Author Topic: EP358: Like a Hawk in its Gyre  (Read 24189 times)

Grumpoid

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Reply #25 on: August 23, 2012, 04:39:11 PM

Fair enough - wasn't trying to defend the choice of title, just to explain it (or at least, explain what I believe its source must have been, I guess it could have been a very odd coincidence).


Your explanation is most likely correct

The title probably says exactly what the author intended

my only, and rather slight, point was, that I doubt that the title is punchy enough for my memory to transfer it to long-term storage, so when asked in conversation to name that story about the poisonous bicycles that was on escapepod (yes, I really do have geek friends that might) if it's more than about three weeks from now, chances are slim I'll be able to do it without a keyboard and a connection.

Allusions are fair game, but 1) SF fans and 2) people with an intimate and extensive knowledge of early to mid twentieth century modernist poetry don't strike me as being obviously congruent sets, Otherwise we'd all be lolling about severally discussing the ticketed gew-gaws on the death star, or Jar-Jar Binks and the scuttling claws (Although... that one is growing on me as I look at it) - However "Look to Windward" and "Consider Phlebas" both from The Wasteland, I suppose, but at least Banks quotes the quote as it was pronounced to us giving us the source before the text begins.

Bah...now you've made me analyse what was meant to be a lightweight disposable quip, I shall go off to press my back against windows, leaving only a random smiley  :)



Gamercow

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Reply #26 on: August 23, 2012, 05:18:28 PM
This story was clean, tight, and quite enjoyable.  There were cracks if you looked closely enough, but while listening, I didn't see the cracks because I was enjoying myself too much.

The cow says "Mooooooooo"


Dem

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Reply #27 on: August 23, 2012, 05:55:27 PM
This story was clean, tight, and quite enjoyable.  There were cracks if you looked closely enough, but while listening, I didn't see the cracks because I was enjoying myself too much.
'Like' - in the Faceebookee styleee

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Max e^{i pi}

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Reply #28 on: August 23, 2012, 06:11:44 PM

... as the story unfolded I definitely started rooting for the paranoid bike and its handlebars of death.


Now "Handlebars of Death" is a title I could get behind. (figuratively speaking) - "Like a Hawk in its Gyre" is essentially meaningless and any reader would be hard put to remember it five minutes after it had been read. The word Gyre is one I've managed to do without for the last half a century, although it sounds more like the rotaty gyr from gyroscope, which I suppose is bicycley appropriate. But as a title, it's trying a little too hard.
Now "Handlebars of Death" on the other hand ....

Quote from: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
'Twas brillig in the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves
and the mome raths outgrabe.
That was my first association. Threw me off ;P
Also, I didn't like that the narrator read that word with a hard 'g'. It's the same 'g' as in "gyroscope".

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Sgarre1

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Reply #29 on: August 23, 2012, 09:44:37 PM
Quote
Quod erat demonstrandum, baby

"Ooooh, you speak *French*!"

(Hopes to God you were actually making that reference...)



Grumpoid

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Reply #30 on: August 23, 2012, 10:36:54 PM

Quote
(Hopes to God you were actually making that reference...)

So you weren't blinded by the science then?  8)



Sgarre1

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Reply #31 on: August 23, 2012, 11:45:18 PM
I just saw the man himself play live a couple of months ago - great show, although he did not play "Airwaves" or "Screen Kiss" or "Leipzig"



InfiniteMonkey

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Reply #32 on: August 24, 2012, 01:13:26 AM
I happen to like the word gyre. It is also used for the rotation of the oceans. And if the allusion "Widening Gyre" can be used for "Andromeda", Batman, and Ben-10, it's good enough for me.



Unblinking

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Reply #33 on: August 24, 2012, 01:52:49 PM
Also, I didn't like that the narrator read that word with a hard 'g'. It's the same 'g' as in "gyroscope".

The hard "g" is consistent with how I've heard it pronounced.  Though come to think of it, I may have only heard it pronounced in the Disney Alice in Wonderland cartoon.  Looking at Merriam-Webster, it looks like you're right.  I didn't realize!

