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10/13/2009 9:40:21 PM
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WPreston
Posts 651
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Picked up my copy from the libes today. Whenever the readers are assembled, we can let the madness begin. John? Mark? Jim-Bob? Agamemnon? (You never know who's going to show up at this place.)
If you mistakenly ordered Sand on Stan's Bar: Tales of a Beachfront Cocktail Server, we'll wait for you to catch up. (I hear that book is part of another "New Wave" . . . dude.)
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http://wmpreston.blogspot.com
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10/13/2009 9:58:30 PM
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Lukas Jackson
Posts 525
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I'm all in. But if this one doesn't completely fascinate and inspire me, and lead to an epiphany that changes my life deeply, I will be sorely disappointed.
That said, the copy I got from the Santa Monica Public Library is just NASTY, its pages soiled with brown stains throughout. I'm hoping the one I have on order from the LA Public Library is better. If not, I have a feeling the tome's condition will shape my reading experience.
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http://darkerblogistan.livejournal.com
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10/13/2009 11:11:55 PM
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Marian
Posts 2178
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I read it years ago so won't say anything except that I'll be interested in your reactions.
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"Know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."
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10/13/2009 11:13:55 PM
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Lee S
Posts 315
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I have a copy somewhere or other on my bookshelves. (unless, of course, it's fallen through the cracks of a timewarp and is now in that where'd-I-put-that state of alternate reality). I'll try to dig it out so I can at least follow along with the spoil...uh...discussion, if there is to be one.
I'm in the middle of 1942 in WSC's History of the Second World War, so a change of pace might not be out of order, or synchronicity, or, whatever.
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10/13/2009 11:56:14 PM
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John E. Rogers, Jr.
Posts 1325
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I'll be picking my copy up from the Sun Valley branch library tomorrow morning. That pick-up will coincide almost to the minute with my projected completion of the unabridged audiobook of Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, which I'm going to have a lot to say about - on another thread.
Bill - why don't you suggest a first read-to point for SOZ.
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10/14/2009 12:46:39 AM
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pc
Posts 1452
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Read it ages ago. A long and quirky tale!
Probably a library copy, but will conduct an extensive search of my own book shelves.
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The ends do not justify the means. Rather, the means build the ends.
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10/14/2009 7:33:06 AM
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jimbraiden
Posts 1755
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Like Marian I too read it years ago.
An excellent book - in many ways the ancestor of the cyber punk novel.
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10/14/2009 3:01:11 PM
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karlb
Posts 380
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I've got a copy, will re-read for the first time in more than 30 years. I remember it fondly, curious as to how well it holds up. IIRC, it's set just about now (2009).
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10/14/2009 4:45:04 PM
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Lukas Jackson
Posts 525
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Yep, it's set in 2010. With a black President named Obomi. Who shreds up the Koran. Hmmm....!
So far it's doing quite a bit of shifting around of perspectives, but at least it seems to be coming back to the same cast of characters. Hopefully it coheres, and is not too postmodern...
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http://darkerblogistan.livejournal.com
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10/14/2009 6:04:27 PM
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WPreston
Posts 651
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Some of us have agreed that we'll read to the end of "the happening world (06)" for Sunday afternoon commenting. It seems to move along fairly well, and to take it much slower would result in it taking too long, I think. Let us know how that pace works out.
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http://wmpreston.blogspot.com
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10/15/2009 10:05:44 AM
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Lukas Jackson
Posts 525
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WPreston wrote:
Some of us have agreed that we'll read to the end of "the happening world (06)" for Sunday afternoon commenting. It seems to move along fairly well, and to take it much slower would result in it taking too long, I think. Let us know how that pace works out.
I will do my best to abide by the timeline, although I am concurrently reading Michael Connelly's TRUNK MUSIC and Stephen King's THE DARK TOWER: THE GUNSLINGER.
This is fun! It's like being in school again. 
