Nigel Price,
3 quoted lines
Re: Blish's ACOC, you wrote:
Other than
that, I can't make up my mind whether it's a peculiar twist in Blish's own thinking, or the effect of the novel's technique, which is to set the main characters against each other in a sort of chiaroscuro dialectic, reminiscent in both its brilliance and its staginess of George Bernard Shaw at his most argumentative. (There are parts of the first book of ACoC which are actually set out as dramatic dialogue, as if written for a play.)
Thanks--I wanted to say something like that! (Rather than Shaw, I was going to draw attention back to the [in my mind] similar roughness of Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain," full of declamations! And stark revelations! People speak frank! [As contrast to Smith's "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard"] But that would only have led to tangents on Cordwainer Smith.)
Hurry up and finish reading it, so you can say whatever it was I was going to say!
=mantis=