Jlawrence’s Comments (group member since Mar 08, 2010)

Jlawrence’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

Release the t-shirts! :D

Sean wrote: "As an atheist who only reads scriptures for their literary value, I must say the Bible is over-rated. Yes, there's lots of good poetry in there, and some of the individual stories are wonderful, but overall it lacks cohesion."

As an anthology compiled from *many* authors, its literary quality does vary greatly. I've probably only read about a third of it in my life, and found portions of it very difficult. But the lack of cohesion is interesting to think about. One of Wolfe's assertions that made me want to read portions of the Bible again: "the convinced Christian meets with few tests of his faith more severe than the Bible." I think that's overstating, but Wolfe does bring up a number of intriguing examples, such as:

"He [the Christian reader:] arrives as a convinced monotheist, only to find 'his' Bible filled with gods who are not God...'God rises in the divine assembly; he judges in the midst of the gods.' King Solomon, or so the Christian has heard, was the wisest of men. What is he to think when he reads, 'The king defiled the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Misconduct, which Solomon, King of Israel, had built in honour of Astarte, the Sidonian horror, or Chemosh, the Moabite horror, and of Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites.'?"

Sean wrote: "And God's change of character in the second half is really unmotivated -- he spends hundreds of pages as the ultimte bad-ass, then suddenly he becomes a hippie for no reason..."

Well, the epic psychedelic panorama of destruction in the Apocalypse makes up for that a bit.

Sean wrote: "Anyone who likes Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time really needs to give the Mahabharata a try.
..."

I started a long excerpt of that from the Norton Anthology of World Literature last year and found it rough-going, but I do want to try again.

aldenoneil wrote: "I made a space opera radio drama in high school, and it was excellent. I destroyed all the copies, though."

Aw, bummer, I would have loved to hear this!

Intriguing. It reminds me of Gene Wolfe's short essay 'A Fantasist Reads the Bible and Its Critics' (from Shadows of the New Sun.) Wolfe is a Christian, but he's looking at what it means that the Bible is a collection of narratives written by humans (quote: "...the authors of the books that make up the Bible were not (as I believe and a multitude of details show) stenographers taking God's dictation, but human beings inspired by Him. And it was as human beings they wrote, conveying the message of inspiration to their fellow.").

Specifically, he looks at what a writer of fantasy would see in these narratives, how they're built, and what they say that other critics would miss, in a way similar to how William Prince finds himself comparing his writing with the Easter sermon and its narrative. And Wolfe goes on to suggest that looking at the Bible's narratives from this viewpoint might be a very fruitful method, both for believer and non-believer.

Here's another quote:

"Fantasy provides the best modern paradigm for the writing of the books that constitue the Bible, not because Moses was a fictional character - he was not - but because the writers of fantasy must deal in the same way with the same types of material. Moses was real, and Frodo is fictional. But the scribe who described (what a suggestive word!) the death of Moses was writing about his idea of Moses, just as Tolkein dealt with his of Frodo. This should not make us think less of Moses, although it may lead us to think rather more of Frodo.

Thus the fantasist who comes to the Bible for the first time finds himself among friends..."

Wolfe makes a bunch of fascinating observations in a very short space, about authorship, symbolism, and a number of (especially to the convinced Christian) unexpected elements of the Bible.

(Prince's essay also reminded me that one of the big factors in shaking my own faith as a youth was the shock wrought by a science fiction writer, Harlan Ellison, with his Deathbird Stories and its bleak, 'humans create their own deities' theme.)

At a point when my eyes were starting to glaze over during one of Mannie's summaries of various revolutionary activities, the scene where he is asked to put on a plug hat and act as an impromptu judge (possibly sentencing Stu to death) really woke me up.

I found that scene fascinating and horrifying at the same time, and also thought it did an excellent job of revealing the way disputes get handled on Luna and the peculiarities of Luna's gender roles and sexual dynamics. And it did all that through a narrative scene instead of Mannie just telling us about the custom, thank goodness (I wish more of the book had been structured that way).

