things I could easily ignore. Forgot to take the medical
> kit? Who cares-- it's easy enough to stipulate that the infection was
> immune to whatever antibiotics they had, or the toxin had no readily
> available antidote. (To be honest, I don't even remember that.)
If there had been _one_ line saying that, fine. Yes, it easily could
have been that it was something resistant. But what it did was
violated the sense of the character of Anne that she would be such
an idiot as to not take her medical kit. She was a doctor. She was
represented as being a good doctor and also a sensible loving person.
She didn't even feel guilty for not having it. I could have believed
in the stupidity if they'd noticed it was stupid, hey? She didn't
ever blame herself, they _all_ acted as if leaving all medical supplies
at the lander - six days walk away, a few hours by a plane they hadn't
maintained landing conditions for - for no reason - gah.
> Orbital mechanics? I. Do. Not. Care.
> Unless there's something just grotesque and hideously wrong about
> them, I'm just going to ignore them as being not germane to the story,
> other than the effect they're going to have later.
Sure. I said that. I'd have liked at least a handwave, but it doesn't
matter all that much.
> Edible flora and fauna? Jesus Christ, you may as well condemn about
> 80% of _all_ SF on that one. I just started _The Reality Dysfunction_
> a few days ago, and it notes in the back timeline a great number of
> extra-terrestrial edibles. We're not even going to mention staples
> like Star Trek, which not only presupposes cross-edible flora and
> fauna, but apparently stipulates that all carbon-based life looks like
> homo sapiens, except for the bumpy heads and the ears.
>
> The method of testing the flora and fauna? Reasonable, since it was
> stipulated that the "chew and wait" method was _after_ all available
> chemical tests had been made, as well.
These things are minor compared to the character violations done in
favour of the God of Contrived Plot, yes.
> The only major fuckup-- and I'm usually willing to grant one or two in
> a good disaster tale-- revolved around the lander and the ultralite.
> Granted, it's hard to excuse that one, but I've seen people in real
> life make howling, hideous mistakes that they just Should Have Known
> Better. This is obviously personal taste, but I'm willing to allow
> one.
>
> I've seen Idiot Plots, and I really consider this to be far from one.
> One major mistake does not make an intrepid band into a pack of
> idiots.
It depends on how it's done.
If they'd - just once - smacked themselves on the head and said "How
could I have been such a fool" I'd probably have forgiven it. I really
wanted to like this book. I did like the characters except when they
behaved uncharacteristically.
I don't think this is the worst thing, though it made me foam at the
mouth.
To go into a really bad spoiler - why the frobozz did Sofia start the
riot? She's been represented as not only a sensible person but someone
whose whole life has been to do with keeping quite and getting ahead,
waiting until the time is right, taking advantage of the little things.
So what makes her do that? The whole thing is over in a couple of
paragraphs of Emilio telling the Jesuits, it's not shown on-screen in
the omnipotent POVs at all, but it just seemed so completely and
utterly uncharacteristic.
Vlatko Juric Kokic
Jo Walton (J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> To go into a really bad spoiler - why the frobozz did Sofia start the
> riot? She's been represented as not only a sensible person but someone
> whose whole life has been to do with keeping quite and getting ahead,
> waiting until the time is right, taking advantage of the little things.
> So what makes her do that? The whole thing is over in a couple of
> paragraphs of Emilio telling the Jesuits, it's not shown on-screen in
> the omnipotent POVs at all, but it just seemed so completely and
> utterly uncharacteristic.
Quite. I think that Russell felt she needed something dramatic to lead to
Emilio's capture. And it complies with the usual howler in the SF, the
one about Earthlings being better, more inteligent, more socially conscious
etc. than anything you might encounter out there.
I mean, did they really need Sofia to point out that there are more of
... (dem, I forgot the name of the herbivores) them?
--
vlatko
vlatko.ju...@mreza.tel.hr
Bill Dugan
On 27 Dec 1997 07:32:16 GMT, J...@mariner.cris.com (John S. Novak)
wrote:
snip
>like Star Trek, which not only presupposes cross-edible flora and
>fauna, but apparently stipulates that all carbon-based life looks like
>homo sapiens, except for the bumpy heads and the ears.
We have to make some allowances on character appearance. The only
available actors are humanoid, after all, and budget and schedule
factors limit the amount of really fancy makeup and special effects
the show can use.
John S. Novak
On Sat, 27 Dec 97 08:20:21 GMT, Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Most of the, "What the hell were they thinking?" fell into the
>> category of things I could easily ignore. Forgot to take the medical
>> kit? Who cares-- it's easy enough to stipulate that the infection was
>> immune to whatever antibiotics they had, or the toxin had no readily
>> available antidote. (To be honest, I don't even remember that.)
