Re: Hammer's Slammers [VERY LONG POST!]

On Aug 20, 1997 at 5:36:53 PM, Allan Goodall <agoodall@sympatico.ca>
wrote:

> _Cross the Stars_ is periferally a Slammers book. It involves one of
the 
> members of the Slammers who is also an aristocrat on his home planet.
I 
> remember enjoying it but let's be honest here, it's Homer's The
Odyssey 
> repackaged as an SF combat story. 

No honesty needed, er, Drake doesn't claim anything else.  In fact, I
believe 
his exact words in the intro are "let's be honest here, it's Homer's The

Odyssey repackaged as an SF combat story".  <grin>

This is not the last time Drake has retold a myth as science fiction,
nor is 
he the only one to retell old myths, in science fiction or other genres.
 In 
the afterword to _Northworld_, for example, he states that it is based
on 
Icelandic myth.  

As a sidenote, he also peripherally mentions "the best professor" he
ever had, 
Jonathan Goldstein of the University of Iowa's Department of History. 
By the 
time I took took Goldstein's "National and Religious Resistance to
Ancient 
Empires" 15 or so years later as a UI History major.  Goldstein was
certainly 
brilliant, but between the pain medication for his bad back and his age,
I'm 
not convinced he was always on the same plane of consciousness as the
rest of 
us, if you get my drift.

For extra credit:
GIVEN the following:
1) there were five people in the class;
2) I was one of two students taking it for a grade;
3) No more than three students ever showed up at one time;
4) my attendance was the best in the class.

Calculate the chances that, one day, I would be the only student who
showed up 
for class. <grin> [He came in and lectured as if it were a full
auditorium.]

-- Chris Weuve	 [My opinions, not my employer's.]
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