"been teaching literature for over 35 years"

Jeff Wilson · 05 Sep 2013, 21:52 · from 2013-September.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at clueland.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 16:52:50 -0500
Subject: (urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"
Message-ID: <ed93a0266c426792f1d95d6a4d41677a.squirrel at webmail.prismnet.com>

Paul Cook has a ranty go at books he doesn't consider SF, including BOTNS.
He considers the presence of medieval and Arthurian tropes with poor sfnal
world building like the Urth failing to wobble from the lack of a moon
(!!) to be false advertising.

http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/09/science-fiction-science-fiction/

Alas, the site editor has blocked comments after a torrent of
coutner-ranting, but has offered to publish a suitably impersonal
counter-column submission.

Would anyone like to join me in compiling some quotes and citations that
poke holes in some of his underinformed opinions?

in particular:

 - there's no moon, so the earth should wobble
 - vulcanism has ceased
 - mountain raising (tectonics) has ceased
 - extreme antiquity (millions or billions of years)
 - subduction zones have stopped removing carbon from the atmosphere
 - events in vast antiquity not referred to, antiquity "not used"
 - "Book Two has a long fairy tale inserted in the middle of the novel
that goes absolutely nowhere and adds nothing to the novel"

It would be best to stick to the original 4 volumes and the pre-Urth
short-stories if we can.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >
A&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab
< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >

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