HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Subject: Re: Life's too short. Was: 1930s Science Fiction
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 21:12:50 GMT
Organization: The Fighting Thundercats

In article <0-3myxd.tmaddox@netcom.com> tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox) writes:
>In article <1992Aug8.115743.790@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
>>Tom Maddox writes:
>>
>>	Jeff Davis writes:
>>
>>		I don't have the foggiest notion of Pournelle 
>>		and Niven's ideology, but found the one book 
>>		of theirs which I read impossibly boring, and 
>>		it soured me on all of sci-fi. 
>>
>>	I'm stunned by this. I ate a bad vegetable once so ate no more. I 
>>	stubbed my toe on a street in San Francisco so will never return. 
>>	Etc. To convict all of sf of Niven and Pournelle's lapses in 
>>	_Footfall_ is remarkably whimsical.  
>>
>>Remarkably whimsical it may well be, but that is precisely how we live our
>>lives. One way or another, intentionally or unintentionally -- usually the
>>latter -- we discard the possibility of experiencing most that life has to
>>offer for, chiefly, lack of time, although fear comes into it.
>
>	Granted.  I still think it was an incredibly silly judgment, much 
>worse than just deciding not to read sf.  A Big Mac should not put one off
>Chez Panisse, if you see what I mean.

My rocket-booster quick judgment of sci-fi was precipitated by the Pournelle-
Niven book but that elephantine goop was not the sole cause: It has always
seemed to me that sci-fi is a genre with a single book: _Frankenstein_.
My other laser probes into the genre, prompted by friend's goading of
"You gotta read this..." has usually come to the Dreaded End. The Cyberiad
is the exception here, but its stories are so elliptical and cryptic
that I'd really rather dip into the frozen Volga with Mandelstam than
try to figure out what's up with them.

I mean no disrespect to either it's practitioners or its fanciers. Now,
if you raised Siamese cats or Jack Russell terriers....

[Sorry if this thread has passed by...I was up in the gorgeous, ferocious
 San Gabriel Mountains last week trying to turn myself into beef jerky...]
-- 
Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu> Write when you get the chance. 
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:14846 rec.arts.sf.written:11178
From: zed@silver.lcs.mit.edu (Zed)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: John Crowley books?
Date: 18 Aug 92 23:31:22 GMT
Reply-To: zed@silver.lcs.mit.edu
Organization: Liars for Truth

In rec.arts.books, pab@robots.oxford.ac.uk (Paul Beardsley) writes:

>I enjoyed "Aegypt" by John Crowley when it came out back in 
>1988.  Four years later, there's still no sign of the sequel 
>though - does anyone know anything about this?  I think there 
>are two John Crowley books which are available in the States 
>but not in the UK - "Novelty" and "Love and Death" (?).  Is
>either of these the follow-up to Aegypt?

Crowley read from the manuscript of _Love and Sleep_, _Aegypt_'s
sequel, at Readercon 3 a couple of years ago. Someone who'd spoken to
Crowley a year ago about it told me he thought Crowley had hinted that
he hoped to finish it within the year. So perhaps we can hope for it
real soon now.

In answer to another poster, yes, as I think the book makes clear
internally, _Aegypt_ is the first of a tetralogy.

Seeing as how it doesn't take much typing, here is, to my knowledge,
the complete Crowley bibliography. (My knowledge of several of these
owes to the Readercon 3 souvenir book.)

Books:
_The Deep_, 1975
_Beasts_, 1976
_Engine Summer_, 1979
_Little, Big_, 1981
_Aegypt_, 1987
_Novelty_, 1989, collection of:
  "The Nightingale Sings at Night"
  "Great Work of Time"
  "In Blue"
  "Novelty"
_Great Work of Time_, 1991 (I think), text as in _Novelty_, given its
  own book after winning the 1990 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella

Stories:

"Antiquities", 1977, in _Whispers_, ed. Stuart David Schiff (I think);
_Magicats_, ed. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

"Where Sprits Gat Them Home", 1978, _Shadows_, ed. Charles L. Grant

"The Green Child", 1981, _Elsewhere_, ed. Terri Windling and Mark Alan
Arnold

"The Reason for the Visit", 1980, _Interfaces_, ed. Ursula K. Le Guin
and Virginia Kidd

"Snow", 1985, "Omni", 11/85; _The Year's Best Science Fiction, 3d
Annual Collection_, ed. Gardner Dozois

"Missolonghi 1824", 1990, "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine",
3/90

Someday I'll finish and post the Sturgeon bibliography I'm working on,
itself largely ripped off from the Readercon 2 souvenir book.

