I won’t dare comment on Adams in her presence!!!
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the great amphibian
5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase
Down to earth, yet not
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 December 2004
There are some scenes that stay in my memory from this book. One of these is when the adventuring trio raft across an underground ocean and have to stay on a raft in the midst of a fight between giant nemesis sea 'dinosaurs'. Another is when the narrator thinks that he has lost his companions and his torch breaks so he is left in the dark miles underground thinking that he is forever lost. I truly felt the fear of being lost to its extreme when reading this. He does manage to find the professor and Hans, but the means are about as crazy as so much in this book, (which is a quaint thing about the book). I think Jules Vernes does the "dare to be bad" thing with the unlikely things that happen, but he might have taken this too far and actually ended up by being a little bit bad because of these totally impossible and unbelievable things that happen or things which the travellers survive for a happy ending, (such as being ejected up from miles underground through the vent of a volcano and surviving). This is probably the most enjoyable and visual adventure story that I have read, and actually, although the things that happen are hard to believe, this is slightly in dream territory, and Vernes clearly had an appreciation for geology and things. I did an A-level in geology, and every time that I was going to object to one of his suggestions he would then justify it. (One of these was that I objected that under the earth it would be far too hot to survive, but Verne justifies this by saying that the protagonists go underground in a tunnel made of granite and hence the temperature gradient doesn't effect them much. At least he know which parts to justify. This must be one of the earliest science fiction books, and is sort of geological science fiction. Also, one thing that I falsely objected to is that going to the centre of the Earth is a totally ridiculous idea for a science fiction story because it is so far-fetched, but in the story the adventurers only actually stay within the Earth's crust, which although deep, is only a tiny distance in geological terms. This made things a lot more realistic. Also the exciting atmosphere of Iceland prior to their 'breach' of Earth's crust stays in my memory. If you like the sound of it, read this book.
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I thought they went to Galapagos or am I mixing up. No that's probably Galapagos come to think of itYes that's just it, and isn't Cat's Cradle set on a Pacific Island or am I misremembering?
The fascinating thing about the crystallisation process is the tension between the beauty of it and the fact it's killing everything, like being hypnotised by a steadily coiling snake. There's something similar going on with people like Giger and Antonioni and Lynch being transfixed by industrial machinery.
However, in doing so, they created a greater problem: the so-called "Greenfly" machines, self-replicating terraformers programmed to destroy every object in a solar system and reorganize them into trillions of vegetation-filled habitats that orbit the local star (behavior that is exactly the same as the threat described by the Shadows). The Inhibitors had kept them in check, but without the Inhibitors, the Greenfly are now out of control. Nothing the humans or Nestbuilders can do has stopped them. As such, humanity is evacuating towards the Pleiades.
I always thought it was weird how Crichton got away with simply rewriting his own novel and replacing cowboys with dinosaurs.Jurassic Park is part of this whole symbology too. Return of primordial, coldblooded, reptilian predators. Nature that natures, i.e. gets out of hand and can't be controlled, begins reproducing. The same way Weyland-Yutani keeps trying to control the xenomorph and failing. Genetic engineering fears. Lableak psychology.
With the Stath beating up triads? How so?That 90s film Safe maybe relevant here
Yes you saw it or yes you'll like it?Yes.
Re crystals, return to lizards... I recently learned that the central organising principle for ASNAC people (Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic) was "Frost and Fire".
Ie it was the central opposition, from which everything else derived.
From frost you get blue, crystal, brittle, sharp.
From fire, it's red, lava, soft, enveloping.
he means the todd haybes one with julianne moore?With the Stath beating up triads? How so?
Lmao no, with Julianne Moore and a buncha women catching a mysterious pathogen none of the men in their lives believe inWith the Stath beating up triads? How so?