h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

scuse me talkin shop

Not a problem at all.

I finished Stonehenge, and i'm mighty pleased with it. Intelligent soeculations, that don't want to be anything else, combined with a great yarn.

I'm on the third of Katherine Kerr's Deverry cycle and then hoping to move on to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.

What do you think of Kerr, i read one Deverry book and wasn't alltogther shure, although i tended to like it.
Beowulf? Anything Beowulf interests me since warrior 13th, keep me posted, there's a good force of darkness!

The Kerr novels are not that bad, but she's a little hamfisted when it comes to the defenition of good and bad in her characters. Magic is known as dweomer and you have of course the dweomer of light and the dweomer of dark. On the side of good you have the shining paragons of virtue and on the dark side you have all the twisted freaks that want to drown the world in darkness.

Now there's nothing wrong with big bad evil. But most of the bad guys are gay as well. I have to say that I've met very few gay guys that are also evil sorcerors on the side!

gay are they, the protagonists of the forces of darkness? Well that would be refreshingly un-pc but if her world is really yin & yang sort of thing, i usually end up rooting for the bad, being bored out of my wits by the goodies. Happend to me with Gemmel, althjough i will say for him that his treatment of the bad guy was consequent and he didn't try to demontage him. You could only kill that guy, but you couldn't despise him

Gemmel's good but slightly bad guys like Waylander are the only thing that make his Drenai novels bearable.

The one thing that you have to say for Kerr though is that all the good guys are either powerful Dweomermen or burly warriors. This might sound a little insensetive, but when a guy gets bum-raped by a nasty bad guy all the big strong warriors won't even entertain the thought of what's actually happened.

They can stand in battle and kill strangers for a living, but the thought of taking it up the arse has them running for the hills!

that aspect is frequently overlooked, but the psychology behind male on male rape would have to lead to such erm occurences in war, wouldn't it?

I'd expect so. It was an insult that the Spartans were constantly hurling at the Athenians in The Twelve Thousand. Calling them every homophobic insult under the sun.

but i thought the Spartan warriors were very erm close themselves, and not to wonder, under the circs.

Judging by the descriptions of the Spartans that I've come across, it's a wonder that they managed to get any action from either side of the gender divide!

oh how so?

The term "Spartan" today generally means frugal and sparse by nature making no attempt to make anything any more than functional in nature and never giving in to the smallest comfort or indulgence.

The actual Spartan ethic was much more far reaching. Their city was seen as a stinking mass by the more "refined" city-states and they were very conservative (almost fascist in some ways).

Coming from a society like that there wasn't much room for the finer things in life. Spartan hoplites used to grow their hair in long braids reaching to their waists and seldom bothered to wash them or tend their wild beards. They used to sleep on the bare ground for fear that they could be taken by suprise in a tent. They kept no servants as they could slit their throats in the night or slow them down when running away from the foe.

They also cultivated bad personal hygeiene in order to intimidate the enemy.

So they were crude, violent, smelly, foul-mouthed, xenophobic louts.

Sound like a guy you'd like to date?

i never heard about the bad hygene, and i doubt that part of it, because i doubt the value for warfare. The Persions mentioned that the Spartans did comb their hair before battle, which always impressed me no end, having a fetish for longhaired men in general, and most particularly trained warriors
I grant you narrowminded to the point of fascism, but do you have any sources on the other allegations?

Their society was rigid as a five-day-dead-dog. They had a king for a start, when other city-states were democratic. The bad hygeine comes from Xenophon's account of Chirisophus, the Spartan mercenary hired as a general by Cyrus in his attempt to take the Persian throne. The man was like a walking flea farm! Most of the Spartans under his command were the same. Xenophon was also not likely to assasinate the character of the Spartans as he was offered asylum by them when exiled from Athens his home.

i found a reference in Plutarch, although there is an indication that it referred specifically to warm bath and "unguents"

this link looks sort of good http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_plutarch_lycurgus.htm

started the Arthur trilogy, i think it's brilliant.

Those books both rock and roll.