-- 
 "A falling dream is a wonderful dream, one of the best dreams one can have.
                           Where did you fall to, and what did you discover?"
zed@silver.lcs.mit.edu
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 13 Aug 92 16:36:15 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <tmccarth.713680380@sfu.ca> tmccarth@fraser.sfu.ca (Teresa Marie McCarthy) writes:
>My point is(and I'm sure you are all wondering) that politics are an integral
>part of the canon, and the canon is generally served up at face value to 
>students(and everyone else) AS literature. 

Is it really?  Still?  I would have thought most students had at least
heard of the idea that it was a somewhat biased collection, and (for
example) the "literature" sections of bookstores that make such a
distinctions don't seem to contain only "canonical" works.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: tmccarth@fraser.sfu.ca (Teresa Marie McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Thomas Hardy -- not for the young (was Books Recently Bought
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 00:10:57 GMT


Has anyone read any of his poetry?  It's often dismissed for it's *traditional*
look, but it's really very complex and rich.
From: maverick@cs.berkeley.edu (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 14 Aug 92 20:52:29 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: CS Division, UC Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: mahogany.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <16h5qbINNhc1@agate.berkeley.edu>, maverick@cs.berkeley.edu (Vance Maverick) writes:
|> |> [Matthew Austern arguing both for and against inherent quality]
|> 
|> I think you're being a little inconsistent here....

I must confess a source.  The article on "Canon" in _Critical Terms
for Literary Study_, Lentricchia and McLaughlin, eds.  I forget the
author of this piece; but I recommend it to followers of this
discussion -- among other things, it captures the circular, pointless
flavor of the debate, its Usenet quality, so to speak.

	Vance
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Asimov and the decay of SF
Date: 13 Aug 92 18:48:57 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

Chacun a son gout means "Each to his or her own taste." Sorry to complicate
communications. Not everyone enjoys bilingual postings, but de gustibus non
disputandum est.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: hsu@sp24.csrd.uiuc.edu (William Tsun-Yuk Hsu)
Subject: Re: Vollman"s Novels
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 92 21:36:29 GMT

br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col) writes:

>I've just ordered YOU BRIGHT AND RISEN ANGELS and would appreciate
>any opinions of it and other work by Vollman.

Me too. 

I thought You Bright and Risen Angels had some wonderful sections,
though sometimes I had to grit my teeth to put up with Vollman's more
annoying stylistic tricks. (Was it really necessary to make half of
those completely unrelated narrative tangents?) It was almost worth
getting through the book just to get to the author's note at the end.

I know Vollman has a second novel out, and a collection of stories.
How are they?

Bill
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: rauchway@leland.Stanford.EDU (Eric Andrew Rauchway)
Subject: Re: Anybody Else Read History?
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 92 22:07:52 GMT

Yes, I do read history, but it's sort of my job.  I guess that still counts.

Clark is correct.  History is brimming with fascinating characters.  
And best of all they are not subject to the stricture that binds many 
writers of realistic fiction:  nobody can say, "C'mon, nobody would
really *do* that. . ."  [corollary of Truth is stranger etc.]

If Clark or anyone else is interested particularly in character-oriented
history, I suggest that he and they steer clear of the cutting-edge
of historical scholarship, which is more concerned with relating the 
story of classes, races, genders, ethnicities, &c., and, while often
wonderfully written and meticulously researched, tends to be devoid of 
recognizable literary characters as such.

Works highly recommended:  anything by David McCullough, whose _Truman_ is
hovering in the top three of the NYT bestsellers; Patricia O'Toole's 
_The Five of Hearts_, about Henry & Clover Adams, John & Clara Hay, and 
Clarence King in D.C. during the Gilded Age; Pauline Maier's _From 
Resistance to Revolution_, about the radicals who helped bring about the 
American revolution.

