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skywaterblueYes, I know. What a crazy nutty project.
The first rule was that I had to read all of them, even the ones I had previously read in school or for pleasure.
Allamagoosa by Erik Frank Russell
At first it was my intent to go chronologically, but I found that hampered when I realized that this project would inevitably involve digging up paper copies of the stories. (WHAT, NOT ALL OF THESE CAN BE FOUND FREE ONLINE SOMEWHERE? Yes children, I know, the internet still doesn't move fast enough for me.) In any case, this short story is a quick little comedy bit from the fifties that is SO very 'ha ha, we all served in the war'. Aside from the fact that it's set on a starship, kind of difficult to see why this won a Hugo. It's quite the sort of thing you'd read in an old Colliers that you bought at a vintage stuff store because you liked the historical cover and or needed old advertisements for a craft project.
I feel so mean for having said that.
The Star by Arthur C. Clarke.
Jesuits in SPAAAAACE. I suppose that all of the other space Jesuits in sci-fi (there are a fair few) are really all descended from this one short story. Anyway, I quite dug it, even though it's one of those short stories that is REALLY short by getting to the punchline and doing very little. No meandering through other subplots for Asimov; well, I appreciate efficiency in art.
The ending is a little 'take that' dig, I think.
Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson.
Um, it's about copyright being shitty. I try not to look at the author's names on the short before I plow through it, if possible, because otherwise we get to situations where I am sad because I have to read ten pages by someone who I don't really like all that much. (As a writer; having never heard schtum about Spider Robinson as a person, I will assume he is a decent chap.) Anyway, we came not to discuss how I've never finished a single Callahan's book, and to discuss this short story.
I don't know. You could probably read the Creative Common's license and get the same gist; the idea that copyright protection smothers human creativity and that we must mulch and weed our creations isn't exactly mindblowing for a child of the 21st century. (See above digression about 'wtf, I'm gonna have to get paper copies?')
Also, in the future everyone has holograms.
"Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler.
On the other side, we have Madame Butler, who I adored. The fact that she's dead still comes to me at odd moments in the bookstore and makes me agita. No more new Butler stories?!
"Speech Sounds" takes place in a typical Butler post-apocalyptic Southern California, where everyone has been struck by a global virus that robs you of your ability to communicate. Clever. Pages and pages of the narrator struggling to survive taking the bus in LA, and then there's some sex which restores the plucky drought-due-to-the-apocalypse narrator to humanity. It's so very her, so very 'I too, have had this day on the bus'. The narrator's frequent comparisons of the other people to apes and monkeys made me squirm a bit with uncomfortable feelings.
"The Crystal Spheres" by David Brin.
I loved David Brin as a teenager. How many hours did I spend pouring over the technical details of the Uplift universe? Well, I fell away because the later trilogy leaves a lot to be desired, and doesn't have as much talking dolphin action as you would think, and at fifteen or so there was only so much I could deal with before calling TIME.
This is fairly classic Brin. It's a big ol' fun space opera. In this universe, all the solar systems that have yellow stars are encircled by a big crystal barrier. After having shattered our own and causing massive catastrophe, humanity finally gets out to the stars and discovers that all planets capable of supporting life are tucked away. Fairly depressing notion, even though my brain was constantly rebelling at the sheer wtf-ery of the physics. (Even though I realized 'it's a big crystal barrier!' is not an idea what wants to conform to reality.)
I enjoyed it a lot.
That is: 5/57, by my quick math.
The first rule was that I had to read all of them, even the ones I had previously read in school or for pleasure.
Allamagoosa by Erik Frank Russell
At first it was my intent to go chronologically, but I found that hampered when I realized that this project would inevitably involve digging up paper copies of the stories. (WHAT, NOT ALL OF THESE CAN BE FOUND FREE ONLINE SOMEWHERE? Yes children, I know, the internet still doesn't move fast enough for me.) In any case, this short story is a quick little comedy bit from the fifties that is SO very 'ha ha, we all served in the war'. Aside from the fact that it's set on a starship, kind of difficult to see why this won a Hugo. It's quite the sort of thing you'd read in an old Colliers that you bought at a vintage stuff store because you liked the historical cover and or needed old advertisements for a craft project.
I feel so mean for having said that.
The Star by Arthur C. Clarke.
