Destiny and Wrinkle in Time

Wow. A trailer for A Wrinkle in Time came out today, and seeing that it was based on a book I looked it up. Looks like Destiny drew some inspiration…

-Themes of dark vs light
-A darkness the main characters have to fight
-Earth is a "shadowed" planet, in which the darkness surrounds it, but has not conquered it.
-There is a character (Mrs. Whatsit) which is hinted to be a star that sacrificed itself in fighting the darkness, but was not totally destroyed.

Sound familiar? Lots of parallels. Who has read the books? How similar is it?

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Wow. A trailer for A Wrinkle in Time came out today, and seeing that it was based on a book I looked it up. Looks like Destiny drew some inspiration…

-Themes of dark vs light
-A darkness the main characters have to fight
-Earth is a "shadowed" planet, in which the darkness surrounds it, but has not conquered it.
-There is a character (Mrs. Whatsit) which is hinted to be a star that sacrificed itself in fighting the darkness, but was not totally destroyed.

Sound familiar? Lots of parallels. Who has read the books? How similar is it?

Not similar at all.

Sure some of the words and phrases are familiar, but well, that happens a lot. You can hardly look in any direction without finding mention of light vs darkness in the plot summary of a popular work of fiction.

Destiny, if it has been about anything so far, has been about groups of sci-fi heroes and their struggles and successes and occasional failures to reclaim their world after their entire civilization was destroyed. In the background there is some sort of battle between light and darkness but we haven’t yet even really seen anything of the light’s point of view or its motivations.

A Wrinkle in Time is a story about a very smart but insecure teenage girl going on a fantastical fantasy adventure to rescue her father. Its themes revolve around it being ok to be different, goodness and love overcoming evil and conformity, and a little about not looking to others to solve all your problems and not being angry at them when they aren’t able to solve everything for you.

There are some names that are similar. When Rasputin talks about fighting IT (The Darkness) with all manner of sci-fi weapons, it really has nothing to do with A Wrinkle in Time’s IT which is a bodiless brain that telepathically controls the population of a planet to conform in perfect lockstep. One wishes for destruction, while the other whishes for the perfect peace that only comes when all chaos and individuality is driven away. If anything, A Wrinkle in Time’s antagonist is more similar to Halo’s Gravemind in wanting peace through oneness... but even that is a huge stretch to compare those two, they are just completely different things.

Similarly, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda had a galactic force of evil Darkness in the Abyss and had stars operating among regular people via avatars like Trance Gemini and had tesseracts used as major plot points, all of which are words and concepts used in A Wrinkle in Time, but those two don’t feel even slightly similar, either.

Honestly, just go read A Wrinkle in Time’s plot summary on Wikipedia and you’ll see that sharing a few superficial words does not make two works of fiction anything alike...

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It seemed fairly gendered, in that I only saw girls read it so I never bothered to pick up the book. Any good?

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I read it and liked it, but it's more of a young adult type book than hard-boiled fantasy or science fiction.

It's like a step below Dragonriders of Pern in terms of theming.

If you're looking for something to read, may humbly I suggest:

Fantasy:
- The Amber Chronicles (by Roger Zelazny)
- The Elric Saga (by Michael Moorcock)
- The Lord of the Rings (only third because I figure most fantasy fans have already read it thrice)
- Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
- Perdido Street Station (and then read goddamn *everything* China Mieville ever wrote, because wow, he's amazing).
- Game of Thrones is a good read. Also season 7 airs in 3 hours if you're on the west coast, or right now on the east coast. Enjoy!

Sci-Fi:
- Alastair Reynolds' series of books is fantastic. The short stories, in particular, and brilliant. Diamond Dogs haunts me to this day.
- The entire Phillip K. Dick collection.
- Embassytown (because China Mieville doesn't limit himself to a single genre and neither should you).
- Hyperion (by Dan Simmons). Then read The Fall of Hyperion and realize that the first book, which won the Hugo and the Nebula, was nothing but a set-up for the sequel.
- Dune. You may then read the sequel. if you must, read the third. Do not torture yourself by attempting any of the others. The first book is a 10 and it drops off exponentially from there.

I've left most of the better known books and authors off of this list because I feel like everyone should read Asimov, Vonnegut, T. H. White, etc.. This is just my recent reading list. Enjoy.

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I read it and liked it, but it's more of a young adult type book than hard-boiled fantasy or science fiction.