Henry Adams's own _History of the USA under the Administrations of Jefferson
and Madison_ contains a host of amazing folks, but it's nine vols. long.
There's a good abbreviation edited by Ernest Samuels that's only one
short volume long that is an enjoyable read.

Have fun.

Eric Rauchway                    /      My opinions are mine, and not those
rauchway@leland.stanford.edu     /      of the department or university.

Department of History                  Stanford University

*****Those who do not remember history are doomed to flunk my class.*****
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re:  Unspoken Words
From: liam@durie.amigans.gen.nz (Liam Greenwood)
Date: 15 Aug 92 23:21:39 GMT+12
Distribution: world
Organization: It's Home, really...

In article <10223@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall) writes:
>
>  You pronounce words in your head as you read?  Really?  (I'm not
>  trying to be smart, although I know it sounds like it :-) )
>
>  My wife does that, or at least says she does, whereas when I read
>  I just see the word and recognize it, but never pronounce it, not
>  even mentally.  I always assumed everyone else read that same way,
>  but perhaps *I* am the one out of step :-(  Hmmmmm....
>
    I don't pronounce (or even attempt to...) words while reading which leads
one to have a largish vocabulary which is difficult to use in conversation.

--
 Liam Greenwood ------ liam@durie.amigans.gen.nz ------ Wanganui, N.Z.
                Don't tell my Mother I'm a programmer,
              she thinks I'm a piano player in a brothel

Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:14946 rec.arts.sf.written:11321
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Canonical Genre Fiction:  SF
Date: 21 Aug 92 16:49:53 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)

In article <1992Aug20.225704.6248@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com>, bhv@areaplg2 (Bronis Vidugiris) writes:
>There are a number of choices I didn't like.  Why 'The End of Eternity'
>for Asimov, rather than his better known works (I Robot, Foundation,
>or even Caves of Steel?).

This is from Pringle's list, and he spells out his reasons.  Rather bluntly,
he doesn't particularly like Asimov's work, but he recognizes that Asimov
belongs on any list of top 100.  The robot stories were important, but
they don't add up to a novel, so they aren't on the list.  The robot
detective novels are superior industrial strength science fiction, but
are certainly not worthy of a top 100 list.

As for the FOUNDATION trilogy, Pringle eliminates it from contention for
the most idiotic of reasons: it's a "thinly" disguised retelling of the
fall of the Roman Empire, told as a series of stories.  Who cares?  Either
it's a "top 100" science fiction novel, well worth reading and also very
important in influence on other writers, or it isn't, as *that's* what his
list is trying to reflect.  Had FOUNDATION never existed, but Ballard,
say, had done a literal retelling of the fall of the Roman Empire itself,
with Roman psychohistory and the role of Hari Seldon in the founding of
the Catholic church and so on, it would have been on Pringle's list.

The complete arbitrariness of his reasoning is easy to prove.  DUNE is a
thinly disguised retelling of the birth of Islam, but because Herbert
did not have a Big Mouth(TM), and complete ignorance about Islam is OK
among educated Westerners, this major detail is not common knowledge.
And more generally, no one ever denigrates Shakespeare and his historical
plays on the grounds that they are based on history.

So in the end, Pringle included TEOE by default.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
From: danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR])
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests: an irrelevant discussion
Date: 17 Aug 1992 18:46:54 GMT
Organization: net.cops
NNTP-Posting-Host: earlybird

Perhaps this has been pointed out before, but I'd appreciate it
if Messrs: "tsuanian@cc.curtin.edu.au (Ian)" and "Charles Lasner"
would take their discussion elsewhere. It seems to have nothing
to do with r.a.b, much less the other newsgroups listed:

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.humor,alt.folklore.urban,rec.arts.sf.misc

Not to mention that both their arguments seem f.o.s.

Dano


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: johnson@tigger.jvnc.net (Steven L. Johnson)
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Atheists: god REPLIES
Originator: johnson@tigger.jvnc.net
Organization: JvNCnet
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 20:01:05 GMT

hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) writes:

> [...] the IAB hasn't figured out yet whether it should be heaven.com,
>heaven.org, heaven.gov, or heaven.edu.

