At 01:27 AM 1/23/01 -0500, dmolnar wrote:
>This suggests a tangent - If we look at works of fiction which were
>politically or socially influential in their day, how many were
>entertaining? how many were "good stories"? A lot of polemics end up
>seeming transparent and thin today (I'm thinking in particular of
>Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, but there are probably other examples).
>They had to capture their audience somehow, which seems to say something
>about the audience of the time (or maybe just about the tendency people
>have to overlook faults in a book which agrees with them).
There's always Ayn Rand - "The Fountainhead" has at least some
depth of characters, as opposed to her later and more polemic
<fnord>"Telemachus Sneezed", with the 600-page speech
by John Guilt</fnord>
"Atlas Shrugged", with its much thinner characters and
increased preachiness.
On the other hand, a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings haven't
passed the physical tests of time, and I gather geodesic domes
tend to leak even if they're not built as badly as
those that Some Local Cypherpunks are living in - we'll see how
geodesic economies do...
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
