Comment on June 2013 Media Thread

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 10:58:29 GMT

Calumet "K" by Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster, from 1904. A very Analog/Astounding piece of engineer-fiction about an unstoppable can-do kind of fellow. Despite being completely contemporary, if you'd read this in Analog or Astounding in the '50s-'80s you wouldn't have batted an eyelid. I'm quite surprised it hasn't been taken up by the business literature field.

It's unfortunately most famous as a major influence on -yn R-nd, who appears only to have obtained from it the idea of the hero-engineer, which she then added as flavour to her own weirdness. (Compare the actual influence of You Can't Win by Jack Black on William S. Burroughs - the Black book is very readable and was a best-seller at the time.) Don't let that taint it for you, it's a cracking good read.

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