>If there had been _one_ line saying that, fine. Yes, it easily could
>have been that it was something resistant. But what it did was
>violated the sense of the character of Anne that she would be such
>an idiot as to not take her medical kit. She was a doctor.
[Etc.]
You know, the more I think about this, the more I don't remember this.
I remember Anne saying that she needs stuff that's back on the lander;
I do _not_ remember her saying that she didn't have a medical kit. I
remember she said she could set up a rehydration unit, which certainly
doesn't sound like she has nothing to work with.
Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong location. I'm thinking of when D. W.
got sick, which sparked the ideas of flying the UL back to the
lander.
>These things are minor compared to the character violations done in
>favour of the God of Contrived Plot, yes.
What, you mean like there being life the next star over, that _just_
reached the point of radio broadcasts that reached Earth _just_ as we
have the technological capacity to go there?
>If they'd - just once - smacked themselves on the head and said "How
>could I have been such a fool" I'd probably have forgiven it.
If you're talking about the Lander episode, they did.
>To go into a really bad spoiler - why the frobozz did Sofia start the
>riot?
Uh, because they were taking the little guys' _children_ away?
>So what makes her do that? The whole thing is over in a couple of
>paragraphs of Emilio telling the Jesuits, it's not shown on-screen in
>the omnipotent POVs at all, but it just seemed so completely and
>utterly uncharacteristic.
I don't know if characteristic/uncharacteristic is the right axis to
judge this sort of thing along-- the farther you are from a "normal"
situation, the less I think that axis applies, personally.
But I did find it entirely believeable.
Don't forget, Sophia was pregnant at that point, too, though I don't
recall if she was far enough along that she knew she was pregnant.
Kate Nepveu
John S. Novak (J...@mariner.cris.com) wrote:
: On Sat, 27 Dec 97 08:20:21 GMT, Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
: >So what makes her do that? The whole thing is over in a couple of
: >paragraphs of Emilio telling the Jesuits, it's not shown on-screen in
: >the omnipotent POVs at all, but it just seemed so completely and
: >utterly uncharacteristic.
: I don't know if characteristic/uncharacteristic is the right axis to
: judge this sort of thing along-- the farther you are from a "normal"
: situation, the less I think that axis applies, personally.
: But I did find it entirely believeable.
: Don't forget, Sophia was pregnant at that point, too, though I don't
: recall if she was far enough along that she knew she was pregnant.
She knew. She told Emilio after Anne & D.W. died.
I've been trying to come up with a reason for all the Really Bad things
happening off-screen, and I haven't come up with a particularly satisfying
one to this point. It may just be that some things are better left to the
imagination, or that it was more important to filter these things through
Emilio since he's the emotional center of the novel, but those don't feel
right for some reason. I'm not unhappy with the way it was done, but I
would like to find some reason behind the pattern.
Jo Walton
In article <slrn6aajf...@mariner.cris.com>
J...@mariner.cris.com "John S. Novak" writes:
> You know, the more I think about this, the more I don't remember this.
> I remember Anne saying that she needs stuff that's back on the lander;
> I do _not_ remember her saying that she didn't have a medical kit. I
> remember she said she could set up a rehydration unit, which certainly
> doesn't sound like she has nothing to work with.
>
> Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong location. I'm thinking of when D. W.
> got sick, which sparked the ideas of flying the UL back to the
> lander.
Anne reports that DW is vomiting and has bad diarrhea "almost like Bengal
Cholera". p 322 of my edition:
"What do we do now?" Sofia asked
"Boil some water and whistle in the dark," said Anne.... "At home I'd
put him on an IV drip and pump him full of drugs. I can approximate a
rehydration fluid but the stuff he really needs is in the lander."
<snip - DW explains the difficulty of getting to the lander because
they haven't cleared the brush from the airstrip, doh! Then Sofia
says:>
"If you need saline and antibiotics, I'm going tonight."
Then when she comes back "she now had access to broad-spectrum
parasitropics". Why didn't she have some already in her medical kit?
Why didn't she have something to bring the fever down? Saline solution
is only salt and water, sure she could make some... but they all
act as if this, and not keeping the landing strip clear, are perfectly
reasonable things to do.
> >These things are minor compared to the character violations done in
> >favour of the God of Contrived Plot, yes.
>
> What, you mean like there being life the next star over, that _just_
> reached the point of radio broadcasts that reached Earth _just_ as we
> have the technological capacity to go there?
