Re: Needle (was Re: A different trans****tation threada (Re: Aside

Mike stone wrote:
> "Mike Stone" <mwstone@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>
news:b0f3f648-d525-4bfa-9c04-9f371516c72b@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On May 4, 9:22?pm, "Dan Tilque" <dtil...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Yes. As somebody once said on another thread, it has a kind of
>> "timeless" air to it. In that, imho, it rather resembles _The Day of
>> the Triffids_. Both are in some ways _more_ topical now than >when
theywere
> written.
> 
> 
> Just had a couple more thoughts on the "dated" question.
> 
> Hunting round google groups just before rasw disappeared from it, I
> discovered an earlier review of _Needle_, in which someone thought it
dated
> because a person growing into adolescence seems to have no problem with
a
> being inhabiting his body and observing his every action.
> 
> Personally, though, I suspect this has more to do with the personalities
> than the times. Clement's juvenile characters (almost always male) are
> pretty consistently extrovert types, not given to self-consciousness or
> sensitivity. In this, I suspect they reflect Clement himself. Wasn't he
a
> scoutmaster or something? So perhaps it isn't so surprising.
> 
> Mention of adolescence, however, brings me on to a glaringly "dated"
aspect
> of the book, on which nobody (myself included up to now) has so far
> commented. The complete absence of girls.
> 
> Offhand, I can only recall two female characters in _Needle_. Bob's
mother
> appears a few times, but is barely more than a voice off stage, a bit
like
> the narrator's wife in Wells' _War of the Worlds_.  Miss Rand, the
resident
> nurse at Bob's school, is at least named, but makes only a very brief
> appearence in Ch 4. Apart from them, the cast (as in much sf of that
> vintage) is exclusively male. As far as the opposite *** is concerned,
Bob
> might as well have remained at his boarding school [1].
> 
> Not that Bob seems to mind. He is fifteen, but still isn't showing the
> slightest interest in girls, and if any of his friends do we are never
told
> about it [2]. They seem to take an all-male "universe" for granted.
> 
> I find it curious that commentators have been so slow to remark on this.
Is
> it something we take so much for granted in older sf that we simply
don't
> notice it?
> 
> 
> 
> [1] I'm not sure if we are ever actually _told_ that the school is for
boys
> only, but given the era I think this can probably be assumed.
> 
> [2] A modern novelist might offer an explanation for it, but in 1949 one
> there was of course no question of _that_.
> 
> --
> 
> Mike Stone - Peterborough, England
> 
> You can tell what God thinks of money by looking at the people He
> gives it to.

Could this not be because they were irrelevant to plot? I read _Needle_ 
less than 3 months back, & was thinking only of the boy, his alien host, 
& the alien fugitive. All other characters were sort of background.

This outlook may also be individual specific, of course.

Thing that I found most curious in the story was, however, the ease with 
which the fugitive was caught. He had time, & chose to stay on the 
island! How likely would detection have been had he really moved around 
earth & ended up in a little village in Peru, say?

-- 
"Most of the matter in the universe is at temperatures so high that no 
chemical compounds can exist, and the atoms themselves are stripped of 
all but their inner electron screens."
- "Castaway" by Arthur Clarke
<http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/2008/01/arthur-clarke-castaway-short-story.html>