In a little while I’ll be heading out to COSine, but I had time to get in a walk before the long drive.
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What I realized while reading/listening to the Share series (similar to the guy that said Ishmael is always reacting) is that he just never makes decisions.
When the story starts he has a “decision” between a merchant ship or the military, but he makes it clear that the military isn’t an option for him so it isn’t really a decision at all. Whose decision was it for him to attend the academy? If you say Ishmael I’d probably call you a liar. How many times over the years does he come to the same point with his wife where he knows he’s supposed to make a decision and instead he just thinks “oh well” and goes on about his business? He doesn’t even choose to buy his own ship. Someone else sets it all up and dumps it into his lap.
Keep in mind all of that is comment, not at all critique.
I was also checking out the COSine programming and found it curious that you are on the military sci-fi panel. Have fun!
Yeah. Well, there’s no “not military” panel so this will be an interesting range of views.
And I don’t take it as a critique at all. I keep finding these kinds of consistencies that I wasn’t aware I was doing. Makes me wonder how and where that comes from.
😀
I do love military SciFi – though I definitely tend to want to see some military experience behind it. David Drake, Gordon R. Dickson, Elizabeth Moon, Joe Haldeman and Jerry Pournelle all had it – and I feel it shows in the character’s attitudes towards war and the people who have to carry it out.
Um – he decided to get married in the first place? He decided to take the job with Diurnia Salvage & Transport? I do believe we were told that he did have other offers.
I think the distinction between “action” and “reaction” – especially with respect to human activity – is a very fuzzy one. Everything we do is a vector sum reaction to everything that we’ve done before and everything that has been done to us before. Picking one proximate cause is a very iffy thing. With respect to Ishmael’s marriage – one could easily point to the way his mother raised him, with so much exposure to classical literature – as the source of his “you grow up, you get married” thing. So I’m not really buying the “Ishmael does nothing but react” idea here.
He is rather passive, that I will admit. He should have, in my opinion, pushed back harder against the “go to the Academy this year”, opting instead to spend another year getting shipboard experience and building a bigger nest egg to use to go to the Academy. One of the things brought home to him was how long lives were now – another year of preparation would have been nearly nothing to that.
Ishmael makes it pretty clear that he got married because that’s what he thought he was supposed to do, not necessarily what he wanted to do. It seemed to me that his goal was being an adult and that getting married was just a stepping stone towards that goal.
As for DST, I thought we were told that he took the job because it was the only offer he received. I recall something like everyone else was getting offers and Ishmael wasn’t so when the DST offer came in he accepted ASAP.
I can’t say that I would prefer Ishmael to act any differently. I just find how he is to be interesting.
Get well soon.