The Gaming Den

Kaelik wrote:How much is just about done?

Concise Locket wrote:

Kaelik wrote:How much is just about done?

Less than 100 pages left to read.

Red Archon wrote:I'm re-reading some 1986 John Varley short stories. As a kid, I found this stuff really icky, what with all the sexual content, but now I see it in a completely different light. Some of this shit, especially concerning sexuality and gender, is really visionary. A lot of what Varley envisioned to take place after we've inhabited the Moon is already here. And to me, that's pretty exciting.

In case you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, in Varley-verse, sex change operations are completely commonplace, even for children, there are essentially no sexual boundaries and the distinction between man and woman has totally vanished. It's kind of neat.

PoliteNewb wrote:

Red Archon wrote:I'm re-reading some 1986 John Varley short stories. As a kid, I found this stuff really icky, what with all the sexual content, but now I see it in a completely different light. Some of this shit, especially concerning sexuality and gender, is really visionary. A lot of what Varley envisioned to take place after we've inhabited the Moon is already here. And to me, that's pretty exciting.

In case you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, in Varley-verse, sex change operations are completely commonplace, even for children, there are essentially no sexual boundaries and the distinction between man and woman has totally vanished. It's kind of neat.

Only Varley I've read is the Titan series (of which I remember the first being by far the best), but you have intrigued me.

John Varley's Steel Beach wrote:“In five years the penis will be obsolete,” said the salesman.

Stephen Hale, Commissioner to Kentucky wrote:African Slavery has not only become one of the fixed domestic institutions of the Southern States, but forms an important element of their political power, and constitutes the most valuable species of their property-- worth, according to recent estimates, not less than four thousand millions of dollars; forming, in fact, the basis upon which rests the prosperity and wealth of most of these States, and supplying the commerce of the world with its richest freights, and furnishing the manufactories of two continents with the raw material, and their operatives with bread. It is upon this gigantic interest, this peculiar institution of the South, that the Northern States and their people have been waging an unrelenting and fanatical war for the last quarter of a century. An institution with which is bound up, not only the wealth and prosperity of the Southern people, but their very existence as a political community. This war has been waged in every way that human ingenuity, urged on by fanaticism, could suggest. They attack us through their literature, in their schools, from the hustings, in their legislative halls, through the public press, and even their courts of justice forget the purity of their judicial ermine, to strike down the rights of the Southern slave-holder, and over-ride every barrier which the Constitution has erected for his protection; and the sacred desk is desecrated to this unholy crusade against our lives, our property, and the Constitutional rights guaranteed to us by the Compact of our Fathers.

...

Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as a change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions --- nothing less than an open declaration of war --- for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. Especially is this true in the cotton-growing States, where, in many localities, the slave outnumbers the white population ten to one.

If the policy of the Republicans is carried out, according to the programme indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the Southern States. The slave-holder and non-slave-holder must ultimately share the same fate --- all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life; or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country.

Who can look upon such a picture without a shudder? What Southern man, be he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters, in the not distant future, associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white man stripped, by the Heaven-daring hand of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed?

...

Will the South give up the institution of slavery, and consent that her citizens be stripped of their property, her civilization destroyed, the whole land laid waste by fire and sword? It is impossible; she can not, she will not. Then why attempt any longer to hold together hostile States under the stipulations of a violated Constitution? It is impossible; disunion is inevitable.

...

Shall we wait until our enemies shall possess themselves of all the powers of the Government? until Abolition Judges are on the Supreme Court bench, Abolition Collectors at every port, and Abolition Postmasters in every town, secret mail agents traversing the whole land, and a subsidized Press established in our midst to demoralize the people? Will we be stronger then, or better prepared to meet the struggle, if a struggle must come? No, verily! When that time shall come, well may our adversaries laugh at our folly, and deride our impotence.