Nov

19

Posted by : atcampbell | On : November 19, 1996

Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human by K. W. Jeter

This month’s report has a multimedia flavor. Our late November book was Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (henceforth abbreviated BR2) by K. W. Jeter, which is a sequel both to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (DADOES) and the movie it inspired, Blade Runner. In preparation several of us read (or reread) the Dick novel, and Lori and I hosted a viewing of the Director’s Cut of Blade Runner at our house. We had a lot of fun rewatching the film, and those of us who’d only seen the original version of the film were surprised by how much the few additional scenes (and the lack of voice-over narration) changed the content of the film. Additionally, I studied all the detailed information and analysis of the movie on the Blade Runner web site (http://www.uq.edu.au/~csmchapm/bladerunner/).

When we gathered on November 19 to discuss BR2, all of our preparation turned out to be helpful. Seven people showed up in person at Adventures in Crime and Space, and one person who couldn’t attend the meeting e-mailed in her comments. We determined that previous viewing of the Blade Runner, preferably

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Nov

05

Posted by : atcampbell | On : November 5, 1996

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

On November 5, eight of us met at the FACT Office to discuss Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Lions of Al-Rassan, a fantasy set in a world patterned much after historical Spain. One of the group’s regular members was unable to attend, but she liked the book enough to e-mail me a set of detailed comments to bring to the discussion. Opinions differed widely on this book, as shown by the following comments from early in the discussion: “I LOVE this book”, “bittersweet but believable”, “Kay’s done better but this is still an above average fantasy”, and “as a reader, I felt consistently cheated by Guy Gavriel Kay”. We all liked the story and found Kay’s writing style readable, but several of us felt that he tried to pull off too much trickery in his use (or misuse) of point of view. The book is basically a historical novel full of heroic deeds, romance, and extremely competent men and women, with only a couple of minor speculative elements

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