A review of the Federaton anthology mentions this story by name, and of the half-dozen or so that are so mentioned this is the only one that's panned: Turtle Fan 18:41, February 5, 2010 (UTC)
http://www.sfsite.com/12a/fe309.htm
- Not surprising. I was able to read the first page or so at Amazon. It feels more labored than anything. Oh, and HT really likes dissing France. TR 18:51, February 5, 2010 (UTC)
- Well who doesn't.
- Even when we had only a title, it always struck me as the world's most labored premise. Turtle Fan 19:40, February 5, 2010 (UTC)
- As I recall reading about it, the POV protagonist was a sapient space hamster and it went downhill from there. ML4E 21:15, February 5, 2010 (UTC)
- Ah. The one page I read didn't reveal that tidbit. I suppose we have sufficient links floating around to justify someone reading it at some point. Some day. Down the road. In the future. Way off in the distance. TR 21:22, February 5, 2010 (UTC)
- Federations makes that easier. The other stories in the book had me thinking it may be worth a read one of these days. Not in the immediate future, but it might come at some point. And if I had a book that included this story, I guess I'd bite the bullet and do it up for us. Turtle Fan 21:52, February 5, 2010 (UTC)
I have indeed come into possession of Federations. My frist order of business will be to read SIStGTRoTG (hell of an abbreviation) and catalog it. That way the rest of you won't have to read it. Then I think I'll be able to wash the taste out of my mouth. There are many stronger stories included; I wouldn't have purchased the book were it not so. Turtle Fan 20:44, February 9, 2010 (UTC)
- Wow--That's a bad story. The puns are there but there's nothing clever about them--and I generally am not that hard to impress with a pun--but other than that none of the elements of HT's humor are in evidence. It's quite impossible to believe that he wrote this the same year he wrote EIaK.
- The only saving grace is that there are a few elements which should lend themselves to pleasant article-writing. Turtle Fan 00:50, February 10, 2010 (UTC)
So I found myself in Barnes&Noble earlier, and I saw several copies of Atlantis and Other Places. I picked it up out of curiosity and leafed through it, reading the author's introductions to each of his old, repackaged, mostly mediocre stories. Of this he said it's the only time in his career that an editor agreed to buy a story of his sight unseen. That could explain so much. . . . Turtle Fan 22:58, December 12, 2010 (UTC)