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| Flux And Trust.; A recurring theme | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 9 2007, 06:19 AM (758 Views) | |
| hrhspence | Dec 10 2007, 09:22 PM Post #16 |
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Hani Assassin
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But a story from my life that I tell the people in my life usually starts with an incident. "I was driving down Lake Meade and just as I crossed Rainbow Boulivard . . ." and continues on to another one. ". . . and then she was hit from behind!" but we leave out all the breaths and heart beats that intervein (except for the heightened ones that we say "my heart jumped into my throat!" |
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| Reptile | Dec 11 2007, 04:31 AM Post #17 |
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Just a thought. :cherryh: was born in 1942. My sister was born in 1943 and I was born in 1947. I bring to the attention, especially of the younger readers, or World War II. Total War. Followed by the, H-bomb charged, Cold War. 12 million or more veterans. Many of them mentally screwed up, including my father, Tech Sergent Reptile with his 4 campaign ribbons, good conduct medal, and decades of nightmares. All the characters of Cyteen. Downbelow, and the other Alliance novels seem directly or indirectly screwed up by the 50-year war. It rings SO true to someone of my generation. This is what you get from that kind of war! That's an important reason that Ariane II is so much saner than her predecessor. She wasn't sexually abused as a pre-adolescent, and it doesn't appear that she will endure the 50-70 year age as a prime agent of amorality and violence. I sensed the acidulous, corrosive effects on individuals and the body politic before I could even read (in the age of McCarthy). Anyway, such are my intuitions, |
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| Aelith | Dec 11 2007, 09:13 AM Post #18 |
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Veteran of the Messenger's Guild
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Oh yes, I was born in 1946. I've managed to suppress the irrational anxieties learned in the fifties, the sound of prop-engines ie BOMBERS just before I go to sleep; the total irrationality and its guilty fear of segregation. I crenge now at the memory of the pateralism that was supposed to make that kind of racism "all right". Maybe that's why escapeism has been such a large part of my life? No, I'm being simple minded. |
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| El Ronin | Dec 11 2007, 12:51 PM Post #19 |
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Guild Linguist
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I'm glad it's not just me that noticed it and I think it is indeed a way to get the reader to care more about the character. I love the character of Bren because it is a strange thing to live in a culture different from one's own. I was raised in western Pennsylvania, and as a black guy, I was quite different from my peers and then to go to Japan and live there for 8 years was an experience, so I TOTALLY understand Bren. And to Reptile's & Aeltith's posts. WOW! That is absolutely Deep. That's a perspective I did not see at all until you brought it up and it makes a great deal of sense. And looking back on Finity's End, a lot of Fletchers observations about his cousins make sense in a different way now. |
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| Reptile | Dec 11 2007, 09:25 PM Post #20 |
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Wow, El Ronin! Sounds to me like you have had an interesting, if perhaps stressful, life. I grew up in the Ozarks (though my parents weren't from there) as an outsider. Only a hint, I'm sure, of your experiences--I can't imagine growing up Black in Western PA. Followed by years in Japan! You must have many an interesting tale and insight to share. I absolutely agree with your insights about Bren. :cherryh: in almost every book examines the intersections of cultural differences and changes, sociological structures, history, and passions, human or nonhuman. Sort of like the Illiad and Oddessy. Working out cultural change and the implications of cultural relativism is, of course, a staple of sci fi/fantasy--at least since Heinlein and H. G. Wells, too, I suppose. Sorry about the typos in my post. The WWII stuff was just there with the atmosphere, the background context and feet of a 40-year period during which the United States was in a hot, fighting, war for at least half the time. Even in Vietnam, we had 550,000 troops theater in 1968, for example. I don't know how self conscious :cherryh: is about this comparisons, but I suspect she is very much so. Also, it is hard to communicate the degree to which militaristic modes of thought and action had permeated U. S. society. In grade scholl one learned how to march in step and to make complicated evolutions, the complicated rituals of raising, lowering and folding a flag, anthems. One took the AF Qualifying Test and one for the Navy along with the SAT tests and the like. Military ways of doing and organizing activities transformed--not always for the better--ways of conducting business. Military jokes and metaphors permeated speech. etc., etc. But again, this all seemed normal--not the wars, but the rest. We had little context, knew no other way to live. |
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8:46 AM Jul 11