Author Topic: PC189: Limits  (Read 18577 times)

DKT

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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.

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


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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!


Max e^{i pi}

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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.

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


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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...

Cogito ergo surf - I think therefore I network

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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 »