Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : A CENTURY OF LIONS/THE 20TH CENTURY TOP 100 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (2809)	5/15/2000 11:10:00 AM
From: Raymond Clutts	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 3246

Yes I have read it. Although, if you're in the mood for millenarian depression why not just go with, "On the Beach" which just plain ends the world instead of putting it through some endless cycle of upreach followed by consuming disaster. Hey, speaking of cyclical conflagration as a literary theme, have you ever read, "The Mote In God's Eye" by Niven/Pournelle? Now that is a great SF novel. For my part I believe that SF has been the most profound literary genre of the 20th Century since it was uniquely formulated to provoke speculation into the causes and effects of scientific and technological innovation on humans and society. As a subtext of this general discussion, why don't we see if we can compile a list of the ten best SF novels of the last hundred years? And, I would add, that in considering those art forms that have advanced significantly during the last hundred years, painting and other forms of traditional art are nowhere on the list while the engineers and research scientists have been dramatically undervalued. After all, during the last hundred years the scientists and engineers have succeeded in nearly doubling the average human life span. If you must accord an order in priority to their work then consider all the other human creativity that was permitted by a life that averaged 70 years instead of 40. If you believe that you must consider "artists" in order to compose a balanced list, then let's at least compromise by looking to those arts that are unique to the 20th Century. Here, I'll start. Let's replace Picasso with the director, John Ford. There, that was easy. Now tell me that you don't get more meaning from "Fort Apache" than from an art form made obsolete by photography and drawn by a misogynist whose own life was a missive for secular hedonism. You may be able to sense here that I have rejected nearly all "modern" art as value free nonsense.

To: Neocon who wrote (2809)	5/17/2000 10:00:00 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

Thanks for mentioning "A Canticle for Leibowitz." I meant to read that a couple of years ago, bit it slipped away and kind of receded from consciousness. My curiosity was piqued by an essay by Walker Percy who wrote, "A Canticle for Leibowitz is like a cipher, a coded message, a book in a strange language....Like a cipher, the book has a secret. But, unlike a cipher, the secret can't be told. Telling it ruins it. But it is not like "giving away" a mystery by telling the outcome. The case is more difficult." He goes on to say that many reviewers of the book simply didn't get it. At the end of the essay he asks, "When he finishes Canticle, the reader can ask himself one question and the answer will tell whether he got the book or missed it. Who is Rachel? What is she?" Do you know what he's talking about here? If you do, don't tell me, I plan to get the book later today.