No, that's not a character violation, that's just fine. There wouldn't
be a story otherwise. And "have the technological capacity". :] How
did they get that asteroid up to c? I'm not quibbling about the science
very much. I mean the people being set up to be like real people and
then suddenly acting entirely out of character just to get Emilio set
up to be tortured. There's a lot of that.
> >If they'd - just once - smacked themselves on the head and said "How
> >could I have been such a fool" I'd probably have forgiven it.
>
> If you're talking about the Lander episode, they did.
What Sofia did bringing it back, yes, but they didn't about not clearing
the brush
> >To go into a really bad spoiler - why the frobozz did Sofia start the
> >riot?
>
> Uh, because they were taking the little guys' _children_ away?
Sofia. Who has lived in a war zone and survived. Who has managed
for all those years to be restrained, and who has seen awful things.
> >So what makes her do that? The whole thing is over in a couple of
> >paragraphs of Emilio telling the Jesuits, it's not shown on-screen in
> >the omnipotent POVs at all, but it just seemed so completely and
> >utterly uncharacteristic.
>
> I don't know if characteristic/uncharacteristic is the right axis to
> judge this sort of thing along-- the farther you are from a "normal"
> situation, the less I think that axis applies, personally.
I think people act as who they are, from who they are. If you and I
were both in the same extreme situation we'd probably react differently,
and in ways unlike our normal selves but in ways people who knew us
would still be able to recognise as ourselves, coming from who we,
individually, are. If Sofia were going to do that sort of thing she'd
have got herself killed long before.
> But I did find it entirely believeable.
> Don't forget, Sophia was pregnant at that point, too, though I don't
> recall if she was far enough along that she knew she was pregnant.
Everyone knew, Anne knew just before she was killed, she was enough
along to be awkward. I can justify what Sofia did to myself - she was
pregnant and wonky with hormones, she had finally had enough of being
passive, she had something to lose and they were many and the others
were few, except that they had all the advantage. But none of that is
given in the novel, Emilio doesn't think how unlike Sofia it is to be
so stupid as to act without thinking and thinking and thinking.
John S. Novak
On Sun, 28 Dec 97 08:11:37 GMT, Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Anne reports that DW is vomiting and has bad diarrhea "almost like Bengal
>Cholera". p 322 of my edition:
[...]
Yeah, that's the episode I was thinking of.
Not having a perfect working knowledge of what goes in what kinds of
medical kits, I really have a hard time regarding this as a big deal.
>No, that's not a character violation, that's just fine. There wouldn't
>be a story otherwise.
Okay, other than Sophia, what do you consider a major character
violation? We obviously differ on Sophia, and other than that, I'm
just not seein' it.
>> >If they'd - just once - smacked themselves on the head and said "How
>> >could I have been such a fool" I'd probably have forgiven it.
>> If you're talking about the Lander episode, they did.
>What Sofia did bringing it back, yes, but they didn't about not clearing
>the brush
I clearly remember a passage to the effect that whatever growth was
there was either way more than they expected, or of a completely
different character than they expected, or both.
>> >To go into a really bad spoiler - why the frobozz did Sofia start the
>> >riot?
>> Uh, because they were taking the little guys' _children_ away?
>Sofia. Who has lived in a war zone and survived. Who has managed
>for all those years to be restrained, and who has seen awful things.
Who was pregnant with her own child at the time.
>I think people act as who they are, from who they are. If you and I
>were both in the same extreme situation we'd probably react differently,
>and in ways unlike our normal selves but in ways people who knew us
>would still be able to recognise as ourselves, coming from who we,
>individually, are.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
I've seen moments of extreme stress turn people unrecognizeable.
>Everyone knew, Anne knew just before she was killed, she was enough
>along to be awkward. I can justify what Sofia did to myself - she was
>pregnant and wonky with hormones, she had finally had enough of being
>passive, she had something to lose and they were many and the others
>were few, except that they had all the advantage. But none of that is
>given in the novel, Emilio doesn't think how unlike Sofia it is to be
>so stupid as to act without thinking and thinking and thinking.
Pick a reason:
1) Emilio had better things to think about. Like immediate
survival, or, later, hatred of God. Most of the time after
the event, Emilio was either in extreme danger or grave
depression.
2) Emilio understood.
3) Emilio thought about it off camera, as it were. There are
some things I'm quite capable of believing in, for the
story's sake, even though I haven't been shown. For
characters as well crafted as these, especially when I had no
problem with the characters' actions, I don't have a problem
with not being beaten over the head by the reactions of the
characters to the other characters.
Or some linear combination of the three.
