Robert Moss Markley
Auteur van Dying Planet: Mars in Science and the Imagination
Werken van Robert Moss Markley
Encyclopedia of Roses: History, Botany, Characteristics, Design Examples, Planting and Care, the Best Species and… (1999) 6 exemplaren
Ziergehölze für den Garten: pflanzen, pflegen, schneiden; die richtige Auswahl für jeden… (2000) 4 exemplaren
Rosen für jeden: Sorten, die wirklich Freude machen. Richtig auswählen, kombinieren, pflegen (2006) 3 exemplaren
Two-edg'd weapons : style and ideology in the comedies of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve (1988) 2 exemplaren
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- Markley, Robert Moss
- Geboortedatum
- 1953
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- USA
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- Professor of English, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
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- #197,646
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In both the Viking and ALH84001 cases, Markley makes the arguments for a biotic interpretation sound stronger than those against, yet acknowledges that most scientists remain unconvinced. It’s not clear to me whether he means to imply that skeptics are in thrall to preconceived notions - it’s certainly easy to read him that way. FWIW, the consensus against the ALH84001 structures being biological in origin seems to have hardened since the book was written 13 years ago.
Markley makes no attempt to hide his leftist politics, which can be annoying if one does not share them, but on the plus side there should be no question of hidden bias. Relatedly, he had a bit of an obsession with “ecology” - which he is eager to project onto the writers he covers - but what he understands by that term only sometimes seems to be what I’d normally take it to mean: sometimes he seems to use it as a mere synonym for life, and sometimes with reference to planetary budgets of water, energy, etc.
The parts of the book I enjoyed the best are those analyzing various sf novels in some depth, with a focus on how they incorporate (or not) then-current planetary science. Apart from Kim Stanley Robinson, who rates a whole chapter for himself, writers treated at greater length include Wells, Lasswitz, Bogdanov (who was unfamiliar to me and whom I should perhaps read), Burroughs, Bradbury, and Dick. One writer I’d liked him to treat less cursorily is Brackett. It’s tangentially noteworthy that Markley, an academic leftist who uses words like “masculinist” in all seriousness, evidently had no qualms about there being only men on the list of authors treated in depth - one might have thought he’d jump at someone like Brackett if only provide a bit of gender balance. Should I wish he’d felt more constrained by political correctness merely so that he might have spent more words on one of my favourite authors?… (meer)