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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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(Quote) ... and we're back to translation, and what counts as "accurate".
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(Quote) Thank you for saying that. One thing I like about this club is the breadth of books we look at. Most work, some don't. But for me, the few failures are worth it for finding all the good ones.
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(Quote) I think the second half was more of the same, albeit faster. I think you wouldn't have enjoyed the rest of the book, given what you thought of the first half.
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There are plenty of "ideal story structure" frameworks around, such as the Campbell Monomyth used as the basis of Star Wars, and so on. The question is, how much artifice in a book is too much? Assume @Apocryphal 's characterisation of th…
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Happy new year! I've posted the final round of questions for Babel.
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(Quote) I read the prequel short story A Dead Djinn in Cairo and really enjoyed it. Hopefully the novel is as good!
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But, would 200-year-old language forms have come across as archaic and stilted, distancing us from the characters? Is what we're reading a translation from that form of language to modern vernacular? Of course, the far more likely explanation is th…
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What is Robin's core identity, and where does he "belong"? I think the Robin of Book 2 belongs nowhere, and he knows it. He is, and will always be, a tolerated intruder in the British ruling class, accepted only so long as he's useful. He'…
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Yes, I think it's long, and large parts of it don't advance any story. But it does all give a sense of the time and place, so none of it feels like filler and I don't find any of the writing dragging.
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(Quote) Sorry, but I don't understand either point you're making here. Could you please expand?
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Steam power, in history, had a lot of material needs. You needed a lot of coal, and hence miners, mining equipment, and all that. You needed to transport the coal to the steam engines, hence canals then railways, requiring all the people to dig the …
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I understand the Harry Potter comments, but I think it's a deliberate ploy by Kuang: she's trying to portray Oxford as an idyllic home of pure intellect, floating above the mundane reality of the world. I expect the action to move out of Oxford soon…
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I've posted a few discussion starters for the first part of the book.
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Is that a comment on this book, or Saberhagen generally? Would you read other books by Saberhagen?
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(Quote) Stone Place wasn't too bad, but I got the feeling that the other stories with these characters were related to some other stories (novels?) that we didn't see. They seemed to be written for people who'd read those other stories.
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I'm also enjoying it. I'm most of the way through Book II, so I'll have to pen some questions before I forget all the details at the end of the month! But even this far through, there are some interesting themes that could support some discussions.
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By coincidence, I've just finished watching Star Trek TOS Series 2 Episode 6, "The Doomsday Machine", about a giant war machine that destroys all in its path. The characters in the programme posit that The Doomsday Machine was a weapon of …
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(Quote) Knowing full-well I'm reading too much into this... but if Saberhagen is positing, in these stories, that an out-of-control military-industrial complex is an existential threat to all life, what is the correct response? Saberhagen's response…
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(Quote) I think that could well be true. The parable of a war machine that slipped out of the control of its creators. So is "more war" the correct response to that? Is that what Saberhagen is saying? Was that a deliberate statement by hi…
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(Quote) In the final story, Karlsen has journeyed to an inhospitable environment, stay there for some indeterminate length of time (at least forty days and nights) while resisting temptation and rejecting lies, and eventually returns with a greater …
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Pretty good, I think. I wouldn't call his writing deep or subtle, especially when it comes to characters. Did any of the people have real depth and complexity? I think the closest we came was the story "What T and I did".
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Starting from the thesis that good science fiction is good because it's a reflection of our own times... what do the berserkers represent? Are they a people, like the Soviets or Chinese, out to destroy America? Are they a massively powerful and se…
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I'll also have more time in December, I think. Let's aim to read all of Book I and Book II in November, and finish the rest in December.
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I liked the range of worlds we saw, and the implied history of spread and collapse. The Esteelers came across as something that was explained and developed elsewhere; there were hints at the larger setting, but it wasn't handled well enough for me t…
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It's very much some dated SF. I don't think it's any more offensive than most other literature of the time: it wouldn't be published now, but it was a reasonable reflection of the times it was written. As Richard points out, just about everyone acti…
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I think I missed Karlsen's faith, and only noticed it when I looked back to answer this question. That indicates that exploration of faith wasn't successful for me. On a quick skim through, is Karlsen's faith any different from standard 1960s middle…
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Without A Thought was interesting because it obviously came about from Saberhagen reading about MENACE, a matchbox-based machine learning system (and, if you're interested, a description of a recent rebuild ). I spent a few minutes working out how &…
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For me, it didn't work as a novel. I thought of it as a collection of short stories with some connecting text. The stories were too different in tone and characters to have more cohesion than that. Now, the short stories themselves were entertainin…
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Reading schedule The book is about 540 pages long, so half of it is 270 pages. That is smack in the middle of Book III (of five). That gives us three options of how to read the book: * Read all of Books I and II (220 pages) * Read up to the end of…
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A good insight about the Icarus painting. The theme of general uninterest in Newton's origins comes through the book. (Quote) Connected to this, I think, is the motif of increased leisure and lack of worthwhile work. The world is falling apart, res…