Jesuits in SPAAAAACE. I suppose that all of the other space Jesuits in sci-fi (there are a fair few) are really all descended from this one short story. Anyway, I quite dug it, even though it's one of those short stories that is REALLY short by getting to the punchline and doing very little. No meandering through other subplots for Asimov; well, I appreciate efficiency in art.
The ending is a little 'take that' dig, I think.
Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson.
Um, it's about copyright being shitty. I try not to look at the author's names on the short before I plow through it, if possible, because otherwise we get to situations where I am sad because I have to read ten pages by someone who I don't really like all that much. (As a writer; having never heard schtum about Spider Robinson as a person, I will assume he is a decent chap.) Anyway, we came not to discuss how I've never finished a single Callahan's book, and to discuss this short story.
I don't know. You could probably read the Creative Common's license and get the same gist; the idea that copyright protection smothers human creativity and that we must mulch and weed our creations isn't exactly mindblowing for a child of the 21st century. (See above digression about 'wtf, I'm gonna have to get paper copies?')
Also, in the future everyone has holograms.
"Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler.
On the other side, we have Madame Butler, who I adored. The fact that she's dead still comes to me at odd moments in the bookstore and makes me agita. No more new Butler stories?!
"Speech Sounds" takes place in a typical Butler post-apocalyptic Southern California, where everyone has been struck by a global virus that robs you of your ability to communicate. Clever. Pages and pages of the narrator struggling to survive taking the bus in LA, and then there's some sex which restores the plucky drought-due-to-the-apocalypse narrator to humanity. It's so very her, so very 'I too, have had this day on the bus'. The narrator's frequent comparisons of the other people to apes and monkeys made me squirm a bit with uncomfortable feelings.
"The Crystal Spheres" by David Brin.
I loved David Brin as a teenager. How many hours did I spend pouring over the technical details of the Uplift universe? Well, I fell away because the later trilogy leaves a lot to be desired, and doesn't have as much talking dolphin action as you would think, and at fifteen or so there was only so much I could deal with before calling TIME.
This is fairly classic Brin. It's a big ol' fun space opera. In this universe, all the solar systems that have yellow stars are encircled by a big crystal barrier. After having shattered our own and causing massive catastrophe, humanity finally gets out to the stars and discovers that all planets capable of supporting life are tucked away. Fairly depressing notion, even though my brain was constantly rebelling at the sheer wtf-ery of the physics. (Even though I realized 'it's a big crystal barrier!' is not an idea what wants to conform to reality.)
I enjoyed it a lot.
That is: 5/57, by my quick math.
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"Allamagoosa" and "The Star"
Date: 2008-08-18 03:55 am (UTC)It has one basic truth to say about bureaucracy, and the potential problems with cutting red tape. I guess it's a simple story, by Hugo standards. I've seen this sort of thing happen in real life, though -- a major flap originating from someone trying to Cover Their Ass and not really understanding what they were doing. The irony in "Allamagoosa" is that the captain truly means well -- he's trying to get around the REMF's, which is why it's a comedy.
"The Star" is by Arthur C. Clarke, not Isaac Asimov. I don't know if it's the first "priest in space" story that's sympathetic to the priest -- Blish did a lot of the same thing. "The Star" works well because it emphasizes the difference between our grasp of the scale of the Cosmos and that of the Ancients -- they could really imagine a "new star" existing for no other purpose than to mark an important Terrestrial event -- Clarke dramatizes what horror that might really mean if it were true.
I didn't even need to re-read these two -- they are among my favorite sf shorts of all time. Especially "The Star."
Clarke was a master of short sf with a twist.
Re: "Allamagoosa" and "The Star"
Date: 2008-08-18 04:36 am (UTC)I'm fixing the mistake right away, thanks for catching it. (Man, do I not take good notes.) "The Star" is great. I really enjoyed it, which I suppose my slap-dash review doesn't quite show enough esteem; I could have gone indepth with Jesuits in science fiction that I feel are descended from the story.
Meanwhile, there may be an earlier Blish with a Jesuit, but "A Case of Conscience" is from 1959, three years after "The Star".
Re: "Allamagoosa" and "The Star"
Date: 2008-08-18 04:40 am (UTC)American middle-class kids (and, increasingly, this means into their early thirties) lead very sheltered lives. That's why they have trouble believing in evil -- very little firsthand experience with it.
The Greatest Generation was less naive.
