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Reged: Feb 16 2004
Posts: 1056
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This thread is for comments about Niels Bohr and the Sleeping Dane, by Jonathon Sullivan
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Marguerite
New user
Reged: Mar 13 2005
Posts: 19
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I love this. Part 1 of 2? Such luck, to get to read more! And such frustration, not to read it immediately!
When I read the sentences "But the wisdom was there, quiet and profound, like clean water pouring out of a rocky cave. I like to think that, even if I had not known him as the man who had resurrected the corpse of Rutherford's atom and made it dance to the strange music of Planck and Einstein, I would have loved him the moment I saw him." I knew it wouldn't be ordinary.
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Anonymous
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Forgive the nitpicking, but the word 'goyim' is plural. One would say he had adopted the dress of a goy, or the dress of the goyim, but not the dress of a goyim. Also, one would speak of a nation of golems, not a nation of golem. Finally, even to speak of a person having the face of G-d sounds somewhat blasphemous, and to speak of having the face of Yaweh sounds positively wierd -- at least to me.
AFAIK, you use the terms used in Jewish mysticism correctly, but I personally don't get the feeling that you understand the concepts.
Though the idea is intriguing, the story itself is difficult for me to read, as are all stories of the holocaust.
Zvi the Fiddler
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Anonymous
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"you use the terms used in Jewish mysticism correctly"
How do you know when they're used correctly or incorrectly when it's all bunk? If it actually worked, THEN you could say it was used correctly.
Mysticism is a crutch of rotten wood, or fertilizer in the garden of fools.
It can make for good fiction, though.
Isn't the holocaust evidence enough that there is no god? That no supernatural force will intervene? We're on our own. The swastika was a cross, the Nazis "crusaders," and Hitler a mystic. And they acted rather like the jews of the Pentateuch, who slaughtered men, women, and children with the same "god-given" sense of righteousness.
Religion teaches superstition and hatred, and it -- more than anything else -- helps to perpetuate our inhumanity.
It is more than unnecessary. It is harmful.
Hans Weber
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Jed Hartman
Fiction Editor
Reged: Oct 15 2003
Posts: 151
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Sorry about the "goyim"/"goy" issue; our proofreaders caught that, but we somehow didn't make the correction before the story went live. I've now corrected that, and we'll go back over the proofreaders' other comments to see if we missed anything else.
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Anonymous
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I'm loving this! Sullydog rocks! I'm very much looking forward to part 2
- Sandra McDonald
P.S. I think there's a typo: exhilirating should be exhilarating.
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Anonymous
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Quote:
Religion teaches superstition and hatred, and it -- more than anything else -- helps to perpetuate our inhumanity.
It is more than unnecessary. It is harmful.
This is a never-ending debate on another board I frequent, and while I'm an atheist myself I just can't agree with this position.
One of the darker sides of human nature is our tendency to tribalism, our instinct to find ways of defining "the other", and then to treat the other as somehow less worthy of decent treatment than the like. While I have a feeling that most evolutionary psychology amounts to little more than just-so stories, it's quite possible to imagine how in a tribal situation an instinct that "your" people are better than others leads to your behaviour preferentially benefitting genes related to yours.
Religion merely provides one among many ways to define those in- and out-groups, it is not the group-forming instinct itself. Followers of utterly secular political ideologies do it. Sports fans do it. SF fans do it.
What's needed is compassion for others, a realisation that everyone in the world is just as human as everyone else. That can coexist quite happily with religion -- most religions in fact teach it quite strongly, however poorly some followers live up to it -- and the absence of religion far from guarantees it.
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Jed Hartman
Fiction Editor
Reged: Oct 15 2003
Posts: 151
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Thanks, Sandra! Glad you're liking it.
And thanks much for pointing out the typo. Fixed now. One of the nice things about publishing online is that we can go back and fix mistakes like that even after the story goes live....
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Anonymous
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Then you might want to know about another typo, in Part 1: "And maddening, because I wasn't pat of it."
I presume that should be "part of it."
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Anonymous
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The story amazed me with it's language, I also enjoyed it's plot and the whole story..
But it also brought me to some "ideological" collision. Among definitions of science fiction genre i prefer one given by a russian sci-fi author, "Science fiction is taradiddle which doesn't sham being truth". E.g. if a book includes telepathy, it's an invention of the author, and though I (a student of "physical" university) like "playing" in the world of the book, it's purely a game; such a book is harmless for my world outlook(except things which concern people(call it "psychology") -- the core of good science fiction books). On the contrary, the story being discussed has deep roots -- in Judaism with history of two thousand years and Science (not fiction!!)which lies in the core of our civilization.. It looks plausible when it says about physics, history or psychology.. Though I am ignorant in religion, i suppose that "Golem idea" is acceptable from the point of view of Judaism which is an ancient myth that tends to EXPLAIN world the first thing(may be this story would be worthy being a new chapter in Bible, hehe).
The thing is that the story doesn't only LOOK LIKE truth, but it illustrates a really truly idea of intertwining different culturies with further enrichment of both ones.. It's no way a science fiction story for me. It is imaginative literature with hyperboles which help to impress the main idea.
Evgeniy.
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