{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2081", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2081, "subject": "Strange Travellers", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-10-26T03:13:08+00:00", "last": "2000-01-21T12:42:11+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Allan Lloyd", "address": "lloyd at nexus.kc3.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-10-26T03:13:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Strange Travellers", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I've been reading Strange Travellers very slowly, trying to savour every\nstory before jumping on to the next, and have now finished the book. In\nmy opinion (and I'm trying to control my enthusiasm with some kind of\nrationality) this is Wolfe's best collection since \"The Island of Dr.\nDeath...\" and possibly the best ever. If anyone is looking for a book to\ngive as an introduction to Gene's work, then this is it. \n \nThe reason that these stoies work better for me than some in other\ncollections is that the surface narative and the characters carry the\nreader into a deeper involvement with them. They all contain the\nfamiliar Wolfeian puzzles and obscure references, but these are balanced\nby line-by-line writing so powerful and painful (meaning full of pain)\nthat the stories work really well on both levels.\n\nIn \"Counting Cats in Zanzibar\" you can feel the painful dilemna that\nfaces the exiled woman without delving too deeply into the\nScience-Fictional reasons for her flight. The depth is there, and the\ninformation, for those that want to look for it, but the story is\ncarried by the confrontation between the human and aspiring-to-be-human\ncharacters.\n\nIn \"The Ziggurat\", for which Wolfe was criticized for his portayal of\nthe female characters, I thought that all the characters were reacting\nin a realistically bitter way to their experiences. The bickering about\nthe divorse settlement carrying on while their children were being\nattacked and abducted brought infinitely more depth to what could have\nbeen a hackneyed UFO story. (By the way, did the narrator's treatment of\nthe childlike alien woman at the end bring a nasty shiver of suspicion\nabout his step-children's allegations of child abuse).\n\nAnd in \"The Man in the Peppermill\" (a story I liked less than most) the\nfirst page is an incredibly affecting portrait of a mother and son\ntrying to deal with the death of a daughter. \"...still not sure how\nCathy, dead, had become Catherine\" That is so spare, not a word wasted,\nbut it sends a chill up the spine.\n\nThe one complaint I have had about Gene's work in the past is that\nalthough he claims to play fair and give enough information to\nunderstand his stories, I'm certain that in some cases he doesn't.\nExamples from the past would be \"The Most Beautiful Woman in the World\"\nand \"Lukora\" from \"Endangered Species\". I like both of these stories,\nbut there is simply not enough information given to decipher the\nmysteries. They both set up situations that beg for a solution, where\nthe characters in the story know much more than they say, leaving the\nreader ultimately dissatisfied, no matter how much detective work is\ndone.\n\n\"Strange Travellers\" contains far less of the \"puzzles-for-puzzles-sake\"\ntype of story, and is better for it. And I loved it.\n\n Allan Lloyd" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2000-01-21T12:42:11+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Strange Travellers", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Allan Lloyd said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In \"The Ziggurat\", for which Wolfe was criticized for his portayal of\nthe female characters, I thought that all the characters were reacting\nin a realistically bitter way to their experiences. The bickering about\nthe divorse settlement carrying on while their children were being\nattacked and abducted brought infinitely more depth to what could have\nbeen a hackneyed UFO story. (By the way, did the narrator's treatment of\nthe childlike alien woman at the end bring a nasty shiver of suspicion\nabout his step-children's allegations of child abuse)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmmm... Not for me. The behavior of the twins convinced me that the \naccusations were false--since they (unless, as John Kessel has proposed,\nthe story is a \"unreliable third-person\" and we see things filtered through\nEmery's insanity) seem to be purely JAN's accusations, not the twins'. In\nfact, I always thought some of the criticism of Wolfe here was misplaced--\nif you want to attack Wolfe for being misogynistic, it's not in the possible\nsympathy of the narrative for Emery's way of seeing things, but in the author's\nconstruction of Jan. Basically, Jan is the kind of person who might drive ME\nto say nasty things about women (and you'll notice that the most damning things\nEmery says, as in the car ride, he's quick to apply to men as well--and those\nwords seem to me to be Wolfe's opinion, all right), so I can hardly blame Emery\nfor being bitter (Jan, in fact, is the weak point in the story--I've met people\nnot unlike her, both male and female, but such characters always come across\nas a bit too conveniently villanous--she's the non-pulp equivalent of the black\nhatted fellow twirling his moustache. On the other hand, to some extent, both\ntypes are reflections of a reality--i.e. \"When I Was Ming the Merciless\" or \nother Wolfe stories). In fact, Emery's treatment of Tamar strikes me as\n(A) in part a \"parental\" desire to protect, etc., but if every relationship\nthat's ever involved such an instinct on one part or the other is indicative\nof child molestation, well, I'd be surprised and (B) part of his engineer's\ncuriosity! THAT is the thing, it seems to me, that rescues Emery from himself\nin this story--initially the robbery takes away his instrument of suicide, but\nin the end what brings him 180 (or 360, perhaps!) from suicide to insane\nrecklessness (in returning to the cabin with Brooke) is engineer's curiosity\n(or science-fiction reader's curiosity)--he wants to know what' really going\non, even if it kills him. In that sense, he really is very much to blame for\nBrooke's death, although it seems to me that the psychological logic of the\nstory is such that had he not returned to the cabin he'd have eventually found\nhimself eating the barrel of a gun.\n\n\n\n\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce" } ] } ] }