Maureen’s Comments (group member since Mar 02, 2009)

Maureen’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Jennifer wrote: "at a red light yesterday i noticed i was behind a car with a license plate beginning with PFL. could it have been leanne marie? or maybe a hardcore fan? "

i'm guessing it was a member of the Pillow Fight League. :)

as for prescripton for love, when i get it from ben i think it goes to dan after me. but margaret had a copy too, i thought. not sure if that's in circulation or what...

Collapsing and Expanding Sub Folders

I'm sure you guys know this already but the triangles beside the sub folders indicate the expand/collapse utility: this means if you don't have an interest in Etymology and Language, for example, you can click on the triangle and the topics listed under it will be hidden from view. if you change your mind and decide that you do, after all, have a keen interest in Etymology and Language, you can go back and expand it again by clicking on that self-same triangle. handy, that. :)

Adrian wrote: "Dear Diary:

I just tried to use my moderator status to get a reservation at a fancy restaurant, but the host didn't know what I was talking about. Un-freakin-believable! The guy must have been ill..."

as if good would ever stand a chance. :P

Connie wrote: "I'm thinking of the pop oldie "Tin Man" by America. Would you think that pays homage to the book or the movie? Or are they too iconic to be separated?"

i think media tends to get all lumped together in our minds these days: for example, i'm not sure if shel was thinking of "don't come around here no more" as related to lit and tom petty but the song itself really has nothing to do with alice in wonderland -- it's just the music video that does. but that's the visual that's burned in our brains and inevitably associated with it. so i think for better or for worse, when most people picture dorothy they see judy garland. :)

hey shel:

i hear you about the clutter but i'm not sure if we should take this to email discussion. the idea of the democratic group means that people should be able to see these discussions, i think. certainly people are looking at these pages much more than they are looking at the discussion of UBIK -- have a look at the page views and you'll see what i mean. :)

we are still in early days yet, and i'm not sure people have all had the chance to login in and respond to these posts. i know we want to be efficient but not everybody is signing on regularly. maybe if people read this they can tell us whether they'd prefer us not to talk about it here, but as i said, it just doesn't make sense to me to pull the discussion away from the group. yes, a group email thing will definitely be good if we have to ban somebody in the future, and i wouldn't want to do THAT here. but otherwise? i don't know. it seems important for this to stay in the interests of open discussion and transparency.

:)

the other thing is, if people don't have an interest in a section of the group, they can just collapse it by clicking on the triangle beside the subfolder name -- and voila! group creation stuff disappears. :)

can we have a medium slow down? i am happy to have you organize everybody! certainly the plan when we moved over here was (and was corroborated by the poll) to have the responsibility for the group not devolve on one person (or two -- shel's been doing a lot, and should be acknowledged for all her hard work) but i just worry that the minute i'm not unemployed or shel's got a crisis on her hands that we'll be in the same boat we were in before. frankly, before patty and michael said they'd give a lot of effort, i was REALLY worried.

so don't completely stop, please! :)

also

love
mo

the rating of the books is difficult. i've noticed on everyone's profile that they also give your average rating. i am happy that you can change your ratings -- recently i was looking at something i'd rated -- and i thought, i gave that two stars? what the hell~! so then i switched it to a one and started thinking of all the books i don't like and sought them out and gave them one star too. very satisfying. ;)

isn't in interesting that he has runciter being the logos? oh. and i have to force myself not to "ooh-bik" -- i told you i'm always with the frenchies. :)

here are some quotes about ubik by philip k. dick culled from a variety of sources by no doubt a bunch of people. here's the source site http://www.philipkdickfans.com/pkdweb... but i thought i'd copy and paste some of it here.. interesting to reflect on them after reading the book, and our comments. i think we actually understood some of it! :)


On December 28, 1974, he wrote to an acquaintance:

Thank you in particular for what you said about UBIK. Just the other day I looked up the Greek philosopher Empedocles and I was amazed to see that UBIK in many ways expresses his world-view. It is a view generally discarded these days. In May of this year a guy from France doing his doctoral thesis on UBIK flew here and asked me, "You know Empedocles?" to which I had to admit, no, I didn't even know the name. The French guy got very angry, as if he believed I was lying, and walked out. Now I can see why. It is impossible to believe that anyone could write UBIK without having gotten the concepts from Empedocles. By the way -- Empedocles, I read, believed that he would be reincarnated and return some day. I'm not kidding. He expected to come back... But I bet he didn't anticipate finding himself in Fullerton. I guess the part where they're all dead is because ol' E. has been dead these many centuries and knows a lot about how it feels (I wish I was kidding when I say all this, but I'm not; I mean, I really sort of believe this).