Re: "Allamagoosa" and "The Star"
Date: 2008-08-18 04:48 am (UTC)We view the Greatest Generation as hopelessly out of touch. That's why I doubt very few people under 35 will be voting for McCain.
Re: "Allamagoosa" and "The Star"
Date: 2008-08-18 05:42 am (UTC)McCain is Silent Generation, not Greatest. In fact, he's just eight years too old to be a Boomer. For reference, he was born in 1936 -- when WWII ended he was 9 years old. He was a teenager from 1949 through 1955, so he would have been one of those crazy cats jiving to the hip new rock and roll sound while his disapproving Lost Generation parents and Greatest Generation older siblings wondered what he saw in it all.
You could put him on the "cusp" between Greatest and Silent generations, since he was actually a bit too old to fit into full Fifties culture, which didn't really kick in until the late 1950's (his formative years were spent during the time of the Second Red Scare).
The usual bad perception of the Silent Generation is that they are "go along to get along" type folk -- in a (Strauss and Howe) word "Adaptive," -- and that they lack the moral committment to be decisive in the crunch. This may be why none of the Silents have ever become President, while several of the Greatests and two Boomers have already achieved that honor.
Amusingly, before the Left denigrated McCain as a "madman," he had very much the opposite reputation. He was famous for being one of the most conciliatory leading Republicans, which is very much in line with the Silent Generational character. I suspect that McCain is going along a bit with the "madman" critics because it makes him look tougher, which appeals to the Republican base.
(Thomas Sowell wrote a very funny article on this, which I could find the link to if you desire).
Barack Obama was born in 1961, which interestingly puts him on the cusp between Boomers and Slackers -- same place as me. He was born after the 50's and was thus too young to remember JFK. He would have been a teenager from 1974 to 1980, which means that his political role-models would have been the Congress voted for in reaction to Watergate in 1974, and probably Jimmy Carter (though, given his "negotiate with everyone without preconditions" statement, he seems to have learned nothing from the Hostage Crisis).
You, interestingly, are on the cusp between the Slackers and the Millennials.
It'll be interesting to see how the Millennials vote this election. They, more than anyone else, really are buying into the "Obama as Messiah" line, but this has a catch to it -- if Obama become President and then stumbles badly, they will tear him to pieces come 2012.
Likewise, the Millennials' reaction to a McCain victory could be interesting. If McCain wins, they will be dismayed -- yet they are a Civic-Heroic generation like the Greatest, and hence McCain could rally them given skill and competence. They might vote against him en masse in 2008, and vote for him en masse in 2012.
And no, I don't think Obama's very competent. He's shown absolutely no signs of it, and every sign of being a media-manufactured personality. McCain's obnoxious and authoritarian, but at least he's real.
Re: "Allamagoosa" and "The Star"
Date: 2008-08-18 05:54 am (UTC)And no, I don't think Obama's very competent. He's shown absolutely no signs of it, and every sign of being a media-manufactured personality. McCain's obnoxious and authoritarian, but at least he's real.
As a state senator, I think he was fairly effective. His career as a Senator has been brief and marked mostly by a desire not to rock the boat. However: if you take just this Presidential race? He out-organized the Hillary camp to switch watch precision, and not just in fund raising. You should read the dueling exposes: the one in the Atlantic about the Hillary camp shows they had no understanding of the primary system. The ones on Obama show that his team is run like a tight-knit machine. That alone bodes well.
Amusingly, before the Left denigrated McCain as a "madman," he had very much the opposite reputation. He was famous for being one of the most conciliatory leading Republicans, which is very much in line with the Silent Generational character. I suspect that McCain is going along a bit with the "madman" critics because it makes him look tougher, which appeals to the Republican base.
As for McCain, like a lot of liberals, I had respect for him prior to 9/11. Post-9/11, he's warped into another hawk imperialist. A complete shame, but the Bush Wars have been TERRIBLE for the country. I know we've argued this point over and over again, so I don't want to start it with you. Suffice to say that the majority of the country is coming around to the reality of the situation and hopefully we'll have more success in this election.
Re: "Allamagoosa" and "The Star"
Date: 2008-08-18 05:59 am (UTC)In both situations, lots of explosions and new wargame scenarioes. I almost want Obama to win so I can see how he handles it.
Re: "Allamagoosa" and "The Star"
Date: 2008-08-18 06:02 am (UTC)