On Wed, 16 Aug 2006, Joshua Hutchinson wrote:

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----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Fawthrop" <hyphen@hyphenologist.co.uk>

Which happens quite often in the real world. My local library catalogues Jean Auel's, Earth's Children books http://www.geocities.com/auelpage/auel.html as Science Fiction :-( IMO Would be better Historical Fiction, or Historical Fantasy, or Fantasy

Actually, the idea that any one woman could invent so many fundamental, society shifting things in the course of a couple years ... that *is* science fiction. Stone-age science fiction, but science fiction.

(Add in the literary porn aspects and you can see why every nerd in high school read those books cover to cover!) ;)

Josh

Of course no one challenges the "fact" that Thales, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Diogenes, etc., could have made their changes. If they had lived so much earlier, couldn't they possibly have made much wider changes in societies less well developed? Each of the names mentioned above took what was available and added huge amounts more. . .couldn't it be that the earlier the more??? Just look at how many people like to challenge my own little changes made to the very young virtual world. Some already say I wasn't there, that my computer wasn't there, at least in their virtual space, as was written down on some scholar's list. Just think how much of that sort of thing will happen after I am gone. ;-))) But the eBooks will remain. . .and that's the whole point, proving it CAN be done. . . . Setting the foundations for others to build on. mh