There's an old saying that, if you have a problem, you've got a problem, but if you have two problems, sometimes they can solve each other
( Read more... )
On the topic of improbably-preserved buildings in fiction:
At a panel discussion of George R. Stewart's Earth Abides (1950, recounts the story of the few survivors after almost all humanity is wiped out by a plague), a participants complained that, a couple years after the disaster, the characters visit a grocery store to get toilet paper. Wouldn't happen, he said: it'd all be eaten by rats, and he criticized the story for its unrealism.
Fortunately B. had a Kindle copy of the book ready to look up. And found that what actually happens in the story is that they go to the grocery store ... and find that all the toilet paper has been eaten by rats.
It's the "Gandalph" phenomenon, after Edmund Wilson who claimed to have read The Lord of the Rings aloud to his daughter, yet couldn't remember how to spell the name of a principal character: some people hate a book so much they can't remember what's in it.
Comments 2
At a panel discussion of George R. Stewart's Earth Abides (1950, recounts the story of the few survivors after almost all humanity is wiped out by a plague), a participants complained that, a couple years after the disaster, the characters visit a grocery store to get toilet paper. Wouldn't happen, he said: it'd all be eaten by rats, and he criticized the story for its unrealism.
Fortunately B. had a Kindle copy of the book ready to look up. And found that what actually happens in the story is that they go to the grocery store ... and find that all the toilet paper has been eaten by rats.
It's the "Gandalph" phenomenon, after Edmund Wilson who claimed to have read The Lord of the Rings aloud to his daughter, yet couldn't remember how to spell the name of a principal character: some people hate a book so much they can't remember what's in it.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment