There is nothing to really say about it.
Hmm, as composer John Cage is said to have remarked about his famously (or infamously) "silent" opus, 4'33",
(I will note that 4'33" is probably the one opus that shows off Laurens Hammond's Noisome Little Noisemaker [tm] at its best.)
There is something about reading and watching media that doesn't evoke a reaction. Sometimes I want my media free of controversy.
If I die, tell my wife I said "Hello."
I only ever read We the Living and the early part of Atlas Shrugged, but I was impressed by her literary abilities (her ability to identify a problem, then propose a completely backward "solution" was also remarkable).
Rand's writing was more about emotional subjectivity than character development, though. We know how it feels to be her protagonists, but everyone else is a sketch.
<Insert "I understood that reference" meme here>
(I'm just happy there was one. Most of the non-Trek references that get thrown around in here, I have no idea what people are talking about
)
I vaguely remember a Starlog piece, from the late 1970s or early 1980s, comparing Atlas Shrugged with 1984 and Brave New World.
They invoked light source metaphors for the three books. I forget what they used as a metaphor for Brave New World; I distinctly recall a harsh searchlight for 1984. And if I remember right, Atlas Shrugged was a burned-out candle.
That, and a number of other things the author of the piece said about Ayn Rand basically told me everything I needed to know about it, and gave me a reason to actively avoid it.
And everything I've heard since then has only reinforced that hearsay first impression.
They invoked light source metaphors for the three books. I forget what they used as a metaphor for Brave New World; I distinctly recall a harsh searchlight for 1984. And if I remember right, Atlas Shrugged was a burned-out candle.
That, and a number of other things the author of the piece said about Ayn Rand basically told me everything I needed to know about it, and gave me a reason to actively avoid it.
And everything I've heard since then has only reinforced that hearsay first impression.
It's easy to evaluate her in terms of what she not good at, but she does have virtues as a writer. I appreciate that, unlike Huxley (I've read Animal Farm, but not 1984), she said something valuable about human experience even when what she wanted to say was useless.
It's one thing to write a polemic well (and to have a point that's worthwhile), and another to convey the subjective emotionality of living. Rand was genuinely good at the latter.
Her novels are about people—broken, unlikeable, self-centered people, but people.
This is the opening to We the Living:
And Huxley's Brave New World:
It's one thing to write a polemic well (and to have a point that's worthwhile), and another to convey the subjective emotionality of living. Rand was genuinely good at the latter.
Her novels are about people—broken, unlikeable, self-centered people, but people.
This is the opening to We the Living:
And Huxley's Brave New World:
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Uh, Animal Farm and 1984 were Orwell. And I, too, have read Animal Farm, but not 1984; the former was a required reading in high school. And like a number of other required readings from high school (e.g., Wuthering Heights, Pride & Prejudice, Lord of the Flies), I've had no inclination to pick it up again.
Yes, I was saying that I can comment on Huxley's writing in Brave New World, but not Orwell's in 1984 (though I've read his Animal Farm).
Weirdly, I first read Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies as an elementary schooler. For me, the nightmare readings in high school were Their Eyes Were Watching God and A Streetcar Named Desire. I think I've revisited everything else at some point, other than Brave New World (and finally appreciated My Ántonia).
I actually only ever read Ayn Rand because I was in a cooperative writing group with someone who'd inserted John Galt as their primary character (an anti-villain), and I wanted to be able to get him right. I don't think I ever finished Atlas Shrugged, but I genuinely enjoyed her narrativity (and Rand's strange combination of insight and obtuseness).
I appreciate this critique of her that I came across on Reddit:
there's a cartoon where holmes is ressurrected in the 22nd century and almost every episode is named for one of the real stories, but the connections are tenuous at best....given that niether holmes nor the robot who read all of watson's journals and thence decided it was watson never says anything about the connections they do have, it suggests they had completely different adventures the first time round.
Ah, yes, Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, in which Holmes's honey-preserved corpse was resurrected by Technology to deal with a clone of Moriarty, and teamed up with the aforementioned robot Watson and a tough lady cop named Beth Lestrade, descendant of the inspector. Ironically, Holmes was voiced by Jason Gray-Stanford, who played the dimwitted police sidekick (essentially the Lestrade equivalent) on Monk.
