"been teaching literature for over 35 years"

Christopher Simon · 06 Sep 2013, 01:23 · from 2013-September.txt.gz

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From: kierkegaurdian at gmail.com (Christopher Simon)
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 21:23:20 -0400
Subject: (urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"
Message-ID: <52292e9b.450d320a.7576.026a at mx.google.com>

I highly doubt Cook actually read BOTNS. He seems to have barely skimmed, picked a few elements, and gone nuts. Seriously, how can you miss the etymological root of "Lune"? Makes me think he didn't read enough to see it mentioned.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Urth" <jordonflatourth at gmail.com>
Sent: ?9/?5/?2013 7:27 PM
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"

I haven't posted to the list in a long while, but reading this made me spit coffee all over the keyboard, in hilarity and horror.  "...a long fairy tale inserted inserted into the middle of the novel that goes nowhere and adds absolutely nothing..."

I pity anyone with him as a professor.  I hope they all read this blog post.

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 5, 2013, at 3:42 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:

> Here's another gem:
> 
> "(Let?s set aside the morality of investing our interest in a character who tortures people. Remember, the violence in Wolfe is partially influenced by the overt violence in the early 1980s of Orson Scott Card. *Card?s touch is everywhere in these books.*)"
> 
> On 9/5/2013 6:36 PM, Christopher Simon wrote:
>> "Bujold tips her hand in the eloquence of her language (normally a good thing) and the attention to detail that only women would find attractive: balls, courts, military dress, palace intrigues, gossiping, and whispering in the corridors."
>> 
>> Kinda sexist too, isn't he?
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> From: Jeff Wilson <mailto:jwilson at clueland.com>
>> Sent: ?9/?5/?2013 5:52 PM
>> To: urth at urth.net <mailto:urth at urth.net>
>> Subject: (urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"
>> 
>> 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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