HemGrupperDiskuteraMerTidsandan
Sök igenom hela webbplatsen
Denna webbplats använder kakor för att fungera optimalt, analysera användarbeteende och för att visa reklam (om du inte är inloggad). Genom att använda LibraryThing intygar du att du har läst och förstått våra Regler och integritetspolicy. All användning av denna webbplats lyder under dessa regler.

Resultat från Google Book Search

Klicka på en bild för att gå till Google Book Search.

Laddar...

Världar i krig

av Poul Anderson

MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygDiskussioner
481527,873 (3.25)Ingen/inga
Ingen/inga
Laddar...

Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken.

Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.

review of
Poul Anderson's / John Brunner's The War of Two Worlds / Threshold of Eternity
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 20-22, 2018

As usual, I got this Ace Double b/c I like one of the authors, John Brunner, but haven't read anything before by the other, Poul Anderson. I've tended to reject many SF authors as probably generic in favor of a small group that struck me as brilliant. These days, I'm much more open to writers I wd've previously rejected. That includes Anderson.

I have at least one friend who lives in São Paulo so when it's mentioned in something I'm reading my interest is piqued:

"Intelligence Prime, lord of the Solar System, opened the window and leaned out to watch the constellations and breathe the watm air that sighed in from the endless Brazilian lands. A lovely world, he thought, a broad fair planet, this Earth—one to fight for, to seize and hold like a beloved mate.

"It was not risky for him to appear at the window. His secret office was so high above darkened Sao Paulo that the very noises were lost." - p 5

""Are you in charge, Commander?" he asked. He spoke in Portuguese, and did it better than I. The Brazilian dialect may be the dominant tongue of Earth, but we were mostly Britons and Norteamericanos here and had used English." - p 11

I like SF for its predictive qualities but I also like it for depicting an unlikely world. The idea of a Brazilian dialect of Portuguese becoming the "dominant tongue" appeals to me as something to imagine. Then there're things like "Hilton's Planetoid":

"We had a four months' wait without a sign from HQ. I began to worry, we'd been on short rations for a long while and now our supplies were terribly low. I wondered if I shouldn't violate orders myself, comandeer a rocket, and go after help. Hilton's Planetoid wasn't far away now, as astronomical distances go, and they had hydroponics and yeast vats there." - p 10

"Well, the last several months had been rugged—atomic bombardment from space, capitulation, famine and plague. Our transportation and manufacturing centers had been so thoroughly wrecked that it hadn't been possible to feed the huge urban majority, or take care of them in any way. Crime and anarchy had risen out of the ruins and still snarled around the world, though the Martian occupation forces were now cooperating with U. N. and local police to smash that violence." - p14

As an anarchist, I've commented so often on the misuse of the word "anarchy" that I'm thoroughly sick of doing so by now but, oh well, here goes: anarchists tend to be organized on a small scale, anarchists don't make governments or militaries. Wars are government & military created activities. The above-named disasters, starting w/ "atomic bombardment from space" came from the Martian military, NOT from Martian anarchists. Governments & the militaries are the problem, not "anarchy".

Our hero has gone from meeting w/ "Intelligence Prime" in São Paulo to New York City where he's being repatriated.

"The haughty skyline of Manhattan was a jumble of steel skeletons, snapped off, and stark against the sky. Some of the buildings had caught a freakish heat-gust and melted where they stood, so that they were brittle crags of lumpy, twisted, fire-blackened steel." - p 15

& it's not just the steel that's twisted. There's a twist to the plot. There's a reason why Anderson named his novel The War of Two Worlds, an obvious reference to H.G.Wells's The War of the Worlds — both novels being about a war between Martians & Earthlings, but there's something else happening in Anderson's story.

""Tahowwa shab-hu gameel weijhak."

""Shakheer! Kasshub umshash woteeha."

"I felt coldness along my spine, and muttered a curse. It was not only that the grunting and sibilant noises were strange to me. It was the rhythm of them, the low rise and fall, the whistling overtones and the rattle and gurgle underneath. I wondered if any human or Martian throat could form those syllables." - p 37

Now, no translation was provided, for reasons important to the plot. Google translate detected Arabic in the 1st line & gave me this:

"I almost like your face."

