Author Topic: PC189: Limits  (Read 18567 times)

Talia

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on: December 27, 2011, 03:09:27 PM
PodCastle 189: Limits

by Donna Glee Williams.

Read by Tisch Parmelee (of the Watch your Language Podcast).

Originally appeared in Strange Horizons. Read the text here.

When did Len first see how far the path would take her son? No Far Walker had been born in Home Village for many years. But everyone knew Shreve Far Walker, from Third Village Down, who often passed through as she carried loads between High and Low. When nightfall caught her near Home Village, she would stay over, taking dinner and giving back news. She wasn’t by nature a talkative person, but she understood the duties of a guest. Len would crowd with the others to hear Shreve’s account of the Far Villages.

So Len had some notion of the life of a Far Walker, though her own range was a modest seven villages. When Cam began to show unusual aptitude for climbing high and descending very low, she wondered. Like all parents, Len had observed Cam closely from his earliest tottering steps as he followed her to First Village Up. She had shared discreet smiles with the other parents as their young ones tried on the new costume of adulthood to see how it would fit them, daring each other to range ever farther from Home Village on spurious errands

There would be a jaunt proposed, a clamor of assent, and a rush like a group of startled goats when Cam and his friends hurried off. No packing or planning was needed as they carried no real loads and it was understood that they would stay in whatever village they were closest to when night fell. Families who housed a youth from another village tonight knew that their own children would find food and a pallet where they needed it tomorrow, and the balance would be kept.

Rated PG.

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« Last Edit: January 03, 2012, 11:31:25 AM by Talia »



InfiniteMonkey

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Reply #1 on: December 28, 2011, 04:45:44 AM
Wow, actually listening to a story on the release date!

I liked the geography of the story, though it requires some thought, and the mother-son nature of the story. I do wish it had more of a resolution, though.



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Reply #2 on: December 29, 2011, 04:43:10 PM
The world-building was pretty cool. It almost seemed like a folktale from Mount Everest. Or the descendants of a lost mountaineering expedition and the civilization they built when they were left behind. I want to hear more about this world.

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Reply #3 on: December 29, 2011, 10:17:54 PM
I rather liked this one. There was a clever bit of world-building, used to support a nice story about growing up, growing out, and looking for a place to belong. I particularly enjoyed that there was never any explanation of the world - it just was what it was, and the people lived in it as best they could. The way all people do. Everywhere.

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Reply #4 on: December 30, 2011, 06:47:10 AM
My biggest issue with this story is that it just doesn't make sense to me that every character wouldn't know more about their world.  Given how much everyone likes to hear stories from travelers, and presuming that those travelers also get news from the villagers, I just can't see how word wouldn't have quickly spread that the ocean is indeed wet, and that the cliff does have a top.  I mean, the villagers at the highest and lowest cliff villages would know all about those topics, right?

And are the themes maybe a little too straight forward?  People spend their lives exploring the world and finding their place in it, before deciding whether to settle down and (literally!) tie the knot.

All that aside, it really was a strangely enjoyable tale which was narrated beautifully!  (Welcome, Tisch!)



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Reply #5 on: December 30, 2011, 05:48:52 PM
I didn't care for this story.  It didn't have enough meat. 

I found the worldbuilding so simplistic as to interfere with my suspension of disbelief.  Apparently they live on a one-dimensional line in a three-dimensional world, otherwise there would be villages in lateral directions instead of just up and down--it just makes more sense that way, to reduce the distance of goods needing to travel.  It just felt to me like a writing exercise more than a real world--"how simplistic can I make a setting?"  Even with this simple setting, it didn't really seem to take into account the social effects.  Word would spread through the villages as commerce spreads--even if no one ranges from top to bottom there would certainly be those at each village who range several villages up and several down.  I'm all for bizarre world if they make for interesting thought experiments, but it didn't seem like enough thought went into it here to make it feel worthwhile.

And as for the characters and the themes, they were also too simplistic.  It seemed like a pretty straightforward metaphor for a person trying decide between roaming and rooting. 

And the ending was more of an ellipsis than a period (or exclamation mark or question mark), it just kind of trailed off.

If any of these things had been compelling to me, then I could've gotten over the others, but  there was just nothing there that really intrigued me.



