09-22-2018, 10:31 AM | #121 | |
Grand Sorcerer
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If animal clones were infertile, fine, I wouldn't question why sterility was mentioned. But they're not. However, I would still question why he mentioned sex with non-clones and then did nothing with it. |
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09-22-2018, 10:40 AM | #122 |
cacoethes scribendi
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That was not my intention. It's what I write, and most of the time it's what I read.
Genres exist because certain standards/conventions/traditions have evolved that categorise the results - not perfectly but enough that most resellers use recognisably similar sets of genre names. In general, what doesn't fit into commonly recognised genres is either called a mash-up or gets lumped into "Literary" fiction. My own definition of Literary fiction is fiction in which the rules of genre are set aside (or not followed as assiduously as normal). As I mentioned earlier, I think an author takes additional risks when choosing to write Literary fiction, because the rules of the various genres help to keep your work in a form that readers are familiar with and are prepared to enjoy. None of this makes genre fiction necessarily easier to write or of a lesser quality than Literary fiction, but by definition it does make it conventional (to a greater or lesser extent). |
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09-22-2018, 11:12 AM | #123 |
cacoethes scribendi
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I think I will leave our conversation about the book there. I did read your response, but I cannot think of anything to add on my side that I have not already said. Saying it again is unlikely to be more convincing so it's going to be another case of unresolved disagreement between us ... but thank you for the discussion.
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09-22-2018, 06:52 PM | #124 | |||
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IThis is the problem. It was so irrelevant to the author that he did little more than reveal it. But to some readers it was very relevant. Catlady for one. |
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09-22-2018, 07:20 PM | #125 | |
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I use the genre fiction label for one purpose only. When I see the label and I'm interested I take a much closer look before deciding to read it, and decide not to more often. An interesting topic, but perhaps one for its own thread rather than this one. |
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10-09-2018, 08:34 AM | #126 |
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As usual, I haven’t read any other views on the book yet so as not to be influenced. I picked this book up with a sense of anticipation, expecting something a bit special, something moving and engaging. I felt let down in all respects. Not to say that it was a bad book. On the contrary, it was well written with an intriguing concept. It just didn’t deliver in the way I expected it to. I never felt a sense of jeopardy or risk on behalf of the protagonists, and I didn’t really feel invested in their stories or the relationships. But what really surprised me was that there was no sense of outrage or challenge from the characters when they found out what their destiny was. I thought the story would become one of a fight back again the inequities of their situation, or maybe at least a flight from it. What I did not expect was the mild acquiescence. Yes, it felt a bit sad, but when the characters don’t seem to feel strongly about the unfairness they face, how can the reader really get invested?
I gave it 3 stars for being well written, but found it ultimately disappointing. |
10-09-2018, 09:03 AM | #127 | |
o saeclum infacetum
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One thing that occurred to me that I don't think has been mentioned is to what extent the clones might accept their destiny because that is how they got a life at all? That the good moments might justify their dreadful destiny? |
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10-09-2018, 10:58 AM | #128 |
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I think that’s a very good point. They did seem to accept they were lucky to be there, and that there purpose was to be harvested. But what I don’t get is that in most other ways they seemed to experience the human condition, so why would they acquiesce so easily? I just don’t think Ishiguru really made the case.
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10-09-2018, 11:39 AM | #129 |
Wizard
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Interesting thought. Maybe passivity is a selection criteria for who gets selected for cloning. As this is presented as a mature system maybe the early generations had the issues and they have since perfected the selection criteria to minimize the number of aggresive (?), motivated (?), rebelious (?) clones.
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10-09-2018, 01:12 PM | #130 |
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Am I remembering correctly that all we're told about the "originals" of the clones is that they're from the dregs of society, including law-breakers. Seems to me that those who break the law would tend to be more rebellious than those who don't.
As for the program being mature and maybe deliberately selecting for passivity, it can't be all that mature if it started post-WWII (I think I remember that), considering that the first crop of clones would have needed some 20 years to grow up, and the story is set in the 1990s. |
10-09-2018, 01:21 PM | #131 |
o saeclum infacetum
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I think that they're cloned from the dregs is a theory of the clones, but they do seem to know things on some level, so I'm willing to take that as a given. Speculation: the process could be highly unpleasant for the donor, hence a form of societal punishment.
I think the Occam's Razor explanation would be that there was something about the cloning process itself that resulted in more passive entities. |
10-09-2018, 01:32 PM | #132 | |
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It seems to be just another indication of how the author failed to have a coherent, consistent backdrop for the story he wanted to tell--whatever that story was. |
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10-09-2018, 01:38 PM | #133 |
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There's very little science at all in this book. As for the passivity, I think we have any one of several explanations, the simplest being drugging. Or some manipulation of the cloning process or the genes during the cloning process, or conditioning from birth/hatching/decanting (whatever it's called.) It doesn't really matter how it's achieved.
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10-09-2018, 02:36 PM | #134 | |
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It shows laziness and/or disdain for the reader, neither of which this reader finds acceptable. |
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10-09-2018, 02:48 PM | #135 |
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I don't agree in a general sense, though I understand that might not work for you. The book isn't about the science, so any details on it is extraneous to the core of the book. Or, at least that's my perception of it. No, this isn't a science fiction book, though it's not set in our current world. Could he have written it as a pure SF book? Certainly. But it would have been a different book, with a different raison d'etre. Would I have liked it better? Hard to imagine I would have liked it less. But clearly that was not the author's intent, and I'm willing to grant that he didn't allow himself to get distracted from the main point.
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