TSR 216

Within a system which must generate an enormous amount of veiling, it would be vain-glorious to expostulate on what actuality is, when my premise declares that were we to penetrate to it for any reason this strange veil-like dream would reinstate itself retroactively, in terms of our perceptions and in terms of our memories. The mutual dreaming would resume as before, because, I think, we are like the characters in my novel UBIK; we are in a state of half-life. We are neither dead nor alive, but preserved in cold storage, waiting to be thawed out. Expressed in the perhaps startingly familiar terms of the procession of the seasons, this is winter of which I speak; it is winter for our race, and it is winter in UBIK for those in half-life. Ice and snow cover them; ice and snow cover our world in layers of accretions, which we call dokos or Maya. What melts away the rind or layer of frozen ice over the world each year is of course the reappearance of the sun. What melts the ice and snow covering the characters in UBIK, and which halts the cooling-off of their lives, the entropy which they feel, is the voice of Mr. Runciter, their former employer, calling to them. The voice of Mr. Runciter is none other than the same voice which each bulb and seed and root in the ground, our ground, in our winter-time, hears. It hears: "Wake up! Sleepers awake!" Now I have told you who Runciter is, and I have told you our condition and what UBIK is really about. What I have said, too, is that time is actually as Dr. Kozyrev in the Soviet Union supposes it to be, and in UBIK time has been nullified and no longer moves forward in the lineal fashion which we experience. As this has happened, due to the deaths of the characters, we the readers and they the personæ see the world as it is without the veil of Maya, without the obscuring mists of lineal time. It is that very energy, Time, postulated by Dr. Kozyrev as binding together all phenomena and maintaining all life, which by its activity hides the ontological reality beneath its flow.

The orthogonal time axis may have been represented in my novel UBIK without my understanding what I was depicting; i.e. the form regression of objects along an entirely different line from that out of which they, in lineal time, were built. This reversion is that of the Platonic Ideas or archetypes; a rocket-ship reverts to a Boeing 747, then back to a World War I "Jenny" biplane. While I may indeed have expressed a dramatic view of orthogonal time, it is less certain that this is orthogonal time undergoing an unnatural reversion; i.e. moving backwards. What the characters in UBIK see may be orthogonal time moving along its normal axis; if we ourselves somehow see the universe reversed the the "reversions" of form which objects in UBIK undergo may be momentum towards perfection. This would imply that our world as extensive in time (rather than extensive in space) is like an onion, an almost infinite number of successive layers. If lineal time seems to add layers, then perhaps orthogonal time peels these off, exposing layers of progressively greater Being. One is reminded here of Plotinus's view of the universe as consisting of concentric rings of emanation, each one possessing more Being -- or reality -- than the next.

TSR 224

UBIK was primarily a dream, or series of dreams. In my opinion it contains strong themes of pre-Socratic philosophical views of the world, unfamiliar to me when I wrote it (to name just one, the views of Empedocles)

TSR 243

In my novel UBIK I present a motion along a retrograde entropic axis, in terms of Platonic forms rather than any decay or reversion we normally conceive. Perhaps the normal forward motion along this axis, away from entropy, accruing rather than divesting, is identical with the axis line that I characterize as lateral, which is to say, in orthogonal rather than linear time. If this is so, the novel UBIK inadvertantly contains what could be called a scientific rather than a philosophical idea. But here I am only guessing. Still, the fiction writer may have written more than he consciously knew.


SL: 285

Dear Sandra,

{...}{...}

Thank you for the review. I'm sorry the characterization in UBIK is so minimal, but I had this problem: I had to move rapidly from the opening status quo (the psi company against the anti-psi company) and into the retreating 'thirties world. Bear in mind that all the material at the beginning of the novel is for all intents and purposes dumped once the bomb goes off. Readers may well ask, "What ever became of S. Melipone Dole?" {sic} and they would be right to do so.

{...}

Take care,

{Sandra Meisal, Sep 8, 1970}

{...}

(Interviewer:) Of all the novels you've written, I guess my own particular favorites are The Man in the High Castle, of course, and Ubik.

(Dick:) You-bick?

(Interviewer:) You-bick.

(Dick:) You-bick. The French call it Ooh-bick. Deek's Ooh-bick. It's called Ubick, Mia Signore in Italian. I guess that means Ubick, My Dear Sir or something like that. Well, it does--I looked it up.


IPOV 63:

In UBIK the forward moving force of time (or timeforce expressed as an ergic field) has ceased. All changes result from that. Forms regress. The substrate is revealed. Cooling (entropy) is allowed to set in unimpeded. Equilibrium is affected by the vanishing of the forward-moving time force-field. The bare bones, so to speak, of the world, our world, are revealed. We see the Logos addressing the many living entities.. Assisting and advising them. We are now aware of the Atman everywhere. The press of time on everything, having been abolished, reveals many elements underlying our phenomena

If time stops, this is what takes place, these changes.

Not frozen-ness but revelation.

There are still the retrograde forces remaining, at work. And also underlying positive forces other than time. The disappearance of the force-field we call time reveals both good and bad things; which is to say, coaching entities (Runciter who is the Logos), the Atman, Ella; it isn't a static world, but it begins to cool. What is missing is a form of heat; the Aten. The Logos (Runciter) can tell you what to do, but you lack the energy -- heat, force -- to do it. (i.e.time)

feel free to unmoderate me, michael. i am clearly immoderate. :)

and you're right: patty is as the soul of moderation. ;)

Patty wrote: "i'm happy to moderate at a medium-high level. whatever you need me to do, i'm there. "

thank you so much patty. i (and i'm sure everybody else, but especially me) really appreciate this. :)

Kerry wrote: "I was flattered when Mo made me a moderator, but it is not something I would have asked for. So even though I really love my moniker, you can remove me from moderator status.

