Re: Genre Study 2: Fantasy


2 May 1995 15:34:27 GMT

In article <GDR11.95Apr30164738@stint.cl.cam.ac.uk>,
Gareth Rees <gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>MeiTien <meitien@aol.com> wrote:
>> I have been reading all your posts and downloaded the authorship and
>> read that also. It helped me a lot. But, I wonder why there is no
>> mention of any asian favored fantasy or subjects? Has IF been focused
>> strictly on western cultures due to its highly language dependent art?
>
>Have you played Erica Sadun's AGT game "The Sound of One Hand Clapping"?
>It isn't authentically Eastern, but it does attempt to capture some of
>the right flavour.

Well, I beg to differ. You're right in that "One Hand Clapping" "isn't
authentically Eastern". However, it's not really an "attempt to capture
some of the right flavour". In the author's own words, its a piece
of "Chinoiserie"; what she's trying to capture is not the "eastern way
of thinking" (if there is such a thing) but the Western notion of
Eastern thinking. This may sound like splitting hairs, but it's really
quite importanta: the world in "One Hand Clapping" isn't really Chinese,
nor is it meant to be; it's an idealized China created by Western
imagination. (The reason I can write this is that I've asked the
author about what I perceived to be inconsistencies and got basically
the above answer).

It would be really interesting to see what a person with a real Chinese
or Japanese background has to say about "One Hand Clapping"... If you're
interested in my own, very "Western" and Eurocentric opinions, please
read my review in the latest issue of SPAG.

Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se) / yacc computer club, Lund, Sweden
Work: Innovativ Vision AB, Linkoping (magnus.olsson@ivab.se)
Old adresses (may still work): magnus@thep.lu.se, thepmo@selund.bitnet
PGP key available via finger (to df.lth.se) or on request.