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Alexei Panshin (1940–2022)

Auteur van Inwijdingsritueel

26+ Werken 2,169 Leden 51 Besprekingen Favoriet van 6 leden

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Werken van Alexei Panshin

Inwijdingsritueel (1968) 1,042 exemplaren
Star Well (1968) — Auteur — 241 exemplaren
The Thurb Revolution (1968) — Auteur — 218 exemplaren
Masque World (1969) — Auteur — 201 exemplaren
Farewell to Yesterday's Tomorrow (1975) — Auteur — 97 exemplaren
Earth Magic (1978) — Auteur — 95 exemplaren
Heinlein in Dimension, a Critical Analysis. (1968) — Auteur — 92 exemplaren
SF in Dimension: A Book of Explorations (1976) — Auteur — 40 exemplaren
New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers (2002) — Auteur — 21 exemplaren
Transmutations : a book of personal alchemy (1982) — Auteur — 8 exemplaren
Sky Blue [short fiction] (1972) 4 exemplaren

Gerelateerde werken

Dwergsterren (1978) — Medewerker — 407 exemplaren
100 Great Fantasy Short, Short Stories (1984) — Medewerker — 246 exemplaren
Epoch (1975) — Medewerker — 209 exemplaren
World's Best Science Fiction: 1970 (1970) — Medewerker — 160 exemplaren
The Best Science Fiction of the Year #1 (1972) — Medewerker — 145 exemplaren
Nebula Award Stories Five (1970) — Medewerker — 145 exemplaren
Universe 4 (1974) — Medewerker — 139 exemplaren
The Best Science Fiction of the Year #2 (1973) — Medewerker — 110 exemplaren
Christmas Stars (1992) — Medewerker — 96 exemplaren
The Science Fictional Solar System (1951) — Medewerker — 92 exemplaren
Science Fiction Today and Tomorrow: A Discursive Symposium (1974) — Medewerker — 91 exemplaren
Orbit 10 (1972) — Medewerker — 88 exemplaren
Lest Darkness Fall & Related Stories (1939) — Nawoord, sommige edities85 exemplaren
Other Dimensions: Ten Stories of Science Fiction (1973) — Medewerker — 75 exemplaren
Quark/2 (1971) — Medewerker — 52 exemplaren
Tomorrow's Worlds: Ten Stories of Science Fiction (1969) — Medewerker — 52 exemplaren
Four Futures (1969) — Medewerker — 47 exemplaren
Dream's Edge (1980) — Medewerker — 40 exemplaren
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction November 1964, Vol. 27, No. 5 (1964) — Author (under shared pseudonym Louis J. A. Adams) — 12 exemplaren
Heinlein's Children: The Juveniles (2006) — Introductie — 10 exemplaren
Fantastic. No. 152 (August 1969) (1969) — Medewerker — 7 exemplaren
Fantastic. No. 169 (June 1972) (1972) 6 exemplaren
Die Königin der Dämonen (1979) — Medewerker — 4 exemplaren

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Officiële naam
Panshin, Alexis Adams
Geboortedatum
1940-08-14
Overlijdensdatum
2022-08-21
Geslacht
male
Nationaliteit
USA
Geboorteplaats
Lansing, Michigan, USA
Oorzaak van overlijden
cardiac arrest
Beroepen
author
science fiction critic
science fiction writer
Relaties
Panshin, A.J. (father)
Panshin, Cory (widow)
Prijzen en onderscheidingen
Hugo (fan writer, 1967)

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Besprekingen

Un impresionante relato de las consecuencias psicológicas y morales de la adolescencia en una joven, cuya educación y ambiente pertenecen ciertamente a nuestro futuro aunque con unos problemas siempre actuales.
 
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Natt90 | 27 andere besprekingen | Apr 18, 2023 |
This book would have been great when I was 12 years old. It helps you wrestle with moral dilemmas. But reading it at the age I am, it seemed plodding. I did enjoy the moral lesson given on Free Birthers; the author's disgust was palpable. Our own planet would have been destroyed, if there existed Overlords for us, as it did in the story. As it is, we take the slow suicide, yea?
 
