Philip Hart wrote: >On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, Davdi Silverrock wrote: > > > >>On 1/11/06, Jon_Lincicum at stream.com <Jon_Lincicum at stream.com> wrote: >> >> >>>So, obviously >>> >>> > >Few words are likelier to provoke a riposte from me (in re Dragaera, >anyway). > > Well, I suppose in Dragaera, the obvious things are the ones that should be the most suspect. And if I didn't want a response, I probably wouldn't bother posting here, anyway, so it's all to the good. >>>the important parts of witchcraft (the energy to make it >>>work, anyway) comes from Psychics/Psionics (is there a Brustian >>>difference here? Or are these just two terms Brust uses for the same >>>thing?) >>> >>> >>I am 99.995% certain that they are the same thing, since they were >>both used to refer to what Daymar is able to do. >> >> > >I find this unconvincing. See the synonym/metonym discussion, plus >would the referrers actually know? > > Perhaps I should have asked if there was an *obvious* difference between the terms? ;-) Re-reading /Yendi/ today, I noticed that he uses psionic about half the time, and psychic about half the time, usually in reference to telepathic communication. By the time of /Dragon/, however, when Vlad asks Daymar how he does his thing with the roomful of morganti weapons, the response is "Psychics", and "Psionics" does not appear at all. Now, Dragon basically surrounds Yendi (the meat is set before, the interludes are set after) but the novel itself was written in 1998, vs 1984 for Yendi. Basically, I'm thinking that Brust has simply decided to stop using "psionics" and go with "psychics" 100% of the time, perhaps to avoid confusion over the concepts. I guess we can see how well *that* worked. Just my $0.02. Majikjon