Tuesday, 12 April 2016

Hard SF And English Literature

"Prominences were tendrils, the corona a ghost-shimmer." (Man-Kzin Wars IX, p. 73)

"...the best that the boat's sensors could do at this remove, lacking interferometry..." (p. 73)

"...clear of the peristellar zone." (p. 73)

"'...doppler shows she isn't boosting...'" (p. 73)

"...the sundiver's periapsis..." (p. 73)

"The thermostatics weren't failing..." (p. 79)

"'...to split molecules or radicals into  atoms - ionized atoms -'" (p. 81)

"The molecules flowed to make a dermis..." (p. 82)

I do know the meanings of some of these words but maybe other readers don't? Certainly there is much that non-technical readers do not understand.

A teacher at the kzinti academy echoes Shakespeare:

"'What they call conscience makes cowards of them all.'" (p. 87)

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I disagreed with the Kzin instructor! I argue that Kzinti do have their own equivalents of a "conscience." After all, the mere fact they feel shame and the sense of being disgraced when failing to live up to the high standards of the Heroic Code indicates as much!

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
I think that guilt is internalized shame as thought is internalized speech.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I define "guilt", in this sense, as being aware of failing to live up to standards a being believes to be right. And that still seems a pretty good definition of a "conscience."

Sean