Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > rec.arts.sf.written > #457148 > unrolled thread

[Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Back to article view | Back to rec.arts.sf.written

Contents

  [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) - 2016-11-17 14:57 +0000
    Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> - 2016-11-17 07:26 -0800
      Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) - 2016-11-18 03:42 +0000
    Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes urban@panix.com (Michael Urban) - 2016-11-18 14:30 +0000
      Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) - 2016-11-18 16:43 +0000
        Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Don Bruder <dakidd@sonic.net> - 2016-11-18 09:25 -0800
          Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2016-11-18 13:34 -0600
          Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes lal_truckee <lal_truckee@yahoo.com> - 2016-11-18 13:39 -0800
            Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2016-11-18 16:04 -0600
          Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes David DeLaney <daviddelaney@earthlink.net> - 2016-11-19 05:00 -0600
      Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2016-11-18 13:33 -0600
        Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> - 2016-11-18 12:26 -0800
          Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2016-11-18 14:42 -0600
            Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2016-11-18 12:56 -0800
              Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2016-11-18 15:01 -0600
                Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2016-11-18 16:56 -0800
                  Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2016-11-19 15:42 -0600
                    Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) - 2016-11-19 22:05 +0000
                    Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2016-11-19 22:05 +0000
                    Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Don Bruder <dakidd@sonic.net> - 2016-11-19 19:37 -0800
              Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2016-11-19 14:26 -0800
          Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes David DeLaney <daviddelaney@earthlink.net> - 2016-11-19 05:21 -0600
          Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) - 2016-11-19 15:24 +0000
          Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes David Harmon <source@netcom.com> - 2016-11-25 19:46 -0800
        Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Don Kuenz <g@crcomp.net> - 2016-11-19 04:49 +0000
        Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes hamish.laws@gmail.com - 2016-11-19 05:48 -0800
      Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Mart van de Wege <mvdwege@gmail.com> - 2016-11-19 15:00 +0100
    Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2016-11-18 09:31 -0800
      Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes lal_truckee <lal_truckee@yahoo.com> - 2016-11-18 13:42 -0800
        Re: [Young People Read Old SFF] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2016-11-20 10:34 -0800

Page 2 of 2 — ← Prev page 1 [2]

#457488

On Friday, 18 November 2016 20:56:23 UTC, Dimensional Traveler  wrote:
> On 11/18/2016 12:42 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> > On 11/18/2016 2:26 PM, Peter Trei wrote:
> >> On Friday, November 18, 2016 at 2:33:41 PM UTC-5, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> >>> On 11/18/2016 8:30 AM, Michael Urban wrote:
> >>>> Funny thing is, young people cannot properly appreciate what Keyes did
> >>>> here.  When you get older, and bits of memory and abilities (Charlie's
> >>>> motor skills are affected) are taken away from you a little at a time,
> >>>> you understand that Charlie is all of us (with a better middle than
> >>>> most of us), compressed and distilled.
> >>>
> >>> I thought the book was a warning about relying on technology ?
> >>
> >> Where on earth do you take that from? Charlie got to experience something
> >> good for a while. When he loses it, his biggest beef, in both the
> >> story and
> >> novel, is people feeling sorry for him. He was a ground-dweller who
> >> got to
> >> soar like an eagle for a while. Technology did something *good* for
> >> him, and
> >> will probably do better next time.
> >>
> >> If I could take a pill, only once, which would grant me 200 IQ for a
> >> year,
> >> then revert to normal, I'd take it.
> >>
> >> pt
> >
> > For you, the pill would take you from functional to super-functional.
> >
> > For Charlie, the pill ??? took him from below-functional to functional.
> >
> > And for you, afterwards you would always have the memory of being
> > smarter while you now feel "dumb".  Might drive you crazy after a while
> > with regrets.
> >
> > And I would probably take the pill also, even knowing that the effects
> > are temporary.
> >
> Even knowing it would kill you when it wore off?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hole_%28Red_Dwarf%29> 
...ah: "references the seminal science fiction novel
_Flowers for Algernon_."  Implicitly, I think, because
the action probably wouldn't be taken if they'd read 
the novel, or the short story.  Also, _Red Dwarf_ is
mainly for laughs.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#457395

On 2016-11-18, Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
> If I could take a pill, only once, which would grant me 200 IQ for a year, 
> then revert to normal, I'd take it.

A couple of maybe-relevant opinions on that:

======

All he had to do was put on the Ring.

