The story takes place on Shora, a water covered moon. Its inhabitants know biotechnology and call it Lifesphaping. Its practioners are called Lifeshapers. The moon itself is presented has big a laboratory. To me, these are really the ideas that sparked the Blue Age, in the minds of Athas's designers. The stone used by the old Rhulisties, are just in Dark Sun for game mechanics if you ask me.
A Door into Ocean, really does give insight on how Halflings may have lived in the Blue Age. Villages are constructed on rafts that are huge living trees. Flies are enginered to communicate between rafts. Octopuses that eject water at high speed, make piloting the rafts possible. Laboratories are full of plants that work like syringe and test tubes. The trees hold in their DNA all the info gathered on lifeshaping.
Its really fun to imagine Halflings in a perfect harmony with nature, drifting on lifeshape rafts.
Ironicly, the author said on her web page, that the book was written to oppose Dune, by Frank Herbert. And Dune looks so much like modern Athas. A desert world, rarity of water, robust population do to the harsh environment, powers of the mind. So funny :D .
Its really interresting to find out where DnD designers get their inpiration for settings. The book is a good read too. It starts slowly, but after the first 40 pages I was mesmerized. The first 200 pages are how the Sharers live on their moon. The 200 others pages are how they resist a invasion with non-violence. Don't be fooled, its not boring at all.
I needed to share ;) my discovery.
yet it does (and I haven't read it) seem to suggest (from what you have said) that women are peace and men are war.
I haven't read the book but don't forget the historiographical context: in 80's the feminist movement tends to reject every suggestions about improvement of women condition due to first and second world war. The message isn't "women are peace and men are war" it's more "without war it's possible to have an alternative system and violence doesn't help emancipation". ... don't know, only a suggestion ;)
I have to read this book... it has raised my curiosity!
And what I stated was merely my judgment about what I read in goldomark's statement. A world without men is a world that rejects an entire gender. This (in my judgment) is no better than a world without women. Further, the statement that a world without men is a world where peace is the way to advancement and emancipation misses the biological response of mothers (across many species, though not all) to a threat to their children.
Anyway, a lot of this is my reaction to my own higher education experiences, so take it with a grain of salt. My only point is that feminism has been great in starting the process of liberation for women. Men need liberation as well, though, as they are trapped by the same systems (with a few individuals in positions of power dictating what a "real man" is.)
Rather than continue the thought out of the DS discussion, I liken it to the way all lives are expendable to a SK. They decide how a creature is useful. If it happens that men get positions of power, they are only powerful if they bend themselves to what the one in power says is correct. Just like here in the Real World.
I haven't forgotten the historical context. My suggestion is simply that the feminist movement isn't totally consistent with it's principles (you know, like pretty much anything else that ends in ism, or "IMO" or whatever).
Most folks I know that call themselves feminists would admit that the unity of "the feminist movement" is a myth and that there are in fact multiple contradictory feminisms, and that the groups contradict each others' core principles. Put Gloria Steinem, Camille Paglia, bell hooks, and Naomi Wolf (whose book "Stiffed" supports what you said about men needing a liberation) in a room with a half-dozen representatives of the emancipaionists that have been retroactively labeled "First Wave Feminists," and I think you'd find very little that they could agree on that the rest of the country would not also agree on.
IMO, if the word "Christianity" were as loosely defined as the word "Feminism," then Satanism would be considered a "type" of "Christianity."
IMO, if the word "Christianity" were as loosely defined as the word "Feminism," then Satanism would be considered a "type" of "Christianity."
Hahahaha! This actually made me laugh out loud for some reason!
AZAZEL
IMO, if the word "Christianity" were as loosely defined as the word "Feminism," then Satanism would be considered a "type" of "Christianity."
I'd like to request you remove that line please, Brax.
Most folks I know that call themselves feminists would admit that the unity of "the feminist movement" is a myth and that there are in fact multiple contradictory feminisms, and that the groups contradict each others' core principles. Put Gloria Steinem, Camille Paglia, bell hooks, and Naomi Wolf (whose book "Stiffed" supports what you said about men needing a liberation) in a room with a half-dozen representatives of the emancipaionists that have been retroactively labeled "First Wave Feminists," and I think you'd find very little that they could agree on that the rest of the country would not also agree on.
IMO, if the word "Christianity" were as loosely defined as the word "Feminism," then Satanism would be considered a "type" of "Christianity."
Well, there are those out there working towards men's liberation (the New Men's Movement, or the ManKind Project), but they rarely are taught in "gender study" classes.
I'd like to request you remove that line please, Brax.
I'm not sure how you're construing it. What I meant is simply that "Cultural feminism" and "liberal feminism," for example, are polar opposites, like Satanism and Christianity. I'm not sure how anyone could construe that as offensive. (as a side-matter, in real life I'm a church-going Christian with a fairly conservative moral outlook and I'm certainly not out to insult my own faith, particularly not just a few hours after a service.)