SF-LOVERS Digest            Tuesday, 6 Aug 1991       Volume 16 : Issue 347

Today's Topics:

 Books - Card (4 msgs) & Clarke (2 msgs) &
                         Crichton & Donaldson &
                         Silverberg & Turtledove

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Date: 5 Aug 91 02:18:38 GMT
From: U35087@uicvm.uic.edu (Brady Daniels)
Subject: Re: Xenocide/Gloriously Bright

halcyon!hikaru@seattleu.edu says:
>descolada. And I really could have done without the young Valentine. She
>REALLY got on my nerves quite a bit.

Really? I don't even remember her saying anything.  Her role seemed very
minor.  I didn't understand the point of bringing those two characters
back unless for a sequel?

The thing that annoyed me SO MUCH was the impotency of Ender.  This the man
that destroyed an alien race as a child and led a new religious/ humanist
movement as an adult was next to useless.  He couldn't get along with his
wife and was very threatened by his older/younger(?) brother. He turned
into a serious wimp.  I guess it's my problem, but I have grown very used
to Ender, and having him transform so drastically really bothers me.  I
would rate _Xenocide_ as okay, far below the levels of its predecessors.

Brady Daniels
u35087@uicvm.uic.edu

------------------------------

Date: 5 Aug 91 17:12:20 GMT
From: hikaru@halcyon.wa.com
Subject: Re: Xenocide/Gloriously Bright

U35087@uicvm.uic.edu (Brady Daniels) writes:
> The thing that annoyed me SO MUCH was the impotency of Ender.  This the
> man that destroyed an alien race as a child and led a new religious/
> humanist movement as an adult was next to useless.  He couldn't get along
> with his wife and was very threatened by his older/younger(?) brother. He
> turned into a serious wimp.  I guess it's my problem, but I have grown
> very used to Ender, and having him transform so drastically really
> bothers me.  I would rate _Xenocide_ as okay, far below the levels of its
> predecessors.

I know what you mean but, I thought that maybe, just maybe, that was the
point. Ender is now twice as old, subjectively, as he was in Speaker For
the Dead. He's had about 30 years to let the last 4000 years catch up with
him.

UUCP: hikaru@halcyon.uucp
Internet: halcyon!hikaru@seattleu.edu

------------------------------

Date: 5 Aug 91 17:17:53 GMT
From: abacus!jmf@fernwood.mpk.ca.us (Joan Frankel)
Subject: Re: OSCard-Folk of the Fringe

MLW@MATH.AMS.COM (Maxine L. Wolfson) writes:
>Just started _Folk of the Fringe_ and am relatively bemused.  Not by the
>story (very clear - almost too overt in spots) or the writing style, or
>the characters.  It's just that I HATE the book and the story, but can not
>put it down!  What a writer.

There are 2 stellar stories in that book, the one about the paraplegic
teacher and the one about the non-Mormon salvage kid.  These both saw sf
magazine life outside the Fringe book before its publication and I believe
one or both of them won deserved awards.

As for the rest of the stories...yech!  Well, I liked parts of the central
portion of the last one, about the missionary kid in South America, but it
ends lamely because of its need to fit into the book-ending schema.  We get
an amazing amount of religious rhetoric in this story, such as: "the
American continents were given by G-d to the Indians, but when certain
tribes devoted themselves to the torture of their enemies, this mandate was
taken from them all and given to the Mormons upon their arrival".  I'm
reasonably sure Card believes this stuff as truly as his idealistic
missionary kid narrator does.  That actually works to make the story
good-in-part; you're getting this loopy stuff thrown at you baldly by a
believer who's given up being cagey about it, there at the end of his book.

Usually I like conversational, gossipy author's forwards (as opposed to
critical/pedantic ones) but Card's left me squirming.  Let's see: He's not
comfortable, he says, unless he's in a group of fellow Mormons.  Even if he
appears to be having a good time among us heathens, he's not, and he feels
he's a conspicuous outsider all the while...

Card introduces those 2 good stories as being told from the role of
outsider, which he's adopted to point out some of the insularity of Mormon
society; then he turns the very real and very isolated characters into
non-convincing insiders by quick key-stroke in later stories.

This book is put forward as a book of futuristic fiction for and about
Mormons.  I remember it even having a disclaimer, not written by Card,
explaining the sf narrative techniques used therein to Mormon readers who
may be unfamiliar with sf, and apologizing for any dark/negative
connotations.

I can only judge it as a work of associated stories, and as such it's
frighteningly amateurish, the 2 good stories being negated by their place
in and co-option by the narrative whole.  Card works overtime in all the
other stories to convey enough wholesomeness and moral uplift to make
anyone gag, usually at the complete expense of an otherwise marginally
viable theme.

I guess Mormons are supposed to end the book with a warm and fuzzy feeling,
while the rest of us are supposed to be inspired to want to join that
improbable lead-off story band of happy, laughing, singing, dancing
characters who are on their way west following the massacre of everyone
they know.  These survivers were mostly hiding in closets during the
massacre and had to wade through the dismembered bodies of their nearest
and dearest as they made their escape, but they're still irrepressible
optimists, because, they tell their guide, that's an inherent part of being
Mormon. I don't believe in this behavior for a minute, or in much else that
follows in the book relating to wholesome family units facing various
obstacles.

