# Digest urth.v028.n103

*The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 03 Dec 1999*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2011>

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### David Duffy
*03 Dec 1999, 00:38*

> Or Paul Park, who dusted off Tommy Gold's discredited theory on hydrocarbon
> formation (Park's "sugar rain"), as well as tucking in a few earlier age
> skiffy artifacts like a car that runs on gunpowder (I thought that Park
> might have actually thought something up with this item, until I saw a
> literature survey and learned better).  Sharing this trait with Gene Wolfe;
> maybe Wolfe's motto should be "Never let science get in the way of story."
> (But with Wolfe I also sense that he is impishly playing with the fickle
> nature of science vogue.)
> 
> =mantis=

In defence of Park, it is pretty clear that words like "horse" and
"petrol"  don't refer to the mammal and hydrocarbon we know and love.  
Perhaps destrier would have been better, but doesn't give the frisson when
you realize halfway through (about the claws IIRC).  I decided gunpowder
must be another translation.  My gripe is after reading Park then
rereading the Helliconia set.

David Duffy.

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