Conference noted::sf

You should read the trilogy he wrote: Inherit the Stars
				      The Gentle Giants of Gyanmede (sp?)
				      Giant's Star

The first is probably the best but you should read the rest to finish the 
story.

				*db*

I know what you mean about the characterizations that don't "sit well". The
usual english lit description would be "flat" or "cardboard" characters. This
is true of all the characters in "the two faces of tomorrow". I think there
are two recognizable facets of that:
	. the characters lack details of personality: visualizations of
	their persons, emotions, thoughts aren't there
	. the characters lack common sense: I refer to the ending, where 
	anybody with common sense would nuke the sucker! Read the ending, 
	and see if you agree.

Woody Greene

What does everyone think of "Code of the Lifemaker"?  All of Hogan's other
books have kept me for the entire book and then some... but this one I just
cannot get through... beginning is ok, but bogged down somewhere in the
middle... the entire setting is driven by what happens when an Artificial
Intelligence program get a bug in it and it decides that "evolution" is the
logical thing to start in a Robot.

Regards,
Dave

Dave, read "Code of the Lifemaker" all the way through.  It gets better. 

James Hogan left DEC a few years ago.  It's funny, but he was more prolific
when he worked here at DEC. 

He characters are weak, but that's more than offset by the way he puts all that
science into the science fiction.  "The Genesis Machine" was his first novel, I
don't think that was listed in the previous replies. 

Pat Sweeney 

Re; localized consciousness

	Pick up a copy of 'The Mind's I' by Dennet and Hofstaedter. It's
a collection of essays (stories, etc.) about the nature of consciousness.

	One essay 'Where am I' addresses the very question you pose about
computer nets, except that it suggests our consciousness is already
non-localized.

	He tells a tale about a guy who gets in an accident; they save
his brain, build him a robot body, but keep the brain at the lab. The
body is controlled by radio waves. The author says he feels like he
is 'in back of his eyes' but knows he's back at the lab.

	He then speculates about the consequences of having the right
hemisphere someplace and the left somewhere else ( again with every
normal connection transmitting an rf signal to a reciever on the other
side ). Location becomes more confused.

	Lastly, he envisions each individual neuron having it's own
transmitter and reciever. At that point, they could be spread around
any space ( possibly miles apart ) without disturbing one's sense of 
'placement'.

	A well written, far more entertaining than my above description,
thought experiment that does provoke some serious thoughts.

					- Karl

    Re 236.99
    
    If there is an element of caricature in my statement of his themes,
    it may be I have misunderstood him, but it may also be that I have
    simply distilled something spread diffusely through the novel.
    
    No, I don't particularly admit that the relations of science and
    religion during the Middle Ages resemble Hogan's caricature.  (I
    would, by the way, claim that the period being parodied is the
    Renaisaance, not the Middle Ages, but that's a trifle.)  Copernicus
    was himself a cleric, and was urged to publish by clerics.  He refused
    not for fear of the church, but for fear of the established
    universities.  Galileo was defended as well as prosecuted by clerics.
    Immediately after his trial, a cardinal flouted the orders of the
    Inquisition and made Galileo his guest, introducing him to a long
    list of scholars and celebrities, when the Inquisition had decreed
    he should be isolated.  The church has been pig-headed, but never
    THAT pig-headed.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

	On the other hand, from all the history I recall, Galileo
        *was* excommunicated for daring to advance science, and it
        was in fact relatively recently that the church decided maybe
        he was OK after all.
        
        Real life religion in fact tends to be *exactly* like the
        religion portrayed in *Lifemaker*, and to some extent the
        story was an effective criticism-through-parody.  It fell
        down, for me, simply because it wasn't a very good or original
        story, after the first few pages.  there just seemed to be
        too many forced, unnatural, and untennable parallels between
        their society and ours.  I have the same objection to some
        of Piers Anthony's "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series...
        particularly the bit about the whistlestop tour over the
        states of North Jupiter (the states of "Sunshine", "Show
        Me", etc.), was just too much to swallow.  Lifemaker gave
        me many of the same sensations.
        
        	/dave

    Well, I don't know enough history well enough to comment intelligently
    on this subject, and having already shot my mouth off I respectfully
    decline the opportunity to dig myself in deeper (if you'll pardon
    my mixed metaphors).  Perhaps Hogan is as guilty as I (and /dave?)
    of drawing a parody based on misconceptions.  It's certainly not
    the case that ALL religious devotees are religious out of "ignorance",
    and Hogan does seem to strongly imply that.  His characters ARE
    overdrawn (as I mentioned before, he makes all his military types
    look like total jerks), and his implicit philosophy does seem a
    little naive (i.e., if we were all rational we'd live together in peace
    and harmony forever).   Anyway, I don't read Hogan for philosophy
    - I have my own, and an SF novel may modify it but it's not likely
    to change it much, so I tend to ignore these kinds of issues when
    reading SF for enjoyment.  It's that "willful suspension of disbelief"
    issue again - some of us are willing to suspend more than others.
    
    len.
    

    I realize that this Hogan discussion is over a year old;
    however,being new to notes I had to put my two cents in.
    
    I am very suprised that more Digits did not pick up on
    Code of the Lifemaker. While Hogan's chracterization has always
    been flat this time he fails because of trying{I think}to 
    extend a parody too far that is obsure to most of his readers.
    Reread through some parts of it and than compare to DEC
    culture and anti-culture. Also to some of the War Stories
    of DEC.
    
    Think about it.