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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!dual!lll-crg!seismo!harvard!think!ISM780B!jimb
From: jimb@ISM780B.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Re: Brin, Sagan, etc.
Message-ID: <27800026@ISM780B.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Oct-85 12:12:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ISM780B.27800026
Posted: Wed Oct  2 12:12:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Oct-85 06:05:43 EDT
References: <576@calmasd.UUCP>
Lines: 37
Nf-ID: #R:calmasd:-57600:ISM780B:27800026:000:1606
Nf-From: ISM780B!jimb    Oct  2 12:12:00 1985


Greg Bear *is* one of my favorite writers and based on your recommendations,
I'll add Eon and Infinity Concerto to my already long to-be-read queue.  (If
I had a matter transmitter that made me a duplicate of me, I'd try to send
him out to earn a living while I stayed home to read and write.  And loaf.)

My comment about Brin should be read as "the best of Brin."  While the Bear
that I've read so far has been exquisite, it has not been the tour de force
that STARTIDE RISING was.  Some of the rest of Brin's work ranges from
average to merely good, though I have high hopes for THE POSTMAN and,
especially THE UPLIFT WAR.

I suspect some of the commentary on I've read on the net concerning dolphins
while partly directed at Brin, has more to do with the knock-offs and
imitations.  Brin did the dolphin's well, with good characterization
(Takkata-Jim was one of my favorites in the whole book), a reasonable social
structure, and in a stroke of inspired brilliance, the dolphin linguistic
system, including Trinary.   Brin did a high-wire act, without a net, and in
my opinion, pulled it off, which makes SR a tour de force.

Bear writes beautifully, but -- and no criticism implied -- in the work's
I've read he's never gone out on the high-wire.

Greg Benford is also friends with both Brin and Bear.  The San Diego Bees as
Shawna McCarthy called them.  I'm almost willing to move a hundred miles
south just to see if some if it would rub off on me.

Cheers.


      -- from the bewildered musings of Jim Brunet

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