[ale] "i am a god" - Sci-F

[Jeff Lightner]

Stranger in a Strange Land is one of the classics of SciFi - Even if you
read no other Heinlein you should read it.   Heinlein was called "The
Dean of Science Fiction" because many of his contemporaries saw him as a
master of the genre.  

 

Don't get me wrong - There are some Heinlein books that I could do
without but by and large I enjoyed most of what he wrote.   

 

By the way Jubal shows up again in Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice.

 

My favorite concept from Stranger was the "Fair Witness".   This was a
professional beyond a notary public that you would hire to observe
something that could be used as an unbiased witness in the event there
were legal questions later.    The example Jubal uses in talking to
Dorcas (his staff fair witness) is to ask her what color the house up
the hill is.   She turns and looks at it and says "It is white on this
side".   He notes that since he asked her what color it "is" rather than
"was" she had to look before replying and also could only state what she
could observe "this side".   This despite the fact she had seen the
house many times before and the obvious assumption most would make that
it is white all the way around.

 

Arthur C. Clarke was also one of my favorites.  If you like him you'd
probably like Orson Scott Card as he like Clarke spends time exploring
how his characters feel.   

 

Stanislaw Lem was interesting reading.  He writes in his native Polish.
His books translated into German and then into English seemed very
humorless though quite good.  His books translated directly into English
were quite humorous.  I always wondered if it was the German translation
that lost humor or if it was just the difference in the stories
themselves.

 

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Kinney
Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 9:06 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] "i am a god"

 

You should see the company he keeps!

	On Dec 18, 2009 6:47 PM, "aaron" <aaron at pd.org> wrote:

	On 2009, Dec, 18, , at 8:51 AM, Jim Kinney wrote: > I never read
Stranger until 1993. A that time I...

	I haven't read Stranger -- more of an Arthur Clarke / Kurt
Vonnegut /
	Kilgore Trout / Stannislaw Lem scifi fan  -- so the name alone
made
	me curious about the character.  This is the front of his
wikipedia
	entry:
	
	" Jubal Harshaw is a fictional character featured in Stranger in
a
	Strange Land,
	a novel by Robert A. Heinlein. He is described as: "Jubal E.
Harshaw,
	LL.B., M.D.,
	Sc.D., bon vivant, gourmet, sybarite, popular author
extraordinary,
	neo-pessimist
	philosopher, devout agnostic, professional clown, amateur
subversive,
	and parasite
	by choice. "
	
	I definitely can see the appeal in being this person.  Sans the
	degrees (which I can fake if needed...) I'm about 75% Jubal
without
	even knowing it and I figure Jim at about 85% without trying,
too.
	:-)
	
	peace
	aaron

	> >> On Dec 18, 2009 8:38 AM, "Jeff Lightner"
<jlightner at water.com> wrote: >> >> I know - I ...

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