John Barnes

Comment Threads

• paws4thot commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  Since Hetermeles was supporting my argument, I was putting my timeline on it. I intend to investigate some of the other variations of the story too. Incidentally, it's also a videogame series (Japanese style story-led RPG) under the name Suikoden....
• Heteromeles commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  I was referring to the Water Margin novel, which was probably written in the early 14th Century. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written in the 14th century as well. It's worth noting that this novel became part of the mythology of later martial arts groups (The Romance of Three Kingdoms also inspired rituals (link). This shouldn't be surprising, really. Modern pagans use the Arthurian mythos (particularly the holy grail) as a source of myths, and Thomas Mallory wrote Le Morte d'Arthur in 1485, about 150 years after The Water Margin is thought to have been written. This rather...
• Bravo Lima Poppa 3 commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  And outside of the action genre, China began creating detective fiction about the same time as Europe did....
• JamesPadraicR commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  This rather pre-dates the whole western genre, since they were both written before Columbus even got to the Americas. Which was what I assumed your point to be--though I was thinking of them predating motion pictures. Basically paws4thot's comment was a "There's a movie of that?" kind of moment for me, or I thought it might be the other way 'round for him....
• paws4thot commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  Ah, I see. Ok, I wasn't actively aware of the movie of the "legend of the 108 heroes", but I was aware of it being traditional Chinese folk tales, a Tv series, at least one novel and the basis of at least 5 computer games. The "romance of the 3 kingdoms" I was also aware of being a whole series of computer games, and several films. Either way, I knew that both pre-date St Brendan the Navigator's visit to North America....