Google translate detected Marathi in the 2nd line & gave me this curious English translation:

"Shakheer! Kasshub umshash woteeha."

Since I find the 2nd line's translation somewhat unsatisfactory, I'm taking the liberty of using the 1st translation & elaborating on the 2nd one:

"I almost like your face."

"Shitkicker! That & 25¢ won't get me a cup of coffee."

After that comment it was almost natural what happened next:

""All well and good. Only how will we make Alandzu oblige us by changing his shape?"

""Well—" A ghostly smile hivered on Regelin's lips. "You might try breaking a lamp over his head." -p 64

Our hero & his small tribe are trying to make themselves scarce. They're fortunate enuf to come across a man who doesn't have to have things explicitly explained to him:

"["]a wise man who'd like to see better days might keep his mouth shut instead of getting poor damned fools into trouble. Even for a reward. My name's Robinson."

"He grinned then. "Okay, Mr. Robinson. Maybe I could let you have a truck cheap. Only it won't get you very far, you know. Even charcoal's hard to come by."

""Oh, I'll make out. I'm just an average guy trying to get along in the world. So damned average that people often fail to recognize me."

""Yeah, your face is easy to forget. Okay, now here I got—"" - p 53

I really don't have much to say about The War of Two Worlds. I didn't think it was absolutely mind-bogglingly fabulous but I enjoyed it & I'd read more by Anderson. Since I often mostly like SF for its plots, I usually try to avoid spoiling them for the readers of my reviews. Otherwise, they feel like they've been

""Conquered by refugees!"

""It's a common enough process in history," I answered. "Look at Rome: the Goths were running from the Huns, who'd been kicked out by the Chinese. Only these—Tahowwa—are smarter about it. They let us do their fighting for them."" - p 81

********************************************************

On to John Brunner's Threshold of Eternity. The front cover (wch is the inverted back cover of The War of Two Worlds) has human men in orange spacesuits w/ space-age rifles being disturbed by a giant blue creature ripping open the ceiling of their dome while a giant machine-like thing that might be a building collapses & rips apart. Unlike some SF covers, this actually has something to do with the story.

The author's statement near the beginning says:

""Basically, all I've tried to do is to write an adventure story which reflects in its development a few unprovable but, to my mind, stimulating speculations about the nature of the universe—particularly time—and the place of human thought in the whole scheme.["]" - p 2

Oh, is that all?!, how incredibly lazy of you!

""I believe science-fiction has an important social function, in the sense that if a little green man from Mars wanted to land his flying saucer somewhere on Earth, he would do well to pick the back yard of a science fiction reader to come down in—there, he'd be less likely to have a shotgun taken on him on principle."" - p 2

That's why I think all signage, including restaurant menus, shd be written in science fiction.

"He caught his breath at the sight.

"The city from another star was fantastic. It sprouted like a forest of beautiful ferns into light bridges of synthetics and tall impossible buildings having nothing in common with Terrestrial architecture. Of course, its people had never been shackled by gravity; they had been able to build from the start with antigrav.

"And they had torn this city up by the roots; they had closed it in with a plastic sheath and mounted it on an interstellar drive. They had loaded it with four million people, of whom one perhaps might be indispensable. They had sunk thousands of man-hours and desperate energy into bringing it where its resources could be utilized—and at the moment of success, disaster awaited." - pp 14-15

Don't see that every day. I originally misread the above to mean its opposite. This resulted in the following train-of-thought: I wdn't want to be the one person who wasn't indispensable. People might start getting ideas about who to take their accumulated aggression out on. Maybe that's what happened when the story finally got to the cover image:

"Something gigantic and powerful smashed down the wall at a different point, bringing the panels of the roof falling in a welter of plastic and a tangle of wiring. A man screamed, and sprawled with his scalp cut across. They had a glimpse of a creature slate-blue and glistening. Then a weapon hissed, and a bolt of energy seared the edge of the gap." - p 24

It was almost worth it for the "welter of plastic". Don't see that every day. Maybe a tumbler of plastic, or something like that, but not a whole welter. Much more common is learning an entire language while you sleep. I can't wait for that to get here. Do you think my head wd explode if I learned 6,000 of them?

"There was a sense of time having passed, but not of intervening awareness, when he woke. For a few moments he simply lay still, wondering what had happened in his head.

