Raised eyebrow

[james_davis_nicoll]

OK, I understand that with the end of the 191 series, Turtledove has to come up with a new series to fill that slot in his publishing schedule. I understand the intellectual attraction of trying to come up with a history where the Book of Mormon is a fairly literal account of Pre-Columbian History, then examining what would have happened if the New Worlders had been an iron-age culture in decline when the Europeans showed up. I can kind of understand why he has historical New Worlders popping up in a history whose POD is 2600 years ago. I even understand that coming up with a plausible mechanism for the Curse of the Lamanites seemed necessary.

But chromataphores? In humans? I'm sorry but handwaving about the Founder Effect and natural rDNA isn't going to make this work for me.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Chromataphores! Chromataphores! Chromataphores!

If I handwave really hard, can't I have chromataphores pleasepleasepleasepleasePLEASE??

[almeda.livejournal.com]

That still doesn't bother me nearly as much as the 'Dies the Fire' universe's mcguffin where explosion-based technology suddenly fails to work (guns, cars), and so do, say, strike-anywhere matches, without harming apparently ANYTHING ELSE.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I liked the angle used in Raymond F. Jones's The Year When Stardust Fell, where the dust made all adjacent metal surfaces adhere to each other.

By the way, does anyone remember a young adult novel from the 1950s where the aliens are motivated to invade Earth because their home system is cooling off? I think they came from a star so red as to be infrared and therefore undetected, despite being near at hand.

It's not by John W. Campbell, Jr.

[matgb]

IIRC, that's the premise for Gerrold's Chtorr books, but it's been awhile; chance of a bit more to prod the memory?

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Since I'm on the Sidewise judge panel, I get all of these things and have to read 'em, and I told Stirling to his face - I loved ISOT, but this is not AH, it's - I dunno, SCA pr0n? He chuckled. He thinks it's AH. I refuse to read it because it's scientifically screaming BS.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

See, ISoT I could buy, because it was ONE EXCEPTION, one big-unknown-weird-thing that the characters don't understand. A freak occurrence, say. And after that, it played fair, to the extent of our historical knowledge (though I'm pretty sure he set it where and when he did because our knowledge of those inhabitants of the British Isles (etc) is so very sketchy and let him have free rein).

DtF, etc, I liked the characters and sociology, but the mcguffin was so blatantly weird and full of 'because the author says so' exceptions and inclusions that it just pissed me off.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

My exact feelings in both cases. Er, well, what little I read of DtF smelled to high heaven of SCA pr0n on the characters and sociology. 'Oh boy oh boy I get to whack at people with swords.'

[gareth-wilson.livejournal.com]

Does it make a difference if you think of the "Dies the Fire" series as fantasy, rather than SF?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

It's part of the culture war going on in his head. I'm not joking. Remember that bit James posted from _The Venera Probes Have Interrupted My Masturbation Fantasy_, how the discovery of Barsoom would render Truman Capote irrelevant? He's been posting on Walter Jon Williams' blog about the superiority of Victor Davis Hanson's prose. Here's an excerpt from VDH's forthcoming book, No Man a Slave, which is not an April Fool's spoof:

“But tell me this also farmer,” Epaminondas pressed even closer, still grinning at upping the Thespian. “Think when you have wasps with the sharp tails in you vineyard that Malgis planted. You know the terrible black ones. The ones that sting the paws of sleeping Sturax over there. Or land on the nose of Porpax. Or even in their pride jab the tall legs of your Neto or the chest of buxom Damo—do you chase them all over the orchard, flailing at one or two of them with the broom or clapping at them with your hands?”

“Of course, not!” Odd that the Theban knew of Neto and his son’s wife Damo, and of Chion and apparently Sturax and Porpax too, but at least not Gorgos as well.

“You think me a fool, Theban? To protect this household that you apparently know so well, I hunt out the nest of these stingers and then burn them out all at once with a torch of straw. Yes, I do. And so would you, had you any sense.” Melon sensed the Theban had a good lid on his own pot, and would need two or three more sticks on the fire before boiling over.

Still, Epaminondas flashed his black eyes, “Then don’t mark me a fool either, when you call me dream monger and worse. Like an old woman by the fire, you warn me that it is terrible to fight the Spartans. Maybe it is—as we both know—or maybe not. But when you fight the Spartans, you must kill their king. No one, not even our Malgis had done that. Then when you take on Sparta , you fight in Sparta, not where and when the kings slither or buzz to sting you.”

Epaminondas would play no more notes on his reed and now pointed his finger in Melon’s face.

I would read no more of that forever. Christ, I've read Left Behind fanfic better than that. I've read Left Behind slash better than that. It reads like an ESL Peter Cropes. Somewhere, Jim Theis is extremely pissed.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

It's screaming nonsense.

[chromatomancer.livejournal.com]

*pout* But I WANT chromataphores. I want them so badly!

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I guess Turtletaub's Squanto will only be published in the UK.

[(Anonymous)]

If HT had wanted to have a Bronze Age New World civilization face off against an essentially unchanged Europe, he should have just had the Arawaks go all Pollynesian.

Cheers,
Mike R.