Hi George! A pleasure to meet you. Welcome to Brin-L.
You might want to check out Brin-L.com to get a feel for the list. To answer your questions, completely out of order: :) Ongoing Brinlist conversations center a great deal on politics, technology, privacy and scientific issues. We don't work hard to keep things on topic -- although one could easily argue that almost every discussion we've had about the inner workings of our civilization relates in some way to the works of Dr. Brin and our other 'namesakes'. We've had a number of discussions of Dr. Brin's work in the last year-plus, along with an in-depth, chapter by chapter analysis and debate of at least one and a half of his novels... but the person who was doing the bulk of the work on that project has been extremely busy lately. Some of us are hoping that may pick up again soon. In other words, we don't discuss the work of the killer-bees and V. Vinge exclusively, (we never really did,) but we do still talk about them, sometimes in depth. Dr. Brin is pretty good about answering questions posed to him with "Brin:" placed before the subject in the subject line. The list changed servers in September and became a 'killer-bee' list. There haven't been many conversations about other killer-bee writers yet, but this is bound to change over time. Personally, I like Vinge's work -- I've just finished his short story collection and 'A Deepness in the Sky' was quite entertaining and absorbing. I'm now working on 'A fire upon the deep'. OK, now on to the important question: Does Kiln People deserve a Hugo? You're not asking an unbiased group, you know. :) My personal opinion is "Heck, Yes!", and here's why: >From a conceptual perspective, KP was quite innovative and even brilliant. Very well thought out. I thought the idea of multiple, interwoven story threads told by dittos of the same protagonist was really fascinating. The story was absorbing and many of the characters were quite believable. (The dittotech was completely improbable, but once you suspended belief, didn't detract from the story.) And from a philosophical standpoint, KP addressed and answered some rather fascinating questions on the concepts of self, identity, mortality, awareness, responsibility, souls and dreams. Many great SF works make us question our own existence and what makes us human. KP fits the bill. Plus, I'm a fan of the noir genre and pace. I even found a couple of cool correlations between this story and Bogart's The Big Sleep, which was released in the mid-40's. I also liked the amount of 'fleshing out' that had been done on the surrounding world. IMO, just enough to move the story along, but not so much that we were dying of boredom. (I felt that way about Brightness Reef and Glory Season. Those two novels invested so much time on the culture of their own worlds that I felt the primary plotlines suffered.) I *have* been meaning to ask Dr. Brin if the puns and chapter headings took as long to write as the rest of the novel. ;) I have to also note that those sometimes awful, groaner puns were a quite inventive way of helping the audience keep track of each protagonist and their storylines. But whoo boy! The ending left a lot of people cold. Metaspirituality meets quantum mechanics. I liked the end, even though I felt that the good doctor had written himself into a corner and needed a deus ex machine to work himself out of it. A common list complaint has been that the last third of the book lagged -- an opinion I don't share. Anyway, I'm off to bed. Pull up a chair and enjoy yourself. :) Jon Gabriel "We need feedback from outside ourselves. Life consists of interacting pieces, free to jiggle and rearrange themselves. That's how you make a working system, like an organism, or a culture, or a biosphere. Or a mind." ~David Brin~ 'Earth' -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of G. D. Akin Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 5:26 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: First real post - Hugo Noms I've been on this list for two days and received about 125 posts, most in mid-stream it seems. The Nomination Form for the Torcon 3 2003 Hugos is available on the Conjose 2002 site and in the Torcon 3 PR 4. I'm about to send my nominations in. How many on the list think Kiln People is worthy of a Hugo (I've already filled in the form and I won't say if it is there or not.) Just trying to get a feel from the list. BTW, of the 125 posts, not one mentions the works of the Killer B's or Baxter or Vinge, all of whom are listed on the sign up page. Has this list been going so long, that the books are no longer discussed. Just curious. George A _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