Card acts as though he's adopted a brave stance at the end of this first
story when he vaguely hints that current LDS policy of taking kids away
from caring single parents in favor of placement in 2-parent foster homes
MAY be wrong in particular instances.  GOLLY!

This book has apparently been written with an eye toward approval by the
current LDS hierarchy, and is dismayingly but not suprisingly protective of
Card's burgeoning real-life role within this hierarchy.

If you read it as a religious tract surrounding 2 very good stories, you
may be able to stand it.  Thats how I took it.

[For more such torture-by-tract, but a FAR better narrative construct, at
least in its first half, read the book he wrote, originally under a
pseudonym, about Dinah, his ancestor and one of the founding mothers of the
Mormon church.  Paperback title is something like "A Woman of Destiny".

The emotionally real parts of the book aren't about Dinah at all, despite
the title and all the chapter lead-ins about how the narrator is trying to
get into Dinah's mindset.  They're about her little brother and her
increasingly vicious elder brother.  If you think this sounds a lot like
Ender's family, you think like me...]

------------------------------

Date: 6 Aug 91 06:03:19 GMT
From: ronf@cs.stanford.edu (Ron Frederick)
Subject: Re: OSCard-Folk of the Fringe

jmf@abacus.uucp (Joan Frankel) writes:
[various things about The Folk of the Fringe deleted]
> [For more such torture-by-tract, but a FAR better narrative construct, at
> least in its first half, read the book he wrote, originally under a
> pseudonym, about Dinah, his ancestor and one of the founding mothers of
> the Mormon church.  Paperback title is something like "A Woman of
> Destiny".
>
> The emotionally real parts of the book aren't about Dinah at all, despite
> the title and all the chapter lead-ins about how the narrator is trying
> to get into Dinah's mindset.  They're about her little brother and her
> increasingly vicious elder brother.  If you think this sounds a lot like
> Ender's family, you think like me...]

This sounds very much like the book "Saints", which I guess I would label
historical fiction by Card. It checks in at a hefty 712 pages of standard
form paperback, and generally follows the story of Dinah from her childhood
in England to her death at age 101 in Utah. As you might imagine from its
length, it covers a lot of ground, and a large part of the early chapters
do spend time on her brothers.

I picked up the book without knowing much about it, strictly based on it
having Card's name on it. I really didn't know that much about the Mormons,
and I don't know if I would have read it had I really known its subject in
advance.  Nevertheless, I found it very hard to put down, like most of his
stories, and a very good read despite its length.

Ron Frederick
ronf@cs.stanford.edu

------------------------------

Date: 5 Aug 91 16:08:57 GMT
From: hennebry@plains.nodak.edu (Michael J. Hennebry)
Subject: Re: Why do we always want sequels? Rama II

leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl writes:
>In Clarke, we never find out who the Ramans are, or what the purpose of
>their ship was. Instead the book closes with that famous last paragraph,
>which so totally surprised me the first time I read it, that for days (I
>was a kid then) I did nothing else but write, in my mind, my own sequels.

I didn't write sequels, but it did occur to me that the guy who remembered
that the Raman's did everthing in threes is likely to be disappointed.  The
other two are not likely to come to Sol. If the first ship ran into a
crystal sphere or some such problem, then the others likely would also.
That would rather defeat the purpose of triplication.

Mike
hennebry@plains.NoDak.edu

------------------------------

Date: 6 Aug 91 07:38:50 GMT
From: leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl (Leo Breebaart)
Subject: Re: Why do we always want sequels? Rama II

hennebry@plains.NoDak.edu (Michael J. Hennebry) writes:
>leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl writes:
>>In Clarke, we never find out who the Ramans are, or what the purpose of
>>their ship was.
>
> I didn't write sequels, but it did occur to me that the guy who
> remembered that the Raman's did everthing in threes is likely to be
> disappointed.  The other two are not likely to come to Sol. If the first
> ship ran into a crystal sphere or some such problem, then the others
> likely would also.  That would rather defeat the purpose of triplication.

Nope. You're thinking like a human again! The whole point of the Ramans is
that although we sometimes catch glimpses of something that we can place in
some frame of reference, basically we understand *nothing* about them,
about their motives, about their mysterious triplicity. They are not humans
dressed up as aliens, they *are* alien.

For them, sending out three ships in the same directions may be the most
logical thing in the world. In their logic.

Alternatively, why didn't they send the three ships *at once* (if you want
to argue that they are not logical in a human sense)?

Alternatively, perhaps they send different *groups of three* ships in
different directions (if you want to argue that they *can* be logical in a
human sense, and wish to avoid the problem you mention).

(Of course, I don't want to know what actually happens in Rama II, so don't
give me the "Yeah, well Clarke says that they..." argument.)

