In a previous post I pointed out a typo in our copy of Alien Stones, and Kevin found one in The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories. And in reading through the book I've noticed a few more, and wondered why the proofreading is so poor. But now that I've read Cues, I have to reconsider...
Near the beginning there is a 'typo' that is really a slip of the tongue (if the bowling balls have tongues...): 'goblin' for 'gobbling'. So far, so good. Halfway through, when explaining how a ball full of stars could be mistaken for a bowling ball with holes, the ball says: "Ever heard of the Coalstack Nebula?" Of course (as amateur astronomers know) there is a Coalsack Nebula, but no Coalstack. Then, in the last paragraph, the second bowling ball says: "I bed your pardon. We give no quarter." Now this is one sentence after the first bowling ball has begun to "think sexy"; so I think we have to conclude that 'bed' for 'beg' is deliberate.
So my question is: Given that Wolfe seems to like playing games with his readers, how many of the other apparent typos in these stories are really intentional?!
Friday, August 10, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
I think I missed something
Someone help me out here...
In The Doctor of Death Island, the doctor of the title is (I'm pretty sure) Dr. Margotte, the neurosurgeon. He appears a few times, usually in kind of ominous circumstances. In one scene, the usually cool protagonist Alvard just about flips out when a prison guard indicates that he knows Margotte. And he is there again at the end of the story. So it seems he is a really key character. But so far as I can see he never really does anything; none of the action really depends on him. What am I missing?...
In The Doctor of Death Island, the doctor of the title is (I'm pretty sure) Dr. Margotte, the neurosurgeon. He appears a few times, usually in kind of ominous circumstances. In one scene, the usually cool protagonist Alvard just about flips out when a prison guard indicates that he knows Margotte. And he is there again at the end of the story. So it seems he is a really key character. But so far as I can see he never really does anything; none of the action really depends on him. What am I missing?...
Friday, July 27, 2007
It's hard to write futuristic science fiction...
... because it's hard to get even near-future technological advances right. For example in this story people are flying around the galaxy on spaceships... and still using CRT displays.
In this story, that isn't a trivial point, either. A big point of the story is to ask the question: How can we understand an alien species? What can we have in common with them as a basis for understanding? And the answer the story gives us seems to be: we will have science and technology in common with them and we can use that to understand them. So of course the aliens will use CRT displays too! But in just a few short decades since Wolfe wrote the story, our own technology has moved beyond CRT's and made them all but obsolete. How much more different from ours would an alien civilization's technologies be... having evolved independently from ours from the beginning?!
In this story, that isn't a trivial point, either. A big point of the story is to ask the question: How can we understand an alien species? What can we have in common with them as a basis for understanding? And the answer the story gives us seems to be: we will have science and technology in common with them and we can use that to understand them. So of course the aliens will use CRT displays too! But in just a few short decades since Wolfe wrote the story, our own technology has moved beyond CRT's and made them all but obsolete. How much more different from ours would an alien civilization's technologies be... having evolved independently from ours from the beginning?!
The second story: a correction
Top of p. 52 (in my copy anyway): "neutrons" should be "neurons".
Hey this post is about one thousandth as long as a Ming post...
Hey this post is about one thousandth as long as a Ming post...
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