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Reply #6 on: January 01, 2012, 04:30:35 PM
I found this story a bit hard to focus on at first, but then after getting a bit further into the story, I started to see it as a reasonable model of my own frustrations with finding partners growing up, not being able to find one that could 'keep up with me'. Once I caught that parallel, I started to focus on the story, hoping that the author would pull out some sage nugget and give me the answer to all my problems in handy, 30 minute parable format. Such was not to be, and the ending gave me the same feeling of wet blanketness that Shel Silverstein's "The Missing Piece" gave me. Yes, yes, it's so nice that  SPOILER







The pacman protagonist of the story finds his missing piece, but then that callous bastard let's her go because he's can't quite sing the same way with the piece nestled into his empty, hollow heart. What a dick.




END SPOILER

So, yeah. Same feeling of...well, I guess it's nice that they both...get what they want...sort of?

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Reply #7 on: January 01, 2012, 10:26:46 PM
I thought the setting of this story was interesting.  I liked the dilemma the main character has.  It reminds me of the idea of being told that you've got to something in reserve, so you can make the trip back.  But when you do that, you never find out how far you can really go, you never know where your limit is.

I would like to hear more about the setting of this story, see more of the world unfold, find out just how tall things are, how far down the mountain things go...and discovering that there's more to the world than up and down, but side to side as well.

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Reply #8 on: January 02, 2012, 01:10:52 PM
Everything previously mentioned about the world bothered me as well. (One-dimensional villages, total lack of real communication between them.) But another thing bothered me even more.
See, I occasionally go hiking, and I know firsthand that even halfway (or partway) up a mountain or cliff-face you can see out, laterally. That means that if there is an ocean at the bottom of the mountain you can see it from everywhere on the side of the mountain. Not just if you crawl to the edge of a rock and look straight down. In fact, that most often will not work.
OK, let's assume that the mountain is so high that it is shrouded in cloud. But we hear descriptions about the weather. Inside a cloud there is no weather.
So let's assume that there is a cloud layer bellow Home Village blocking the view, and only if you go down far enough you are below the cloud and can see out. But you still wouldn't have to crawl to the edge of a rock.
Then there is the painfully ego-centric geography of the story.
Let's suspend our sense of disbelief and accept the geography of villages on a line all up and down the mountain. What kind of stupid society names their own village Home Village and all the others n-up and n-down? Are all the villages called Home Village by their denizens? That must make commerce, news and traveling very confusing.
On the other hand, it is rather fitting that simple, not-thought-out one dimensional characters live in a simple, not-thought-out one-dimensional world.

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Reply #9 on: January 02, 2012, 09:16:07 PM
Loved this one. Sure, the world-building and all was interesting but it was much less about making a fully-realised believable world than about the characters and their choices. In that respect, I experienced it more like a parable than a story and it was a beautiful pondering of limits, choices, consequences and rewards. Another winner!


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Reply #10 on: January 04, 2012, 06:30:58 PM
Everything previously mentioned about the world bothered me as well. (One-dimensional villages, total lack of real communication between them.) But another thing bothered me even more.
See, I occasionally go hiking, and I know firsthand that even halfway (or partway) up a mountain or cliff-face you can see out, laterally. That means that if there is an ocean at the bottom of the mountain you can see it from everywhere on the side of the mountain. Not just if you crawl to the edge of a rock and look straight down. In fact, that most often will not work.
OK, let's assume that the mountain is so high that it is shrouded in cloud. But we hear descriptions about the weather. Inside a cloud there is no weather.
So let's assume that there is a cloud layer bellow Home Village blocking the view, and only if you go down far enough you are below the cloud and can see out. But you still wouldn't have to crawl to the edge of a rock.
Then there is the painfully ego-centric geography of the story.
Let's suspend our sense of disbelief and accept the geography of villages on a line all up and down the mountain. What kind of stupid society names their own village Home Village and all the others n-up and n-down? Are all the villages called Home Village by their denizens? That must make commerce, news and traveling very confusing.
On the other hand, it is rather fitting that simple, not-thought-out one dimensional characters live in a simple, not-thought-out one-dimensional world.

Was it ever stated that they were on a mountain? I actually kind of imagined them as angels or some other kind of celestial where ever up and ever down, distances that were unwalkable by humans, were considered challenging and testing of limits. If you ended up so high that the air thinned in the troposphere (or whatever), and into the outer rings of God's presence (you know, keeping with the whole angelic hierarchy...thrones, principalities, seraphim, cherubim, blah, blah), maybe you'd find your limit that way, too.

