--- Jot Powers <books at bofh.com> wrote: > I'd appreciate comments on fixing up the following: > > http://www.superpowers.us/article.php?story=20050408215426638 > > I recognize that it isn't correct is the present form, but it's > close. I went there, but I did not comment on it there, nor has anyone else in the 86 times it had been viewed. My reason? They won't let you comment without registering, and I refuse to join YAIB (Yet Another Internet Board) just to be able to comment on one blog or site, no matter how interesting I find it. (I haven't always been consistent in this determination, but my daughter's blog is a special case.) There you say: >>> Tsalmoth: giant land clam that hunts by climbing a tree and dropping on it's prey, a cycle that takes about 50 years...woe the Tsalmoth that misses. <<< Let's kill that Tsalmyth. In a long interview published in Science Fiction Weekly and on the web at http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue224/interview.html (thanks, Phoenix, for the link to it on your page!), the interviewer asked Steve about a Zelazny quote, and that got them into the following exchange. I'm giving a lot of context because (a) I want it to be very clear that Steve is making up a dumb example, not providing insight into canon, and (b) the context gives us an insight into the way he thinks about his writing. >>>>> Brust: [...] I think very often, yes, many science-fiction stories are very cut and dried, "This is hard fact, here is our extrapolation, et cetera," and much fantasy really doesn't give you enough to hang your fingers onto and grip. Q: That's certainly something people have said about your own fantasy-- Brust: Good. I like that. Q: Then obviously you do it on purpose--keeping things as vague as possible. Such as the nature of many of the animals in the Dragaeran cycle. Brust: There are a number of reasons I do it that way. For one--what I always come back to, whenever any question comes up, the first way I want to look at it is, "OK, if I were reading this book, what would I like? What would please me as a reader?" Because that's all I have to go on. That kind of thing, where everything isn't cut and dried and there are a lot of questions, and hints at the future, and references back to the past, to past adventures that I may or may not have mentioned ... I love that. I'm just a sucker for that stuff. And a lot of it is, I need to give myself space. I need to give myself room to decide things. If I were to say, for example, that a tsalmoth is a six-foot-diameter snail that hunts its prey by climbing into trees over the course of months and months and then pounces, well, then if I decide later that I want it to be something else, I'm kind of stuck. So I need to give myself some room and not think too much until I have a chance to actually explore. When I pick one of those Houses, I'm looking at that aspect of human character and trying to understand it, and trying to come to grips with it myself by playing with it. Because all of the things that are represented by the Houses in the Cycle are obviously human attributes; we all have all of them. We all have pieces of every one of them. So that's my chance to play with them and try to understand that bit of the human psyche. <<<<< It's a counterfactual example, along the lines of "If I took out a loan for a million dollars to invest in twonkies, sooner or later I'd have to pay it back, and if I haven't done well with it I'll be in deep trouble." That doesn't mean I'm going to take out a loan, and Steve isn't saying that a Tsalmoth is (etc.). Got that, folks? I include myself, having seen some vague reference to this and somehow, like maybe many of us, gotten the impression that that's what a Ts. is in Steve's mind. And the difference between the way you give it -- which, BTW, is closer to the way I thought of it than to Steve's words above -- indicates the mutability of a Wrong Idea once it's gotten out into the world, unless Steve has used it in your form elsewhere. Sorry to be going on at such length, but I want to get the i's dotted and t's crossed. ("And to avoid checking the garage door opener and cleaning the living room!" "Oh, hell, you've got me there, Loiosh." "So, ya gonna do 'em now?" "First, some dinner. Then do 'em." "I'll be watching you. But yeah, dinner first.") -- Mark A. Mandel http://cracksandshards.com a Steven Brust Dragaera fan website __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com