Beth and Richard Treitel
To my surprise and delight, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton) wrote:
>The absurdities of the science - they don't even use handwavium to get
>the characters in an asteroid from Earth to Alpha Centauri - is equalled
>only by the idiocy of the characters. An "idiot plot" is one where the
>characters have to act like idiots in order for the plot to work. This
>is all well and good if your characters _are_ idiots, but these are a
>group of intelligent people except where Russell's pushing them about
>like puppets to make the plot work.
Thanks, Jo, for putting this book in its place. I was getting ready to
post my own commentary about how, in chapter 26, the author forces two
intelligent people to do a very silly thing in order to achieve a
situation which she almost certainly could have achieved by more
plausible means -- heck, even I can think of other ways to get the
expedition into that predicament. I was also getting ready to blast the
"technology" content, but was afraid that, coming from me, it would be
dismissed as just another male who doesn't want to credit women with the
ability to get any of that hard science stuff right. Besides, the
picture of Russell on the dust jacket looked awfully pretty.
Darn it, this is the *last time* I buy a book based on rave reviews on
r.a.sf.w without waiting for "on the other hand" stuff to seep out.
Publishers and/or distributors and/or bookshops who take books off their
shelves after a month can go and, as my grandfather said, "walk out to
sea till your hat floats." (Obviously there will be people who will buy
the book in that first month, but I don't aim to be one of them.)
-- Richard
------
A sufficiently incompetent ScF author is indistinguishable from magic.
What is (and isn't) ScF? ==> http://www.wco.com/~treitel/sf.html
Mail from hotmail.com is ignored due to spamming.
I use PGP 2.6.2.
Andrew Plotkin
Beth and Richard Treitel (tre...@wco.com) wrote:
> Darn it, this is the *last time* I buy a book based on rave reviews on
> r.a.sf.w without waiting for "on the other hand" stuff to seep out.
Mind you, this practice -- buying based on initial rasfw rave reviews --
has a better success rate than any other rule I've tried. (Including
buying based on rave reviews from people who know me personally.)
Although I know I've got some semiconscious filters on *which* rave
reviews to pay attention to.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Vicki Rosenzweig
In article <883296...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk wrote:
>In article <slrn6aajf...@mariner.cris.com>
> J...@mariner.cris.com "John S. Novak" writes:
>
wanted, and expected, to like it more than we did, and happened to
read it at about the same time. And one of the things that got to us,
which hasn't been mentioned anywhere here, is that everyone's
reaction to what happened to Emilio seemed way out of line. Yes,
it was horrible. Take care of the poor man, try to heal him, and let
him talk in his own time. But [this isn't much of a spoiler, it's early
in the book, and we don't find out why until later] it's nowhere near
bad enough to have been a world-wide scandal that lasted for years
and almost ruined the Society of Jesus. I can understand him
blaming himself--there's one moment of professional failure (he's a
linguist and doesn't understand what the alien asks him for
permission to do), and people often do blame themselves for what
is done to them. But it does *not* seem plausible for *everyone else*
to blame him for what the aliens did to him. [One half-decent PR
type could have presented it either as "Father Sandoz was under
incredible stress because the aliens tortured him" or "Without
meaning to, he killed an alien, but their own government does it
all the time, it's not a big deal" if the early publicity made the Jesuits
look bad.] It also didn't seem plausible for the second Earth expedition
to drop him in a spaceship home, with inadequate medical supplies
and navigation equipment, such that he'd only be found by chance.
All that said, there's a bunch of interesting stuff in this book--if it were
just bad, Lise and I wouldn't have spent an evening discussing what
bothered us about it. But I can't help thinking that it could, and should,
have been quite a bit better.
Vicki Rosenzweig
v...@interport.net | http://www.users.interport.net/~vr/
Typos are Coyote padding through the language, grinning.
--Susanna Sturgis
Rich Horton
On Tue, 30 Dec 1997 02:34:33 GMT, v...@interport.net (Vicki Rosenzweig)
wrote:
>And one of the things that got to us,
>which hasn't been mentioned anywhere here, is that everyone's
>reaction to what happened to Emilio seemed way out of line. Yes,
>it was horrible. Take care of the poor man, try to heal him, and let
>him talk in his own time. But [this isn't much of a spoiler, it's early
>in the book, and we don't find out why until later] it's nowhere near
>bad enough to have been a world-wide scandal that lasted for years
>and almost ruined the Society of Jesus.
Yes, exactly. (Which I did mention.) And it weakens what I think
should be the true "revelation", which I won't mention because it is a
spoiler. Another (lesser) problem was that the Jesuits didn't
=appear= to be nearly ruined in the latter-day segements. And, as you
say, dumping him on the ship and sending him back by himself simply
stretched my credibility beyond the breaking point.
