Robert Bull wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 RB> Hello, Roy;

 RB> 27 Dec 04 12:21, Roy J. Tellason wrote to Robert Bull:

 KS>>> CBIP: _Paladins_ by Joel Rosenberg.  Almost didn't read this one

 RT> He was in this echo for a while some years back.

 RB> Must have been before my time.  Eight to ten years ago, I couldn't
 RB> even  keep up with the local UK equivalent of this echo, let alone
 RB> the vast  traffic flow here.  But now, it's -too- quiet...  :-(

I'm thinking more like 12-14 years ago.  Wow,  I hadn't realized it'd been that long!

 RB> Must have been lots of other authors here then, e.g. Patricia
 RB> Wrede?

Not that I can recall.  Lawrence Watt-Evans was in here,  for one.  John
DeChancie for another.  Probably some others I'm not thinking of at the
moment.

 RB>> Maybe hierarchies, which ultimately have a head, are the normal
 RB>> way for human society to run?

 RT> I certainly hope not!

 RT> There are other ways of arranging things,  though.  Some years back I
 RT> happened to find an anthropology textbook,  and it was an interesting
 RT> read,  for the contrasts.  I should probably dig it out and add it to
 RT> my to-reread pile (which never seems to get very much smaller :-).

 RB> Whatever you do, alpha males still seem to like to lock horns and
 RB> grunt...

Not always.

 RT> I'm not familiar with any of those.  But that seems to be happening
 RT> too often these days anyway,  I get the feeling that the field has
 RT> moved on and left me behind,  somewhat.  Or maybe it's just the
 RT> fantasy side of things.

 RB> I once heard someone say much the same about pop music.  His taste
 RB> had got  stuck around 1967, and never changed thereafter.  He said
 RB> this in 1972 :-/

I could say the same about music for sure.  But I can listen to a lot of
stuff that came out over a great many decades.

 RB> You could be right about the field leaving us behind.  I've found
 RB> stories using virtual reality semi-incoherent, in that sometimes
 RB> authors don't make a distinction between the real world and the
 RB> virtual one, and I don't have  the background to grasp much of the
 RB> biotech-based stuff, with Paul McAuley an honourable exception.

I think,  too,  that like the visual media,  there's an awful lot of *bad*
stuff out there.  Case in point,  they aired the "Battlestar
Galactica" movie the other night on tv.  I have a tendency to pick at
stuff,  my other half doesn't,  preferring to just enjoy when possible.  I
pointed out that the "fighters" were stuck in a fighter plane
mode of thinking,  and that doing stuff in space would be *different* in a
lot of ways these writers weren't thinking about.  She commented on the
"machine guns" they were using.  The damn things had a canopy
just like any other "fighter plane",  and a set of air intakes!

 RB> I seem to be reading more and more fantasy and less SF, and there's
 RB> no doubt that a great deal of very high-quality fantasy is being
 RB> written now.

I think there's probably more fantasy being written than hard SF.  Or at
least more of it on the bookstore shelves...

My tastes always tended toward the harder stuff,  though.

 RT> of a binge of Gordon R. Dickson -- somebody sent me a package with

 RT> my collection and re-read a bunch of the Dorsai and Childe Cycle

 RB> I'm not sure I'd much enjoy militaristic SF, but I haven't actually
 RB> read and Gordon R. Dickson.

Militaristic doesn't really describe it that much.  Yeah,  there's wars
going on but much of the stuff seems to center around tactics,  strategy, 
and even philosophies,  as well as cultural issues.

 RT> related stuff again.  Currently in the middle of The Chantry Guild,
 RT> where the central character is trying to figure out how things would
 RT> work without people harming each other to achieve their own ends.

 RB> Kate Elliot's fantasy series CROWN OF STARS (starts with KING'S
 RB> DRAGON,  though the "dragons" are the king's elite cavalry)
 RB> contains an important  chararacter whose study of sorcery centres
 RB> on coercion.  She wants to make people do "what they know they
 RB> really want to do anyway," i.e., do what she wants, but can't see
 RB> the difference.

There sure seems to be a lot of that going around.  I'd rather prefer
something that would show how a society could work without it.

 RT> online forums who are actively exploring alternative ways of living
 RT> (see "thementalmilitia.org if you're interested in one such forum).

 RB> I'm too old to change, but good luck to them.  OTOH, I haven't
 RB> forgotten all the defunct communes of the Sixties.

No change necessary,  it's some interesting discussions in there.

 RT> And this sort of exploration is one of the things that SF tends to
 RT> explore,  right?  How else things might work...

Just so.

 RB> Right...  but maybe people aren't thinking much ATM, as SF seems to
 RB> be lagging fantasy in popularity.  Then again, fantasy is as good
 RB> a vehicle as any to explore things like alternative political 
 RB> systems and the abuse of power.

Yes,  but I guess it depends on how your tastes run.  I'm much more of a
technophile than most,  so I tend to prefer the harder stuff.  Of the
magazines my first choice is Analog,  though for some odd reason I seem to
have better luck (?) buying F&SF,  or at least I have more of them in
my collection.  I got a kick out of one reference I saw years ago that
referred to that magazine as "the one with the rivets".  :-)

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