> Mike,
>
> Thanks for the kind words. I particularly
> appreciate the mention of Marie-Josephe's ability
> for science. Inasmuch as Moon & Sun has been
> noticed by the sf community at all, it's been
> interpreted several times as one of those "science
> v. intuition" plots, with Marie-Josephe on the
> intuition side and her brother in the camp of
> heartless science. It's good to have someone
> notice that what's going on is that MJ is a
> _better_ scientist than her brother, that she
> observes more carefully and notices more, and that
> Yves is the one who's more affected by
> preconceptions and faulty assumptions.
Vonda,
That anyone should make this mistake, it seems to me, says a lot about
their preconceptions and faulty assumptions concerning women, women writers,
and science. You give plenty of clues that it's Marie-Josephe who is the
superior scientist. Her brother may do the actual dissection, but she's the
true anatomist, noticing, for example, the similarities between the male sea
creature's skull and a human skull, examining the exact way in which the
sea woman's feet are constructed, etc. She comes to any number of
conclusions based strictly on observation of the sea woman rather than on
preconceived notions.
I'm also confused by the problems people have had in deciding whether or
not The Moon and the Sun is science fiction or fantasy. It seems obvious
to me that it's the former.
One thing I'm still confused about, though, and would appreciate some
explanation of, is how Marie-Joesphe and the sea woman communicate.
Obviously there's more going on than simply a music-based language,
particularly when the sea woman causes Marie-Josephe to, in effect,
hallucinate the tiger, etc. But simply calling it telepathy doesn't seem
adequate either. Did I miss something in the book?
Mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:45 PDT