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http://darkerblogistan.livejournal.com
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10/15/2009 10:39:44 AM
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Tom Purdom
Posts 604
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I read it when it first came out. I remember it as an engrossing well written book. One thing we all commented on was the technique Brunner used to build up the background. It seems to me it hasn't been used as much as it could have been.
It won the Hugo but the Nebula that year went to Panshin's Rite of Passage. Many people found that odd-- a reversal of expectations. But it was probably an accident of timing. Zanzibar came out late in the year and the Nebulas were awarded in April.
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10/15/2009 12:42:30 PM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 3308
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I've got it. First edition from the library. Tell you, who ever was doing selection back in the late 60s at our library must have been a real SF fan. It's probably the strongest part of our SF collection, though I'm trying to fix that.
I started it last night, and found it best to just accept the prose as it comes, it's building to something. And I thought Luke was kidding about Obami, but he's not.
Oooo, the chick lit groupies at work are going to be amused that we've got an SF book club!
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10/15/2009 2:37:23 PM
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WPreston
Posts 651
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Tom Purdom wrote:
I read it when it first came out. I remember it as an engrossing well written book. One thing we all commented on was the technique Brunner used to build up the background. It seems to me it hasn't been used as much as it could have been.
You mean by subsequent writers? It strikes me that the structure—which I'm enjoying—is an endpoint for fiction rather than a new approach that others might somehow employ. To borrow at all from it would be mere copying. Stylistically, it's sui generis. Don't you agree?
It's similar in this respect to a film I teach, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Director Robert Wiene applies German expressionism so absolutely to the film, with the sets, all on stages, completely distorted, that to at all follow Wiene's lead in that regard is to simply steal. So later German expressionist films such as The Golem and Nosferatu don't: they follow Wiene's lead on tone and take his lessons on cross-cutting, but they leave behind his visual style, creating one that becomes the template for hundreds of films that follow.
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http://wmpreston.blogspot.com
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10/15/2009 3:37:00 PM
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karlb
Posts 380
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You mean by subsequent writers? It strikes me that the structure—which I'm enjoying—is an endpoint for fiction rather than a new approach that others might somehow employ. To borrow at all from it would be mere copying. Stylistically, it's sui generis. Don't you agree?
Brunner himself borrowed much of it from John Dos Passos' USA trilogy. Dos Passos is semi-forgotten today, IMO, but USA is a terrific work.
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10/15/2009 3:53:15 PM
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John E. Rogers, Jr.
Posts 1325
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karlb wrote:
You mean by subsequent writers? It strikes me that the structure—which I'm enjoying—is an endpoint for fiction rather than a new approach that others might somehow employ. To borrow at all from it would be mere copying. Stylistically, it's sui generis. Don't you agree?
Brunner himself borrowed much of it from John Dos Passos' USA trilogy. Dos Passos is semi-forgotten today, IMO, but USA is a terrific work.
Interesting, Karl. That's one of my father's favorite works. He's been after me to read it for years.
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10/15/2009 3:56:46 PM
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karlb
Posts 380
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The old man knows what he's talking about. Great book.
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10/15/2009 4:00:20 PM
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John E. Rogers, Jr.
Posts 1325
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karlb wrote:
The old man knows what he's talking about. Great book.
I'll look it up after Stand on Zanzibar - and after my lawyers' reading group finishes Bleak House.
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10/15/2009 6:58:35 PM
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WPreston
Posts 651
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I love Bleak House, especially the impressionistic opening.
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http://wmpreston.blogspot.com
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10/15/2009 7:12:42 PM
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Bruce
Posts 64
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Drat. I was planning to re-read it in 2010 to see how it stood up in a world 42 years after the Hugo was awarded to Brunner...I'd read it for the third time, iirc, in the mid-80's. I did take another go at 'The Sheep Look Up' three years ago. It also borrows dos Passo's technique and was spookily prescient. One section ends with the American President declaiming, "America is under attack". A fine book.
Joe Haldeman cheekily mentioned being the receiver of stolen goods rather than an outright thief when he wrote 'Mindbridge' using the same approach. Let's hope he gets better real soon now.
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