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The remaining mystery books
Jun. 2nd, 2006 12:20 amin the statistically improbable phrases game were:
3. contour chair, real commanders, adhesive plaster, space eternal - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan
This was a funny one—most people guessed from the phrases that it was some pulpish 1930s thing, but the language was actually young Kurt Vonnegut's extravagant parody of that sensibility from 1959. "Real commanders" (as in "the real commanders of the Army of Mars") was the phrase that I thought would give this one away.
9. mercury drum, singularity sphere, control booth, telemann works - Kim Stanley Robinson, The Memory of Whiteness
The Memory of Whiteness seems to be one of Robinson's least-known novels, so I'm not surprised that nobody got it, but I'd have expected "mercury drum" to be a giveaway for anyone who had.
...And, perhaps interestingly, these novels are both odd futuristic tours of our solar system that deal strongly with notions of fate and predestination (though Vonnegut hits that theme even harder in Slaughterhouse-Five, which I've always thought would make an interesting paired reading with The Memory of Whiteness, Kate Nepveu style).
3. contour chair, real commanders, adhesive plaster, space eternal - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan
This was a funny one—most people guessed from the phrases that it was some pulpish 1930s thing, but the language was actually young Kurt Vonnegut's extravagant parody of that sensibility from 1959. "Real commanders" (as in "the real commanders of the Army of Mars") was the phrase that I thought would give this one away.
9. mercury drum, singularity sphere, control booth, telemann works - Kim Stanley Robinson, The Memory of Whiteness
The Memory of Whiteness seems to be one of Robinson's least-known novels, so I'm not surprised that nobody got it, but I'd have expected "mercury drum" to be a giveaway for anyone who had.
...And, perhaps interestingly, these novels are both odd futuristic tours of our solar system that deal strongly with notions of fate and predestination (though Vonnegut hits that theme even harder in Slaughterhouse-Five, which I've always thought would make an interesting paired reading with The Memory of Whiteness, Kate Nepveu style).