{"id":362,"date":"2002-03-23T14:55:06","date_gmt":"2002-03-23T22:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2002\/03\/23\/362.html"},"modified":"2002-03-23T14:55:06","modified_gmt":"2002-03-23T22:55:06","slug":"the-drake-equation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2002\/03\/23\/the-drake-equation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Drake Equation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Hugo nomination deadline is almost upon us, so I finally went over to <cite>Sci Fiction<\/cite> and read Ian R. MacLeod's \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.scifi.com\/scifiction\/originals\/originals_archive\/macleod\/\">New Light on the Drake Equation<\/a>,\" a novella long enough to have been published across four weeks in May 2001, the first anniversary of that magazine.<\/p>\n<p>As one might expect from my previous <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/logos\/journal\/show-entry.php?Entry_ID=139\">raving about MacLeod<\/a>, I rather liked the story.  I think it's too long and slow in places (particularly in part 1), and I saw more or less where it was going fairly early on, but it managed to do some things I hadn't expected, and some parts are gorgeous.  It tugs the heartstrings of its intended audience (sf readers) a bit too obviously; the protagonist is a lifelong sf fan who's dedicated his life to SETI, and who once loved a beautiful woman who was also into sf, and it all feels just a little bit too pointedly aimed at certain kinds of readers.  On the other hand, it's beautifully done nonetheless, poignant and sweet and sad, with lovely characterization and interactions.  And there's a certain irony (intentional, I'm pretty sure, though not explicitly stated) in a character spending his life looking for alien life at the same time as humans are changing themselves in alien ways all around him; which ties in nicely with what I think is the central metaphor, about being alone in the world\/universe.  Good stuff.  Recommended.  And free!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hugo nomination deadline is almost upon us, so I finally went over to Sci Fiction and read Ian R&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories","category-speculative-fiction"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}