Re: Terrifying future phrases

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 23:26:25 -0500, mimus wrote:

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 22:11:13 -0600, Richard Todd wrote:

mimus <tinmimus99@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:41:12 -0600, Richard Todd wrote:

mimus <tinmimus99@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Aside from that, his _Patterns of Chaos_ was good if lurid and, yes,
apocalyptic . . . (I never had the guts to try the sequel).

Sequel? You mean _The Chaos Weapon_ (which is arguably only fairly
loosely a sequel to _Patterns of Chaos_), or was there another book
you're thinking of?

Yes, _The Chaos Weapon_.

Considering the end of _Patterns_, it was a little difficult to
conceive of a sequel involving the same characters or indeed galaxy . .
. .

Ah. Well, _The Chaos Weapon_ doesn't involve any of the same characters
as were in _Patterns of Chaos_.

It wasn't clear to me that the two books are even in the same
(fictional) universe; the "chaos" technology is pretty similar in the
two books, but the government isn't obviously like that in _Patterns of
Chaos_ (either of the two governments there, the Destroyer Federation
or, um, whatever the one was that Bron came from.) Later, upon
rereading, I found a clue: in one scene in _The Chaos Weapon_, I think
it's the one where all the Marshals are at a meeting early on in the
story, there's a mention of there being a painting of "Bron the Warlord"
on the wall. That's it.

My guess is that, if _The Chaos Weapon_ is a sequel to _Patterns of
Chaos_, it takes place hundreds if not thousands of years after the
first novel.

Hm, well, that's one way of distancing things nicely . . . .

I guess you could do the same thing with _The Chronicles of Riddick_,
showing them giving his aged frozen body an Imperial send-off into space
at the beginning and then after the title sequence having someone find it
ten or twenty thousand years later and thaw 'im out and fix 'im up (and
have him find out the humans are all slaves of the Green Things or
something). (Although I figured a prequel would be next in line there.)

But I will grab _The Chaos Weapon_ and check it out, then.

Hm, well, got it and read it, but had to force myself (several times) to
finish it . . . .

I just couldn't achieve the proverbial WSOD at all-- granted, both books
are deterministic, although Kapp tries to rescue his theory of chaotic
indication with some finagling involving phenomenon-swapping.

But I think the pace and intrigue and rapidly-expanding scope of the first
novel helps simply avoid such considerations-- although even there I
found it hard to swallow the additional notion that a super-accomplished
species can degenerate in the fashion he propounds, something I struggle
with when I find it occasionally in Vance's novels, too ("Such is the dark
side of vegetarianism", *snort*).

--

"You are either insane or a fool."
"I am a sanitary inspector."

< _Maske: Thaery_


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