Sanity in SF
Dan Goodman
_Clans of the Alphane Moon_.
Character who's sane by our standards, in a setting where most people
are clinically insane by our standards: Fritz Leiber, "Sanity."
Large numbers of people fall victim to a virus which makes them saner:
John Brunner, _The Stone That Never Came Down_.
People become generally healthy, and those who weren't sane become so,
thanks to a patent medicine which actually works: Rog Phillips, _The
Involuntary Immortals_.
There are others, but I can't think of them just now.
--
Dan Goodman
"I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers."
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Expire
Journal dsgood.dreamwidth.org (livejournal.com, insanejournal.com)
Mike Schilling
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote in message
news:xn0gw0em...@news.iphouse.com...
> Eminently sane characters in science fiction: One in Philip K. Dick's
> _Clans of the Alphane Moon_.
>
> Character who's sane by our standards, in a setting where most people
> are clinically insane by our standards: Fritz Leiber, "Sanity."
>
> Large numbers of people fall victim to a virus which makes them saner:
> John Brunner, _The Stone That Never Came Down_.
>
> People become generally healthy, and those who weren't sane become so,
> thanks to a patent medicine which actually works: Rog Phillips, _The
> Involuntary Immortals_.
>
> There are others, but I can't think of them just now.
Nutty characters declared sane by authorial fiat: van Vogt's Null-A books.
A single ethnic group is genetically sane: Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar
Butch Malahide
>
> Character who's sane by our standards, in a setting where most people
> are clinically insane by our standards: Fritz Leiber, "Sanity."
Wyman Guin's "Beyond Bedlam", maybe; the main character was different,
but I don't recall if he was actually sane.
Dan Goodman
Reading the Leiber story, I find it hard to maintain belief in his
sanity when he says that of _course_ he knows what's happening in the
real world -- he reads all the reports.
And Phil Dick's eminently sane character doesn't seem all that sane to
me.
> A single ethnic group is genetically sane: Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar
Thanks.
Dan Goodman
I don't recall even as much as you do. I know I've read the story, but
that's about it.
Thanks.
David Johnston
wrote:
>
>And Phil Dick's eminently sane character doesn't seem all that sane to
>me.
Yeah, but how does he measure up to Dick's other characters?
Mike Schilling
"David Johnston" <da...@block.net> wrote in message
news:j17o261oio0i6deph...@4ax.com...
You're asking how big it is?
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
"Sane" guy is wrong -- until.. "The Men Return", but Jack Vance.
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Dan Goodman
A high percentage of the other characters are explicitly insane.
This one is about as sane as most of Phil Dick's major characters
during his pulp-writing days. In the 1950s, he would probably have
been diagnosed as neurotic. I don't know how DSM-IV (or the upcoming
DSM-V) would place him.
Dan Goodman
Bo Lindbergh
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
> People become generally healthy, and those who weren't sane become so,
> thanks to a patent medicine which actually works: Rog Phillips, _The
> Involuntary Immortals_.
Tepper's _The Awakeners_: smoking the right parts of one of the local plants
makes you sane.
/Bo Lindbergh
Robert Carnegie
wrote:
I think it's in the author's preface to _Null-A Three_ that he all-
capses the fact that the protagonist (whose memories are duplicated
into new bodies, making him a non-Aristotelian personality, i.e. not a
unique soul) is called Gilbert GoSANE, spelled every other time
Gosseyn.
Fan site <http://www.roger-russell.com/sffun/nulla.htm> says: "After
reading the Null-A novels, I had thought of General Semantics as a
discipline for making evaluations and decisions. [He's about to
explain that there's more to it.] Van Vogt refers to this system as
the cortical-thalamic pause. Instead of reacting immediately and often
blindly to a situation, Null-A teaches us to stop and consider our
total reaction and options before responding."
That part doesn't sound so crazy.
The subjects of Larry Niven's _Protector_ have unusual and intense
personal goals, tremendous intelligence with which to pursue those,
and don't otherwise have the loopiness traditionally associated with a
powerful mind.
In one of Terry Pratchett's novels, a special coffee has the effect of
making you un-drunk, spelled "knurd", even compared to the normal
human state of mind. This is a rough experience and you had better
have some booze in easy reach.
In real life, I heard that research determined that who has the most
realistic outlook on life, is the depressives. This also is a rough
experience, but booze is not a good remedy. Very much not.
David Duffy
> Eminently sane characters in science fiction: One in Philip K. Dick's
> _Clans of the Alphane Moon_.
> Character who's sane by our standards, in a setting where most people
> are clinically insane by our standards: Fritz Leiber, "Sanity."
> Large numbers of people fall victim to a virus which makes them saner:
> John Brunner, _The Stone That Never Came Down_.
> People become generally healthy, and those who weren't sane become so,
> thanks to a patent medicine which actually works: Rog Phillips, _The
> Involuntary Immortals_.
> There are others, but I can't think of them just now.
Frank Herbert _Under Pressure_, sane is insane.
Joseph Heller _Catch 22_ insane is sane.
David Duffy.
Will in New Haven
> In article <xn0gw0emq4gotg...@news.iphouse.com>,
Not SF then, or is there an SFnal idea other than that?
--
Will in New Haven
Dave Hansen
>
> There are others, but I can't think of them just now.
Alien visitors are thought to be merely insane natives (Bradbury's
"The Earth Men").
-=Dave
Winter
wrote:
>Eminently sane characters in science fiction: One in Philip K. Dick's
>_Clans of the Alphane Moon_.