I don't know. I didn't have much of a problem with geography as I took it, as some others said, as a parable, not literally.



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Reply #11 on: January 04, 2012, 06:50:36 PM
I took this story to be a parable, and it worked for me as such. I also really liked the narration. :)



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Reply #12 on: January 14, 2012, 11:20:11 PM
I rather liked this one. There was a clever bit of world-building, used to support a nice story about growing up, growing out, and looking for a place to belong. I particularly enjoyed that there was never any explanation of the world - it just was what it was, and the people lived in it as best they could. The way all people do. Everywhere.

This.

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Reply #13 on: January 20, 2012, 02:50:42 PM
I enjoyed this story.  The setting was interesting, and the ambiguous ending redeemed what was otherwise a fairly straightforward allegory.  I like to think that Fox found a boat and carried on, and the two of them might meet somewhere on the other side.

For myself, I was slightly troubled by the "O woe is me!" attitude Cam had.  "Gosh, it's so hard being the most gifted person."  I'd be more sympathetic if, y'know, being gifted didn't involve having *gifts*.  I am leery of anything that lets the privileged bemoan their status, however slightly.  This is mostly a personal tic; I've blathered at length on my reasons for feeling that way several times previously, so I shan't belabor the point.

Good story, for the most part.  Y'all are overthinking the world; it's a magic place that doesn't have the same physical rules as ours does.  (And as for the "news" of the ocean and the top, well, that was totally in there.  Len KNEW about the ocean; she just hadn't seen it and didn't know anything about it.  The implication I got is that there were hundreds of villages between Len's home and the ocean, most of them several hours' walking apart, at minimum.  Anything they'd hear about either end of the mountain/cliff/whatever would have been garbled through at least five or six retellings, even assuming every span of 15 villages had someone as wide-ranging as the Far-Walker.)



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Reply #14 on: January 20, 2012, 03:42:34 PM
Y'all are overthinking the world; it's a magic place that doesn't have the same physical rules as ours does. 

Or the author was underthinking the world...  But we can disagree on that point.   :P



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Reply #15 on: January 20, 2012, 03:57:37 PM
Y'all are overthinking the world; it's a magic place that doesn't have the same physical rules as ours does. 

Or the author was underthinking the world...  But we can disagree on that point.   :P

Well, sure, we can, but how could you ever justify your position? I mean, saying the author was underthinking the world means that the author had to meet some sort of minimum standard of world plausibility. Where would such a standard come from?

I'm normally quite happy to rail against internal inconsistencies in a story, but I don't think there were any here. I'm also quite happy to wave the banner of realism for stories that lay some claim to being set in the real world or a real world analogue, but this one made no such claim.

I'm not saying that the story or world building is above criticism. But saying that the author was underthinking the world is not the same as saying that the world was underdeveloped - the latter is a story internal criticism, while the former is a statement about what is allowble in literature.



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Reply #16 on: January 20, 2012, 05:54:27 PM
Y'all are overthinking the world; it's a magic place that doesn't have the same physical rules as ours does.  

Or the author was underthinking the world...  But we can disagree on that point.   :P

Well, sure, we can, but how could you ever justify your position? I mean, saying the author was underthinking the world means that the author had to meet some sort of minimum standard of world plausibility. Where would such a standard come from?

I'm normally quite happy to rail against internal inconsistencies in a story, but I don't think there were any here. I'm also quite happy to wave the banner of realism for stories that lay some claim to being set in the real world or a real world analogue, but this one made no such claim.

I'm not saying that the story or world building is above criticism. But saying that the author was underthinking the world is not the same as saying that the world was underdeveloped - the latter is a story internal criticism, while the former is a statement about what is allowble in literature.

Okay, perhaps it would be better to call it an underdeveloped world (though I don't see why that phrase wouldn't be subject to the same criticism--is there a standard of how developed a world ought to be?)

But the comment "Or the author was underthinking the world..." was in direct response to scattercat's "Y'all are overthinking the world."  I think I understand what you are getting at, in that the way that I said it implied that there should be some accepted minimum standard of plausibility and this story did not meet the threshold.  Such a threshold doesn't exist (and never can exist in a generally agreed upon way).

