Notes on The Pursuit of the Pankera (2)

[nancylebov]

https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Pankera-Parallel-Novel-Universes-ebook/dp/B082838YYY

Chapter V:

Deety decides to wear clothes and there is discussion of how to treat husbands. There may be women like that. I'm not one of them and I thought it was sort of wearisome.

Hilda is forty-five, which is younger than I expected.

Chapter VI

Jake talks with Jane. The bit about Jane (who is dead being more real than the reader is quite interesting in terms of the later part (at least in NotB) about fictons, fictional universes, being real. And the the earlier stuff about the importance of pulp magazines also fits in.

More about wearing clothes or not. More about pleasing spouses. Ghu knows, it's important for married or otherwise coupled people to be good to each other, but I'm not sure that's naturalistic way of talking or thinking about it.

Breakfast "was a gourmet specialty that would enrage a Cordon Bleu chef". Would it really? I have no idea, and I don't get as much fun out of the idea of outraging people as I used to. Sounds like an excellent breakfast, though.

"Are men and women one race? I know what biologists say— say— but history is loaded with “scientists” jumping to conclusions from superficial evidence. It seems to me far more likely that they are symbiotes. I am not speaking from ignorance; I was one trimester short of a BS in biology (and a straight-A student)"

I've wondered what Heinlein had in mind when he wrote that-- I expect he had a specific theory.

"I am strong for women’s rights but was never taken in by unisex nonsense. I don’t yearn to be equal; Sharpie is as unequal as possible, with all the perks and bonuses and special privileges that come from being one of the superior sex."

"Who's in charge here?" is one of Heinlein's biggest themes. He's the only author I know of who *likes* manipulative women so long as they're of good will, and he apparently thought a lot of them are of good will.

"Some people don’t let their left hands know what their right hands are doing. Zebbie doesn’t let his thumb know what his fingers are doing.”

After complaining about a lot of the humor, I feel obliged to say I like that bit.

I'm comprehensively squicked by the extent to which Hilda was concealing her intelligence.

The part about additional dimensions reminds me of part of Egan's Diaspora-- characters spend some time in a higher dimensional universe, but can remember it when they get back. I'd like Elf Hill.

I have no idea why Revelations was included in the Christian Bible. For a while I thought that the number of the beast on the hand and forehead which was needed to buy and sell was an example of very early science fiction, but I've since decided it was a satire of Roman bureaucracy and control. On the other hand, there's a lot of overlap between satire and science fction.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

I don't think Revelation was intended precisely as satire, but more as an encoded message to people who wanted to throw off Roman rule. There are a lot of theories about the number of the Beast. Roman names could be read as numeric encodings, and Nero supposedly worked out to 666.

As for why it was included in the Christian Bible, well, it certainly gives a spectacular finish to the book. It would have been a dud if it ended with the Epistle of Jude. :)

[carbonel]

The business about men and women being of separate races reminds of the bit in To Sail Beyond the Sunset where Maureen and her father are spending an evening with Mark Twain and he (to please her, she says) comes up with a riff on how redheads are clearly descended from cats, unlike the rest of the human race. That one was clearly not intended seriously, though.