--
Rich Horton
Beth and Richard Treitel
To my surprise and delight, rrho...@concentric.net (Rich Horton) wrote:
>- there are some scientific howlers. F'rinstance, the spaceship has
>been under 1g acceleration for a few hours, it seems, and the crew is
>already noticing significant time dilation effects. (I need to do
>some calculations here, I suppose.) (On the one hand, this is also
>niggling. On the other hand, this could easily have been fixed.)
Actually, it's worse than that. At one point, someone mentions that
extra supplies are being loaded in case the voyage takes longer than
expected *because*the*time*dilation*doesn't*work*as*expected. If the
author doesn't know that this aspect of Special Relativity has been
thoroughly tested at speeds much higher than her spaceship reaches in
the story, then she is guilty of awfully sloppy research. (Either that,
or she's trying to suggest that Jesuits have a pathological distrust of
scientists, which seems even more unlikely.)
Janice E. Dawley
Jo Walton wrote:
>I can justify what Sofia did to myself - she was
>pregnant and wonky with hormones, she had finally had enough of being
>passive, she had something to lose and they were many and the others
>were few, except that they had all the advantage. But none of that is
>given in the novel, Emilio doesn't think how unlike Sofia it is to be
>so stupid as to act without thinking and thinking and thinking.
Yes, this approximates my own major problem with the book. I thought the
rushed, offstage ending was unfair to the characters who had been
painstakingly developed over the course of the book. Anne & DW's deaths
seemed random. Sofia's did not really fit in with her character as
described in the book. If in fact her pregnancy was enough to make her
turn 180 degrees, I want to have that explained, rather than scribbled
in shorthand.
I realize that the lack of sense to the deaths is a large part of
what causes Emilio's breakdown. But this is where the suspense structure
of the book impaired its effectiveness for me. Throughout we are left
wondering what exactly happened & of course Russell cannot let Emilio
talk about or think about what happened in any detail or the suspense
will evaporate. Without those details, Emilio's more vague thoughts
about an uncaring or evil God didn't make emotional sense to me. I
didn't FEEL his pain.
And at the end the details are revealed in a lifeless manner that
did not give me any sense of resolution.
I was left feeling that I could have liked the book so much better IF...
Perhaps the sequel will be paced better.
-----
Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT
http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm
Listening to: Radiohead - OK Computer
"Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin
Nomad of Norad (David C. Hall)
In article <34ba2ce8....@news.demon.co.uk> mi...@moose.demon.co.uk (Mike Scott) writes:
> On Fri, 26 Dec 97 21:48:41 GMT, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton) wrote:
>
> >I said I wasn't going to go on about the absurdities of the science, and
> >I'm not. I'm prepared to accept the handwaves to make the plot work,
> >bad as it is. So no other scientific absurdities are going to be mentioned.
> >But there is, in a book about theodicy, an unforgiveable mistake in a
> >_biblical reference_. If anyone would like to pass this on to Ms. Russell
> >or the publishers for correction in a later edition that's fine. It's
> >on page 137 of the British (Black Swan) edition, and it states about
> >Jesus' miracle with the loaves and the fishes that there were seven
> >loaves and seven fishes. There were, as recorded in the gospels, just
> >five loaves and two fishes.
>
> Actually, as is so common in the Bible, there are two versions. Five
> loaves and two fishes is in all four gospels, but Matthew 15:32 also
> refers to seven loaves and an unspecified number of small fish, which
> could as easily be seven as anything else. I'm ever so glad I managed to
> find a biblical concordance I didn't know I had to look that up in, as
> dictionaries of quotations aren't very good on loaves and fishes.
The way I've heard it is that there were actually at least TWO occasions
where Christ took bread and fishes and multiplied them into huge amounts.
It wasn't just two differing descriptions of the same event.
--
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +-------------------------------------+
Nomad of Norad (David C. Hall) | "What good will cryptography do if |
no...@joshua-wopr.com | some adversary can fly a gnat-sized |
http://users.southeast.net/~nomad/ | camera into your room and station |
+----------------------------------+ it above your desk?" |
| -- David Brin, in his article, "The Transparent Society," WIRED 4.12US |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Kate Nepveu
Vicki Rosenzweig (v...@interport.net) wrote:
Spoilers discussed in vague and general language.
: But [this isn't much of a spoiler, it's early
: in the book, and we don't find out why until later] it's nowhere near
: bad enough to have been a world-wide scandal that lasted for years
: and almost ruined the Society of Jesus. I can understand him
: blaming himself--there's one moment of professional failure (he's a
: linguist and doesn't understand what the alien asks him for
: permission to do), and people often do blame themselves for what
: is done to them. But it does *not* seem plausible for *everyone else*
: to blame him for what the aliens did to him. [One half-decent PR
: type could have presented it either as "Father Sandoz was under
: incredible stress because the aliens tortured him" or "Without
: meaning to, he killed an alien, but their own government does it
: all the time, it's not a big deal" if the early publicity made the Jesuits
: look bad.]
