Community Re-Read #2: The Wounded Sky
Jun. 4th, 2009 06:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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starry_seaTime for discussion post #2, in which we discuss
I've gotta confess, people: I am incapable of being anything but squeeful about this book. Not only is it just really excellent, but it taught me a lot of things that became the foundation of the way I understand the universe. (It's *that* good.)
...but, hey, it's also just a Star Trek novel! So feel free to discuss whatever you'd like.
Here's a few topics I was thinking about, just to get us started:
1. Science! This book has a scientific bibliography at the end, and if you go back to the source post, we actually posted copies of a couple of the articles and books that are listed in the bibliography. You probably didn't read them, and if you did, you probably didn't have a clue what they were talking about (I didn't), but what do you think of the way this book handles science in general? It definitely shows that it's a book that's done its research, especially when it comes to astronomy. (Red Matter = de Sitter Space, y/y/wtf?)
2. Diversity! One thing that really stands out in DD's work in general is the way she 's really committed to showing that not all aliens look like Terrans with latex foreheads, and not all aliens think like Terrans, either. In this book we've got Sulamids, hestv, Hamalki, Sadrao, sa'na'Mdeihei... and that's just for a start. What do you feel about how that Federation looks as compared to the one we see too often where everyone's just humans in costume?
And how does diversity among alien species interact with diversity among Human characters? Does it detract? Does it intersect? Thoughts? How to her original characters (human and not, female and not) fit in to that diversity? Do they work? (I will never get over K't'lk discussing sex and religion and death and taxes in Jim's cabin. On the other hand, does that relationship only work because she's sufficiently non-humanoid that he doesn't see her as a woman? Why *is* sex off the table? Jack Harkness would've hit on her anyway... Heck, *I* would hit on her; her brain is shiny.)
3. Kirk/Enterprise/Crew: meant for each other, yes? (OMFG, yes. Also: she thinks he's her pet, and he's adorable.)
4. How about all the pop-culture references that get casually thrown around? We've got everything from Lothlorien to landsharks. It's a really fannish way of doing things, maybe, and I think it works in the universe she draws. But does it really add to the story for everyone? Is there a danger in going overboard? Am I overestimating how much she does it?
5. The spirituality. She notes at the end that a lot of what's in this book came from The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra, which I'll admit I've never finished reading (it's been partially-read for years) but I've read a fair amount on Tao in general, and on physics and faith. And I still don't quite buy that singularity causes mind-melds, or that creative physics works quite like that. Although remembering K't'lk's logic has helped me, more than a few times, understand some topic in science or philosophy. Duane's concept of entropy as the death-principle was my first introduction to the term, and when I learned later how the concept actually works in science, it was both confusing and illuminating.
In the end they bring entropy to a new universe, a universe they build around a game, where an eternal plural Oneness can play at being people. That's an echo of a creation myth that shows up in mystical traditions the world around - from the Tao te Ching to the Sefer Zohar, though frequently it loses the element of laughter along the way. Does it work for you fictionally? Does it have echoes into your own real life spirituality? I'll admit that my answer to "Why is there pain and death?" is still (depending on the audience) either "Because we'd be really bored without it" or "Because without the second law of thermodynamics, there is no change."
Anybody know any Wounded-sky based fanfic? Anybody want to write any? I've been craving, for a very long time, a story that brings back the universe they created - imagine an older Kirk and Spock and Scotty (or the reboot versions!) wandering into a universe in which they're the great founding archetypes that have shaped every story and every philosophy...
oh, wait, that's our universe. :P (Imagine, then, them wandering into a universe where K't'lk is still-always-singing creation, and it's a creation built of love and compassion and integrity in-the-other's-skin.)
The Wounded Sky is also, of course, the first of Diane Duane's Star Trek novels, introducing some characters, characterization, and worldbuilding that recur in her other six ST books, which shaped the way a lot of Star Trek fans understand Star Trek. Feel free to discuss it in that context, or even in the context of DD's entire ouvre (I'm something of a fan, you might have noticed.)
Next discussion will be on Spock's World (the return of K's't'lk, among many other things!), but I may be a bit late getting files up (due to massive computer woes), and it's a longer book, so I'm going to give us two weeks to finish reading it.
ETA: Who wants to make me a recording of Enterprise, Starship? (Or the one about the asteroid miner's daughter and the weird-looking creature with all the eyes. I'm not picky.)
The Wounded Sky!