Leo Breebaart
leo @ ph.tn.tudelft.nl

------------------------------

Date: 5 Aug 91 21:47:29 GMT
From: novell!HICKS@uunet.uu.net (Jeffery D. Hicks)
Subject: Michael Crichton

Someone was inquiring last week about other books by Michael Crichton.  I
read JURASSIC PARK this summer and was moderately pleased.  As usual there
is a strong sense of technology gone bad (or at least warped by misguided
souls.)

Definitely worth a look and I think it would be a good movie.

Jeff
HICKS@Novell.boystown.org

------------------------------

Date: 5 Aug 91 05:46:04 GMT
From: sk2f+@andrew.cmu.edu (Seth D. Kadesh)
Subject: Re: Donaldson's Gap Series

I was talking to the salesclerk at the bookstore where I picked up
Forbidden Knowledge.  I mentioned that it was a shame that the publisher
was having a special sale on the first book (The Real Story) now, because
those of us who would be interested in taking advantage of the offer
already bought the first book in hardcover.  He agreed that it was kind of
strange, but that the publisher must have had a LOT of unsold copies of The
Real Story.  I think that's too bad; Donaldson has written some very
intriguing science fiction.  Definitely NOT for the faint of heart.

BTW, for those of you who didn't like Thomas Covenant because it was too
"wordy", pick up The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story.  You'll be
pleasantly surprised (it's a very "smooth" read).

Dani: re-read the author's note at the end of The Real Story.  Forbidden
Knowledge seems to flesh it out a bit more....

Seth
sk2f@andrew.cmu.edu
tmSatCMU@DRYCAS.BITNET

------------------------------

Date: 2 Aug 91 08:13:44 GMT
From: Charles_K._Kuhlman.MAN@rxg.xerox.com
Subject: Robert Silverberg's *Mutant* series

Has anyone read the entire *Mutant* series? The Mutant Season just showed
up in a second hand English bookstore here and I enjoyed it. Decided to
look for others.  So... what do you think?

Chuck Kuhlman
Rank Xerox
Germany
CK.MAN@RXG.Xerox.com

------------------------------

Date: 1 Aug 91 06:33:45 GMT
From: smds!rh@uunet.uu.net (Richard Harter)
Subject: Krispos

Harry Turtledove is one of the authors that I particularly look for.  His
new series, the Tale of Krispos, is quite enjoyable.  There are two volumes
so far, Krispos Rising, and Krispos of Videssos, which just came out.

Turtledove has a degree in Byzantine history; he is obviously a lover of
Byzantium and has drawn on it for his Agent of Byzantium stories and the
Videssos Cycle.  The Agent of Byzantium series take place in an alternate
universe in which Mohammed became a Christian saint and Byzantium did not
fall.

The Videssos cycle is a four volume series about a Roman legion and its
commander who get pitched into another world.  Videssos is very much
Byzantium, with the signal difference that it did not fall, and the world
of Videssos is one in which magic works.

In the Videssos cycle the Empire is racked by civil war, and is beset by a
malignant 850 year old sorceror who is dedicated to the God of Evil.  A few
lines towards the end of the last volume provide the occasion for the Tale
of Krispos:

"That is worse.  But it being so, much of what has passed in the
intervening centuries makes better sense -- just as one example, the savage
behavior of the Haloga mercenary troops that crossed the Astris in the
reign of Anthimos III five hundred years ago -- though I would still say
Anthimos' antics had much to do with the success they enjoyed until Krispos
gained the throne a few years later."

The Tale of Krispos is the story behind those lines.  In the first volume
Krispos rises from a boyhood as a peasant to gain the Imperial throne.  Now
this is something that happens now and then in the history of empires, but
it rarely happens.  The usual path is via the military; an able soldier can
rise to be a general, and imperial dynasties are regularly overthrown by
able generals.  Krispos, however, rose by becoming the protege of
increasingly powerful protectors.  The first book ends with his crowning as
Avtokrator.  The second volume is the story of his first two years as
Emperor; eventful years since he had to beat down a rebellion by the uncle
of Anthimos and had to fight and beat said Sorceror (only 300 years into
his war against Videssos.)

On the whole, the Tale of Krispos, is more enjoyable IMHO than the Videssos
cycle.  It is an essentially simpler tale.  In the Videssos cycle there are
so many people and so many threads going on that it is a bit wearisome to
keep track of it all - not unlike War And Peace.  Krispos Rising is, of
course, the classic story of the unknown youth who rise to the highest
place.  It is a conventional theme that bears retelling again; one of the
merits of Turtledove's treatment is that the rise is thoroughly plausible.
Krispos of Videssos is, essentially, the story of what happens after the
Happy Ending.

I do not know what they teach of history in the schools today - from what I
gather, it is precious little.  But, when I went to school, quite some time
ago, Byzantium was a minor footnote, easily overlooked.  It was much later
that I realized that the Roman Empire did not fall circa 450 AD but that it
continued on for another 1000 years.  The histories told much of barbarians
of the West; they said little of of a Golden city at the far end of Europe,
capital of an Empire that dated back into antiquity, the only real
civilization in a sea of European barbarism.

Richard Harter
SMDS Inc.
PO Box 555
Concord MA 01742
508-369-7398
uunet!smds!rh

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End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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