{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2751", "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": 2751, "subject": "Scattered Shots", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2001-08-02T10:13:41+00:00", "last": "2001-08-04T15:45:03+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-08-02T10:13:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Scattered Shots", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Replies to various persons in a single email 'cause I\"m lazy.\n\nTo Jasper: \n\nAaargh. I can't _believe_ I left out Alan Garner. (I'm not sure if I'd \nhave added Diana Wynne Jones, because somehow I have never read her...)\n\n\nTo Alex David Groce:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, I haven't yet read TGC, but this is pretty common in\nalternate history fantasy. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "TGC is not just an \"alternate history fantasy,\" in which some random\nevent in the past has historical ramifications. I think most of these\n(there are exceptions, like _THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE_) are simply\nsilly, and almost precisely to the extent that they do the \"what\nwould Richard III or John Calvin have done in this world?\" bit. \n\n(Confession: I once worked out just such an alternate history, in\nalmost-excruciating detail, beginning with the assumption that Friar\nBacon's researches to prove the nullity of magic had in fact proven\nits efficiacy. I wound up making Martin Luther Pope. But for ghod's\nsake, that was just background for a roleplaying game!)\n\nBut, as I say, TGC is not such a story. It isn't set in a world where\nLincoln survived, or Jesus was a woman, or some other historical \ncounterfactual. It is set in a world where human souls exist as \nexternally visible beings (which, because they're generally of the\nopposite sex of their human, I think of as animae/animi), where at\nleast some form of magic works, and where polar bears (I don't know\nabout other kinds) have developed sentience, opposable thumbs, \nglotti capable of forming sounds similar to those of human language,\nand a metallurgy capable of forging bullet-stopping body armor.\n\nAnd we're expected to believe this world has its Oxford, complete\nwith porters, scouts, and Masters and Rectors; that there's a \nChristian Church, complete with (historical) Popes and Manichees\n... Hell, just the assumption that this world is dominated by white \nEuropean culture is damnably hard to swallow, let alone that it's\nso similar in so many ways to ours.\n\nPullman just _does not bother_ to work out the ramifications of\nhis ideas.\n\nTo Tony Ellis: \nN, I'm not daemonizing Pullman; I'm just insisting that he has\nfailed to do something that would make an otherwise-excellent novel \nalso work as an excellent fantasy. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell probably irritated a few easily-\nirritated Christians in its time too, but what it was supposed to\ndo was make people think." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Which is fine by me. I don't object as such to anti-clericalism, or\neven anti-Christianism. I object to what I perceive as the rather\nchildish way Pullman does it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would hope that a child reading Pullman's book might be very\ninterested to learn that a word used by Christianity to mean an\nincarnation of evil originally meant something as harmless as\n\"spirit\", " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm inclined to agree. Unfortunately, no child will learn that fact by \nreading THE GOLDEN COMPASS. The word is just used with no particular\nexplanation. (I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it were explained \nwhen Lyra shows up in our world in the later books, but that doesn't\nhelp this book.) So I can't really accept that Pullman had such a\npaedogogical goal.\n\nGiven his external statements about Lewis (and, yes, I regard his \nattitude toward the Narnias as quite childish), I think it's pretty\nclear that the word \"daemon\" was chosen specifically for its rather\nlimited shock value. \n\n(And I can't help wondering if there wasn't a rather cynical \ncommercial motive there, too. Perhaps he was hoping to gain some\nnotoriety by having right-wing Christian groups ban the book?)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Crushed Butterfly theory of time has been tediously fashionable\nin SF writing for a long time now, but it -is- just a theory. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "See above: this isn't an alternate history; it's a world that is \nradically different. (Radically, in the literal and etymological\nsense. At the root.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If [the conservation-of-history] theory leads to more books like\nPullman's, \nor Wolfe's There Are Doors, where the changes are small and\nthought-provoking\nrather than huge and predictable, then I for one am happy to give \"logic\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "a" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "miss for a while. :-)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "TAD is also not an alternate history but a world different at its root. (It\nis\nalso quite possibly my least favorite of all Mr. Wolfe's novels, partly\nbecause\nhis other-world is far, far too much like ours.)