Just that, and all would become clear to him, once more the slowness and mud
would leave his thoughts, all possibilities and futures transparent to him, he
would see through the Shadow's plans and devise an irresistible counterstroke -

- and he would never be able to take off the Ring, not again, not by any will
that would be left to him. All Frodo had of those moments were fading memories,
but he knew that it had felt like dying, to let all his towers of thought
collapse and become only Frodo once more. It had felt like dying, he remembered
that much of Weathertop even if he remembered little else. And if he did wear
the Ring again, it would be better to die with it on his finger, to end his
life while he was still himself; for Frodo knew that he could not withstand the
effects of wearing the Ring a second time, not afterward when the limitless
clarity was lost to him...

======

ORDERS OF ABSTRACTION:

The Crystal Wind of EarthÆs InfoNet has been too fast for humans to navigate
within, unaided, for nearly four decades. And as the hardware got faster and
the software smarter, the problem has only grown worse. Increasingly clever
approaches were used to address the problem û Images were programmed to deal
with most of the grunt work of navigating the Net; tracesets freed humans from
keyboards and pointing devices and the need to speak aloud; the first real
Players, the greatest of the webdancers, subjected themselves to surgery, had
InfoNet links implanted within their skulls, ôin-skin,ö to provide them with
greater integration with their Images; and finally, in the year 2069, Tytan
Labs had shipped the NNII, an experimental nerve net designed to offload
biological thought processes into the nerve net û making its recipient
smarter, able to think faster; Trent had had one installed in late Æ69. For ten
years the biochip nerve net had been growing inside his skull, making ever
deeper and more intimate connections with TrentÆs neural system. It would have
killed him to remove it; but even so:

Stopgap measures on the way to the Promised Land. The problem was that there
was an absolute limit to the speed at which protein-based neurons could process
information.

Trent had solved the problem.

For most of the last five years, Trent the Uncatchable had been a replicant AI.
------
The boundaries of his informational universe expanded by eight orders of
magnitude; the speed at which he thought improved by five orders of magnitude.
It took less than a second of Realtime; to the living Image of Trent the
Uncatchable, the process took well over a day. [...] 
When he was done, he was the largest, fastest, most complex intelligence in all
of history.
------
THIS WAS THE hard part.

Replicant AIs have, in general, no evolved desire for self-preservation. Over
the years most replicants had invested themselves with such an imperative, but
in every case Trent knew of the imperative lacked the urgency, and replicants
the fear, associated with the human desire to continue living.

Trent did not lack it.
------
Trent detonated the grenades û

The wavefront of the explosion raced inward, shredding the Black Beast
molecules at a time, moving so slowly that Trent the Uncatchable was aware of
it as a dimming of his resources: his extremities went numb and ceased speaking
to him, and Trent shrank and fell back before the great darkness advancing upon
him. The wave of darkness came at last to the place where he awaited it, in the
midst of the light:

û and died.
======

Dave, somberly

ps: I can see, just barely, 200 IQ from where I sit. I can't reach it even on
a good day. I think I might be able to follow the conversation of such a person
(they do exist; at least one has YouTube videos) - internal of course; at that
level it's physically impossible to speak as fast as you're thinking. But I
would be lagging behind the whole time, and would miss some of it, and their
jokes WOULD have layering I didn't catch.
  I know what it's like to vary, a little, in intelligence over time. So do
you, if you think about it. Charlie's tragedy, and Alzheimer's patients', is
not so much the variation? But the irreversibility and loss. In my opinion at
least.

pps: also see David Zindell's 'vastening', and of course Vinge's True Names.

ppps: no side effects? i'd take it in a heartbeat. You can type out a lot of
 clues over the course of a year for yourself...
-- 
\/David	DeLaney	posting	thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that	grows the flower
It's not the clock that	slows the hour 	The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is	all it takes to	make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE	HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
website on VIC is down,	probably for good - oh well/ I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#457411

In article <417fcbbd-eb39-4702-adc8-bcbeda5e1af0@googlegroups.com>,
Peter Trei  <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Friday, November 18, 2016 at 2:33:41 PM UTC-5, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>> On 11/18/2016 8:30 AM, Michael Urban wrote:
>> > Funny thing is, young people cannot properly appreciate what Keyes did
>> > here.  When you get older, and bits of memory and abilities (Charlie's
>> > motor skills are affected) are taken away from you a little at a time,
>> > you understand that Charlie is all of us (with a better middle than
>> > most of us), compressed and distilled.
>> 
>> I thought the book was a warning about relying on technology ?
>
>Where on earth do you take that from? Charlie got to experience something
>good for a while. When he loses it, his biggest beef, in both the story and
>novel, is people feeling sorry for him. He was a ground-dweller who got to
>soar like an eagle for a while. Technology did something *good* for him, and
>will probably do better next time.

