Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 22:07:18 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Anvil & Flint
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

> sgs at aginc.net 03/25/02 09:59PM
>>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"?

Sorry; I seemed to missed the reference to Path of Unreason.  The cassette =
drive must have crashed . . .

mjw

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