You have a much more optimistic outlook on the media and public's tendency
to jump to conclusions than I. First, no-one knew the full story of what
happened--one can't say that the public was unfair for blaming Sandoz for
"what the aliens did to him," since as far as they knew, he did it to
himself. Likewise, they did not know that the government killed members
of its population "all the time"--the upheaval that the second expedition
encountered was atypical, and they had no reason to believe that it was
based on anything but the actions of the Jesuits.
More generally, the public and the press love scandal. They love to be
shocked--and the further the fall from the pedestal, the better. Rumors
snowball and impressions become firmly-held convictions, virtually
impossible to dislodge, overnight. Given the sensational nature of this
story, and the highly damning nature of the situation as first
encountered, I found it very easy to believe that the public would react
in the way described. As for the damage to the Jesuits not being
sufficiently visible, there were one or two throw-away lines about the
efforts to repair the Society's reputation; the handling of the
appearance of damage is at any rate a separate issue from whether the
damage existed.
Evelyn C. Leeper
In article <nomad...@joshua-wopr.com>,
Nomad of Norad (David C. Hall) <no...@joshua-wopr.com> wrote:
>
> In article <34ba2ce8....@news.demon.co.uk> mi...@moose.demon.co.uk (Mike Scott) writes:
> > On Fri, 26 Dec 97 21:48:41 GMT, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton) wrote:
> >
> > >I'm not. I'm prepared to accept the handwaves to make the plot work,
> > >bad as it is. So no other scientific absurdities are going to be mentioned.
> > >But there is, in a book about theodicy, an unforgiveable mistake in a
> > >_biblical reference_. If anyone would like to pass this on to Ms. Russell
> > >or the publishers for correction in a later edition that's fine. It's
> > >on page 137 of the British (Black Swan) edition, and it states about
> > >Jesus' miracle with the loaves and the fishes that there were seven
> > >loaves and seven fishes. There were, as recorded in the gospels, just
> > >five loaves and two fishes.
> >
> > loaves and two fishes is in all four gospels, but Matthew 15:32 also
> > refers to seven loaves and an unspecified number of small fish, which
> > could as easily be seven as anything else. I'm ever so glad I managed to
> > find a biblical concordance I didn't know I had to look that up in, as
> > dictionaries of quotations aren't very good on loaves and fishes.
>
> The way I've heard it is that there were actually at least TWO occasions
> where Christ took bread and fishes and multiplied them into huge amounts.
> It wasn't just two differing descriptions of the same event.
Two separate occasions when Jesus went to a desert place right after the
beheading of John the Baptist? (Matthew 4:13 and Mark 6:31)
I don't think so.
If one is looking for an explanation, how about that to a careless
copyist, "penta" and "septa" may get confused?
--
Evelyn C. Leeper | ele...@lucent.com
+1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"Those who do not learn from the future are destined to make mistakes in it."
--Warren Miller (New Yorker)
Elisabeth Carey
Vicki Rosenzweig <v...@interport.net> wrote in article
<689mjp$q0_...@port.net.interport.net>...
> In article <883296...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
wrote:
> >In article <slrn6aajf...@mariner.cris.com>
> > J...@mariner.cris.com "John S. Novak" writes:
> >
> A friend and I spent an evening taking this book apart recently--we both
> wanted, and expected, to like it more than we did, and happened to
> which hasn't been mentioned anywhere here, is that everyone's
> reaction to what happened to Emilio seemed way out of line. Yes,
> it was horrible. Take care of the poor man, try to heal him, and let
> in the book, and we don't find out why until later] it's nowhere near
> bad enough to have been a world-wide scandal that lasted for years
> and almost ruined the Society of Jesus. I can understand him
> blaming himself--there's one moment of professional failure (he's a
> linguist and doesn't understand what the alien asks him for
> permission to do), and people often do blame themselves for what
> is done to them. But it does *not* seem plausible for *everyone else*
> to blame him for what the aliens did to him. [One half-decent PR
> type could have presented it either as "Father Sandoz was under
> incredible stress because the aliens tortured him" or "Without
> meaning to, he killed an alien, but their own government does it
> all the time, it's not a big deal" if the early publicity made the
Jesuits
> to drop him in a spaceship home, with inadequate medical supplies
> and navigation equipment, such that he'd only be found by chance.