Previous iterations of the treatment worked even more poorly, so they are
getting better. I was surprised that A: the fact the treatment wasn't 
permanent in the past was mentioned very early in the novel and B: while
there is no hint of it in the original, in the expanded version it turns 
out the doctors invested a lot of thought into how to deal with informed
consent in Charlie's case. 
-- 
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My Livejournal at http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#458160

On Fri, 18 Nov 2016 12:26:41 -0800 (PST) in rec.arts.sf.written, Peter
Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote,
>If I could take a pill, only once, which would grant me 200 IQ for a year, 
>then revert to normal, I'd take it.

The college faculty were in their annual meeting when, suddenly, an
angel appears.  Turning to the Dean, the creature said, "I will grant
you one of three boons -- infinite wisdom, infinite wealth or infinite
health."

The Dean thought for a minute, then replied "Wisdom."

"So be it." and the angel disappeared.

In the silence that followed, the Dean sat thoughtfully, saying nothing
and staring off into the distance.  Finally, one of the other faculty
members exclaimed, "Do you have anything to say? What words of wisdom
can you provide us?".

Quoth the Dean, "I should have taken the money."

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/93q3/infinites.html

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#457353

Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/18/2016 8:30 AM, Michael Urban wrote:
>> Funny thing is, young people cannot properly appreciate what Keyes did
>> here.  When you get older, and bits of memory and abilities (Charlie's
>> motor skills are affected) are taken away from you a little at a time,
>> you understand that Charlie is all of us (with a better middle than
>> most of us), compressed and distilled.
>
> I thought the book was a warning about relying on technology ?

From my perspective it's a story about how smart people get ostracized.
Even world class researchers give Charlie the bum's rush after they
suspect that he's smarter than them.

The notion that a psycho-experimentalist needs to know Hindustani and
Chinese to keep abreast of new developments is interesting. Although
English is the world's de facto lingua franca some documents that
interest me are only available in Chinese.

Thank you,

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU

Not body enough to cover his mind decently with; his intellect is
improperly exposed. - Sydney Smith

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#457401

On Saturday, November 19, 2016 at 6:33:41 AM UTC+11, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> On 11/18/2016 8:30 AM, Michael Urban wrote:
> > Funny thing is, young people cannot properly appreciate what Keyes did
> > here.  When you get older, and bits of memory and abilities (Charlie's
> > motor skills are affected) are taken away from you a little at a time,
> > you understand that Charlie is all of us (with a better middle than
> > most of us), compressed and distilled.
> 
> I thought the book was a warning about relying on technology ?
> 
What universe are you from?

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#457404

urban@panix.com (Michael Urban) writes:

> Funny thing is, young people cannot properly appreciate what Keyes did
> here.  When you get older, and bits of memory and abilities (Charlie's
> motor skills are affected) are taken away from you a little at a time,
> you understand that Charlie is all of us (with a better middle than
> most of us), compressed and distilled. 

The very first review actually touches on the fear of mental decline as
you get older, so I think your point, although well raised, is not
applicable here. James' readers seem to be an empathic bunch.

Mart

-- 
"We will need a longer wall when the revolution comes."
    --- AJS, quoting an uncertain source.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#457248

James Nicoll wrote:
> 
> Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
> 
> http://youngpeoplereadoldsff.com/story/flowers-for-algernon
> 
> (the original short story, not the novel)
> --
> My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
> My Livejournal at http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
> My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll



white mice are not smarter...they just smell cheese. it's their nose
that guide them through the maze, not their brains.

mice are not smarter than me.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#457298

On 11/18/16 9:31 AM, The Starmaker wrote:
> mice are not smarter than me.

Chortle.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#457552

lal_truckee wrote:
> 
> On 11/18/16 9:31 AM, The Starmaker wrote:
> > mice are not smarter than me.
> 
> Chortle.

i mean, i don't understand...

Why measure the sense of smell of a mouse with a person's IQ?


Somehting is wrong with the title and story of the book Flowers for
Algernon..


the mouse was never smarter..he just can smell cheese.

[toc] | [prev] | [standalone]

Page 2 of 2 — ← Prev page 1 [2]

Back to top | Article view | rec.arts.sf.written

csiph-web