Oh, I had almost forgotten about that Raven episode, but now you remind me, and it was indeed excellent. (And I thought managed to do one thing better than its HL pregenitor, "Forgive us our trespasses", because Duncan defeating Keane, sparing his life and Keane by this concluding he's forgivable never felt like the right emotional answer to their dilemma, but Amanda offering her death genuinenly, and being given a mortal but not an immortal one, did.
Re: Going Postal - check out the recent tv version, which was delightful.
Also: there is a debate whether or not Vetinari is grooming Moist as his successor. Opinion?
Conman who's con goes wrong, leading to loss of innocent lives, repentance, and a real desire to become a force for good? Hmmm... wish I was clever enough to think of another example of that trope... *pets icon*
Going Postal is one of my top favorites - I really enjoy a battle fought with brains instead of fists, especially one between equal opponents. That's quite hard to find in literature - either there's a genius and an idiot, or two people beating the crap out of each other. The meshes and moves like an intricate clockwork.
(This is why, as I mention on your other post, that I'm not in a hurry to see the live adaptation. The first half was okay, if reduced; the second half is, I'm told, some other story entirely. And that is a great shame.)
The metaphor for Gilt is not safely in history: the story of the Grand Trunk is very explicitly about the privatisation of the British railway network in the 1990s, and the way the new private sector owners proceeded to kill (and I am not talking hyperbolically) a substantial number of both staff and passengers and nearly wreck the network through their greed and utter incompetence.
Going Postal was the first novel Pratchett wrote after he was given the US anarcho-capitalist SF fan Prometheus award forNight Watch, probably because of a passage in it that can be read as being anti-gun-control. I don't think that was coincidental.
And I was thinking Enron and other such companies that have left such a trail of ruined workers in their wake. You're right--Reacher Gilt isn't just a historical villain, he's a current-day one as well. I'm actually not at all surprised to find out that a railway debacle was behind the story, though. Do you know what shinkansen (the famous Japanese "bullet trains") means in English? "New Trunk Line."
Going Postal and Making MoneyauroramamaJune 13 2010, 22:42:47 UTC
Good point about Amanda and Moist. They're both compelling characters because they have great charm and charisma, and because they're having fun; they radiate joy. Unless you're the one paying for it. But they're always moving, so they never think about that until someone catches up to them.
Oh, very much present day villainy; I thought the Agatean Wall discussion was scarily prescient about the credit crisis. And the overall perspective on a system that's supported because it's supposed to generate prosperity, but is now draining the life from the society that fosters it. The value is in the city - that speaks to my distress over the concept that wealth belongs exclusively to the individual who amasses it, no matter how he got his paws on it, and with no regard to the fact that without society, money is worthless.
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Re: Going Postal - check out the recent tv version, which was delightful.
Also: there is a debate whether or not Vetinari is grooming Moist as his successor. Opinion?
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(This is why, as I mention on your other post, that I'm not in a hurry to see the live adaptation. The first half was okay, if reduced; the second half is, I'm told, some other story entirely. And that is a great shame.)
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Going Postal was the first novel Pratchett wrote after he was given the US anarcho-capitalist SF fan Prometheus award forNight Watch, probably because of a passage in it that can be read as being anti-gun-control. I don't think that was coincidental.
Reply
Reply
Oh, very much present day villainy; I thought the Agatean Wall discussion was scarily prescient about the credit crisis. And the overall perspective on a system that's supported because it's supposed to generate prosperity, but is now draining the life from the society that fosters it. The value is in the city - that speaks to my distress over the concept that wealth belongs exclusively to the individual who amasses it, no matter how he got his paws on it, and with no regard to the fact that without society, money is worthless.
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