M&D--Spoilers

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Gershom Bazerman writes of the slave Gershom in M&D:






























3. It means "Stranger in a Strange Land," so perhaps the whole thing is
more of a nod to Heinlein

I haven't gotte this far yet, but its meaning is literal in the case of
an African slave, wouldn't you say?



I have been enjoying M&D all along, as I'm able to get to it, but as
I approach 200 pages (slow reader indeed!), some things stand out--
Mason's descent to view Jenkins' Ear that echoes Alice's descent into
Wonderland.

The delightfully sly wit of Mason twitting the locals in the pub about
the "lost" 11 days of the Gregorian calendar.  This chapter struck me
especially because I think in GR, TRP would have presented the fantasy
as an overt riff, like the story of Byron the Bulb or the pinballs
from Katzpiel.  Here, the fantasy has a similar force but it also says
something about Mason's apparently stolid character that he could come
up with such a tease.  It also works in an American context--even today,
one can encounter Letters to the Editor that look askance at how
Daylight Savings Time has fiddled with God's Laws!



One more thing about the Transit of Venus--I found interesting the process
of the "filament" that apparently attaches the planet to the edge of the
sun's disk until the last moment.  I think there's more significance to
this fact as well, but I'll need to reread to verify.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)