But I would say that if you can to that conclusion then you must also come to the same conclusion about scattercat's original comment.  I found that the world was too simplified, and I was not able to suspend my disbelief as a result.  If my comment is flawed, then so is the comment I was responding to, because there is no minimum standard of suspension of disbelief in a reader, either.

So, either neither of the comments is flawed, in which case my rebuttal stands.  Or both of the comments are flawed, in which case my rebuttal is irrelevant anyway.

Ah, semantics.  :)

How about this:
"The world of the story was too simple for my taste because I found myself unable to listen to the story without focusing on the world's implausibility."



eytanz

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Reply #17 on: January 20, 2012, 06:03:11 PM
Well, your comment and Scattercat's weren't entirely equivalent since he was talking about the people he was talking to, not on the author.

Quote
"The world of the story was too simple for my taste because I found myself unable to listen to the story without focusing on the world's implausibility."

That's a pretty sensible criticism; but I think it's not actually a criticism of the world development, but a criticism of the storytelling as a whole. The world building in this story existed to service the central themes of social vs. individual development and expectations. I don't think the world can stand on its own, but I don't think it's supposed to, either. If the themes weren't conveyed strongly enough to bouy the worldbuilding for you, I have no issue with you complaining about that.



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Reply #18 on: January 21, 2012, 04:31:24 AM
For myself, I was slightly troubled by the "O woe is me!" attitude Cam had.  "Gosh, it's so hard being the most gifted person."  I'd be more sympathetic if, y'know, being gifted didn't involve having *gifts*.  I am leery of anything that lets the privileged bemoan their status, however slightly.  This is mostly a personal tic; I've blathered at length on my reasons for feeling that way several times previously, so I shan't belabor the point.

I didn't see it that way at all. (And I DID see where you said about the "personal tic" but I'll just say a bit on this one point :). I saw Cam's thoughts more as trying to understand why folks wouldn't walk as far as he. The main thing was loss of companionship, not bemoaning superior skill. Leastaways, that's how I heard.


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Reply #19 on: January 21, 2012, 12:04:06 PM
I agree that the story was more about being alone than about being too gifted.  It was around the middle, though, when there was a line to the effect of, "Everyone is finding their limits.  When will I find mine?" and my initial reaction was, "Aw, poor little rich kid.  Enjoy what you effing have, you little ingrate, or else shut up about it and settle down."  If the character had been 13 instead of 20 at the time, I'd have been more forgiving in my instinctive response. 

By the end, the story was about Cam making his choice and embracing it.  It was just the petulance about Fox's initial departure that irked me. 



eytanz

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Reply #20 on: January 21, 2012, 12:15:10 PM
What I found particularly interesting about Cam's response to Fox's departure was that he was blind to his own limit. She had a limit of how far she was willing to go up, but he seemed to have a limit of how far he was willing to go down. It wasn't so much that he was more gifted than her, but that their gifts pulled them in opposite directions.



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Reply #21 on: January 24, 2012, 04:00:21 PM
Well, your comment and Scattercat's weren't entirely equivalent since he was talking about the people he was talking to, not on the author.

Quote
"The world of the story was too simple for my taste because I found myself unable to listen to the story without focusing on the world's implausibility."

That's a pretty sensible criticism; but I think it's not actually a criticism of the world development, but a criticism of the storytelling as a whole. The world building in this story existed to service the central themes of social vs. individual development and expectations. I don't think the world can stand on its own, but I don't think it's supposed to, either. If the themes weren't conveyed strongly enough to bouy the worldbuilding for you, I have no issue with you complaining about that.

If the world of a story can't stand on its own without the story, then to me that's a flaw in the worldbuilding, but it does interfere with the storytelling for me.  If the world is too simplified to feel like a real world, and only exists to provide a framework upon which to build the moral, then the whole thing takes on the flavor of an allegory for me.  Allegories are fine--good ones can be very illustrative and thought-provoking, but I don't find them emotionally compelling, which is what I'm really looking for in a story. 



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Reply #22 on: February 16, 2012, 08:31:49 PM
What I found particularly interesting about Cam's response to Fox's departure was that he was blind to his own limit. She had a limit of how far she was willing to go up, but he seemed to have a limit of how far he was willing to go down. It wasn't so much that he was more gifted than her, but that their gifts pulled them in opposite directions.

