BOOKSCAN #7

PEOPLE MACHINES 
By Jack Williamson 
 Ace, 1971 

 After a long time I have across another book worthy of a Bookscan post. 

"People Machines" is a collection of 9 short stories by Jack Williamson. The stories are very good but better than the stories are author's notes that precede each story. In these notes, Williamson discusses various elements of a story: characters, plot, scene, language, style, etc. In these notes, I found 2 things worthy of extra attention.

First is what I consider the best definition of Science Fiction: "Fiction based on the imaginative exploration of scientific possibility." 

Second is his mention of "stratificational grammar" postulated by Sidney Lamb. This was a new term for me and as I love going on excursions tangentially from a book, I started looking up transitional grammar. And I was disappointed. I was not able to locate a single resource for explaining the concept to a layman or to demonstrate any applicability. For my money, Chomsky's transformational grammar still stands unbeaten.





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