Friday, November 20, 2015

Follow Friday - Eratosthenes Became the Head Librarian of the Library of Alexandria in 236 B.C.


It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:
  1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
  2. Follow the Featured Blogger of the week - Twin Spin.
  3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
  4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
  5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
  6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
  7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
  8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!
And now for the Follow Friday Question: If you could teleport into ANY story, which would you chose?

This is a more difficult question than it appears at first, because much of what makes stories good is that they would generally be unhappy or even unpleasant times to live in. A story is a great thing to hear, or read, or to have experienced, but it is often something that is not enjoyable for those enmeshed inside of it. People may love to read A Song of Ice and Fire, but almost no one wants to go to Westeros. That's an extreme example, but I doubt you'd get many takers if you offered people the chance to be inserted into the middle of The Lord of the Rings, or Foundation, or Ancillary Justice.

So the question is, what unsettled mess would I want to be injected into? Right off the bat I'm going to discount most fantasy stories, because as much fun as reading about vaguely historical settings with magic and monsters injected into them, the world of the past was often an unpleasant place that lacked in things like dentistry and personal liberties. Adding dragons and ogres intent on killing those they meet into the mix doesn't really serve to make them more appetizing. For most of my reading, that leaves a science fiction story, although for fairly obvious reasons I'm going to rule out stories set in dystopian or post-apocalyptic settings. I'll probably also rule out most military science fiction: As good as it is to read something like Starship Troopers, I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in that story if I don't have to. Even a story like Dune has so many downsides that I'm pretty sure that's not where I'd want to be on a voluntary basis.

I'm thinking that I'd like to be in a story that has aliens. I like the idea of meeting aliens. Space travel too. I would definitely like to be in a story where humans have ventured to the stars. I've always liked Andre Norton's work. Maybe living in one of her stories would be good. Probably not something like Judgment on Janus or Star Guard, but maybe The Zero Stone or one of the other books involving a free trader would be good. I'll go with that, probably one of the stories involving the crew of the Solar Queen.

Previous Follow Friday: Two Hundred Thirty-Five. That Is All.

Follow Friday     Home

No comments:

Post a Comment