In Poul Anderson's works, ancient texts like the Eddas and sagas provide material for heroic fantasies while modern science provides material for hard sf but there is no suggestion that ancient writers mystically intuited the entire theoretical content of modern empirical science even including superstrings, as in Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. That ancient texts are important is indisputable but that they are important for that reason is nonsensical.
In The Lost Symbol, "noetic scientists" verify psychokinesis, thus making this novel sf. However, Anderson's talent is to develop unexpected and sometimes alternative consequences of sf premises whereas Brown's skill is to keep the reader turning pages by continually hinting that some significant secret is about to be revealed: enjoyable but less substantial.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
At least my copy of HROLK KRAKI'S SAGA, printed by Ballantine in 1973, has an apostrophe!
I have chilly feelings, I admit, about Dan Brown. His novels are notoriously dishonest and shot thru and thru with anti Catholicism. Btw, Sandra Miesel, an expert on the works of Poul Anderson, co-authored with Carl E. Olsen THE DAVINCI HOAX EXPOSED,giving a detailed critique of the errors to be found in that book.
Sean
Sean,
I googled the debunking book. One of the replies to Brown included the statement that is wrong to say merely that witches were burned - because many were strangled or drowned instead.
Paul.
Paul and Sean:
Another site I visit uses the term "Dan Browned" to describe a situation "when a creator has been making noticeable claims—or simply strongly implying—that their work is highly researched and as correct as they can make it, only for you to quickly discover it to be a steaming pile of factual inaccuracies."
David,
I have just posted about this.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul and DAVID!
Paul, Catholics have done bad enough things thru the centuries without being lied about for things they have not done! Your mention of so called "witches" reminded me of Charles Williams book WITCHCRAFT, in which he stated that while the hysteria about "witches" could be found in Catholic countries as in the new Protestant state, at least the boring insistence by the Inquisitions of PROOF of actual harm being done by alleged witches acted as a check on the mania. Williams even dedicated his book to the memory of a Spanish Inquisitor, who as a just man, stopped an outbreak of panicked hysteria about "witches" in Spain before too many people got hurt.
And Sandra Miesel's book is yet another of the many books I want to reread!
David, and I have only contempt for the kind of people you mentioned. Be as partisan or even biased as you like, but at least be honest about FACTS.
Sean
It's extremely important to keep the distinction between fiction -- the conditional hypothetical -- and reality clear in your own mind.
This is the distinction between fiction and -lies-.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I absolutely agree! And the skillful use of the conditional hypothetical by you and Poul Anderson makes it very easy, temptingly so, to treat the books of you both as non fiction! And, of course Tolkien was another writer whose most famous work, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, is also easy to treat as non fictional.
I think Dan Brown either does not understand the conditional hypothetical or is knowingly lying under the disguise of "fiction."
Sean
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