""So you're conscious," said Teula's voice from behind him.

""What did you do to us?" asked Red, and was interrupted by a cry from Chantal.

""Red! You'e talking Speech!"

""So are you!" They gazed at each other in amazement for a moment, and then he turned to Teula. "Is it hypnosis?"

""Partly."" - p 46

Personally, I'd rather be speaking Talk. But that's just me.

"""Now Smith here has his head very nearly as full of knowledge as is conceivably possible. He's a synthesist. We've taken him and stuffed his mind full by every technique we can imagine: hypnosis, sleep-learning, tachistoscopic acceleration of uptake, drugs . . . . He's good. They're all good. But they aren't good enough.["]" - p 113" - "Being Eaten By Sharks Off The Coast Of Zanzibar":
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/380819-being-eaten-by-sharks-off-the-coast-...

That other Brunner bk quote aside, THIS Brunner bk has a few oddly generic elements: the aforesaid giant monster & now this:

""Is it bad?" Red put in tentatively.

""It may be. It may be very bad. For some reason we can't fathom, anything picked up in a temporal stage is more likely to be organic than inorganic, and most likely to be human. The mass of this one is small, but diffuse—which means several people or animals. And if they're people—"

""What?"

""Then 1957 had been invaded by a bunch of the most bloodthirsty savages in history—a war party from the twenty-third century Croceraunian Empire."" - p 56

1st. I don't remember Red putting anything in me. 2nd. Then again I was only 3 or 4. 3rd. Nor do I remember eating any bloodthirsty sausages at the war party. 4th. Besides, I never succeeded in picking up anybody in a temporal stage — that's why I stopped hanging out at them.

""I'm going to ask you to go out there—screened, so that you're invisible—pick out the Croceraunians, and beat them over the head. It will be dangerous, because I don't think the screens will protect you against either the Breath of Terror or a high-velocity bullet. I must be candid—it's either you, or an indispensible technician." - p 72

See what I mean about being NOT indispensible?! It sucks gas. & what gives about having invisibility shields that don't protect you? That's like having seat-belts that don't buckle or a helmet without a top.

"It almost, but not quite, stopped him wishing it had not been necessary to do away with sleep. The combination of hypnotic relaxation and selective removal of fatigue poisons which the race had been forced to develop doubled an individual's thinking time, was completely harmless and even aided longevity. But he missed—how he missed—the ability to turn himself off for a while." - p 65

Doing away w/ sleep is a bad idea, even in science fiction. Ever heard of dreams? Besides, what are people who work the graveyard shift supposed to do? It's bound to turn out bad:

"they were predominantly conscious of one thing—a stink which was almost nauseating. Mafwareet suffered even worse than Red. The reason was perfectly plain, of course—from upper story windows maidservants were casually tossing night slops into the streets, horses padded through the muddy pools leaving the inevitable signs of their passage, and the inhabitants themselves were blithely and unselfconsciously unaware of the values of public sanitation. The most resplendently dressed people they met were scratching themselves for lice." - p 85

"Night slops", of course, are undreamt dreams, unslept sleep. It got so bad that Red turned Blue.

"This much Red took in before Burma indicated a livid green time map before him, and said, "This is it, my friends—we're headed for the beginning of Time."" - p 112

""We can't track this surge, Artesha. It goes beyond the farthest range of our instruments, ans it's still gaining momentum when it disappears. We can't begin to guess where they'll wind up. Some of them may witness the formation of the Earth, or starve to death in a Carboniferous forest, or even fetch up with a crash against the wall of the Beginning of Everything." - p 113

Some people are such Drama Queens!!

"Something J. B. S. Haldane had said in one of his essays came back to Red. What was it? "I imagined myself in a—" What kind of space? Riemannian, that was it. "I was standing on a transparent plane. When I looked up above me I could see the soles of my boots turned backwards. . . ."" - p 122

& while we're so damned busy not sleeping, "To appreciate what the inner lives of great scientists/mathematicians/metaphysicians are like [..] we need only lie here and try to form a truly rigorous and coherent idea [..] of what we really mean by 'omnipotent,' or 'integer,' or 'illimitable,' or 'finite but unbounded'", or 'Perverse Number Theory,' or 'Reimannian after-space'." - p 137, Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T (Perverse Number Theory) - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

"Since I invented (w/o definition) "Riemannian after-space" & introduced it into the internet, I might as well try to define it after giving some history: "[Georg Friedrich Bernhard] Riemann merged projective geometry with the complex numbers, and all of a sudden lines became circles, circles became lines, and zero and infinity became the poles on a globe full of numbers."

