From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis@sirius.com>
Subject: (urth) ACoC Dialectic!
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 17:01:47 

Nigel Price,

Re: Blish's ACOC, you wrote:

>Other than
>that, I can't make up my mind whether it's a peculiar twist in Blish's own
>thinking, or the effect of the novel's technique, which is to set the main
>characters against each other in a sort of chiaroscuro dialectic,
>reminiscent in both its brilliance and its staginess of George Bernard Shaw
>at his most argumentative.  (There are parts of the first book of ACoC
>which are actually set out as dramatic dialogue, as if written for a play.)

Thanks--I wanted to say something like that!  (Rather than Shaw, I was
going to draw attention back to the [in my mind] similar roughness of
Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain," full of declamations!  And
stark revelations!  People speak frank!  [As contrast to Smith's "Alpha
Ralpha Boulevard"]  But that would only have led to tangents on Cordwainer
Smith.)

Hurry up and finish reading it, so you can say whatever it was I was going
to say!

=mantis=



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