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Chapter 8: Eurekarrgh
By: John D. Giorgis
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Introduction:
Well, I hate to something get left unfinished, so here is my attempt to get
us through The Practice Effect, since that seems to have dropped off.
Title:
This one is rather obvious - a play on the fabled exclamation of Archimedes
upon discovering bouyancy and Charlie Brown's exclamation upon missing the
football.
Analysis:
In this section, Dennis Nuel gets his taste of "Groundhog Day", waking up
in a dungeon *again.* Fortunately, a convenient deus ex machina arrives
in the form of the Scout Patrol robot. The robot blats its way into
Dennis' cell, blasts its way to a rescue of Linnora, blasts its way to
Arth's cell, and then holds off the guards with yes, more blasting. This
chapter is obviously transitional, powered entirely by an action sequence
designed to get Dennis out of the town, and into the countryside where he
can piece together the final pieces of the Coylian puzzle.
The dramatic action concludes with Dennis, Arth, and Linnora flying their
way on a glider which conveniently gets them just over the City Walls and
into the drink... err... river, on the other side. The drama is
heightened by Brin invoking yet another felthesh trance. Although not
necessary to the transition (after all, Brin could just have easily written
the glider making it just over the wall without invoking a felthesh -
something less plausible for using dental floss to cut bars) the felthesh
serves two purposes. One, it heightens the drama and the visual imagery.
More importantly, it connects the felthesh explicitly to the
pixolet/Krenegee beast which is noted to be "purring" and producing a
"resonant echo."
Finally, the conclusion of the chapter obiously gives away the double play
on this chapter's title. At the moment of their greatest success our
heroes end up crashing into a cold river..... and Dennis gets his much
needed bath.
Notes:
-practised bandages! One thing we can always credit Dr. Brin with is
coming up with unexpected consequences, just as Linnorra worries about
practicing her elegant room with "her good taste." These were nice ways of
presenting a new twist to the already familiar practice effect.
-I think Dr. Brin has a slight contradiction in his "Practice Effect" here.
On page 166, Dennis gives up on practicing a stone into a chisel because
he realizes that he is really just practicing the wall. Of course, this
assumes that "the Wall" exists as an entity. Shouldn't it be possible to
practice some of the stones of the wall very hard, but leave a weak spot to
use his now well-practised chisel on? Or maybe use the chisel on the
door? Oops.
-Linnora plays a "klasmodion", anybody get a reference out of that?
-the pixolet/noor comparisons are even more obvious in this section, where
Dennis notes that "as expected, the pixolet deserted the moment it came to
any action."
-Note the homage to E.T. on 182.
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of isntitutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
