3 ms·
cf https://www.cherryh.com/www/list.htm https://www.cherryh.com/www/list.htm > Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed fro
by 082349872349872 2y ago
cf https://www.cherryh.com/www/list.htm https://www.cherryh.com/www/list.htm
> Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed from one side of the net to the other. Ridiculous to say that someone ‘stole’ an idea: no, no, a thousand times no. The point is the volley, and how it’s carried, and what statement is made by the answering ‘statement.’ In other words—if Burroughs initiates a time-gate and says it works randomly, and then Norton has time gates confounded with the Perilous Seat, the Siege Perilous of the Round Table, and locates it in a bar on a rainy night—do you see both the humor and the volley in the tennis match?
(unless someone has been messing with time gates, Cherry has over a decade on Stross, and Stross wasn't even FIAWOL enough to publish as Strhoss)
- WillAdams 2y agoThis conceit is especially cogent when one considers that many of Cherryh's works are to some degree a deconstruction of, and re-examination of previous works: - _Rimrunner_ takes a powered armor trooper out of her armor and then examines the place of military in society from a compleatly different angle than Heinlein's _Starship Troopers_ - The Faded Sun trilogy takes an honour-bound warrior culture which has a strange alien life form as a central aspect of society and examines its workings and the interactions with the life form and ecologies in a way which is not possible in Frank Herbert's _Dune_ with its physics laws defying sandworms - the Morgaine trilogy takes the concept of gates and looks at how such devices might relate to and interact with not just societies and cultures, but the very fabric of reality