I don't think he was necessarily blind, but rather he was under the impression that the ocean was the bottom of the world, and thus it didn't continue on. In this world, the mindset is you can only travel by path. So as long as there's a path, you can go up. You can go down. And apparently, you can't go sideways, or even through. It's like Flatlanders in a way. This is why I love how the story ends with Fox at the ocean, because you don't know if she resigned to stop where she is, or if she thinks outside the boundaries of what she knows and attempts making a boat. What happens when you're forced to forge your own path, doing something no one has ever done before? It's more frightening than we thinks.

As from Cam, I think his seeing the ocean became the impetus for him to try for those hot springs he never went to, and beyond, just to see the top of the world. Thus, his surprise and delight when he sees the trail continuing, even at the top of the world.

Oh, there is so much metaphor in this story I can chew on it for *days*.

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eytanz

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Reply #23 on: February 16, 2012, 10:10:05 PM
What I found particularly interesting about Cam's response to Fox's departure was that he was blind to his own limit. She had a limit of how far she was willing to go up, but he seemed to have a limit of how far he was willing to go down. It wasn't so much that he was more gifted than her, but that their gifts pulled them in opposite directions.

I don't think he was necessarily blind, but rather he was under the impression that the ocean was the bottom of the world, and thus it didn't continue on. In this world, the mindset is you can only travel by path. So as long as there's a path, you can go up. You can go down. And apparently, you can't go sideways, or even through. It's like Flatlanders in a way. This is why I love how the story ends with Fox at the ocean, because you don't know if she resigned to stop where she is, or if she thinks outside the boundaries of what she knows and attempts making a boat. What happens when you're forced to forge your own path, doing something no one has ever done before? It's more frightening than we thinks.

But he didn't go all the way to the ocean. You're right about the world, but the other thing we know is that everyone here rationalizes their limits. Fox's upper limit wasn't "I can't go further", it's "I prefer to go down".

When I said he was blind to his own limit, I meant that he didn't realize that Fox could go further down than him - that the reason she didn't go up was also the reason he didn't go down, i.e. that she was pulled in the opposite direction. He thought he was without limits, but really he did have one (whether it was the place where he actually stopped or the ocean below it), where most people have two. I agree that the question of whether the sea was a true limit to Fox was a very good one to leave open.



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Reply #24 on: February 17, 2012, 09:24:58 AM
I need to relisten, but I think that when Dave read some of the comments on this thread he made a mistake. Instead of describing the world of this story vertically he described it horizontally...

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Reply #25 on: February 17, 2012, 02:07:43 PM
D'oh. Apologies! Yeah, I should've said vertically.


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Reply #26 on: February 17, 2012, 03:10:20 PM
D'oh. Apologies! Yeah, I should've said vertically.

I don't think vertically is the right word either, because then you wouldn't be able to stay on the line.

I think "linearly" is the best word.  The path is apparently a single line, but the line is neither horizontal nor vertical, it is at some nonzero noninfinite slope.

(Even that isn't correct of the line as a whole--I think it said that the slope changes near the top, and then must go down on the other side.  I guess it would be piecewise linear, but now I'm probably getting too nitpicky.  "Linear" is a reasonable description for the part that is seen by the vast majority)



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Reply #27 on: February 17, 2012, 04:39:32 PM
Well, maybe not. But I think Max is correct in that it's more accurate than horizontal  ;)

Y'all are making me want to go back and reread Flatland now!


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Reply #28 on: February 17, 2012, 05:02:41 PM
A fourth dimension?  Preposterous!



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Reply #29 on: February 17, 2012, 05:18:11 PM
Maybe it's not linear but more like a mobius strip. I wouldn't be surprised to see the snowy path above wrap back around to the sea. And a mobius strip would be way more analogy-awesome.

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Reply #30 on: February 17, 2012, 11:23:27 PM
Maybe it's not linear but more like a mobius strip. I wouldn't be surprised to see the snowy path above wrap back around to the sea. And a mobius strip would be way more analogy-awesome.

Now that's a very interesting take on the piece! Like!


