votes: 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10
average: 6.75

Kerri couldn't make it but voted 

_Cyteen_ 

Raja: bloated; talking heads book; 

JGallman: Book is very ambitious; very 
knowledgable about cloning, psychology/psychiatry,
lots of intelligence lurking in book :5 points
:1 point for performance and execution
Lots of plots, subplots, politics,
marvelous mixture of feudalism, fascism, capitalism

terrible execution. Always room for a lengthy
 dialog that advances the plot very little.

DedaimiaW: I liked Denys

JGallman: Denys is Iago. You need an Iago ;-)

GJER: Cherryh has been building this space opera
setting for decades; it's rich, comparable
only for Poul Anderson.

Got Hugo for _Downbelow Station_, which was more
action-oriented --

PKuchera: I precisely agree with John. I don't
dislike the book, so much there ... but
I'm *allergic* to her style 

Dave: Loved _Downbelow Station_, couldn't make
it through this ....

GJER: Better description. Julian May also has
better description, better focused.

Raja: Anti-vivid writing.

JGallman: The mark of a great novel is that you
couldn't take any word out ....

PKuchera: John, I could take every other *chapter*
out of Moby Dick!

RT: Bad description! Does *anyone* know what the
planet Cyteen is like? 

Kendra: Poisonous plants, two continents ...

Raja: But you've done a better job of describing
in a few minutes than Cherryh did in 680 pages!

Dedaimia: Too long, but I enjoyed reading it.
This is a book that I looked forward to picking
up and reading ....

Liked the ideas she's playing with. Liked her take
cloning ....

Likes novels where the protagonists are smarter
than everyone else (it encourages you to
identify ;-) Liked the young Ari a lot.

Sue: Made it to Page 97. Hugo is a popular
award ....

Gregg: Why Cyteen won? It's the culmination of a
*lot* of stuff that had been in _Downbelow
Station_, _40000 in Gehenna_, .... It was
a powerful culmination, and a great book.

DW: Disliked Justin, who was supposed to be
great, Ari's match, but all he did was
whine ....

Kendra: Most empathized with Justin. Couldn't
sympathize with Ari, since she's such a master
of the politics ....

DW: There's a moment when Justin was completely
out of character (when he was competent at
the "press conference" after Jordan claimed
innocence).

Julie: The style killed me. Couldn't get past
the style. There was a sentence that I
had to re-read 5 times, and *still* couldn't
figure it out.

Chloe: Cherryh is like Dostoyevsky: The first
150 pages will be intolerable ....

JGallman: I wanted to talk about the cloning.
Isn't anybody troubled by the morality of the
book? It's an insane world with no morality.
Creating slaves is a matter of *business*,
not morality ....

Kendra: Main point of the book is about
first Ari's project: Sociogenesis. Creating
uniform societies that won't war with each
other. ...

Cherryh takes a Hegelian morality. Good of
the society is entirely superior to the good
of a single human. P220: "A Special has
the Long view, and Wide view .... outside
the experience of anyone previous."

Related to the Hegelian idea of the hero:
The hero's viewpoint changes society.

Gregg: Others very different philosopically
came to similar conclusions (cf Zeroeth
Law of Robotics after 30 years). Also
Ben Reich from _The Demolished Man_ ....

DWhitney: That's an interesting analysis,
but I didn't respond that way at all. 
Thought the inherent immorality was there
to make me *think* about it.

In the last hundred pages, Cherryh's
attitude toward the azi changed; Florian
and Catlin became a butler and maid.
Before then, they had been friends,
very competent.

Kendra: Cherryh wants you to think, but
doesn't tell you *what* to think.

Judy: One of my problems with the
book was that she wanted more information
about the psychprobes, the clones ....
e.g., what was the psychprobe, why was
it bad. Problem with Justin: He was
quivering all the time, and I didn't
understand *why*. You either got a
completely general description, or
something highly technical.
"What are the implications? Are
the azi happy?"

Had trouble with the politics. Didn't
understand why Justin kept getting
psychprobed with no recourse.

JGallman: Politics seemed fairly
murky.

Too many plotlines. Is it a murder
mystery, human/azi relations,
palace politics at the house?

Kept waiting for the book to
define itself.

Too many elements!

Gregg: Dune is larger than life
and this is like life! Most of
life is unremarkable, conversations
are unremarkable ....

In Dune the politics were clear-cut:
Poltics of scarcity. Here it is
muddier, intentionally. They're still
recognizably human, whereas the
political issues weren't as
clear.

JGallman: The idea that they could
track a person's experiences in
sufficient detail to build a 
replica was ludicrous.

Judy: Why was there an inconsistency
in recreating experiences? Why *didn't*
Denys abuse her?

JGallman/Raja: What was the motivation
for Denys's activities at the end?

Kendra: Denys reached his breaking point.

Gregg: She's describing a world that's
alien to us, but it looks like life.

///////

eglentyne@viaduct.custom.net

_Bloom_, Wil McCarthy, September 23, 1999
Raja Thiagarajan
