Random Thoughts XIII - Radioenergopithecocracy

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This forum is a time capsule. This was posted... 17 years ago. Found it by chance while looking for something else :)
 
another dog thing . The owner seems/sounds embrassed , because ı heard her calling the dog back . Had moved sideways and it still gets triggered . If the owner is embrassed and it is unleashed , well , it apparently only thinks of attacking me . Only thing ı can say is that maybe the owner should consider a second leash on her waist , if the black one calls for her right arm .
 
There was a book I read years ago in which someone invents a device that lets them change history*. It's not exactly a time-machine, in the usual sense, because it doesn't let the character travel back through time. Rather, the invention allows them to kind of reach back through time and meddle with events, while remaining in the present. But after they mess around with history, they realize that everything is worse, and they spend the rest of the book trying to undo what they did. Of course the concept of alternate, parallel universes has really been in vogue lately (although it's not a new idea**).

Do you ever wonder if we're living in the weird, alternate-history universe where something got screwed up and events unfolded in some totally bizarre way they shouldn't have? Or maybe there was that odd, 1-in-a-million chance of something strange happening, but with a million chances, somebody had to get the 1, and it was us? Like, if you could look at the nearest 999,999 universes, you'd think 'hey, how come they all have _____, and we don't?'



* Had to look it up. It was Making History (1996), by Stephen Fry. I remember finding it so funny, I was worried people around me would think I was having some kind of fit.
** I think the first 'multiverse' movie might have been It's a Wonderful Life (1946).
 
There was a book I read years ago in which someone invents a device that lets them change history*. It's not exactly a time-machine, in the usual sense, because it doesn't let the character travel back through time. Rather, the invention allows them to kind of reach back through time and meddle with events, while remaining in the present. But after they mess around with history, they realize that everything is worse, and they spend the rest of the book trying to undo what they did. Of course the concept of alternate, parallel universes has really been in vogue lately (although it's not a new idea**).

Do you ever wonder if we're living in the weird, alternate-history universe where something got screwed up and events unfolded in some totally bizarre way they shouldn't have? Or maybe there was that odd, 1-in-a-million chance of something strange happening, but with a million chances, somebody had to get the 1, and it was us? Like, if you could look at the nearest 999,999 universes, you'd think 'hey, how come they all have _____, and we don't?'



* Had to look it up. It was Making History (1996), by Stephen Fry. I remember finding it so funny, I was worried people around me would think I was having some kind of fit.
** I think the first 'multiverse' movie might have been It's a Wonderful Life (1946).
Afaik it is also the theme of P.K. Dick's Valis. The timeline was distorted and is now a dystopia, with almost everyone having repressed the real present.
 
Afaik it is also the theme of P.K. Dick's Valis. The timeline was distorted and is now a dystopia, with almost everyone having repressed the real present.
Never read that one. I'll have to look for it.

EDIT: Hey, you just reminded me about The Man in the High Castle. Wasn't there something in that story about a myserious newsreel that depicted the Allies winning the war and celebrating "V-E Day" that the underground was trying to find? My memory is hazy. I haven't read that in a while. I might be conflating the book with the Amazon tv series, which I think I only watched a few eps of.
 
No :)
Feel free to suggest ones you like. I think I've read 5 or something like that.
I think they're best read in order. Or at least the first few stories, and one of the books ('The Confessions of Father Brown' or some name like that). The rest can be safely disregarded chronologically
 
Iirc I've read the following:
The Invisible Man
Oracle of the Dog
The Arrow of Heaven
The Secret Garden

Chesterton is a capable writer, and for me it's better that he doesn't care much about the story being believable as something to have happened. He primarily is about the style and elegance.
Helps that he can write far better than Doyle and Christie. But Doyle barely could write, so there's that ^^

The Arrow of Heaven is the best example of the above, in that it simply doesn't work as a detective story (everyone would have immediately suspected the same person), but works as a literary one due to the incorporation of the Indian war anecdote.
The Secret Garden has a similar situation (but more convoluted). I didn't like the reveal, apart from the technical part of it, and felt that the murderer would never have allowed for such exposure.
 
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Helps that he can write far better than Doyle and Christie. But Doyle barely could write, so there's that ^^
Doyle one of my favourite writers :( Have you read his historical fiction? The White Company stories and the Brigadier Gerard ones?

There is one Chesterton story, I forget its name, set in an exotic river trip in Italy, the story feels like a semi-dream demi-fairytale as well feels like Father Brown stumbled onto a Poe story.

There is another set in an exclusive dining club. It's titled 'The Twelve Tradespeople' or something. I found its central conceit clever, and Chesterton's commentary was very amusing (as it usually is).

Chesterton is a very artistic writer. He knows how to paint a picture, knows how best to achieve the effect of grotesqueness without it feeling like something from a penny dreadful.
 
I have read very few stories by Doyle, apart from a couple of Holmes ones it was the scifi/horror tales, like the one with the creatures living above the clouds :)
So I am in no means an expert on him, and it is very likely some other of his works would have made a better impression to me as well.

Chesterton is artistic, yes. One of his fans was a prominent mathematically oriented entertainer/"magician", Martin Gardner. Borges has written a few articles on Chesterton - it was there I got the incentive to read the Invisible Man.

I will have a look at the Twelve Tradespeople (if I can find it; indeed it seems the title was something else).
 
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