Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 21:59:52 -0500
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Anvil & Flint
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Michael Walsh wrote:
>
> Steve Smith sent forth into the aether:

> >I have this neat little mental "knob" that I can set to the date of a
> >story.  I can then relate to it as to the date it was written, without
> >getting tripped up with current science or Political Correctness.  For
> >example "A Princess of Mars" comes out as being scientifically accurate
> >(it was set on Percival Lowell's Mars).
> >
> >Then I read "The Path of Unreason", by George O. Smith (one of the
> >finest Paranoid Fantasy novels I've ever read, btw).  Copyright 1958.
> >Cool.  Set the little knob.  Finding digital watches, pocket
> >calculators, Teflon, and Larry Niven was a real speedbump ...
> >
> >Other people do it too.  My copy of PoU is from Ballentine.  Says "First
> >Printing, 1975", but nothing about updating the copyright.
>
> If my memory serves me, I would think giant vacumn tubes might be clue =
> that it wasn't a new book.   (Gotta upgrade the memory from the cassette =
> unit . . .)

Problem wasn't the giant vacuum tubes (I suspect you're thinking of the
Venus Equilateral stories.  You don't need a degree in Electrical
Engineering to read them, but it helps.)  Finding a (supposed) 1958 book
that refers to Larry Niven as a major SF writer was the problem.

Thing is, all of the anachronisms (for 1958) were completely
gratuitous.  Why, for example, would the editor change "He looked at his
watch" to "He looked at his digital watch"?

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."