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Nov. 6th, 2005 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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harrock
1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
3. You'll update your LJ with the five questions answered.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
1) What fictional universe would you be most interested in visiting and mucking with? (Assume that you have adequate skills/powers to not be instantly destroyed...)
Hmm. Interesting. When I'm not happy with what's going on in a book/movie, it's usually that I think the people are making stupid choices because that will create the situation the writer's trying to achieve, rather than that the world isn't defined correctly. For example, every time I read one of the later Darkover books I wish that MZB had realized that women doing office work after, oh, 1975 or so weren't forced to wear mini-skirts and high heels, and weren't automatically assumed to be uneducated and incompetent. (Sorry. Go read The Shattered Chain if you want details. If it's not your own copy, please try not to throw it against a wall or stomp on it.)
Anyway. I have to go back to my early adolescent reading to find a setup I want to change. Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life" (which was somewhat loosely translated into a Twilight Zone episode) is about a boy with Vast Powers living in a small town. The story is told from the viewpoint of one of the adults in the town, who is horrified at the awful things the boy does, because no one's ever had the guts to try to teach him manners. You can kind of see their point--who'd want to spank a kid who could turn your hand into a teacup? However, when I read the story, I was 11 or 12, and I thought that the boy must be awfully lonely, really, and I wanted to send in someone who'd be his friend. That person would have to have the Vast Power to not be harmed by the boy's abilities, though, or something similar, because otherwise they'd be toast (possibly quite literally.)
2) Situation: Historical figures can be recreated, with the same knowledge they had at their times of death, and volunteers are needed to introduce them to modern society. Counting only people who died at least 50 years ago, who do you volunteer for, what do you most want to know from them, and where do you start in explaining things?
Amelia Earhart, what really happened on that final flight, and I'd take her to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum to show her what kind of progress we've made since she died. (I would have suggested a trip on the Concorde, but that's not possible any more.)
3) Where is the strangest place you have ever visited? (i.e. most alien-feeling to you)
Probably my last job's headquarters in Swindon (in the U.K.); the smoking in the office, the only on-site food being a truck that showed up for about 10 minutes at lunchtime with sandwiches, and almost complete lack of women and total lack of non-white people made me feel like I'd moved back into the 50s, and not in a good way.
4) What does "justice" mean to you?
A struggle to define laws that appropriately treat behavior in modern circumstances.
5) If you were an angry god, a la that game we used to have on the Mac in the LSC office (I think it was just called "Despair"), what would be your preferred method of visiting death and destruction upon your hapless victims?
I don't really remember the details of that game, alas, but I'd probably go the simple route and just let the ground open up and swallow them.
harrock1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
3. You'll update your LJ with the five questions answered.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
1) What fictional universe would you be most interested in visiting and mucking with? (Assume that you have adequate skills/powers to not be instantly destroyed...)
Hmm. Interesting. When I'm not happy with what's going on in a book/movie, it's usually that I think the people are making stupid choices because that will create the situation the writer's trying to achieve, rather than that the world isn't defined correctly. For example, every time I read one of the later Darkover books I wish that MZB had realized that women doing office work after, oh, 1975 or so weren't forced to wear mini-skirts and high heels, and weren't automatically assumed to be uneducated and incompetent. (Sorry. Go read The Shattered Chain if you want details. If it's not your own copy, please try not to throw it against a wall or stomp on it.)
Anyway. I have to go back to my early adolescent reading to find a setup I want to change. Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life" (which was somewhat loosely translated into a Twilight Zone episode) is about a boy with Vast Powers living in a small town. The story is told from the viewpoint of one of the adults in the town, who is horrified at the awful things the boy does, because no one's ever had the guts to try to teach him manners. You can kind of see their point--who'd want to spank a kid who could turn your hand into a teacup? However, when I read the story, I was 11 or 12, and I thought that the boy must be awfully lonely, really, and I wanted to send in someone who'd be his friend. That person would have to have the Vast Power to not be harmed by the boy's abilities, though, or something similar, because otherwise they'd be toast (possibly quite literally.)
2) Situation: Historical figures can be recreated, with the same knowledge they had at their times of death, and volunteers are needed to introduce them to modern society. Counting only people who died at least 50 years ago, who do you volunteer for, what do you most want to know from them, and where do you start in explaining things?
Amelia Earhart, what really happened on that final flight, and I'd take her to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum to show her what kind of progress we've made since she died. (I would have suggested a trip on the Concorde, but that's not possible any more.)
3) Where is the strangest place you have ever visited? (i.e. most alien-feeling to you)
Probably my last job's headquarters in Swindon (in the U.K.); the smoking in the office, the only on-site food being a truck that showed up for about 10 minutes at lunchtime with sandwiches, and almost complete lack of women and total lack of non-white people made me feel like I'd moved back into the 50s, and not in a good way.
4) What does "justice" mean to you?
A struggle to define laws that appropriately treat behavior in modern circumstances.
5) If you were an angry god, a la that game we used to have on the Mac in the LSC office (I think it was just called "Despair"), what would be your preferred method of visiting death and destruction upon your hapless victims?
I don't really remember the details of that game, alas, but I'd probably go the simple route and just let the ground open up and swallow them.