The premise was strikingly similar (I don't want to say "suspiciously," since such convergences happen by chance all the time) to the "Sherlock Holmes in the 23rd Century" backdoor-pilot 2-parter in Filmation's BraveStarr 11 years earlier, in which Holmes fell through a time warp at Reichenbach Falls, discovered that Moriarty had cryogenically frozen himself to follow Holmes to the future, and teamed up with an alien Dr. Wt'sn (pronounced "Whitsun") and a tough lady cop descendant named Mycroft Holmes, who worked for Chief Inspector Kitty Lestrade. It was originally conceived as a separate series, but got scaled down to a backdoor pilot, then never got made because Filmation got sold off and shut down after BraveStarr.
Thinking of Data's inadvertent creation of holo-Moriarty. And of a Canadian-made animated series from the late 1960s, that got aired in the Los Angeles market, Rocket Robin Hood (anybody else remember that one?)
At our school, it was the opposite way round for some reason.
i have a strange affection for SH22C. the blue carbuncle episode episode joined my annual christmas (an example of the thing i mentioned: at no point do holmes or watson mention this talking imp doll is not a jewel) watches after i rediscovered it on youtube over a decade ago, and several services besides.
still puzzled as to how it got the e/i "educational and informational" classification
i have seen the bravestarr episode, although not until well after i first watched sh22c, despite knowing bravestarr existed from promos on he-man, she-ra, and ghostbusters tapes, i don't think i actually watched it when i was a kid
can't say as i do, that's uh, well before my time (not that that is much of a hindrance anymore)
it looks... interesting
That's one way of putting it.
A lot of pure bovine scat and gratuitous violence, but I enjoyed it as an 8-year-old.
Now there's nothing wrong with having required readings. I strongly support the idea of Shirley Jackson's best-known short story as a required reading (even if I am convinced that she was, ahem, "stoned" when she wrote it), and I even wrote a "hit-and-run fiction" piece, called "The Fly on the Classroom Wall," about a classroom full of "Lottery virgins" reacting to their first encounter with it. And likewise, Coover's "The Babysitter" is an absolutely brilliant study in keeping the reader off-balance with continual shifts, first into different points of view, and then different realities. And I can think of quite a few books that, if they were made required readings in high school, might reduce bigotry. But I dislike certain specific required readings. I don't like the "Man is Fundamentally Evil" premise of Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm, and I found Wuthering Heights to be a boring, depressing, slog.
I think BraveStarr was Filmation's best show of the 1980s, with some of their best animation (since the pilot was a feature film that had much of its feature-quality animation incorporated into episodes of the show, much like Flash Gordon had done a few years earlier). It was progressive for its day in having its future-cowboy hero be a Native American (although it comes off as somewhat stereotyped in retrospect, and they cast white actors Pat Fraley and Ed Gilbert as the Native regulars) and otherwise having a very diverse supporting cast. It could also get surprisingly mature at times. Filmation shows rarely depicted death, to the point that when it happened, it stood out as a Very Special Episode -- but BraveStarr did it three times, not shying away from the tragedy and pain of it. And its main villain, Tex Hex, occasionally got a bit more character development and ambiguity than previous villains like Skeletor.
Oddly, BraveStarr was one of three space Westerns that came out in the same 2-year period, alongside Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers and an anime import known in the States as Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs. I liked it best of the three, though Galaxy Rangers was also pretty good.
Bringing back the topic to Star Trek novels...
Around 20 years ago I was reading a book entry following up on one of the recent ST series (details omitted to protect the offending author) where the Captain, in a moment of high tension, reflected in great detail on how the current situation resembled a similar situation in one of the TV episodes. This went on for two pages before the Captain finally concluded that this situation was actually different. Totally ground the story to a halt and ended up being pointless as well. I DNFed the book, never returned to the book series, and stayed away from anything else by this author.
Around 20 years ago I was reading a book entry following up on one of the recent ST series (details omitted to protect the offending author) where the Captain, in a moment of high tension, reflected in great detail on how the current situation resembled a similar situation in one of the TV episodes. This went on for two pages before the Captain finally concluded that this situation was actually different. Totally ground the story to a halt and ended up being pointless as well. I DNFed the book, never returned to the book series, and stayed away from anything else by this author.
I vividly remember BraveStarr being willing to kill off a kid via accidental drug overdose.I was old enough that it didn't traumatize me or anything, but it was very surprising that they went that far with it.
That wasn't very nice of them (says the guy who put his protagonist through the horrors of an attempted rape and a potentially career-ending automobile accident)
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