Of course, there are various depictions of people being eliminated without even the vigilantism-moderated-by-third-party that this ad-hoc trial represented, and those trial-less eliminations being socially acceptable. But here we saw Luna's informal justice up close. Did you find it disturbing? Understandable given the social conditions of Luna?

I also wondered how it compares with how disputes were settled in historic frontiers that also had no formal rule of law...

Yeah, this was a definite issue for me while reading - not just the debates, but Heinlein/the narrator's tendency to often tell us what happened in summary form (for pages upon pages!) instead of being shown actual scenes (ye olde 'show instead of tell' rule of fiction being broken over and over). Fortunately, that aspect lessened greatly in the last third.

I did feel that Wyoh, for someone supposedly passionately steeped in socialist belief, didn't oppose the Prof's arguments strongly enough in that early discussion. That did seem a rigged scene to let the Prof get in the best word, and there were several other scenes that had that feel (Prof vs. strawmen opponents) throughout the book. Moreover, though I didn't feel the Prof was an absolute mouthpiece for Heinlein, the entire mood and thrust of the book suggests that the author's sympathies lie with the Prof's anarchist/libertarian philosophy.

However, I didn't feel that Wyoh was portrayed simply as an empty-headed sexpot. As pointed out, she played a crucial active role at various stages of the revolution. And women in general in Lunar society, while definitely sexualized by the male gaze of the narrator and others, seem respected for their practicality and strength as well, not just their 'rare' status. Time and again we're told that anyone in Lunar society, male or female, *has* to be tough and practical just to survive -- think of Mannie's 'Ma' telling him that she has tricks up her sleeve to violently deal with the invading Terran forces.

As for the Prof as a simple figurehead, what I liked about the book was that while Heinlein's sympathies lay with Prof's idealism, the actual course of the revolution showed the Prof having to contradict his own ideals for various practical, conspiratorial reasons, and the political entity that emerged from the Prof's successfully-led revolution also did not match his pure ideals. For those reasons it felt more nuanced and interesting than the pure "see, this is how it should be done" libertarian-wish-fulfillment-fantasy it could have been.

Very interesting, both that's it two science fiction authors trying out fantasy, and that's it audio-only. I'll probably give it a shot, but I may skip the intro to avoid that accent-disconnect. ;)

I still haven't started The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but as an amusing bit of Heinlein lore, here's a post on his pre-Internet method of replying to fan-mail:

http://kk.org/ct2/2008/09/heinleins-f...

I disagree with Luke that Carl Sagan's Contact was horrible, but I do agree that the film is better for stream-lining *many* elements. (Though the one thing I wish they'd kept was the much more interesting 'proof' Ellie was given at the end).

Blade Runner vs. DADoES - I like many PKD books, but that one never made a big impression on me, whereas the film, for all its various flaws, is lodged in my head for the strong atmosphere and mood it created, and certain indelible scenes.

Outside of S&L, I love the movie The World According to Garp, but have never been able to get into the novel.

Consider Phlebas, which has been mentioned in several threads here, has a shape-shifting spy as its protagonist.

I'm on a non-fiction kick, reading The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 and Mazes for the Mind: Computers and the Unexpected -- though the latter is filled with bizarre mathematical/scientific conundrums that could easily be used as the basis for science fiction stories (and the author, Clifford Pickover, has written some sci-fi novels himself).

Soon will add Moon is a Harsh Mistress to my currently-reading list.

Interested by the The Pillars of the Earth comments - I have a free copy & have wondered if it was worth taking that thick book on.

I'm going! I still need to get a handle on the schedule and figure out what to prioritize among all the geek goodies.

