{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2782", "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": 2782, "subject": "Pullman, Juveniles, Hamilton and Cerberus", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-08-15T22:21:12+00:00", "last": "2001-08-16T09:02:33+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nigel Price", "address": "nigel.a.price at virgin.net" }, "date": "2001-08-15T22:21:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Pullman, Juveniles, Hamilton and Cerberus", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Pullman, Juveniles, Hamilton and Cerberus - a most excellent firm of\naccountants...\n\n#1 Pullman on the Booker Prize Long List\n\nI heard on BBC Radio 4's \"Front Row\" programme (nightly magazine-style radio\nprogramme discussing the arts) tonight that Pullman's \"Amber Spyglass\" has\nbeen included in the long list for this year's Booker Prize. The presenter\nreferred to this as being unusual in that Pullman was regarded primarily as\na children's writer. The pundit commenting on the list expressed surprise on\ndifferent grounds, namely that although Pullman was a very fine writer,\n\"Amber Spyglass\" was a mess and not his best work. It was, he said, the last\nvolume of a trilogy, the first two volumes of which had set up so many\nthemes, expectations and parallel worlds that the third volume could never\nresolve all the plots and issues satisfactorily.\n\nHave not read any Pullman yet. The discussion of Pullman on this list first\nintrigued me, and then almost put me off altogether. I'm sure that I'll get\nround to him some time when all the fuss has dies down.\n\n#2 Juvenile fantasy\n\nOn the recently aired subject of juvenile fantasy: I've been reading a\nvariety of books to my eight year-old daughter over the past couple of\nyears. She loved \"The Hobbit\" and adored the Narnia books. She thought that\n\"The Silver Chair\" was the best, and I'm not sure that she isn't right. Some\nof the volumes I'd particularly enjoyed in the past (including \"The Lion,\nthe Witch and the Wardrobe\" and \"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader\") seemed a\nlittle disappointing this time round, while others (\"Prince Caspian\", for\ninstance) were better than I remembered. I insisted on reading \"The\nMagician's Nephew\" in its correct place, as the penultimate book in the\nseries. I still think that the opening section of that volume, on the\ndeserted dying world, takes some beating.\n\n(Of course, being a slightly illiterate and narrow-minded Baptist, I didn't\nmind the religious bits at all. Charlotte, who loves animals and wants to\nbecome a vet, for a long time didn't even realise that there was any\nreligious agenda in the Narnia books, and just thought that they were the\nmost wonderful tales of world which has talking animals and a magic lion for\nits king.)\n\nWe've also read the first three of Ursula LeGuin's four \"Earthsea\" books.\nThese are exquisitely written, and read aloud beautifully. I've read them\nbefore, but we were both quite mesmerised. The major downside, however, is\nthat they are incredibly gloomy and depressing in places. In that sense,\nthey're not entirely ideal as bedtime reading. We're taking a break before\ntackling the final volume, \"Tehanu\", and are currently reading \"Swallows and\nAmazons\", which is much more jolly, although it was rather slow in getting\nstarted.\n\n(I'd never read \"A Wrinkle in Time\", so I bought and read it a while back to\nsee if it was something that Charlotte might enjoy. I thought it very dull\nand preachy, and terribly old fashioned. Perhaps I've just grown too old...)\n\n#3 A sixth head for Cerberus\n\nAs a footnote to my earlier posting on Hamilton's \"Night's Dawn\" trilogy:\nthe apparent allusion to \"The Fifth Head of Cerberus\" in \"The Reality\nDysfunction\" is a brief, trifling and passing thing. The short story\n\"Deathday\", however, in the collection \"A Second Chance at Eden\", shows much\ncloser and more significant parallels with Wolfe's novel.\n\n* Complete and utter spoiler for \"Deathday\" *\n\nIn summary...\n\nStricken with grief over the death of his wife, a human colonist on a\ndistant world hunts down what he imagines is one of the last examples of an\naboriginal alien species. The other members of the race have been killed off\nby humans. The alien is a shape shifter, able to change both its shape and\ncolour in order to blend in with its surroundings. It is also telepathic and\nable to project its thoughts and feelings into the human's mind. After he\nhas killed the alien, the colonist discovers its eggs, which hatch out\ncreatures which take on human shape. A hatchling in his house takes on the\nappearance of his late wife, and tries to seduce him. Hatchlings outside his\nhouse take on his own appearance, and shoot him with his own rifle.\n\nWell, OK, not *exactly* the same as TFHoC, but you can see that there are\nsome strongly common themes coming through - shapeshifting, telepathic\nprojection, apparently threatened aliens replacing humans - even the hunting\nmotif.\n\nIncidentally, an interesting early example of the \"alien evolves into a\nhuman\" motif can be found in F L Wallace's short story \"Student Body\",\noriginally published in \"Galaxy\" magazine in 1953.\n\nNigel\nMinety, Wilts" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-08-16T09:02:33+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Pullman, Juveniles, Hamilton and Cerberus", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Nigel Price wrote:\n* Complete and utter spoiler for \"Deathday\" *" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, OK, not *exactly* the same as TFHoC, but you can see that there are\nsome strongly common themes coming through - shapeshifting, telepathic\nprojection, apparently threatened aliens replacing humans - even the hunting\nmotif." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Your description actually reminded me more of Bradbury's Martian\nChronicles than FIFTH HEAD. \n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }