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 AckleyA 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)