A Pullman Car on the Wolfe Train

Alex David Groce · 01 Aug 2001, 20:30 · from urth-v0030.mbox · original

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From: Alex David Groce <Alex_Groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) A Pullman Car on the Wolfe Train
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 20:30:51
Message-ID: <urth-v0030-0583 at digest.urth.net>
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Dan'l wrote:

> No. Once is a joke. Twice might be jokes. Three or four times, let
> alone the dozens of things that have similar quasi-referentiality to
> our world For examplw: all the places with same or similar names --
> I could almost grant that if only as a conceptual "translation" to
> give readers a clear sense of the geography. But the titles of
> persons [various Oxonian titles], the references to historical
> persons [i.e., Manicheeism] ... the fact that the [European] culture
> of TGC's world is so _similar_ to ours, I suppose, is what bothers
> me most. It seems to lack a certain kind of inventiveness that I
> would hope would go into working out the ramifications of such a
> radically _different_ Earth.

Well, I haven't yet read TGC, but this is pretty common in alternate
history fantasy.  Canonical examples of worlds that would _really_
involve a lot less common names and history would include John Ford's
_The Dragon Waiting_ (which, for on-topicness, Wolfe has said very
nice things about, with justification) and/or the Randall Garrett
books.  Is Pullman doing anything different than that?  Restricting
the changes because you want the frisson of John Calvin/Richard
III/etc. in different roles in your world vs. people nobody has heard
of and who have no connotations seems like perfectly legitimate
fictional technique.

--
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

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