You're overlooking a major point; the second expedition, which found him,
had no interest whatsoever in minimizing scandal, and placed the worst
possible interpretationon what they saw [which included, incidentally, the
murder of a child]--and then Emilio Sandoz, deep in an emotional breakdown
due what has happened, both the torture and the deaths of all the other
members of the expedition, does not tell them differently. The media ran
with the Scandal, because scandal sells and the media love scandal, and the
Society of Jesus *had* *no* *facts* with which to challenge the scandal
version. Until they finally coaxed Fr. Sandoz to talk, they didn't know
that the version told by the second expedition wasn't, in fact, the exact
truth. They hoped, they suspected, but they didn't know, and had no facts
on which to argue differently.
>
> All that said, there's a bunch of interesting stuff in this book--if it
were
> just bad, Lise and I wouldn't have spent an evening discussing what
> bothered us about it. But I can't help thinking that it could, and
should,
> have been quite a bit better.
I think you've overlooked a lot that's there.
Lis Carey
Kevin J. Maroney
This has nothing to do with _The Sparrow_ and decidedly little to do
with written SF, so follows-up should be sent somewhere else. But:
On Sat, 27 Dec 1997 17:37:58 GMT, wkd...@ix.netcom.com (Bill Dugan)
wrote:
>We have to make some allowances on character appearance [in
>Star Trek]. The only
>available actors are humanoid, after all, and budget and schedule
>factors limit the amount of really fancy makeup and special effects
>the show can use.
That overlooks the simple fact that _Dr. Who_, a show with a budget
that maked _Star Trek: TOS_'s look like _Titanic vs. Waterworld_, had
the good sense to present non-humanoid aliens starting in its second
storyline (in 1964) and from that point on for 20+ years.
Admittedly, _ST:TOS_ had some non-humanoid aliens, and _Dr. Who_ had a
plethora of humans-with-bumpy-foreheads (including some introduced in
that very same storyline). However, a science fiction story which
blithely assumes that an alien ecosphere contains life forms which are
edible by humans without, at least, *severe* alergic and toxic effects
deserves some chastisement for that.
Yes, the universe is more fun if it's populated with dozens of
near-Earths within a few day's drive. It's also, shall we say,
somewhat less likely than a universe filled with talking scarecrows
and wicked witches who melt when you throw water on them.
Kevin Maroney | Crossover Technologies | kmar...@crossover.com
Games are my entire waking life.
Bill Dugan
>This has nothing to do with _The Sparrow_ and decidedly little to do
>with written SF, so follows-up should be sent somewhere else. But:
The thread subject (at least as shown on my newsreader) is
_Unimaginative aliens and alien environments_. Since at least some of
the same cliches in this area happen in written SF, with considerably
less excuse, I don't think we're that far adrift.
>On Sat, 27 Dec 1997 17:37:58 GMT, wkd...@ix.netcom.com (Bill Dugan)
>wrote:
>
>>We have to make some allowances on character appearance [in
>>Star Trek]. The only
>>available actors are humanoid, after all, and budget and schedule
>>factors limit the amount of really fancy makeup and special effects
>>the show can use.
>
>That overlooks the simple fact that _Dr. Who_, a show with a budget
>that maked _Star Trek: TOS_'s look like _Titanic vs. Waterworld_, had
>the good sense to present non-humanoid aliens starting in its second
>storyline (in 1964) and from that point on for 20+ years.
But the vast majority of Dr. Who aliens were essentially humanoid in
most visible respects, starting with the Doctor himself, and for much
the same reasons. It would have been impossible to produce the show on
time and within budget if they'd done otherwise. It's a different
story when written SF gives us aliens who look like humans and behave
like 20th century Americans or Europeans.
>Admittedly, _ST:TOS_ had some non-humanoid aliens, and _Dr. Who_ had a
>plethora of humans-with-bumpy-foreheads (including some introduced in
>that very same storyline). However, a science fiction story which
>blithely assumes that an alien ecosphere contains life forms which are
>edible by humans without, at least, *severe* alergic and toxic effects
>deserves some chastisement for that.
I'd be inclined to agree, but until we've actually examined samples
from ecospheres other than our own, we don't really know.
It's possible that there are only a few ways to achieve a viable
biochemistry, so you'd have reasonable odds of hitting one like ours.
It's equally possible that there are many ways, so you'd almost
certainly encounter something different.
>Yes, the universe is more fun if it's populated with dozens of
>near-Earths within a few day's drive. It's also, shall we say,
>somewhat less likely than a universe filled with talking scarecrows
>and wicked witches who melt when you throw water on them.
