Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site topaz.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!@RUTGERS.ARPA:DA61@CMU-CS-A.ARPA
From: @RUTGERS.ARPA:DA61@CMU-CS-A.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Brunner's The Crucible of Time
Message-ID: <913@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 8-Mar-85 14:40:01 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.913
Posted: Fri Mar  8 14:40:01 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Mar-85 08:44:58 EST
Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 24

From: Dave Ackley 

A couple of recent messages have described Brunner's latest
novel, The Crucible of Time, as unfinishable.  I did finish it.
It is a book easier to appreciate than to love.  Brunner set
himself a difficult task for the book: No humans ever appear.
No humanoid aliens, no genetically altered human stock, no
first-contact with space-faring humans, nothing.

It is certainly possible to fulfill this constraint in a
more-or-less trivial way, by taking any story one likes and
replacing "Earth" with "Grotz", "marriage" with "conflockage",
and so on.  Brunner wanted more \alien/ aliens than that.

But if there are no human-like characters, the aliens can't be
\too/ alien.  Imagine Lem's Solaris without a human presence.
If the alien mind is unfathomable, and there are no humans,
there is no story.

Parts of The Crucible of Time were slow, but I quite appreciated
the line that Brunner walked between syntactically alien humans
and semantically incomprehensible aliens.  Borrow the book and
give it a try.
	-Dave Ackley	(Ackley@CMU-CS-A)