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Reply #31 on: February 18, 2012, 04:44:33 PM
"About a young man pushing as far as he could along a horizontal frontier..." is what Dave said.
Should have been vertical.
Just so you know Dave, we love listening and appreciate all the hard work you (plural) do, but we also like things to be correct. ;D

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Reply #32 on: February 18, 2012, 05:54:36 PM
"About a young man pushing as far as he could along a horizontal frontier..." is what Dave said.
Should have been vertical.
Just so you know Dave, we love listening and appreciate all the hard work you (plural) do, but we also like things to be correct. ;D

But at the end it was horizontal on the snowy plain above, where he was again pushing his limits.

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Reply #33 on: February 18, 2012, 08:13:11 PM
"About a young man pushing as far as he could along a horizontal frontier..." is what Dave said.
Should have been vertical.
Just so you know Dave, we love listening and appreciate all the hard work you (plural) do, but we also like things to be correct. ;D

But at the end it was horizontal on the snowy plain above, where he was again pushing his limits.
But that wasn't what the story was about, that was just the end...

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Reply #34 on: February 20, 2012, 03:50:31 PM
"About a young man pushing as far as he could along a horizontal frontier..." is what Dave said.
Should have been vertical.
Just so you know Dave, we love listening and appreciate all the hard work you (plural) do, but we also like things to be correct. ;D

But at the end it was horizontal on the snowy plain above, where he was again pushing his limits.
But that wasn't what the story was about, that was just the end...

Agreed.  The focus of the story was about a linear section where some parts had higher altitudes than others.  :)



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Reply #35 on: February 20, 2012, 05:18:03 PM
"About a young man pushing as far as he could along a horizontal frontier..." is what Dave said.
Should have been vertical.
Just so you know Dave, we love listening and appreciate all the hard work you (plural) do, but we also like things to be correct. ;D

But at the end it was horizontal on the snowy plain above, where he was again pushing his limits.
But that wasn't what the story was about, that was just the end...

Agreed.  The focus of the story was about a linear section where some parts had higher altitudes than others.  :)

You're just trying to box me in. I need the mobius strip. Just because you're happy with 12UP and 7DOWN doesn't mean I have to settle.

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


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Reply #36 on: February 21, 2012, 03:20:08 PM
"About a young man pushing as far as he could along a horizontal frontier..." is what Dave said.
Should have been vertical.
Just so you know Dave, we love listening and appreciate all the hard work you (plural) do, but we also like things to be correct. ;D

But at the end it was horizontal on the snowy plain above, where he was again pushing his limits.
But that wasn't what the story was about, that was just the end...

Agreed.  The focus of the story was about a linear section where some parts had higher altitudes than others.  :)

You're just trying to box me in. I need the mobius strip. Just because you're happy with 12UP and 7DOWN doesn't mean I have to settle.

Hey, sounds good to me.  I'd probably find it at least somewhat more interesting if it weren't so linear for the bulk of the story.  :)



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Reply #37 on: February 21, 2012, 05:52:14 PM
"About a young man pushing as far as he could along a horizontal frontier..." is what Dave said.
Should have been vertical.
Just so you know Dave, we love listening and appreciate all the hard work you (plural) do, but we also like things to be correct. ;D

But at the end it was horizontal on the snowy plain above, where he was again pushing his limits.
But that wasn't what the story was about, that was just the end...

Agreed.  The focus of the story was about a linear section where some parts had higher altitudes than others.  :)

You're just trying to box me in. I need the mobius strip. Just because you're happy with 12UP and 7DOWN doesn't mean I have to settle.

Hey, sounds good to me.  I'd probably find it at least somewhat more interesting if it weren't so linear for the bulk of the story.  :)
I thought that the linearity of it was the point. But if you want to break that, why stop with a Mobius strip? Why not use a Calabi-Yau manifold?

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Reply #38 on: February 21, 2012, 06:32:13 PM
"About a young man pushing as far as he could along a horizontal frontier..." is what Dave said.
Should have been vertical.
Just so you know Dave, we love listening and appreciate all the hard work you (plural) do, but we also like things to be correct. ;D

But at the end it was horizontal on the snowy plain above, where he was again pushing his limits.
But that wasn't what the story was about, that was just the end...

Agreed.  The focus of the story was about a linear section where some parts had higher altitudes than others.  :)

You're just trying to box me in. I need the mobius strip. Just because you're happy with 12UP and 7DOWN doesn't mean I have to settle.

