"been teaching literature for over 35 years"

Jerry Friedman · 06 Sep 2013, 04:37 · from 2013-September.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 21:37:26 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"
In-Reply-To: <52290769.660c320a.7def.fffff916 at mx.google.com>
References: <52290769.660c320a.7def.fffff916 at mx.google.com>
Message-ID: <1378442246.57552.YahooMailNeo at web124504.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>

You left out the best part of that quotation.

"But the romance elements creep in very early on. 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. All of this is right out of Alexander Dumas."

Cook has just proved that Alexandre Dumas was a woman.

I supposed the violence in pre-1977 Wolfe is influenced by the shadow of Card thrown backward in time.

The part about volcanoes, mountain building, and subduction, though, is probably based on "I remembered that we rowed across the crater of a volcano. Might it not have been the Cumaean's kettle? Urth's fires were long dead, as Master Malrubius had taught us..." I don't know of anything that contradicts that--is there something?

Jerry Friedman





>________________________________
> From: Christopher Simon <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>
>To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>; "urth at urth.net" <urth at urth.net> 
>Sent: Thursday, September 5, 2013 4:36 PM
>Subject: Re: (urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"
> 
>
>
>"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
>Sent: ?9/?5/?2013 5:52 PM
>To: 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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>Urth Mailing List
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>
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