I was referring to the bad guy in the story.  From the bad guy's perspective, if he thought that the good guy could control the hawk well enough to bring the hawk in, you'd have to assume he could control the hawk well enough to rip out the bad guy's eyes as the hawk came on in.

Ah!  Good point, then.



Myrealana

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Reply #34 on: August 29, 2012, 05:39:52 PM
I enjoyed this story, but I was a bit disappointed that the hawks were only mentioned and made no actual appearance.

'Cause hawks are cool.

As for the title, I'm a little embarassed to admit I didn't actually know what the word "gyre" meant in relation to a hawk, but I assumed it had something to do with the word gyroscope, and therefore meant some kind of circular movement - kind of like the bicycle circling around to attack Starkweather...

I don't know -- that's just what happened to occur to me.

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Reply #35 on: August 31, 2012, 03:10:00 AM
Beware the hawk in its gyre, my son: the jaws that bite; the claws that catch.

Thanks for the literature lesson, Eytanz. I never would have gotten that.

Nice, fun, tightly-written story.

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CryptoMe

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Reply #36 on: September 06, 2012, 04:50:11 AM
I liked this story. It was interesting and kept me wanting to know what happened in the past and what would happen now. That's pretty good in my books. Though I did not get the literary reference of the title.



Unblinking

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Reply #37 on: October 08, 2012, 06:02:58 PM
Was looking up  background of The Jabberwocky, and saw an interesting note in Wikipedia about the pronunciation of "gyre" in the poem:

Quote
In the author's note to the Christmas 1896 edition of Through the Looking-Glass Carroll writes, "The new words, in the poem Jabberwocky, have given rise to some differences of opinion as to their pronunciation, so it may be well to give instructions on that point also. Pronounce 'slithy' as if it were the two words, 'sly, thee': make the 'g' hard in 'gyre' and 'gimble': and pronounce 'rath' to rhyme with 'bath.'"[17] In the Preface to The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll wrote, "[Let] me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been asked me, how to pronounce "slithy toves." The "i" in "slithy" is long, as in "writhe", and "toves" is pronounced so as to rhyme with "groves." Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry." Such is Human Perversity."[18]

These pronunciations are consistent with the Cheshire Cat's pronunciations in the Disney cartoon version, which is where these pronunciations were cemented in my memory.  I realize that this does conflict with Merriam-Webster.  I'm not sure whether the pronunciation has changed or whether Carroll was just messing with the pronunciation for fun (or whether that quote is even authentic, haven't fact-checked it or anything)



eytanz

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Reply #38 on: October 08, 2012, 06:42:35 PM
I believe that the verb "gyre", which was invented by Carroll, is indeed pronounced with a hard 'g'.

The noun "gyre", which means "a circular path", and is in the title of this story, goes back to the days of Middle English (I think) and is pronounced with a soft "j".



LaShawn

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Reply #39 on: October 22, 2012, 04:30:35 PM
This story surprised me. At first, I was like, "Aww...this story is about sentient bicycles...borrrring..." I just read Elizabeth Bear's "And the Deep Blue Sea" and I looooved the personification she gave the motorcycle in that story, so I didn't think the bicycle in this story measured up. But then I was like, "wait...this isn't about sentient bicycles at all.." and then the secrets thing came out and I was rewinding and like, "Wait...wait..." and by the end, I was like "Duuuuuuude..." Some parts were predictable, but I'm glad I stuck with this.


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hardware

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Reply #40 on: November 14, 2012, 12:09:11 PM
I did like a lot of the ideas in this story, the neurological tweaks, the artificial life - a lot of hot contemporary scientific ideas were included in this story. Perhaps a bit too much exposition compared to story and character for my taste, but it was a fascinating world nevertheless. 



childoftyranny

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Reply #41 on: March 23, 2013, 04:11:56 AM
Makes you wonder though, if you can make bikes intelligent and deadly where does it end?  (I'll tell you where it should end: toilets.)

I was really having to hunt for something interesting to say about this that wasn't already said, far far better than I was going to put it, but I was thankfully saved by the thought sentient venomous toilets...now that is terrifying.