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San Francisco, 2:31 AM
Mon Nov 30
10 posts in the last 24 hours
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07/30/09
Call me BoBo. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me in the jungle, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
07/30/09
It was a cold, bright, clear day in April, and the clocks were tolling thirteen. Davy Jones decided that this would be an excellent time to play his tamborine in the streets.
07/30/09
07/30/09
And, in any case, it's not as though every particular conception of heaven isn't drawn specifically from something other than the Bible, anyway--a book which is notoriously murky about just how things after death are supposed to work.
07/29/09
Asimov foretold the future, where people don't even touch each other and babies are raised on human farms. We are so headed there it's not even funny.
07/29/09
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07/29/09
Or, alternately, biblical apocrypha, I guess.
Also, yes, it turns out that if you change some things in a book to other things, then the book will be different.
07/29/09
07/30/09
So, yes, you could replace the Martians with Wizards, or Mole People, or flying squids from beyond the stars, or ascended Tibetan Masters, and as long as you didn't care why they lived on Mars, they'd serve largely the same purpose.
I'm still not sure that that statement doesn't miss the point of the book, though.
07/29/09
07/29/09
What's the f'ing point?
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07/29/09
"To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful."
"There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick."
07/29/09
You and me both Heinlein.
07/29/09
07/29/09
Because the original publisher wanted to cut out a lot of the controversial stuff. The edited version is the "Original" published edition. The unedited version came out later.
07/29/09
07/29/09
Jar Jar: Me likey youuuuuu!!!
Qui-Gon Jinn: What the??
Jar Jar: Oh yah, I talka funny. Look at me dancy!
Qui-Gon Jinn: Piss off
Jar Jar: No. I wanny hangy out with you!
A clearly annoyed Qui-Gon Jinn whips out lightsabre and cuts Jar Jar Binks in half.
The Empire never rises and Anakin doesn't become Darth Vader. The End.
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07/29/09
This is a good policy. In similar news, stop voting for Presidents until you yourself have been President.
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07/29/09
And seriously, you'd better quit drinking Keith's India Pale Ale until you've developed your own hundred-year old system for fermenting yeast in pure water with hops and grains to yield a pure, crisp, refreshing drink suitable for all occasions.
(*this post brought to you by Keith's India Pale Ale).
07/29/09
I just have trouble seeing how she has furthered SF, or science, or the plight of mankind with this statement.
07/29/09
This is perhaps the single funniest thing I've read in the past three months. Seriously, when you think about this, it's utterly perfect, and is in fact a great, GREAT dig at Heinlein.
07/29/09
07/29/09
Magic can only do so much. Maybe it can erase our memories of having read them, at least.
07/29/09
And no to that Jane Austen thing. Jane Austen was wonderful and brilliant. You don't add anything to her books when you release campy sea monster versions, except that maybe more people will go back and read the originals.
There's a difference between changing objects, and circumstances, or themes in a book, and saying that the entire structure of the book would be exactly the same as fantasy and not science fiction. She's basically saying that Heinlein's ideas are so boring and rote that you could plug them into any situation and they'd run the same way, like a cheap old rickety machine. But can you say the same about Arthur C. Clarke? Fundamentally he had a wonder and a sort of spectacular vision that needed technology, that was at the root looking to the future.
Frank Herbert is the opposite of Heinlein. His novels are so based in character, interchange and beautiful, personal vision that I guess you could make them fantasy works and they'd still be rich and beautiful. You'd have to change a LOT of the story and plot though. You'd have to rewrite a lot.
Anyhow, I think that phrase points to the cheapness and paperiness of a Heinlein story. That's how it reads to me.
07/29/09
Herbert kids: SEAWORMS! WHEEEE!
07/29/09
A few years ago, Pat Murphy wrote a really funny Hobbit pastiche that turned it into SF. If I remember right, the elves became pataphysicians or something like that. What made it a good read, though, was that changing the genre changed the meaning of the story.
I don't think a story needs to be good to have its genre be a necessary component of its meaning. All of my suggestions were meant to be facetious. Except for the Dune sequel one, though I do like worsethannormal's suggestion of a memory wipe. (But let's remember, worsethannormal, a memory wipe is an SF trope as well...)
07/29/09
(Oddly enough, doesn't Jubal Harshaw pretty much admit this in the actual text of the book? He writes a hokum story about a kitty cat that makes his secretary tear up, but it's total bullshit. He admits constantly that a writer that can't write for money isn't really a writer. He's basically calling his reading public stupid in that work. I find it fairly offensive.)
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Are you saying that if I liked Heinlein's writing, I would somehow begin to regard this as a "cheap shot"? That a previously valid criticism would be invalid? I like James Joyce, but when someone says to me "his writing is impenetrable and hard to understand and so I think it's terrible", I don't find that to be a "cheap shot". It's what's called "AN OPINION". Maybe you've heard of it? It's pretty much what you're doing right now, just in case you couldn't figure that out.
A cheap shot would be... I don't know... "James Joyce was an alcoholic, so his books are terrible", or something equally stupid.
07/29/09
07/30/09
the point i'm trying to make really makes itself, you're hung up on yourself and what you think so much that it obfuscates reality. take dlomax as an example, dlomax admits that they're not a huge fan of Heinlein's writting and they're still capable of getting over themselves long enough to recognize a cheap shot.
07/29/09
Effective birth control doesn't mean people actually use it.
07/29/09
Not to mention the divine/alien intervention.