Hey, sounds good to me.  I'd probably find it at least somewhat more interesting if it weren't so linear for the bulk of the story.  :)
I thought that the linearity of it was the point. But if you want to break that, why stop with a Mobius strip? Why not use a Calabi-Yau manifold?

I'm down with that.  :)  Maybe linearity was the point, but if it was, it was too simple of a point to really be interesting to me.  A mobius would be somewhat more interesting in that it is complex enough to be less trivial but not too complex to be understood in the body of a story.  I have read at least one story tied to a Mobius, though more the concept of the infinite loop than the strict geometry:
http://www.drabblecast.org/2010/05/26/drabblecast-165-doubleheader-vi-ringing-up-baby-and-mobius-stripped-of-a-muse-by-ellen-klages/

And I've read at least one story set in a world based loosely on the Mandelbrot set.  I think it was Fractal Mode by Piers Anthony? 



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Reply #39 on: February 21, 2012, 06:33:43 PM
Instead of a world in 1-dimensional space, let's bring it down a notch and go with 0 dimensional.  Pre-Big Bang perhaps?  :)



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Reply #40 on: March 01, 2012, 06:43:28 PM
I need to find a hobby that isn't thinking things through because now I'm stuck up on why didn't the linearity bother me, what in my perception was different that I didn't even concern myself with it. Part of it is that I didn't really consider why they couldn't or wouldn't go off to the side, considering my understand of these villages living on a mountain going sideways will either circle around or be going up or down so it felt as if the paths were essentially the easiest way to travel. Assuming all over the place I'd say that the reason for not building the villages closer on the slope was to take advantage of the different plants and such living at the altitudes, it doesn't really say that nobody lives out along the paths but that most of the population is in the towns labeled from what I would think is the middle of the mountain.

It seems worth pondering if being able to go further and further without limit is really a gift, its something unique for sure, but as everyone else decides and their limit emerges it frames their world, for some people they would love to be deciding their own limits but he appears to be troubled by this, his uniqueness leaves him without the same help that others get to decide what they job and position will be. This could be quite terrifying especially in a world where things are so linear.

I don't think there is any evidence to support the idea, but I also wondered if perhaps the limit was simply people having their wanderlust fufilled, its not that they couldn't go further, they were just happy where they were, that the fear they felt was one of ruining what they were pleased with just for the risk of the unknown.



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Reply #41 on: March 06, 2012, 09:09:16 PM
I loved this one.  The one word that comes to mind is a made-up one: Emshwilleresque.  Carol Emshwiller is an author who doesn't get adjectived enough but she has a really distinctive style, and it is nice to see it making an impact on other writers.  Something about the simplistic allegorical world as an enabler of character self-discovery and not bothering to sketch in non-thematic, non-important details.  I don't know, I'm overtired while typing this, but I just listened and had to comment.

Did anyone read "All the News That's Fit" in Asimov's last year?  I imagined this story taking place in a similar world, although obviously the ends are so different that they cannot be.  Both good stories, but I honestly prefer "Limits".  That's right, the non-Emshwiller Emshwiller-style story in the lesser-paying market is my favorite.  Good job getting this one PodCastle!  I think the difference is the hopefulness of the ending.  I too like to believe that the two young lovebirds meet up in a road going around the base of the mountain.



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Reply #42 on: August 28, 2012, 09:44:01 PM
I didn't care for this story.  It didn't have enough meat. 
I found the worldbuilding so simplistic as to interfere with my suspension of disbelief. 
If any of these things had been compelling to me, then I could've gotten over the others, but  there was just nothing there that really intrigued me.

Agree with you.  People argued with you because you have a valid, important criticism. You are right, they are wrong.  Their arguments only brought out more of your good thoughts (author underthinking). 
If this was submitted to you as an editor, would you have returned it to the author to give a better ending?  I thought a better ending might have salvaged it, but maybe not.

I think it might have been okay, if the author did not suddenly write an ending for some real or imagined deadline.  The ending given did not make sense geographically, socially, or texturally.



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Reply #43 on: August 29, 2012, 03:40:11 AM
Quote
Quote from: Unblinking on December 30, 2011, 12:48:52 PM
I didn't care for this story.  It didn't have enough meat.
I found the worldbuilding so simplistic as to interfere with my suspension of disbelief.
If any of these things had been compelling to me, then I could've gotten over the others, but  there was just nothing there that really intrigued me.