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burritapal | 27 andere besprekingen | Oct 23, 2022 |
Great book by Panshin. I thoroughly enjoy this SF juvenile classic. It won a HOGO and deserved it. One SF writer noted that Panshin used to complain about Robert Heinlein's success with juvenille SF books. Then Panshin wrote this charming SF book that could be easily be mistaken for a Heinlein novel and won awards. I agree, it does read like a Heinlein juvenile but this one is better then some of Heinlein's.
 
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ikeman100 | 27 andere besprekingen | Sep 24, 2022 |
review of
Alexei Panshin's Rite of Passage
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 24, 2014

Time to read yet-another SF author whose work I haven't previously read. This one was the winner of a Nebula Award, an award I respect since I usually agree about the merit of the work so honored. In this case, I, perhaps, agree a little less - there are some aspects of the work that are remarkable but it mostly strikes me as a novel-w/-SF-trappings.

It seems that I've been reading a fair amt of dire-predictions-of-population-explosion SF bks lately, the most recently reviewed of wch is John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (see my review here: full version: "Being Eaten By Sharks Off The Coast Of Zanzibar": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/380819-being-eaten-by-sharks-off-the-coast-... ). Stand on Zanzibar's set in 2010 & its population predictions (made 42 yrs in advance of the novel's time setting) is close. As I write in my review: "according to Geohive, 2009's world population was "6,834,721,933". / "["]What we can't cope with is seven billion competing members of our own species.["]" (p 424) Hence, Stand on Zanzibar's prediction for 2009 population is only 165,000,000 shy. Not bad."

Rite of Passage is set in a further future where humanity's migrated off-planet. Earth was destroyed on March 9th (yr unstated).

"From what I learned in school population pressure is the ultimate cause of every war. In 2041, there were eight billion people on Earth alone, and nobody even had free room to sneeze. There were not enuf houses, not enuf schools or teachers, inadequate roads and impossible traffic, natural resources were going or gone, and everybody was a little bit hungry all the time, although nobody was actually starving. Nobody dared to raise his voice because if he did he might disturb a hundred other people, and they had laws and ordinances to bring the point home" - p 9

Now, granted that this is told in the voice of a 12 yr old living in a hollowed-out asteroid spaceship who's just recounting what she remembers from her schooling the author is, therefore, not presenting this as (fictionalized) 'facts of the future'. I'm writing this review at the end of 2014, a population of 8 billion by 27 yrs from now isn't improbable. At this rate of human growth conditions such as those described above might also be probable but I don't think that even 8 billion will get us there. As it is now I live in an uncrowded area w/ enuf to go around & plenty of 'untapped' nature. Then again, I'm considerably more fortunate than other people in the world & my 'good fortune' can at least partially be ascribed to the warlike nature of this country's politicians & other ruling elites.

Maybe 200 yrs ago when people had many children it was w/ the likelihood that a high percentage wd die young. Not so these days. In the case of this story, the "rite of passage" of the title is a part of the 'weeding out' process:

"We won't become overpopulated, either. We have a safety valve. Within three months of the day you turn fourteen, they take you from the ship and drop you on one of the colony planets to survive as best you can for thirty days. There are no exceptions and a reasonably high percentage of deaths. if you are stupid, foolish, immature, or simply unlucky, you won't live through the month. If you do come home, you are an adult. My problem was that at twelve I wasn't afraid to die, but I was afraid to leave the Ship. I couldn't even face leaving the quad we lived in." - p 10

That's an interesting enuf premise & Panshin fulfills it believably (at least to this reader). He also writes from the 1st person perspective of a young girl believably (again, to this reader) - although it probably helps that she's a bit 'tom-boyish'. Whether there's a girl in the world who wd agree w/ me on that latter I don't know.

The girl describes her spaceship environment
thusly: "The quad itself, and they're all this way, was a maze of blank walls, blind alleys, endless corridors, and staircases leading in odd directions. This was done on purpose—it keeps people from getting either bored or lazy, and that's important on a Ship like ours." - p 14

I'm reminded of the "Winchester House":

"There were countless staircases which led nowhere; a blind chimney that stops short of the ceiling; closets that opened to blank walls; trap doors; double-back hallways; skylights that were located one above another; doors that opened to steep drops to the lawn below; and dozens of other oddities. Even all of the stair posts were installed upside-down and many of the bathrooms had glass doors on them."

