Comments on: Doomsday Book, Passage

by: Jemima

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 00:32:29 +0000

I haven’t seen that movie, but Passage’s flaw is admitting the limits of our knowledge for most of the book, and then at the very end pushing forward instead of pulling back. It’s not cheating, but the end undermines the power of what came before.

by: A.R. Yngve

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 14:04:54 +0000

Remember the ending of that flawed, yet oddly compelling film BRAINSTORM? (They show it on TCM every month or so.) At the end, Christopher Walken’s character has a near-death experience, complete with “angels” and life-seen-in-flashback… and then he pulls back at the last moment, just before dying, and we never get to see the final destination.

Is it cheating? Maybe it’s a form of honesty, admitting the limits of one’s knowledge. Consider the opposite case, showing the afterlife in all its glory… ludicrous.

by: Jemima

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:42:38 +0000

I think she likes short stories better as well, as do many of the best sf/f writers. I don’t think it’s a question of their personal strengths so much as the strengths of the genre itself. Unfortunately, you can’t make a career out of writing short stories - the heyday of the pulps is long gone and short story collections don’t sell well.

by: Julie

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 12:55:10 +0000

One of my first reaction upon finishing Passage was that it could have been a couple hundred words shorter. The ambiguity of the ending didn’t bother me so much, but I think the imapct of it might have been heightened if the story overall has been a bit more streamlined.

But yes, it was still a very engrossing book. Though I still think her main strength is as a short story writer, not a novelist.