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Apocryphal
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LOL!
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Well, I think these are cases of the state reflecting the will of the people, not of the state 'dictating culture'. In some cases those may be the same thing. A more contentious example might be the adoption of a state religion - that might reflect …
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Could it be surmised, then, that the author of the York Notes, felt the opposite of @RichardAbbott re: the writing style. I mean, one doesn't write a whole book to discuss dull writing, do they? For my part, I was also unmoved by the writing, but I …
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(Quote) What happens to them afterward? Does the state give them lodging and food, find a job for them, or ship them abroad? Are they free, but without a support network?
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Yes, I'm also seeing the trend go the other way. But there are a few pressures in the opposite direction that concern me, like the recent fervor to prevent 'cultural appropriation' which can (and has) been taken so far as to make it socially unaccep…
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Nothing to add here, atm, but this might be a good place to say 'great questions, as usual, @NeilNjae !'
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Wow, I love the examples given so far above. P.G. Wodehouse as a utopia - yes, that's fantastic thinking! And yet there's lots of conflict in his world. Sure, most of the conflicts seem trivial, and I guess that's part of what makes them funny - the…
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I've done this both with PCs as insiders and as outsiders. It's much easier to have the PCs be outsiders because that way you don't have to rely on the players reading background material. But it's much more rewarding when the PCs are insiders, I fi…
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I don't think it's strictly necessary to highlight what's interesting about a different culture, but can make it easier. Thinking of the @RichardAbbott novels I've read, the ancient world novels and the Spaceports novels are both written by insiders…
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It's certainly expressive and transformative, so I would agree that it's art. Good art? How do we define what's good in art? You might ask instead, is this a good story? And that's an entirely different thing, and perhaps no, it isn't, but it's much…
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Again, I largely agree with Paul. I think art is a form of catharsis for people who have undergone hard times, and without those hard times some art (like Picasso's Guernica) might not exist. But many emotions move art, and the Cistene Chapel didn't…
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Perhaps, but culture is a grass roots phenomenon - it begins with the people, and changes as the people change. The pressures on culture come from many directions (schools, parents, news and entertainment media - but also technology, peers, and dema…
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I agree with Paul on all the matters he touched upon. With respect to where the responsibility lies, I'd only add that you can vote for your government, but not for your church leadership, and churches have certainly not shown themselves to be free …
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Brave New World is both a utopia and a dystopia, and what I was trying to get across in the introduction when I posted about the John Joseph Adams anthology is that this dual nature is a hallmark of the genre. There's a lesson in this idea that huma…
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A few additional notes I have on these chapters. I agree - there isn't quite the payoff one would expect from the ending. Lots of loose ends untied, and really what's the moral of the story? Inire's letter is interesting - he refers to 'his cousin…
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LEXICON (Quote) Xanthoderms: A person with yellow skin. Paralians: Someone who lives by the sea. Terentines: A brittle nut that breaks when you touch it?? Perhaps this is one of his misspellings. Antrustiones: (Frankish) A volunteer or follower of …
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LEXICON (Quote) Aquastor: Aquastor, or Aquaster, is an esoteric term coined and used by Paracelsus. It denotes an entity formed by the power of a concentrated thought. This being can obtain a life of its own and can even assume physical form. The a…
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LEXICON (Quote) Cerbotana: A mispelling of the Italian word for blow-gun: cerbottana. Uturuncu: Quechua word for 'jaguar'. I don't see any independent reference to this being a shaman who can turn into a tiger. The word does not appear in the Lexic…
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LEXICON (Quote) Phenocod: Lexicon Urthus says this is an animal that skulks around battlefields, however it's derived from a Phenacodus, which is a paleocene animal that lived long before battlefields were a thing. (Image) Orphicleide: a musical …
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LEXICON (Quote) Contus: Greek - long pole or pike - from 'I sting/goad' Sutler: A person who follows an army selling provisions. (Quote) Anpiel: In ancient Hebrew mysticism, Anpiel is one of the angels charged by rabbis with the government of bird…
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I’m excited for this!
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LEXICON (Quote) Maniple: Easy - a sub-unit of a Roman legion consisting of 120 or 60 men. Ile: This one is trickier - obsolete word for an 'aisle' or an 'ear of corn' or Latin for 'intestines', but the latin etymology reveals a Greek root meaning '…
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Yes, I also got that the other Severian was the same person from an alternate branch of time, but found that chapter quite confusing. Earlier in this book it was intimated that Severian was a twin, so no revelation on that front. Also wondering …
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FWIW with The New Sun we read about 20 pages per week, which was usually almost exactly 4 chapters each week.
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🥳
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@Michael_S_Miller does that mean you’re in?
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@NeilNjae Very cool!
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Bit difficult to say as I haven read it, but based on the past two slow reads ive noticed that one tends to want the breaks to reflect episodes in the text. Eg. if there are two episodes in the Lazaret then they should be in the same week. On the ot…
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I wonder if Genesis referenced Brave New World in one of their songs? Get Em Out By Friday maybe? I’m listening to an audio version and it’s a bit surreal to hear Michael York pronounce ‘gametes’ so it sounds like ‘gay meats’. Is that a common pr…
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Thanks for volunteering @NeilNjae ! Much appreciated.