\n\n\nTo Rostrum:\n\nYou wrote that the title _The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities_\n\"makes \nme want to go out and give him a try.\" If so, it's even more of a shame than\n\nusual that the damn thing isn't available.\n\nI highly recommend its predecessor, _Stars in my Pocket like Grains of\nSand_,\nand indeed most of his work. I find his \"pornotopic\" novels quite difficult \nto take, and some of his early work doesn't stand up quite as well as it\nmight. But he's never written a _bad_ book. \n\nOther good starting points would include _Empire Star_ (quite short, and\nthe only Delany novel that qualifies as just plain fun); _Dhalgren_ (but\nwith the caveat that it's extraordinarily difficult, in a very different way\nfrom Wolfe); and _Nova_ (which Algis Budrys once described as a \"perfect\" \nbook, meaning it in a rather double-edged way -- perfection can become\nsterile: but which I wish someone with Lucas' resources would film well).\n\nAlso, Mandatory Wolfe Content. Regarding TAD, you observe that: \"All of \nhuman history and society would be very, very, very different if men died\nimmediately after having intercourse ... No man would have more than one \nchild! Every man alive would be celibate.\"\n\nTo be fair, Wolfe does deal with both these issues, by making it clear \nthat a woman can store sperm for multiple pregnancies, and by making the\nmale sex drive stronger in his alternate world. (Failure to deal with\neither would have resulted in a world where the population would undergo\nrapid, radical, and terminal decline.)\n\n\nFinally, to Spectacled Bear:\n\nYou raise the only objection to my \"lousy working out of the fantasy world\"\nthat I can even begin to accept, when you say: " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Things are a lot more connected than she (or we) would expect. No\nattempt at explanation is made; it's simply beyond our present degree\nof knowledge. I can respect that a lot more than books that simply\nignore the question." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Moi aussi. It doesn't help TGC as a stand-alone novel, but it isn't \nreally intended as a stand-alone. (Hell, it ends with a massive cliff-\nhanger. What I've said so far is something like criticising _The \nFellowship of the Ring_ without having read _The Two Towers_ and _The \nReturn of the King_.) If it becomes clear in the later novels that \nthe worlds are connected, even though those connections are not \nexplained, well, yes, that would help. (I still think that such a \nworld would be more radically different than Pullman paints it, but\nthis puts him within the realm of conscientiously working out his\nworld rather than just drifting into speculative conservatism.)\n\n\n\n--Dan'l" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2001-08-02T13:55:05+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Scattered Shots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "TGC is not just an \"alternate history fantasy,\" in which some random\nevent in the past has historical ramifications. I think most of\nthese (there are exceptions, like _THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE_) are\nsimply silly, and almost precisely to the extent that they do the\n\"what would Richard III or John Calvin have done in this world?\"\nbit." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I fail to see why they are silly; considering them to be\nscience-fiction rather than fantasy strikes me as odd, but that's\nanother story. The examples I came up with and (how on earth did I\nnot think of this?) _There are Doors_ are not perhaps in worlds as\nradically different as Pullman's, but they're not simple \"Ghandi\nbecomes a car salesman\" stuff, which often _is_ silly (I'm thinking of\nsome Baby Boomers obsession with putting JFK and other historical\nfigures through every possible profession, although when Howard\nWaldrop does it I like it).\n\nThink of the technique as a musical variation on a theme in real\nhistory. _The Dragon Waiting_ has a Richard III not unrelated to\nours, or arbitrarily changed--I think there's a possibility for the\nstudy of character and contingent situations in this kind of thing.\nGarrett's Lord Darcy stories aren't up to that kind of thing, but the\naltered but near background works well for me, at least. Keith\nRoberts' _Pavane_ would also be in this class, and also changes more\nthan history--in all of these, magic really works, which would\npresumably (but what does a counterfactual even mean?) alter the world\nbeyond recognition just as Wolfe's reproductive cycle in _There are\nDoors_ would. Actually, Wolfe shows one reason to do this: the whole\nambiguity of the Green's sanity would be much less interesting if the\nother world were completely and utterly different, not just a\nreworking of themes in our own history. \n\nExpecting fantasies to follow a rigorous logic that (a) is in a sense\nas hypothetical as the logic of these stories and (b) would destroy\nthe fictional aim of the author and much of the enjoyment of the story\nfor many people strikes me as unfair.