[ExI] sf with pathos

[spike]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org 
> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of 
> Damien Broderick
...
> 
> Thanks for the nod, Spike. I'll now do my usual irritating 
> sf-writer thing of insisting that I have *never* written "sci 
> fi"...

Oops, thanks for the correction.  I vaguely recalled that from last time,
but I couldn't remember the correct term.  I am sooo tragically not hip.

>... STAR WARS is pure sci fi.

So it gets into one of those things like how to define "western" as a genre.
My father in law loves Louis Lamour, but to me the stories are so two
dimensional, almost clownish, they and the entire genre might as well be
called Harelquin-romances-for-men.  I really liked Steinbeck's East of Eden,
but he argued that wasn't a western at all.  I don't see why not.  It is set
in California from 1865 to 1917, it has horses, cattle, whore houses,
expanding businesses, historical and geographical authenticity, Steinbeck's
own family history subtly written into it (oddly enough), everything that
makes for a really good western but without the hackneyed corny nonsense. 


> (It's surely relevant that the premier sf writers' 
> organization is SFWA, not SciFiWA, and almost all the Year's 
> Best books use SF/sf in the title or introductions.)

Cool SF it is.  Anything SF always reads San Francisco to me, but I will get
over it.


> 
> >Damien wrote another one which I cannot recall the name 
> (Damien, which
> >please?) where the scientist Dr. Paul (who?) and his friend 
...
> 
> POST MORTAL SYNDROME, by me and Barbara Lamar. It was online 
> for a year as a free download...

Please sir, what is the point of giving away your valuable labors?  Is the
local grocery store offering any free downloads?

> ... 
> Self-Indulgent Notifications will flood this list and others 
> when that happens...

Self indulgent?  Sounds like others-indulgent to me.  See above comment.

> The great, memorable, written sf-with-feelings-that-make-you-cry
> story is "Flowers for Algernon"...

Read it twice, liked it both times.


> ...which made a pretty awful 
> Cliff Robertson movie (as CHARLY)...

Saw it, liked it better than another truly awful FfA film adapation called
Lawnmower Man.  I am told Lawnmower Man isn't as bad as it's sequel, but I
spared myself that one.

 decades ago and a quite 
> touching Matthew Modine TV version more recently: 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210044/
> 

Thanks!  This looks really good.

spike