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[John M. Krafft]

From:	MIAVX2::JMKRAFFT     "John M. Krafft"  9-MAR-1992 20:58:53.19
To:	
CC:	JMKRAFFT    
Subj:	Re: Pynchon, Burroughs, Gibson

X-News: miavx2 alt.cyberpunk:622
From: williams at herky.cs.uiowa.edu (Kent Williams)
Subject:Re: Pynchon, Burroughs, Gibson
Date: 6 Mar 92 15:39:18 GMT
Message-ID:<11340 at ns-mx.uiowa.edu>

>From article <1992Mar6.042820.26291 at u.washington.edu>, by tmaddox at milton.u.washington.edu (Tom Maddox):
> 	My suspicion is that Gibson would find the key term of comparison
> as meaningless as I do.  If one Pynchon equals ten-fifteen Gibsons, then 
> what does one Joyce equal?  One Faulkner?  One Shakespeare?  One Delany?
> And who gets to set the terms of comparison?
> 

Oh come now.  Don't you know that you CAN rate writers?  The trick is
to place them in the complex plane.  Then plot a Mandelbrot set over
the plane.  The Boring writers are definitely outside the Mandelbrot
Set (in the big colored bits).  The Bad writers are definitely IN the
Mandelbrot Set (The black lake in the middle).  The interesting
writers are at the boundary between the two.  Goodness or badness is
an iteratively defined function.

Any more questions?

--
Kent Williams         | "Do you see your cerebellum as a lightbulb or a cog? I
williams at cs.uiowa.edu | saw mine as gristle so I fed it to the dog. But it 
Quote: Bevis Frond    | taste so bad, that she left it in the bowl ..."