Dave <-- redeacted --> writes:

> At 10:42 PM 10/9/97 -0400, David Johnson wrote:
> >
> >And while we're on the subject of Beam's anachronisms, how much would
> >you bet that the most likely cause of death for his characters,
> >barring violent means, was lung cancer? :)
>
> No bet.  Although smoking is not necessarily an anachronism--just because
> it's less fashionable now in the US than it was 35 years ago doesn't
> necessarily mean it'll die out entirely.

Of course, but unless it's a genetically altered tobacco (or they've
cured cancer) his characters are going to be dying. :)  (Actually, the
centuries-old, chain-smoking Paratimers contradict this.)

> Another one:  the cocktail
> hour.  Will it really persist for 650 years?  I suppose it's not
> impossible; do we have now any social rituals that originated before
> 1350?

Catholic mass is about it. :)  My point wasn't that Beam was anachronistic
in his presentation of the future.  Rather, it was that he seems
anachronistic to us as *readers* four decades after the fact.

David Johnson                        Net: -- redeacted --
Arlington, Virginia, North America   Web: http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~david
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"And you know what English is?  The result of the efforts of Norman
men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids in the Ninth Century
Pre-Atomic. . . ."                   -Victor Grego (H. Beam Piper)
                                     *Fuzzy Sapiens*