The Sword and Laser discussion

I see comments saying that the stories are not realistic and these things couldn’t happen the way they are depicted. I think some people are reading the book too literally. For example, “Life Around The Event Horizon” isn’t a sf adventure story about a guy with a singularity in his head any more than “The Metamorphosis” is a horror story about a guy who turns into a giant bug. Just as Kafke wrote a metaphor for alienation and the conflicting elements of the narrator’s personality, “Life around” is about internalizing and processing grief and learning to live again. Something the narrator felt he didn’t really do even before the plague. The development of the singularity is a symbol of that change - it represents the grief that is always in his mind, that Theresa has helped him contain, and his worries that it may collapse back in on him again in the future. All the people constantly asking if he is okay are doing it because of his loss, not because he is emitting Hawking radiation from his temporal lobe.

I agree with most people that some of the stories are overdone and don't work all that well, especially the second one. It seems too calculated, trying too hard to turn the grief to maximum. But if you step back from some of the stranger ones and look at them with a literary eye and not a literal one I think they will make a lot more sense.

Interesting points, but I imagine many (most) readers are not trained with a literary eye. It's something I'm actively working on in my own reading, but it's a difficult skill to pick up. Judging readers harshly for not understanding the literary convention is just as bad as judging the book harshly for not adhering to our expectations of reality or suspension of disbelief while reading.

I apologize if my comments were harsh, it was not my intent to judge readers but to point out that there is another way of looking at these stories. I like my space opera - where a cigar is just a cigar - as much as the next person.

As a side note, if this is where your concern is coming from, I may judge people for their political views but the reason I started a new thread was to avoid delving too deeply into that.

I do appreciate this insight, because as I said I'm actively trying to come to a literary understanding of what I read, to bring different experience and connections to the things I read for fun. I just wanted to remind (mainly the lurkers who'll read this thread but not comment) that there's no right way to consume or understand art.