[..]

"While all of this seems like madness to us, it all made sense to Sarah. In this way, she could control the spirits who came to the house for evil purposes, or who were outlaws or vengeful people in their past life. These bad men, killed by Winchester rifles, could wreak havoc on Sarah’s life. The house had been designed into a maze to confuse and discourage the bad spirits." - http://www.prairieghosts.com/winchester.html

Architecturally, this seems like my kind of place!

That tangent aside, tho, the most important relevant reference in connection w/ Panshin's spaceship design wd be the NASA research that I was fortunate enuf to participate in around 1973 (5 yrs after this novel came out). I was a research volunteer for simulated space-station living at the Phipps Clinic, wch was part of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, us@. For 15 days I lived in confined circumstances following procedures that were clearly designed to be Behavioral Modification tests meant to keep the mind & body in good health. While the space was too small for labyrinths the general guiding principle in Panshin's novel is still sound.

"There is a constant problem of stimulation in living in the Ship—if life were too easy, we would all become vegetables. The response has been to make some things more difficult than they might be. This means that shopping is something you do in person and not by vid." - p 168

Panshin has the main character wanting to be a "synthesist". I've been saturated w/ reading bks by John Brunner for the last 2 yrs so it's possible that I'm overemphasizing Brunner here but, nonetheless, it's probably worth mentioning that I'd already encountered the notion of "synthesist" in Brunner's "The Fourth Power" story (1960) in Out of my Mind - from the Past, Present and Future & in the afore-mentioned Stand on Zanzibar (1968). I'm not saying that Panshin took the idea from Brunner (& if he did it's ok w/ me), & I imagine that the idea predated both of their uses of it, I'm saying that there's some zeitgeist at work here: the idea of a "synthesist" was probably budding in importance in the mid-20th century (in fact, it still seems important to me NOW in the early 21st c). Panshin does go off on a development that I don't remember in Brunner:

"A synthesist, which is what I wanted to be, is a person who comes in and admires the neatened room, and recognizes how nice a copy of a certain piece of furniture would loon in the next room over and how useful it would be there, and points the fact out. Without the ordinologists, a synthesist wouldn't be able to begin work. Of course, without the synthesists, there wouldn't be much reason for the ordinologists to set to work in the first place, because nobody would have any use for what they do." - p 29

The synthesist, in the above description, seems precariously close to an aesthetician, a highly suspect pseudo-profession in my opinion. That said, the symbiosis of the ordinologist & the synthesist is interesting.

[reviewer's note: every time I turn a page & flatten it for easier reading in this bk it comes unglued & I have to tape it together - that's getting very distracting - shame on whoever Ace used for this printing]

In Science Fiction there might
be a higher percentage of collective creation than in other fictional genres. EG: Heinlein's "waldo":

"This story has been largely forgotten (even though it still makes great reading). The notion of a waldo, however, has not. The word itself has come into common usage; the American Heritage Dictionary describes it as follows: "A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb." Real-life waldoes were developed for the nuclear industry during WWII; they were named after the invention described by Heinlein.

"This technology is known today by the more generic term "telefactoring"; it is used in a variety of industries." - http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=23

Another less direct instance occurs in Rite of Passage:

""I've got one," Riggy said, after some moments of concentration during which he wouldn't show anybody what he was doing. Triumphantly he held up a sheet with a drawing of locks on it. " 'More-lock,' " he said. "Get it?"

"We got it but we didn't like it. He had covered the whole sheet with his drawings, which is hardly what you'd call concise.

"I'd been working on the same name myself. I came up with a fair-to-middling troglodyte.

""What's that?" Atilla asked.

""It's Morlock again."