>
>Character who's sane by our standards, in a setting where most people
>are clinically insane by our standards: Fritz Leiber, "Sanity."
>
>Large numbers of people fall victim to a virus which makes them saner:
>John Brunner, _The Stone That Never Came Down_.
>
>People become generally healthy, and those who weren't sane become so,
>thanks to a patent medicine which actually works: Rog Phillips, _The
>Involuntary Immortals_.
>
>There are others, but I can't think of them just now.
This makes me think of a short story. No idea from what time it was.
Earth passed through an insane/chaotic part of the universe, and all
natural laws became more like suggestions than actual laws. Distance,
direction, all were skewed.
Some people adapted and became insane, while the sane people had real
trouble coping and were hunted. I remember one scene of an insane one
chasing a sane one, and the former just picking a random direction to
chase the latter, and that worked. He just went with the chaotic flow.
Then suddenly the Earth comes back to the 'normal' universe, and then
the sane people could cope again, while the insane ones couldn't just
flow with the chaotic, malleable world anymore.
Anyone got an idea?
Dan Goodman
Thanks.
Dan Goodman
The odds of a novel by her under that name _not_ being sf are about the
same as those of a novel by Jerry Pournelle in which all the good guys
are practicing pacifists.
Dan Goodman
Jack Vance, "The Men Return."
Ilya2
go insane. In game terms, exposure to Things Man Was Not Meant To Know
causes the loss of SAN points until SAN reaches zero. A zero SAN
character "joins the other side" -- he is permanently and irrevocably
an NPC under gamemaster's control, worshipping and serving Great Old
Ones. All major game villains have SAN 0 to start with. But "Sanity 0"
does not mean a character is a drooling idiot (although sometimes he
is). Most SAN 0 people act more or less rationally toward their goals
-- except the goals are inimical to human race. But who is the really
sane one here?
Characters in "Call of Cthulhu" game, at least relatively experienced
one (which means low SAN), *know* human race is doomed. They know
sooner or later Great Old Ones will be back and human species will be
erased, like many other sentient species before it, and many yet to
come. Pretending otherwise is to hide head in the sand, and acquiring
mastery of Cthulhoid magic is one's best bet for continued existence
-- a slim bet, but potentially for very long existence at that. I
always interpreted that "reaching Sanity 0" means accepting humanity's
true (however unenviable) place in the scheme of things. To be sane in
this context means to be ignorant and parochial. Anyone who accepted
the abovementioned place is psychotic by human standards, but actually
acts rationally with regard to (correct) information he possesses. So
who is the really sane one here?
David Goldfarb
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>I think it's in the author's preface to _Null-A Three_ that he all-
>capses the fact that the protagonist (whose memories are duplicated
>into new bodies, making him a non-Aristotelian personality, i.e. not a
>unique soul) is called Gilbert GoSANE, spelled every other time
>Gosseyn.
Nope, that's the preface to the book publication of the original
_World of Null-A_.
--
David Goldfarb | "You never learn until too late that everyone's
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | passing for normal."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Will Shetterly
Mike Schilling
"David Goldfarb" <gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu> wrote in message
news:L4wE8...@kithrup.com...
> In article
> <9b61aff1-4155-40db...@e5g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>>I think it's in the author's preface to _Null-A Three_ that he all-
>>capses the fact that the protagonist (whose memories are duplicated
>>into new bodies, making him a non-Aristotelian personality, i.e. not a
>>unique soul) is called Gilbert GoSANE, spelled every other time
>>Gosseyn.
>
> Nope, that's the preface to the book publication of the original
> _World of Null-A_.
One of the book publications, anyway. Since that same preface references S.
I. Hayakawa [1] as the president of SF State, it's obviously not the
original.
1. A student of Korzybski.
David Goldfarb
Okay, but anyway it was well before the publication of _Null-A Three_.
--
David Goldfarb |"Why are you persecuting me? What have I ever
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | done to you?"
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | "You tried to kill me, and destroy this
| entire planet."
|"Apart from that!" -- Doctor Who, "Boom Town"
Norm D. Plumber
It sounds a whole lot like driving from San Diego to Santa Barbara
through the whack-zone between the two.
--
pour spelling, bad tuping, and dylsexia; so it goes.
raymond larsson
dsg...@iphouse.com says...
> Eminently sane characters in science fiction: One in Philip K. Dick's
> _Clans of the Alphane Moon_.
But he's a /slime mold/ .
--
rgl ... and a spy!
William December Starr
Ilya2 <il...@rcn.com> said:
> Characters in "Call of Cthulhu" game, at least relatively
> experienced one (which means low SAN), *know* human race is
> doomed. They know sooner or later Great Old Ones will be back and
> human species will be erased, like many other sentient species
> before it, and many yet to come. Pretending otherwise is to hide
> head in the sand, and acquiring mastery of Cthulhoid magic is
> one's best bet for continued existence -- a slim bet, but
> potentially for very long existence at that. I always interpreted
> that "reaching Sanity 0" means accepting humanity's true (however
> unenviable) place in the scheme of things. To be sane in this
> context means to be ignorant and parochial. Anyone who accepted
> the abovementioned place is psychotic by human standards, but
> actually acts rationally with regard to (correct) information he
> possesses. So who is the really sane one here?
"The majority is always sane, Louis."
(I'm not promoting that idea (nor was Larry Niven, I believe); just
reproducing the quote.)
-- wds