I thought the hold up was waiting for an assignment of an ISO country
code for heaven.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: manley@iies.ecn.purdue.edu (HELD HOSTAGE -- YEAR ONE)
Subject: Re: Thomas Hardy -- not for the young (was Books Recently Bought
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 03:16:40 GMT

In article <tmccarth.713751057@sfu.ca> tmccarth@fraser.sfu.ca (Teresa Marie McCarthy) writes:
>
>Has anyone read any of his poetry?  It's often dismissed for it's *traditional*
>look, but it's really very complex and rich.

  I enjoy quite a bit of Hardy's poetry.  "The Rash(?) Bride: An Adventure of
  the Mellstock Quire" (I am unsure about "Rash," but I know Quire is the way
  that word is spelled in the title) is fun to read aloud, and not a bad (if
  dark) Christmas story.  "Sweet Lisby Brown," "The Convergence of the Twain,"
  many others.  Good stuff, and proof (to me, at least) that more "traditional"
  poetry can be accessible (meaning Bubba down the street can read it and get
  something out of it, as opposed to, say, the poetry you find in _Antaeus_)
  and still not end up as Ann Landers/greeting card pap.

  M.
--
------------------------  manley@iies.ecn.purdue.edu  ------------------------
                              Nobody likes you.
                            Everybody hates you.
                             You're gonna lose.
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:14439 rec.humor:25813 rec.arts.sf.misc:2549 alt.religion.kibology:3429
From: fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.humor,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.religion.kibology
Subject: rec.arts.sf.misc is dead....
Date: 12 Aug 92 12:16:20 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens


   ... long live rec.arts.sf.atheism.yammer.yammer.yammer

   and coming soon, CFVs for

       rec.arts.books.atheism.yammer.yammer.yammer
       alt.religion.kibology.atheism.yammer.yammer.yammer

   (the third CFV in the series may be delayed; we're still trying to
   decide between rec.humor.atheism.yammer.yammer.yammer and rec.
   humorless.)
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 12 Aug 92 23:46:25 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <14217@mindlink.bc.ca>, Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
> So maybe Augustine was a "mulatto"; what the hell did that mean in his time and
> place? Dumas was supposed to be part black, and so was Pushkin; in their
> societies, I suspect it meant very little--perhaps less that Sinclair Lewis'
> dreadful acne meant to him. Genetic coding for melanin produces dark skin; it
> takes active cooperation among large numbers of people to make "black" and
> "white" into culturally and politically significant categories.

But it would damage the PC crap about the Canon being a bunch of DWMs.
No question the canon is primarily DWMs but suddenly, we must look at the
possibility that racism isn't the reason.
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
When the government wins the War on Drugs, they are welcome to try their
gun control snake oil.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel (x2025))
Subject: Re: Male-male love in Tolkien (was Re: C.S. Lewis)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. - Rye Canyon
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 16:12:51 GMT

In article <2600007@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com>, hypes@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Gary Hypes) writes...

>C'mon, guys; JRRT has written at length about the why and wherefore of
>the Ring trilogy and what to read into it and what not to read into it.
>(His worst fears were that someone would think he was writing an
>allegory about Hitler. I'd imagine he's fairly spinning in his grave
>over suggestions he was implying homosexual relationships...)
> 
>Like Freud said, some times a cigar is just a cigar.
> 
>- Gary Hypes -

It takes a more thorough attempt at analysis than simple symbol replacement 
to appreciate the unconscious content of any dream or work of art.  So I 
agree with Gary that it's not as trite or straightforward as some have 
tried to suggest, but at the same time you cannot always nor completely trust
what an author reports about his intentions either.  I don't mean to imply that
JRRT was disingenuous, but I dare say that people in general are not objective
enough about themselves to interpret their own actions and motivations.  It's
sort of like the plaintiff's plea:  if it's _guilty_, we tend to believe it;
but if it's _not guilty_ we doubt it and have to look further for more 
objective evidence. And fragments (from a novel or dream, say) cannot be used to
good advantage in isolation but must fit into a larger whole picture (when trying
to interpret latent meanings of some form of expression) otherwise you're really
left with a hybrid of the author's AND his interpreter's motivations (for lack
of a more comprehensive term).