Currently my entire apt. is a nerd room, in varying degrees. On the embarrassing books note, I have done some strategic downplaying of certain items. For instance, the hardback 'Great Space Battles' - '70s sci-fi paintings accompanied by text that treats them as depictions of actual battles - is in a not-so prominent location (I was once specifically ridiculed for that book). I feel this is balanced, though, by placing Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart with its *almost* romance-novel-looking art on its spine, on my 'favorite books shelf' in prominent view. I am prepared to defend it if ridicule comes its way.

I still really like collecting physical books, nerdly or not, but I have run out of shelf space! So I have joined the Kindle club & most of my new book purchases will be there for the time being.

I'd be up for almost any of the suggestions so far, particularly Iain Banks because I'm reading Consider Phlebas right now, and A Fire Upon The Deep because I've wanted to re-read it, to try out the version with all the author's annotations about the complex world-building he did for that novel.

Additional suggestions: Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang- I was blown away by one of this author's stories in a SF anthology & want to read more. In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente - been intrigued by this book for quite a while.

Sean wrote: "YMMV. I consider it one of the most disturbing dystopias ever written. The Minds are only benevolent if you'd be happy with super-powerful AIs keeping you as a pet. The Cultruniks live the most meaningless lives imaginable, essentially frat boys who never have to grow up, get jobs, or even learn anything. Except for a handful who get picked out to perform secret missions that perpetuate Culture's hegemony."

Sean, you might try reading Consider Phlebas - I'm reading it right now, my first exposure to Banks and the Culture. Its protagonist Horza is a shape-shifter who's sided with an alien race fighting the Culture because he passionately believes the Culture is malignant for some of the same reasons you've detailed.

At least so far (half way-through) Banks seems to be allowing full play for Horza's point of view (ie Horza doesn't seem to be simplistically set up just to be proven wrong). You might find it satisfying or interesting as an alternate view to the Culture that's apparently presented in the other books.

That teaser lived up the label 'teaser' more than any other I've seen in my life for a) getting me terribly excited & b) being excruciatingly short. It was certainly a 'the first one's always free...' moment.

Shaun of the Dead is my favorite brain-munching flick (the scene where Shaun stumbles his way to a corner store in a not-having-woken-up-yet-fog, oblivious to what's around him, is *so* brilliant).

28 Days I liked even better the 2nd time I watched it. Definitely a solid updating to the zombie genre. Zombieland was good fun. I was also surprised at how much I liked the 2004 Dawn of the Dead (though Sarah Polley being in it helped a lot) -- but I've never seen the original (I need to watch the Romero classics - they're in my Netflix queue somewhere). But it seems like we've been lucky with solid zombie films in recent years.

Tauret, Brooks names Studs Terkel's work as one of the inspirations for the book in the Acknowledgements at the end, and I agree Brooks did a great job of making a potentially very goofy subject seem very real through the interview/oral documentary style combined with what seems like tons of research.

I only had two complaints. Like Kentos, I found that, despite the impressive breadth of different characters' situations, the voices of the characters were often too similar. Strangely, when I mentioned I was reading and enjoying WWZ to a co-worker, he said he couldn't make it past chapter 5 or so, because he felt Brooks was terrible at rendering dialect and tried it far too often. I recall maybe a few clunky instances of this, with one of the French characters, maybe, but certainly not an overwhelming amount (Brooks seemed to toss foreign words into speech much more than he attempted actual dialect). With some notable exceptions, the voices usually seemed to kind of approach the same well-spoken tone.

Also similar to what Kentos and Brad said, I felt like the turning point of the war in humanity's favor came too early in the book. We already know humanity won from the get-go, but the actual tension of figuring out how to turn the tide could have been stretched out longer - the Great Panic portion of the book ended up being the most engrossing in terms of suspense because of this.

But that would matter more if the plot of the zombie war was the most important element, but Brooks instead makes social and psychological commentary the main focus, and by combining that with solid story-telling by vignettes, I feel he succeeded.

Reading Ian Banks' Consider Phlebas based on recommendations from this group, and liking it so far. Also *still* working through The Discoverers in spurts (apparently it's my 'enjoyable albatross' of the year).