Again I'd tend to agree, but we can't really be sure. It depends on
how far a few days drive is, and on the probablities of various kinds
of life forms developing.
If we stick with currently known physics, there are no other
Earth-like planets reachable within a few days. If we allow FTL, it's
essentially writer's fiat how fast you can go, and therefore how many
planetary systems might be within a few days travel. Since we have
good data on only our own system, it's difficult to estimate what
fraction might include physically Earth-like planets.
Similarly, we know very little about the probability of life forms
like Earth's vs. something totally different, so we don't have good
information about the fraction of physically Earth-like planets which
would also be biologically Earth-like. Until we've seen other
ecospheres, it's just educated guesswork, so writers can assume a lot
without being obviously wrong.
Nomad of Norad (David C. Hall)
In article <68di8b$7...@nntpa.cb.lucent.com> e...@hobcs1.mt.lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) writes:
> In article <nomad...@joshua-wopr.com>,
> Nomad of Norad (David C. Hall) <no...@joshua-wopr.com> wrote:
> >
> > In article <34ba2ce8....@news.demon.co.uk> mi...@moose.demon.co.uk (Mike Scott) writes:
> > > On Fri, 26 Dec 97 21:48:41 GMT, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton) wrote:
> > >
> > > >I said I wasn't going to go on about the absurdities of the science, and
> > > >I'm not. I'm prepared to accept the handwaves to make the plot work,
> > > >bad as it is. So no other scientific absurdities are going to be mentioned.
> > > >But there is, in a book about theodicy, an unforgiveable mistake in a
> > > >_biblical reference_. If anyone would like to pass this on to Ms. Russell
> > > >or the publishers for correction in a later edition that's fine. It's
> > > >on page 137 of the British (Black Swan) edition, and it states about
> > > >Jesus' miracle with the loaves and the fishes that there were seven
> > > >loaves and seven fishes. There were, as recorded in the gospels, just
> > > >five loaves and two fishes.
> > >
> > > Actually, as is so common in the Bible, there are two versions. Five
> > > loaves and two fishes is in all four gospels, but Matthew 15:32 also
> > > refers to seven loaves and an unspecified number of small fish, which
> > > could as easily be seven as anything else. I'm ever so glad I managed to
> > > find a biblical concordance I didn't know I had to look that up in, as
> > > dictionaries of quotations aren't very good on loaves and fishes.
> >
> > The way I've heard it is that there were actually at least TWO occasions
> > where Christ took bread and fishes and multiplied them into huge amounts.
> > It wasn't just two differing descriptions of the same event.
>
> Two separate occasions when Jesus went to a desert place right after the
> beheading of John the Baptist? (Matthew 4:13 and Mark 6:31)
>
> I don't think so.
Have you looked at Mark 8:19-20? It clearly describes two seperate
occasions where Christ took loaves and fishes and multiplied them.
Here it is from the New International Version (NIV):
(In this passage, Christ is talking with His disciples, trying to make
a spiritual point, and is jogging their memories about recent events.)
19 "When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many
basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"
"Twelve," they replied.
20 "And then I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how
many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"
They answered, "Seven."
So, clearly there WERE at least two occasions where Christ performed this
miracle. It still doesn't answer the question as to whether there were at
some point seven loaves and seven fishes. Does someone out there have a
digital Bible? Something he or she could do a word-search on?
> If one is looking for an explanation, how about that to a careless
> copyist, "penta" and "septa" may get confused?
On the other hand, we know from historical evidence that the scribes'
copying of the books of the Bible way back then was done with extremely
strict checking and double-checking to make sure there were no mistakes
in copying. There was an elaborate system of checking the number of
words and characters on a section of scroll, plus other schemes, to
be sure that there were no "typos" or the like. It was sort of analogous
to a CRC-checksum. If there was ANY mistake, the whole scroll was
destroyed and the scribe would start again.
And when they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls some number of decades ago,
there were among them many extremely ancient copies of the various books
of the Bible, and it happens that in the oldest of these scrolls, the
passages are virtually identical to the Bible we know today, even though
the copies of those books had been passed down to us through different
routes. There was NO sign of the meaning of the Bible "mutating" over
the passage of time.
In other words, there WERE no "careless copyists."
We are, however, getting dangerously off-topic with this discussion.
> Evelyn C. Leeper | ele...@lucent.com
Geoff C. Marshall
Nomad of Norad (David C. Hall) wrote:
>
>
> In other words, there WERE no "careless copyists."
>
times of "careless copyists". Although, incompetant
might be better....
> We are, however, getting dangerously off-topic with this discussion.
>
Not really, this is for fiction AND fantasy.
<evil grin>
G....
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