And Freud did say that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but he was 
essentially being facetious on the one hand, and admonishing his audience 
for applying simple symbol replacement on the other.  He was delivering a 
series of University lectures during WWI, and paused in the middle of one 
discourse to light a cigar (imagine doing that these days), and a chuckle 
arose from the audience (both men and women medical students).  BTW - this 
series of lectures were published collectively as the _Introductory Lectures_
and make interesting reading - showing Freud's literary skills and 
providing a good overview of his psychoanalytic theories too.  At any rate, 
he would not have really down-played the significance of his or anyone's 
smoking habit, just the attempt at trying to find it in a single cigar in 
an isolated moment.

After all, for Freud, where there's smoke, there's a cigar...


Ron
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum)
Subject: Re: Vollman"s Novels
Reply-To: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 92 17:48:58 GMT


In a previous article, br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col) says:

>
>I've just ordered YOU BRIGHT AND RISEN ANGELS and would appreciate
>any opinions of it and other work by Vollman.

I've read most of his book of short stories (_The Rainbow Stories_)
and the later novel, _The Ice-Shirt_, which purports to be the
first of a 7 volume history of North American exploration.  The
two books are very different and neither of them quite lives up
to the hype which his work has benefited from.  The Rainbow
Stories are vaguely Burroughs-esque tales of life among street
punks and skinheads in contemporary San Francisco, told for
the most part in a neo-realistic style and to me seeming to
meander a whole lot.

The Ice-Shirt promises much more and delivers some of it.  It
is mostly a retelling of the Viking settlement of Greenland
and exploration of North America, fictionalizing an actual
settlement and its subsequent destruction by eventually
hostile Micmac Indians.  Along with that one gets the author's
travels in the Great North (quite boring) and a much more
interesting reanimation of mythical encounters with an ice
demon apparently common or syncretisable from both Viking
and Indian myth.  

As in lots of recent Hollywood film, all evil comes from the
scheming and insane woman, in this case a Viking who traffics
with aforesaid demon.

The problem with all this promising material is that it sprawls
and that Vollman either cannot decide where to focus or (more
likely) does not especially want to focus.  There is perhaps
a shallow postmodernism at work in his composition.  Tho this
needn't be a fatal flaw, the prose just isn't rich or worked
enough to provide a whole lot else.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, Vollman gets compared to
Pynchon a lot, tho the two books I've read wouldn't at all
suggest the link.  The editor for whom I do some book reviewing
(I reviewed _The Ice-Shirt_) sent me a publicity release about
his forthcoming book (title and topic escape me), and again
the release spoke of him as Pynchonian.  Would this be
_ . . . Angels_, which I haven't read?

Gary Lee Stonum
Case Western Reserve University
From: ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Thomas Harris question
Date: 19 Aug 92 15:57:09 GMT
Reply-To: ncramer@labs-n.bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com

a2824ag@sunmanager.LRZ-Muenchen.DE (Riaan de Jager) writes:
>I've read Silence of the Lambs, and I've almost finished Red Dragon.
>Anybody out there know his other books? Are there any others? Hope so!

The only other book is _Black Sunday_.  He only seems to write one book
every six or seven years.  :(

...of course, if you get desperate enough for _any_ book written by "Thomas
Harris", there's always _I'm OK, You're OK_.                           ;)

N
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: paulchem@tigger.cs.Colorado.EDU (Icarus)
Subject: Inconsistent Details -- Trivia
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 21:46:31 GMT


1] With all the work that goes into the writing of a book, an author must
   be expected to slip up somewhere and leave in a detail that does not
   fit in with the rest of the plot.

   For example in robinson crusoe, the shipwrecked crusoe, is described as
   having taken off all his clothes in order to swim easily to the pieces
   of the ship that still are floating. And yet, later the author says
   he put the biscuits he rescued from the floating planks into his pocket !


   Does anyone know of other inconsistencies in prominent books ?
   This kind of thing is great to impress people at parties :-)

2] Stay Cool.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.    ~ ~                                                                     .
.    o o      signito ergo sum.              paul chemmanoor.                .
.     |    i sign therefore i am.            Computer Science department.    .
.     =                                      Univ. of Colorado, Boulder.     .
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