"Inquiring on Google as to what Riemannian after-space might mean I got 60 links - the top 2 of wch were the ones I created. I wasn't expecting much luck so I wasn't surprised when "Riemannian" was consistently separated by alotof other words before the pairing of "after" & "space". Nor was I surprised when those latter words weren't hyphenated. It was somewhat promising that the occurrences of "after" & "space" side-by-side sometimes was followed by "travel". W/ that in mind, I cd pretend that Riemannian after-space is some sort of abbreviation for what happens to Riemannian depictions of space after space travel. That definitely had potential - esp after skimming thru some Einstein Relativity.

"But, THEN, I came across & a thread in wch "marcus" writes:

"One always suspects, after first being confronted with a generous helping of indigestible terminology, that mathematicians (especially Categorists) are crazy."

- p 130, Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T (Perverse Number Theory) - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

In other words, I've just contaminated a perfectly gradiose & wonderful science-fiction plot w/ some, uh, other science-fiction that doesn't belong (t)here. Down! Boy. Note that I spelled IT "Reimannian" & "Riemannian" — but, HEY!, if you think that's bad check out this verbatim quote from the Ace Double printing of Threshold of Eternity:

"Magwareet left the presence of Artesha and went down to
Magwareet left the presence of Artesha and went down to see the little biologist in his research hall. He found Kepthin about the chance of a pact with the Enemy. However, him excitedly analyzing the psychological implications of on his way, a general call from Artesha came to him over the Enemy signals which were now being intercepted. When the communicators, and at her urgent command he returned the Magwareet breached his idea, however, Kepthin shook his head. way he had come as fast as he could." - p 130

Except that, of course, the above is not a mistake. What's particularly juicy about it, or shd I say "erect"?, is that Brunner got to use experimental writing technique justified by the plot. I'll bet the editors of Ace Doubles argued w/ him over that part. It figures that he held his (hypothetical) ground.

Ever have one of those days when people just ask too much of you?

"Then there was something in his head that was like a memory speaking, but was not one. It said: You are one of the two needed for a special task. It said: You are a sculptor with a sculptor's mind and a sculptor's way of looking at space. It said: There could be nothing greater for you than to create with pure space and pure time as well. It said: You are to supply what is needful.

"It said: You are to help in molding the universe itself." - p 137

Just think what wd've happened if Claes Oldenburg had been the sculptor. Or Tinguely. Or Edward Kleinholz. Or Carl Andre. ( )
  tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |
inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
Du måste logga in för att ändra Allmänna fakta.
Mer hjälp finns på hjälpsidan för Allmänna fakta.
Vedertagen titel
Originaltitel
Alternativa titlar
Information från den tyska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Första utgivningsdatum
Personer/gestalter
Viktiga platser
Viktiga händelser
Relaterade filmer
Motto
Dedikation
Inledande ord
Information från den italienska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Dopo un breve crepuscolo, la notte venuta dall'Atlantico dilagò sul mondo.
Citat
Avslutande ord
Information från den italienska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
(Klicka för att visa. Varning: Kan innehålla spoilers.)
Särskiljningsnotis
Förlagets redaktörer
På omslaget citeras
Ursprungsspråk
Information från den tyska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Kanonisk DDC/MDS
Kanonisk LCC

Hänvisningar till detta verk hos externa resurser.

Wikipedia på engelska

Ingen/inga

Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas.

Bokbeskrivning
Haiku-sammanfattning

Pågående diskussioner

Ingen/inga

Populära omslag

Snabblänkar

Betyg

Medelbetyg: (3.25)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5 1
3 3
3.5
4 2
4.5
5

Är det här du?

Bli LibraryThing-författare.

 

Om | Kontakt | LibraryThing.com | Sekretess/Villkor | Hjälp/Vanliga frågor | Blogg | Butik | APIs | TinyCat | Efterlämnade bibliotek | Förhandsrecensenter | Allmänna fakta | 203,241,863 böcker! | Topplisten: Alltid synlig