Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow: A Discursive Symposium edited by Reginald Bretnor

[james_davis_nicoll]

Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow: A Discursive Symposium edited by Reginald Bretnor

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

First, don't mistake Brentnor's loss in your recent poll for lack of interest. I was eager to read your review, but did not vote because I had no strong opinion on the actual subject of the poll, which of the books you should review first.

Second, Brentnor himself is apparently less popular than his most notorious literary creation. Although he does earn more Google hits than Papa Schimmelhorn.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I had no idea googlefight was a thing!

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

Hoo boy, that thing is almost as bad as TvTropes for suddenly absorbing time...

[treddytrafalgar.livejournal.com]

Asimov beats Heinlein, but Clarke beats Asimov, and Philip K. Dick beats Clarke...

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I miss the animation Googlefight used to display while its computation was cooking, in which stick figures punched one another frantically, and then the victor hopped up and down in triumph.

[seawasp]

If all it is is a "this one has more search results than that one" I'd demand an animation. I'd much prefer an actual Mortal Kombat sequence where Google generates a warrior based on each choice and they duel to the death!

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

There's a new animation, but it's boringly abstract.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I had no idea googlefight was a thing!

I've known about it for years; you are among today's Lucky Ten Thousand.

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

"Clement makes an interesting point: just because you’ve done a lot of homework does not mean you have to present all of it on the page. What the reader needs to know and what the author needs to know are not the same thing."

Words to live by. As a writer, you can often present the reader with a jawbone, a couple of metatarsals, and a femur of an idea--as long as you have a good sketch of the complete skeleton.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think it was the Turkey City Lexicon that talked about showing too much of your research under the title "I've suffered for my art (and so will you)".

[philrm.livejournal.com]

I actually own a copy of The Craft of Science Fiction, picked up in a used book store long ago. I imagine I even read it at some point, although none of it was striking enough to remember. The list of contributors has a fairly large overlap with the one under review, with Katherine MacLean replacing Anne McCaffrey as the token woman, writing on "Alien Minds and Nonhuman Intelligences" (implications left to the reader). It also features Jerry Pournelle on "The Construction of Believable Societies" (involuntary shudder).

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

"if we shared the world’s food supply with every living human being, all of us would starve."

Mathematically, that would seem to indicate that a sizable part of the world's population is consuming negative calories.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Soylent algebra, man.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Let's see... who of those are still alive?

Bova, Zebrowski, Gunn (92!), the Panshins.

[(Anonymous)]

"It may be that she is referring to Larry Niven’s A Gift From Earth, whose revolutionary movement—the Sons of Earth—had, if memory serves, one shrew, one woman there to service the men’s sexual needs, and one (understandably) axe-crazy extremist"

On the other hand, the Sons of Earth had only two significant male characters, neither of them exactly pleasant individuals either.




.

[(Anonymous)]

If it was "The Sons of Earth", you'd hardly expect a large female membership, would you?

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's been a while, but I don't remember anyone in that book being particularly sympathetic.

[ilya187.livejournal.com]

I thought the main character was sympathetic, but only in the most literal sense. As in, he evoked sympathy. IOW, the reader feels sorry for him.

Until the twist at the very end.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Revolutionary cabals require three to six named characters, right?

Come to think of it, the same seems to be true of super-secret government agencies.

[drpaisley.livejournal.com]

I read this saying to myself "I have this book," but when I got up to look at my bookcase of recently-unpacked "sf reference" books, it wasn't there. Thanks for letting me know I have at least one more box in this category somewhere in the garage.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

Needs Russ and Delany. :-)