"Venie didn't look pleased, and Riggy immediately challenged, "How do you get Morlock out of that thing>"

""It's from an old novel called The Time Machine. There's a group of underground monsters in it called Morlocks."" - p 122

One of the nicer touches in Rite of Passage is the taking of horses to the colonized planets:

"When the colonies were settled, they took horses to work and ride, because tractors and heli-pacs have such a low reproductive rate." [They'd reproduce better if reproduction were as pleasurable for them as it is for humans.] "There weren't any opportunities to set up industries on the colonies, simply time enough to drop people and enough supplies to give them a fair chance to survive. Then the ships would head back to Earth for another load and another destination. Those supplies included very little in the way of machines because machines wear out in a few years. They did include horses." - p 60

Panshin's protagonist is female. He has her give this herstory:

"Like the girl who first found out how to make fire, like the girl who invented the principle of the lever, like the girl who first had the courage to eat moldy goat cheese and found Roquefort, I had discovered something absolutely new in the world. Self-confidence, perhaps." - p 93

I reckon we have no way of knowing who figured out "how to make fire" so it might've been a girl. Wikipedia tells this story "Legend has it that the cheese was discovered when a youth, eating his lunch of bread and ewes' milk cheese, saw a beautiful girl in the distance. Abandoning his meal in a nearby cave, he ran to meet her. When he returned a few months later, the mold (Penicillium roqueforti) had transformed his plain cheese into Roquefort." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefort ) - but that's only a legend. Finally, there's no conclusive evidence regarding the origin of levers either:

"Levers have been used since prehistoric times for cultivation, excavation, and moving large objects. Such implements as hoes, slings, and oars were conceived and constructed to enhance human effort.

"As early as 5000 B.C.E., a simple balance scale employing a lever was used to weigh gold and other items. A Greek device called a steelyard improved on these simple scales by adding a sliding weight to enhance precision. Around 1500 B.C.E., the shaduf, a forerunner of the crane, made its appearance in Egypt and India as a device for lifting containers of water.[1]

"The earliest extant writings regarding levers date from the third century B.C.E. and were provided by Archimedes—behind his famous remark Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth stands a correct mathematical principle of levers (quoted by Pappus of Alexandria) and of the various methods possibly used by builders." - http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lever

Ergo, the protagonist might be correct. Personally, I prefer sentences such as 'Like the person who first found out how to make fire' but I think Panshin's way of putting thoughts in his protagonist's head is an effective challenge to POVs such as the legend recounted above.

Panshin also manages to squeeze in Ethics:

"Ethics is the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with conduct, questions of good and evil, right and wrong."

[..]

"Skipping the history and development of utilitarianism, the most popular expression of the doctrine is "the greatest good for the greatest number," which makes it sound like its relative, the economic philosophy communism which, in a sense, is what we live with in the Ship. The common expression of utilitarian good is "the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain."

"Speaking descriptively, utilitarianism doesn't hold true, though the utilitarian claims that it does. People do act self-destructively at times—they know the pleasureful and choose the painful instead." - p 148

"The trouble with stoicism, it seems to me, is that it is a soporific. It affirms the status quo and thereby puts an end to all ambition, all change. It says, as Christianity did a thousand years ago, that kings should be kings and slaves should be slaves, and it seems to me that that is a philosophy infinitely more attractive to the king than the slave." - p 152

I find these 'youthful' philosophical musings interesting. It seems to me that any system, philosophical or otherwise, isn't going to be apropos for ever situation it's applied to. As such, a flexible philosophy that helps a person decide what an appropriate response is in the time best-suited for the degree of urgency is desirable.

& then there's the politics:

"Mr. Persson said, "As you know, our past policy has been to hand only as little technical information out to the planets as possible, and then only in return for material considerations." - p 246

Ah, yes, well that particular philosophy turned out to be pretty Draconian.. but I won't spoil it. A good read, I enjoyed it, I don't much care, I'll forget it in a wk or 2.
… (meer)
 
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tENTATIVELY | 27 andere besprekingen | Apr 3, 2022 |

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Werken
26
Ook door
26
Leden
2,169
Populariteit
#11,840
Waardering
½ 3.7
Besprekingen
51
ISBNs
58
Talen
7
Favoriet
6

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