And for anyone worried about telepathic Lensmen invading privacy, the Arisians are worse. They know what you're going to do out on your little podunk planet at the edge of the galaxy centuries before you actually do it, if they care to. That ship has quite thoroughly sailed.
]]>Remember, the Arisians had their agenda just like the Eddorians.
]]>Thing is, back in the 50's as a child, I knew these women existed, at the same time that there was much (to quote le Guin) breast-beating & territory-spraying about how women could not possibly be commercial airline pilots (or anything alse, much, actually. And wondering... "you what, uh? but didn't ... " etc
]]>"Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a German aviator, Nazi test pilot, and the only woman awarded the Iron Cross First Class and the Luftwaffe Pilot/Observer Badge in Gold with Diamonds during World War II. She set over forty aviation altitude and endurance records during her career, both before and after World War II, and several of her international gliding records still stand in 2012. In the 1960s she founded a gliding school in Ghana, where she worked for Kwame Nkrumah."
]]>i> I'd suggest that mainstream literature is trained to be terrified and envious of science at universities, where (very unfortunately), the humanities are funded in some large part by grant overheads from the biomedical and engineering schools. Usually referred to as; "Physics Envy"
And so, so true. Even more visible in governments & civil services everywhere.
Just to prove that the loonies are running the asylum .... F'rinstance we now have a minister of science & technology who is professionally incompetent to the point of criminal negligence & irresponsibility. I.E. He is unfit to hold office - ANY office.
Look up: Greg Clark, Minister of State for Science. And call for his removal from Parliament, on the grounds of insanity RIGHT NOW - please?
]]>Humanities classes are actually much cheaper than science or engineering classes, usually. It's just a teacher, some desks, and some books. There's no need for hands-on experience with a million-dollar infinitive splitter, and literature Ph.D.s work cheaply. Heating in the chemistry labs probably costs more than the entire English department at most universities (it's the fume hoods).
Grant overheads don't go to humanities classes, they go to university administrators. Naturally, this leaves humanities departments without a lot of support in higher management.
]]>If the numbers are hard to find, they look bad. If they looked good, they'd be in every press release. That's a fairly good rule about organizational statistics.
]]>But then, with Lensmen it might be a question of historical context; the 30s is not that lon after the establishment of modern international drug legislation, and if you look up some of the surroundings of the first Opium Conference and like,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InternationalOpiumConvention
quite some impetus came from the US, explained as the first decolonized nation helping the other colonies against the exploiting imperial powers. Of course, this also meant the USA was forced to intervent, e.g. in the Philipines, and create its own kinda empire, but I digress.
If we view it that way, the Galactic Patrol becomes some kind of League of Nations (one could argue somewhat perverted), and the leader of Boskone having a German name in the 30s, well...
On another note, sitting in Italy with a laptop with a broken keyboard and a 7 inch tablet, it hurts, so I guess it'll be some time till I join in the party again. It's not to bad, though, but I still wish I had made some remark to the guy reading "Atlas Shrugged" in the ER waiting room of the local hospital:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Italy
But then, Ayn Rand wasn't that consistent, either...
]]>That proves it's hard SF!
]]>