\n\nI'll also add that Walter Jon Williams in _Aristoi_ uses daemon in its\nclassical sense, and that Pullman could be just borrowing a reasonable\ncoinage from Socrates. On the other hand, one reason I've put off\nreading the series so far is that the anti-Lewis essays struck me as\nthe work of a particularly rude village atheist whose hatred for\nChristianity moved him to berate Lewis for writing books for children\nthat might (gasp and horror of horrors) move them to think differently\nthan Pullman, and then set out to do the same thing himself, secure\nthat his side wasn't propaganda, it was plain and simple truth. But\nthat's unfair--there are plenty of writers I enjoy despite their\nutterly wrongheaded opinions, and I shouldn't let the fact that I ran\ninto Pullman at his worst turn me away from trying his books. That he\ndisdains fantasy except for Terry Brooks is what should really worry\nme..." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32\n--\nAlex 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" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Spectacled Bear", "address": "spectacled.bear at pobox.com" }, "date": "2001-08-03T11:25:16+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Scattered Shots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "At 18:13 2001-08-02, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n(of Samuel Delany)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I highly recommend its predecessor, _Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand_,\nand indeed most of his work. I find his \"pornotopic\" novels quite difficult \nto take, and some of his early work doesn't stand up quite as well as it\nmight. But he's never written a _bad_ book. \n\nOther good starting points would include _Empire Star_ (quite short, and\nthe only Delany novel that qualifies as just plain fun); _Dhalgren_ (but\nwith the caveat that it's extraordinarily difficult, in a very different way\nfrom Wolfe); and _Nova_ (which Algis Budrys once described as a \"perfect\" \nbook, meaning it in a rather double-edged way -- perfection can become\nsterile: but which I wish someone with Lucas' resources would film well)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "_Nova_ is one of my favourite books of all time. Filming it well would\nbe a challenge: firstly, because if you leave the cinema with all your\nsenses fully functioning, the film probably hasn't done the book justice;\nand secondly, because of the extraordinary literary special effect used\nfor the nova. I don't know if this counts as a spoiler or not, but most\nof us have surely had a chance to read the book by now...\n\n** MILD SPOILER FOR _Nova_ **\n\n\nThe book left me with a tremendous impression of heat and light and noise.\nOne day I happened to pick it up, and went to read the fabulous description\nof the nova. I was quite startled to find that.....\n\n.... it isn't there. There isn't one. They go in and come out again with\nhardly a word of description. Instead of a futile attempt to convey the\nsensation of going through an exploding star with a few paragraphs of\nconcentrated Doc Smith-ian hyperbole, there is a gradual build-up of\nlesser events that are more amenable to description. Scenes like the one\nin Gold leave an cumulative impression that in the end exceeds anything\nthat a direct description could do.\n\nSpectacled Bear\n\n-- waiting for Ashton Clark" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk" }, "date": "2001-08-04T15:45:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: scattered shots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nI would hope that a child reading Pullman's book might be very\ninterested to learn that a word used by Christianity to mean an\nincarnation of evil originally meant something as harmless as\n\"spirit\"," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm inclined to agree. Unfortunately, no child will learn that fact by\nreading THE GOLDEN COMPASS. The word is just used with no particular\nexplanation. (I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it were explained\nwhen Lyra shows up in our world in the later books, but that doesn't\nhelp this book.) So I can't really accept that Pullman had such a\npaedogogical goal." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hey, -my- hypothetical child occasionally looks words up when it finds them\nbeing used in an unexpected manner, or asks a grown-up. I can't help it if\nyour hypothetical child is too lazy. :-)\n\nAs for Pullman's alleged \"childishness\"... We're getting down to personal\ntaste here, and it seems pointless to argue about that. You say \"childish\",\nI say \"pleasingly irreverent\".\n\nThe main thing is that you're still enjoying the story. I hope you enjoy the\nother two books as well." } ] } ] }