Do You like book The Persistence Of Vision (1988)?
-Desde las ideas, abrumador y original para su tiempo.-Género. Relatos.Lo que nos cuenta. Seis relatos de Ciencia-Ficción, escritos entre 1975 y 1978, todos publicados previamente en dos conocidas revistas de género y uno de ellos multipremiado, con tres relatos menos que la edición original (vaya usted a saber la razón), que tratan temas tan dispares como los efectos de determinados tipos de música a través de la tecnología, las consecuencias de un accidente en una colonia en Marte, el manejo de un incidente por el cual la conciencia de un hombre queda separada de su cuerpo, la vida en una comunidad de ciegos, mudos y sordos, la búsqueda de unas extrañas joyas minerales de sorprendentes propiedades y otro incidente entre conciencias de un mismo individuo.¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
—Olethros
John Varley is not a new name in the science fiction world, but he is a new name to me. I've read a lot of science fiction novels and shortstories, but for some reason the name John Varley has completely eluded me. Until now that is.This is another review-in-progress and I will write short reviews of each of the stories as I find the time to read them. As always, I am starting at the beginning. Phantom of Kansas tells the story of Fox, a weather artist on Luna who is being stalked by a man intent on killing her... again. The shortstory introduces a couple of new ideas that I found really interesting, like memory cubes. This is a way to preserve your memory so that you might indeed live forever (since your body is just a thing to be cloned). The story kept me captivated all way to the end... and then it dropped me. The last couple of pages doesn't fit the overall theme and I dont really know whats going on with the CC. And yet, definitely worth your time. (3 stars) Air Raid is a weird story about a group of soldiers attacking a plane, stealing the people to some bleak future. The story is told by some female ghoul who is missing her lips, a leg and probably a lot of other things, but luckily for her, the future has ways to disguise her. The story throws around a lot of words that are never fully explained and we never really understand what has happened to earth. I am not sold on this idea, but maybe a second read sometime will reveal things that I missed the first time around. (1.5 stars)
—K. Axel
While "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" is good, "The Persistence of Vision" is extraordinarily good.Although set in the near future, "Persistence" has no other science fiction elements. The story is about a vagabound moving from one countercultural community to the next in the southwest, then ending up to stay quite a while with one qualitatively different than the rest. On land leased from the Navaho, this community was set up by several dozen deaf-blind persons who had grown up institutionally together after a fictional rubella outbreak. Granted money by the government after a series of law suits initiated after they reach their majority, they are able to hire professional help and acquire the land and equipment they need for a self-sustaining community. Established when the protagonist arrives, his entry into the community is facilitated by the fact that their children, the eldest of whom is now thirteen, are hearing and sighted.I dated and eventually wed a hometown girl who was going deaf when I met her and had become completely deaf by the time of our marriage. Consequently, I learned American Sign Language, Signed English and enough hand-to-hand method to be able to speak to deaf-blind persons. Thus, Varley's tale made some immediate sense to me, particularly as the protagonist is just beginning to adapt to the world of the deaf-blind.The world of these people is one of total, body-to-body communication whereby secret keeping and deception are impossible and interactions occur three-dimensionally between people. We, the protagonist learns, are the cripples, our reliance on denotative languages and logics lacking a dimension while allowing not only social but self-deception. Lines that bound our lives intertwine in theirs, including sexual and gender lines.This novella not only made me think very critically about my personal limitations but inspired me to some enthusiasm about untapped human potentials.
—Erik Graff