:)"

hi kerry:

i know i gave you the moderator status, but i don't feel right about removing people -- so i am going to ask that everybody who doesn't want to be a moderator, remove that status themselves. a tip regarding that: you can't remove a moderator unless you first delete the fun title. once the title is gone, that status can be removed.

thanks in advance. :)

***spoilers for those who have not read ubik below***

okay, well, i'm back but it's been a full week since i last wrote about this book and it feels like it's been a century. reading over our discussion above i find it sad for pat that she was set up as such a red herring. what a horrible thing to face when she began to succumb to the dry-out herself, despite the fact that she was happy enough when she thought she was doing it to the others.

and jory! jory is a terrible thing, an undead leech, and the idea that there are many jorys, in every moratorium, is a depressing one. joe chip takes on the battle against jory but i am still not sure why: revenge? survival? want of anything better to do with his half-life?

about dr. sonderberg: i looked up sonder in a german to english dictionary and it's an adjective meaning "extra" or "special". i think dan and ben both have something here: he could be a construct with the half-lifers behind it, almost like the wizard of oz.

as for ben's comment re: "lonely and i'd like a girlfriend" -- this is the part of philip k dick i don't like. i have purposely tried to obliterate from my mind one of my favourite author's attitude and relationships to the women in his life. he is lonely even with a girlfriend, and then he gets a newer (generally younger) and then the cycle begins again, because the thing is one woman never ever satisfied. i am happy to have read the two biographies i did because they helped me understand a lot of other things about him, but this part of him just made me sad. the biographers made much of his relationship with his mother, and the loss of his twin jane, but as much as i tried to believe that, it rang falsely with me.

Martyn wrote: "Lauren wrote: "its on my bookshelf!! I just havent read it yet
"

don't bother."

martyn: i have no idea why you thought it would be worthwhile to say just these two words. i am guessing you read the futurist and didn't enjoy it, but lauren may -- we do all have a variety of tastes you know. at any rate, feel free to expand on why you think people shouldn't bother. i'm curious to hear your thoughts on the book. :)

in the meantime, oro's looking for you to help shout down democracy... i didn't realize you were anti-democracy, but hey! apparently i learn something new about my friends every day. :)

don't feel badly shel. what this is telling me is that we have a bunch of people who don't mind helping when we need them to. so those of us that put more time in will be able to say -- hey, i won't be around for a couple of weeks, can one of you guys keep an eye on things? and they'll say okay. :)

and the guidelines you suggested are good. we can pin them and close that thread until such time we need to discuss them again. we can direct people to go there and have a look when they first join (i'll amend the initial post in the welcome thread.)

and now back to everybody who is a moderator reading, writing, relaxing, and drinking their yak piss, or not, the same as people who are not moderators. :P

Shel wrote: "Last but not least, if we can't all email each other in one email from GoodReads, then we should get a list of personal email addresses together and do that. Because if we need to communicate with only moderators, and it turns out to be a PITA here, then we should find another way."

i forgot to ask: when you say PITA i don't think you mean mediterranean flat bread -- can you please explain? also, is yak pee an aphrodisiac? :)

Charlaralotte wrote: "The word "taxonomy" scares the heck out of me. Even a sexy title couldn't reduce the fear. Although perhaps a snarky-schmucky title might make me overcome the block."

what about we replace the word taxonomy with "information architecture"? who doesn't want to be an information architect? jolly good fun, what?

as for snarky-schmucky titles, i believe we have those in abundance. :P

Matt wrote: "can I go around managing the snark levels?"

i suspect this means you intend to increase the snark levels. and i for one, say, why the hell not? of course, this is a democratic forum, and i have only one vote... :P

Michael wrote:
I just did a little experiment. Our group was half-way down the page of the broader "books" listing of groups, and 2nd on the narrower "literature" listing. By simply making a post I brought the group up to the top of both listing momentarily.

wonderful news michael. i believe if we all do as we have been doing and posting frequently soon we will see a nice influx of new members who are finding us solely because we are always talking to each other. :)

and i found the old fiction files because it was high on the list when i went looking for literature: when johnny had to start the group over again because of the BLACKOUT and we were reduced to 600 loyal ff'ers, i think that's when we started to suffer.

so keep up the great work and keep posting everybody! (though i'm guessing a few more book topics on this page wouldn't hurt. :)

Hi Kids:

You've probably seen Shel's post regarding guidelines and my reply. What I'm hoping now is that people will say here if they want to be a moderator and what kind of involvement they would like (high - med - low -)

if you don't want to be a moderator at all, please remove yourself from the list. you'll have to delete your title first. :)

Once we have a core group of people, and know what they want to do, we can feel good about what we're doing and when we need to do it. it may be we won't end up with anybody offensive for months to come so we can just relax and lounge about. :)

since i started up this idea of moving over to goodreads, i will volunteer to moderate at a high level.