Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis

Gwern Branwen · 22 Sep 2009, 03:12 · from 2009-September.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:12:41 -0400
Subject: (urth) Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis
In-Reply-To: <1f7617370909211704g1f4bf189x7e152cbba77cee08 at mail.gmail.com>
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	<1f7617370909211704g1f4bf189x7e152cbba77cee08 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <cbf55b100909212012p71bf5ff1l8cc2cc63320edd5e at mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 8:04 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Seems like a worthwhile thesis, although I wonder whether those 2
>> priest archetypes are quite so universal - such a categorization would
>> have difficulty with Frank Herbert, I think.
>
> ... and Arthur Clarke ("The Star") ... and Dan Simmons (Hyperion) ... and
> Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow) ... and Peter F. Hamilton (the Night's Dawn
> trilogy) ... and Walter M. Miller (A Canticle for Leibowitz) ... and Tony
> Boucher ("The Quest for St. Aquin") ... and ...

Ah yes, how could I forget Father Dure? Although arguably the rest of
Simmons' Catholic Church falls neatly into the lie category.

> The makings of at least one excellent doctoral thesis lies in the image of
> the (Catholic) priest in SF. However, this person's thesis ain't it.

This sort of thing is one reason I avoid literature research: of the
dozens of thousands of SF works, is a few dozen works (say) which
avoid the 2 standard storylines enough to render Wolfe's similar
avoidance not newsworthy, or to invalidate the division into 2
standard storylines? What *is* the standard for good literature
research?

-- 
gwern

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