That usenet post is incredibly entertaining, thank you for linking it.
The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts.
These are mightly small; one seedweight of waterstuff holds a
tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts.
Excuse me if I’m telling people things they already know, but it’s a quote of a short article which is also available in books. Poul Anderson was one of the major golden age sf writers (both fantasy and science fiction), and quite possibly worth looking up—a lot of his work has been reprinted by NESFA and Baen.
I’m not sure what the best Anderson for rationalists would be, maybe “The Three-Cornered Wheel”. I’m very fond of his A Midsummer Tempest—alternate history set in a universe where everything Shakespeare wrote was literally true. Check out Three Hearts and Three Lions if you want to see what golden age pacing looks like—it’s a short novel, a lot happens in it, and I think a contemporary writer would have puffed it up into six long novels.
Vernor Vinge and GRR Martin’s writing remind me of Anderson—there’s something about the style of description and the way heroism is constructed.
That usenet post is incredibly entertaining, thank you for linking it.
Excuse me if I’m telling people things they already know, but it’s a quote of a short article which is also available in books. Poul Anderson was one of the major golden age sf writers (both fantasy and science fiction), and quite possibly worth looking up—a lot of his work has been reprinted by NESFA and Baen.
I’m not sure what the best Anderson for rationalists would be, maybe “The Three-Cornered Wheel”. I’m very fond of his A Midsummer Tempest—alternate history set in a universe where everything Shakespeare wrote was literally true. Check out Three Hearts and Three Lions if you want to see what golden age pacing looks like—it’s a short novel, a lot happens in it, and I think a contemporary writer would have puffed it up into six long novels.
Vernor Vinge and GRR Martin’s writing remind me of Anderson—there’s something about the style of description and the way heroism is constructed.