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

Hello, I've been watching the WWWA thread for a while, and what you said about the Maori claims caught my attention. I have the same feeling about it, so I'd like to ask somebody who actually lives in NZ, rather than a whole lot of people who just have opinions about the issue.
I understand the Maori have next to no claims to face from the Moriori, who were indeed the first inhabitants of NZ? Seems they've been more clever avoiding possible future litigation than the Europeans somewheres...or has cynical me got something wrong there?

Hello Delicia. No, you're absolutely right. Maori land claims have reached ridiculous proportions and it's largely because past claims were over-indulged.

The Moriori (who were resident in NZ long before the first Maori arrived) have all but died out. At last count I believe there was one person who could prove Moriori blood left alive and I believe he might've gone to his grave now.

So it's sheer force of will that keeps Maori claims alive. About ten years ago a previous NZ government tried to put an end to it by offering what they called a 'fiscal envelope'. A one-time one billion dollar payment in lieu of all future claims, but Maori were having none of it. They knew that as long as the arguments continue, they can stay on the gravy train forever.

It's all based on a thing called the 'Treaty Of Waitangi' signed in 1840 between Britain and local Maori leaders. But this treaty is so vague, imprecise and anachronistic as to be meaningless and it's never been ratified anyway.

Meanwhile anyone who says that Maori people are disadvantaged in NZ has never spent as much as five minutes here. New Zealand has as close to a classless society as anywhere on Earth. There's no racism here and no real poverty. If anything, Maori people have MORE opportunities than anyone else.

There are few, if any, full blooded Moari people left (most inter-married generations ago). Up until the recent renaissance of Maoridom, most knew little of their culture and nothing of their language. Much of the so-called Maori language was actually invented in the 1970s for tourism reasons.

Yet we have absurd laws like - if you can show that you have at least one sixteenth Maori blood, you can gather an unlimited number of shellfish from certain beaches. If you can't prove that ancestory, you can't have that fish.

If anything threatens racial harmony in New Zealand it's this silly pandering to Maori claims.

Ah, just what I thought. Thank you very much Empty Sky. It's so hard today to get a levelheaded opinion on these things, as there are so many -isms floating about, making it a perfectly intolerable atmosphere to discuss history.
I sometimes wonder why we Europeans are the only ones of all people in the world who can't simply hold on to their conquests once they got it, and be strong about it. But no, we also want everybody to like us. Mind you, I'm exagerrating now, i'm all for a change of the millenia old practice of grab and keep, all for letting everybody have a little something, but the way it seems to go at the mo it is all very onesided, very disagreable, and very hypocritical. You people in the "colonies" don't have it easy now, and i feel for you, having a bit of an idea from a stint in South Africa.

Oh talkin about autobiography, you ever read Errol Flynn's "My wicked wicked ways"?

No I haven't read it but I will. It sounds good. Errol Flynn was a fascinating person.

And that's putting it tamely.

Did you know he was from Tasmania and not from Ireland and that he farmed coconuts and tobacco? And that he'd had some adventures on the gold fields of New Guinea that were more hair raising than anything he did on sceen? That he really knew something about ships and the sea and was a quite a brawler, who fought dirty, and lost more than one bout? That he got fed up with his action roles to the point of suicide and pined for the writer he never became, he actually was a very decent writer. Quote: "What was I doing with a sword in one hand and a garter in the other?"

Thanks, that's fascinating. I knew that Errol Flynn was Australian and that he'd been a farmer but I didn't know the rest. Apparently he had quite a reputation for his sexual activity. Hence the expression 'In Like Flynn'.

I love biographies. I read all the biographies I can get my hands on. It's not just people's lives that are fascinating but it's the way they see their lives and the times they live in.

In fact, increasingly, I've got no time for fiction and I haven't read any fiction in a long time. It's difficult to be in awe of anything in fiction because it's possible to make anything up. But I find the truth is much more absorbing. Is there something wrong with me?

Yeah that bugged him too, that he had become a sort of "phallic symbol" his own words that. He also couldn't understand why he was considered beautiful. Mind you, he WAS truly beautiful, particularly as Captain Blood, with that face of an angel, moving like a demon.

In my opinion, if fiction at all, then one should go all the way to science fiction and fantasy. Because in those genres the writer has to make everything up, the whole fictive world in which the fictive story plays. Now many writers do take that as a licence to make up a world according to their own little idiosyncrasies. They make up a world as they think it should be, which in my opinion results in a terrible flatness of story. Whereas, if one changes some premises, and then builds up the fictive world logically, one ends up with a world very similar to ours, only f'r instance one in which magic works. Barbara Hambly is an excellent example.

If I may intrude... World building can be a fascinating thing in science fiction. I recently read a 'how to' book by Orson Scott Card about writing science fiction, he had a long chapter about world building. It covered the rules of physics, astronomy and biology that must be followed, otherwise one is writing fantasy not sf. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...)
Have a lot at my Guide Entry on Science Fiction Authors (advertisement) and Empty Sky, have a look at Rogerr Zelazny's 'Amber' books - still fiction, but worthy of an exception to your recent rule.
Hello, Delicia!

Hi there, Adele, yes you may, in fact it´s mighty nice of you! Like i said even fantasy writing must adhere to the natural laws, and when suspending them, it must be for a good reason which must be made very clear by the writer. S´cuse pontificatin, this is rather a pet subject of mine. Come to think of it, such a book as you mention should be a fine crash course in natural sciences, i must see can i find it somewhere.

There's the similar book by James Blish as well. Plus I think there are books specifically about world building.
Regarding fantasy, there are two books by Terry Pratchett and others, about the Science of the Discworld.

The world building conventions is an interesting idea. I like the idea of science fiction stories, no matter who they're written by, being structured around certain rules. It seems to make it all the more real. I suppose we'll all be disappointed if, in three hundred years time, things aren't exactly that way.

Place your bets now.

>> in three hundred years time, things aren't exactly that way.

Place your bets now. <<
It's the collecting that'd be the hard part.
(Though apparently, the ancient pagan Celts believed in reincarnation, and they'd borrow money to be paid off in the next life. Seems a bit dodgy to me...What if your new incarnation denied all knowledge?)

ah but one gets reincarnated only if one's leading a comparatively blameless life, doesn`t one, otherwise one would get reborn as something creepy crawly, in which case the debt wouldn't be collectable until one's ment ones manners, what? Or am i mixing that up with the Hindus, the ones who wear a cloth across the mouth so as not to swallow inadvertantly a fly that hasn't paid its debts...

>Or am i mixing that up with the Hindus, the ones who wear a cloth across the mouth so as not to swallow inadvertantly a fly that hasn't paid its debts...<

I think those are the Jains. I wonder what they live on, they'd have a harder time than Vegans!
P.S Moby and my friend Ann are Vegans.

Vegans, they all live on a lesbian smallholding in North Wales. Where they grow their own yoghurt and knit their own lentils.

And raise their own muesli under tender watchful eyes...

they plant it at the waxing of the moon...