Quote
Quote from: ThomasTheAttoney on August 28, 2012

Agree with you.  People argued with you because you have a valid, important criticism. You are right, they are wrong.

An object lesson in the difference between a socialized and an unsocialized criticism.  Can you spot the difference?  Look carefully...



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Reply #44 on: August 29, 2012, 04:11:14 AM
I didn't care for this story.  It didn't have enough meat. 
I found the worldbuilding so simplistic as to interfere with my suspension of disbelief. 
If any of these things had been compelling to me, then I could've gotten over the others, but  there was just nothing there that really intrigued me.

Agree with you.  People argued with you because you have a valid, important criticism. You are right, they are wrong.  Their arguments only brought out more of your good thoughts (author underthinking). 
If this was submitted to you as an editor, would you have returned it to the author to give a better ending?  I thought a better ending might have salvaged it, but maybe not.

I think it might have been okay, if the author did not suddenly write an ending for some real or imagined deadline.  The ending given did not make sense geographically, socially, or texturally.

While it's certainly OK to not care for particular stories that come along, please acknowledge that other readers, including the editors,  may have different tastes from your own and let it go when those diverge. Thanks.



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Reply #45 on: September 04, 2012, 05:11:51 PM
Agree with you.  People argued with you because you have a valid, important criticism. You are right, they are wrong.  

The great thing about art is that it is subjective.  

In working in scientific fields, you might have varying theories but they all are meant to describe an underlying truth that (if you are doing your job right) will approach the truth through peer review and 3rd party reproduction of results.

With art (including fiction writing) there is no objective measuring stick to gauge quality.  Other than the basic nuts-and-bolts of proper grammar and spelling, anyway.  And that lack of standardized measure is a good thing.  I learn more from my fellow human beings when we disagree--to me learning about other people and about the world is what makes art worthwhile.  If we all agree, that's boring.  I would just stop reading entirely and find a different pursuit to spend my time.  If I hate a story and someone else loves it, the story still has value to me in that I can try to understand why other people like it.  That doesn't mean that they will convince me that I should like it, but it helps me gain perspective on other points of view, which is an invaluable result.


It can also help me gain insight into my own prejudices so that in the best case scenario I can learn to think fairly, or in the worst case at least understand where I cannot see things fairly and work around it.  "Ghosts of New York" is a prime example of this.  I had a strong, visceral, negative reaction to that story.  Others liked it and had no such reaction.  On further examination, I decided that the extent of my dislike was beyond what was rational for the story content.  That hasn't changed the strength of my reaction, but I've come to the conclusion that the fault is in prejudices in my own perception rather than the story having no value.  These prejudices still bother me becauase I still don't understand them to any degree.  But I would rather be aware of them then unaware.  In that way, even though I still hate that story with a passion deep in my gut, it has provided a valuable service in helping me understand myself better than I did before.

I should be writing this in a blog post...
« Last Edit: September 04, 2012, 05:18:44 PM by Unblinking »



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Reply #46 on: September 04, 2012, 05:21:50 PM
Along the same lines of differing opinions, I met a writer at WorldCon who told me in all seriousness that her favorite point of view for a story is 2nd person present tense.  This still boggles my mind, but widens my perspective.  I would never have expected any writer to ever say that. 



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Reply #47 on: September 04, 2012, 05:57:40 PM
Along the same lines of differing opinions, I met a writer at WorldCon who told me in all seriousness that her favorite point of view for a story is 2nd person present tense.  This still boggles my mind, but widens my perspective.  I would never have expected any writer to ever say that. 

Strong exposure to Choose Your Own Adventure books?

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


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Reply #48 on: September 04, 2012, 06:38:51 PM
Along the same lines of differing opinions, I met a writer at WorldCon who told me in all seriousness that her favorite point of view for a story is 2nd person present tense.  This still boggles my mind, but widens my perspective.  I would never have expected any writer to ever say that.  

Strong exposure to Choose Your Own Adventure books?

Maybe!  But I don't think so.  She listed a few examples, none of which were Choose Your Own Adventure.  To my mind, Choose Your Own Adventure style stories are the ONLY time when 2nd person is the right choice.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2012, 08:20:32 PM by Unblinking »