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clash_bowley
About
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- clash_bowley
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Comments
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Not yet started. Will do so today!
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All set!
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Boughtenated.
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(Quote) :D
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(Quote) I think choosing beavers would have been more interesting...
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@BarnerCobblewood - your posts are helping me to understand this book. Thank you.
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Interesting analysis, @BarnerCobblewood! I agree that nostalgia is deeply important to this book, and I have no particular sense of nostalgia. I don't associate emotions with things and places, so the way the people act in this book seems bizarre to…
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(Quote) No, though Umslopogaas the Zulu, the male main character in Nala the Lily, is an important character in some of the Allan Quartermain books.
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I will be doing H. Rider Haggard's Nada the Lily for my next book.
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There were many things that rubbed me the wrong way about this book. It suffered from far too many tropes of the times for me to enjoy it. I was acutely aware of the 'smurf population distribution' - there were 30 smurfs for every one smurfette. Als…
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(Quote) For emphasis!
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(Quote) It was meant to be chuckled over... (Quote) I also thought of Blish's Cities in Flight
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Nothing here.
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I didn't get this far, and don't remember it from 50 years ago....
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Thought it was bizarre, and absurd without any humor. It didn't even fit with the story so far. It's out of left field and should have stayed there.
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My willing suspension of disbelief was removed at this point, but apparently not fictional humanity's suspension of disbelief. On the word of one witness everyone mass moves to Jupiter and converts their body? Really? Has Simak ever met any humans? …
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This could have been interesting if Simak had any clue what to do with it.
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The best part about this book was the interstitial commentary, yielding some fun pseudo-academic wrangling. But really? Robots would have sufficed.
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As I can see as I accompany my son on his rounds delivering flowers, rather than retreating to the country, people retreated into the city. Many people do not come out even to accept gifted flowers, and instead communicate to people through their do…
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It's bollocks. I think this move to the country was all a simple extension of the retreat to suburbia in postwar USA. It's straight up bull because the reason there is lots of land for cheap in the country is that the vast majority of people live in…
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I read City before, back in the 70s?, and quite liked it. This time if fell apart on me. It's definitely a 'future history' thing, which was quite fashionable in those days, but I couldn't look past the deficiencies this time.
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I thought they were Americans in unconvincing Russian costumes. My bad... :D
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What bothered me wasn't that they were talking Russian as if there was only was a mild dialectic difference it was that it was all without aid from an AI translator. These devices exist today in more rudimentary form and they should be in routine us…
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(Quote) I agree entirely. This is one of the two things that bothered me the most about this book's background. Yes, groups can survive in isolation for huge lengths of time, BUT they change differently than those not isolated. Languages always chan…
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But yes, Americans should take our great president for life's lead and write only about Americans in America and fuck the rest of the world. The characters should be the color of the writer. We must write what we know and we all know nothing.
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I said it was handled like a noir mystery, not written like one! I was thinking of something like Poisonville or The Maltese Falcon - both Hardboiled, actually, but I said noir as the later film style which was used in the movie versions of these s…
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Actually the Hypatia's crew - based on the names - were multi-ethnic. Maddie's name was French. I believe Russian was just a common language in the Hypatia's earth, so they knew how to speak it.
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IIRC, the knowledge of the location - and the existence - of the third ring was deliberately suppressed and removed from any data accessible to the colonists. Anya was in fact searching very close to the area for lost people at one time.
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I have always thought this. I didn't know Tolkien was so enamored of She, but Haggard was one of my favorite authors growing up. Knowing after reading this how influential Haggard was to Tolkien, I would say there is little doubt Galadriel was an ev…
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I am ready just as soon as I can finish my questions...