Pocket Books #13, by Diane Duane.I've gotta confess, people: I am incapable of being anything but squeeful about this book. Not only is it just really excellent, but it taught me a lot of things that became the foundation of the way I understand the universe. (It's *that* good.)
...but, hey, it's also just a Star Trek novel! So feel free to discuss whatever you'd like.
Here's a few topics I was thinking about, just to get us started:
1. Science! This book has a scientific bibliography at the end, and if you go back to the source post, we actually posted copies of a couple of the articles and books that are listed in the bibliography. You probably didn't read them, and if you did, you probably didn't have a clue what they were talking about (I didn't), but what do you think of the way this book handles science in general? It definitely shows that it's a book that's done its research, especially when it comes to astronomy. (Red Matter = de Sitter Space, y/y/wtf?)
2. Diversity! One thing that really stands out in DD's work in general is the way she 's really committed to showing that not all aliens look like Terrans with latex foreheads, and not all aliens think like Terrans, either. In this book we've got Sulamids, hestv, Hamalki, Sadrao, sa'na'Mdeihei... and that's just for a start. What do you feel about how that Federation looks as compared to the one we see too often where everyone's just humans in costume?
And how does diversity among alien species interact with diversity among Human characters? Does it detract? Does it intersect? Thoughts? How to her original characters (human and not, female and not) fit in to that diversity? Do they work? (I will never get over K't'lk discussing sex and religion and death and taxes in Jim's cabin. On the other hand, does that relationship only work because she's sufficiently non-humanoid that he doesn't see her as a woman? Why *is* sex off the table? Jack Harkness would've hit on her anyway... Heck, *I* would hit on her; her brain is shiny.)
3. Kirk/Enterprise/Crew: meant for each other, yes? (OMFG, yes. Also: she thinks he's her pet, and he's adorable.)
4. How about all the pop-culture references that get casually thrown around? We've got everything from Lothlorien to landsharks. It's a really fannish way of doing things, maybe, and I think it works in the universe she draws. But does it really add to the story for everyone? Is there a danger in going overboard? Am I overestimating how much she does it?
5. The spirituality. She notes at the end that a lot of what's in this book came from The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra, which I'll admit I've never finished reading (it's been partially-read for years) but I've read a fair amount on Tao in general, and on physics and faith. And I still don't quite buy that singularity causes mind-melds, or that creative physics works quite like that. Although remembering K't'lk's logic has helped me, more than a few times, understand some topic in science or philosophy. Duane's concept of entropy as the death-principle was my first introduction to the term, and when I learned later how the concept actually works in science, it was both confusing and illuminating.
In the end they bring entropy to a new universe, a universe they build around a game, where an eternal plural Oneness can play at being people. That's an echo of a creation myth that shows up in mystical traditions the world around - from the Tao te Ching to the Sefer Zohar, though frequently it loses the element of laughter along the way. Does it work for you fictionally? Does it have echoes into your own real life spirituality? I'll admit that my answer to "Why is there pain and death?" is still (depending on the audience) either "Because we'd be really bored without it" or "Because without the second law of thermodynamics, there is no change."
Anybody know any Wounded-sky based fanfic? Anybody want to write any? I've been craving, for a very long time, a story that brings back the universe they created - imagine an older Kirk and Spock and Scotty (or the reboot versions!) wandering into a universe in which they're the great founding archetypes that have shaped every story and every philosophy...
oh, wait, that's our universe. :P (Imagine, then, them wandering into a universe where K't'lk is still-always-singing creation, and it's a creation built of love and compassion and integrity in-the-other's-skin.)
The Wounded Sky is also, of course, the first of Diane Duane's Star Trek novels, introducing some characters, characterization, and worldbuilding that recur in her other six ST books, which shaped the way a lot of Star Trek fans understand Star Trek. Feel free to discuss it in that context, or even in the context of DD's entire ouvre (I'm something of a fan, you might have noticed.)
Next discussion will be on Spock's World (the return of K's't'lk, among many other things!), but I may be a bit late getting files up (due to massive computer woes), and it's a longer book, so I'm going to give us two weeks to finish reading it.
ETA: Who wants to make me a recording of Enterprise, Starship? (Or the one about the asteroid miner's daughter and the weird-looking creature with all the eyes. I'm not picky.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 09:44 am (UTC)It doesn't hold up as well as I'd hoped -- the whole marching scene seems over the top (both in references and in purple prose) to me now when it didn't when I was younger, but the characters are still lovely. Duane is best when she sticks to characters rather than action, I think.
...Possibly more when it is not 5:45 am and I am on my way out of the house.