Agreed.

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YA stuff can be much more enjoyable than more acclaimed and/or conceptually similar hard-boiled stuff.

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YA stuff can be much more enjoyable than more acclaimed and/or conceptually similar hard-boiled stuff.

Oh sure! I love this kind of stuff! Reread A Wrinkle in Time today just to be able to better answer Cody’s question.

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But I read it when I was a YA.

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I read it and liked it, but it's more of a young adult type book than hard-boiled fantasy or science fiction.

I think I read it in middle school too, but it must not have affected me much. I do remember it introducing me to the concept of explaining tesseracts/wormholes through bringing two points together. Before seeing Interstellar with some friends we discussed whether they would use that technique to explain their wormhole. When that guy brought out his piece of paper in the movie we all started laughing.

- Perdido Street Station (and then read goddamn *everything* China Mieville ever wrote, because wow, he's amazing).

I've found The Scar to be the book that has most affected me. The imagery of Machine Beach is seared in my mind.

- Embassytown (because China Mieville doesn't limit himself to a single genre and neither should you).

Yes.

- Dune. You may then read the sequel. if you must, read the third. Do not torture yourself by attempting any of the others. The first book is a 10 and it drops off exponentially from there.

I'll disagree here, only to defend the sequels. I think most people find them shocking (especially God Emperor) because they are so outside the realm of expectation based on the first book. I know I gave up Dune: Messiah halfway through, and came back a year or so later. After making it through them all, I've now reread them several times, and I'd have a hard time picking a favorite. Heretics of Dune is amazing, and the fact that God Emperor was parodied in an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy remains one of my favorite things of all time. However, I am still struggling with the decision whether or not to read the Brian Herbert sequels to finally find out what happens. His prequels were serviceable, but he's just not the writer Frank Herbert was (and nobody really is).

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It seemed fairly gendered, in that I only saw girls read it so I never bothered to pick up the book. Any good?

I read them.

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I was curious because Jason Jones has always pulled from science fiction literature. In the case of Halo, some of the original story was so closely based off of other sources, that it would have been 'actionable' according to Eric Trautmann.

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...or a little Ol' faithful in Mr. Jones' pocket...
http://i.imgur.com/zykVMU7.jpg
(imgur kept "zoinks"ing me when i tried to resize it)

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...was not to step on butterflies.

That was something different, wasn't it?

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I cringed when I realized he was still alive when she posted that.

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I cringed when I realized he was still alive when she posted that.

Apparently they watched it together. And it was kinda awkward.

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Why do you write all your post subjects in Title Case, and why do you capitalize words that shouldn't be capitalized even in title case (like "our")?

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Some random switch in my brain. Something.

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Why do you write all your post subjects in Title Case, and why do you capitalize words that shouldn't be capitalized even in title case (like "our")?

What I find funny is that you are questioning their capitalization and yet you never even bothered to fix yours :-P

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Why do you write all your post subjects in Title Case, and why do you capitalize words that shouldn't be capitalized even in title case (like "our")?

What I find funny is that you are questioning their capitalization and yet you never even bothered to fix yours :-P

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The big takeaway from this thread to me is that you all come across like cultural buffoons. A Wrinkle in Time is one of the greatest young adult novels of all time, and you don't really need the "young adult" classification.

I was gobsmacked that Cody hadn't read it, but just as gobsmacked by the ongoing discussion by some of you.

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Never heard of it, but when Squid described a specific scene, I had a rush of memories come to me, so I thought that I might have read it. When I looked it up though, it turns out that the book I had read was "The Boy Who Reversed Himself" by William Sleator (one of my favorite authors as a child, and who one more than one occasion wrote on trans-dimensional travel).

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I might have heard of it, but its an aphorism, so I would not have been able to tell you it was a book 2 days ago. Friends are loving the trailer, but I think you need to gave read the book for the trailer to impact you? (or at least I didn't get anything out of it)

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I might have heard of it, but its an aphorism, so I would not have been able to tell you it was a book 2 days ago. Friends are loving the trailer, but I think you need to gave read the book for the trailer to impact you? (or at least I didn't get anything out of it)

I wasn't that impressed by the trailer, but the characters are pretty fixed in my mind and I mainly think of it as a book to be read rather than anything else. Many years ago there was a TV adaptation that was just okay.

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I wasn't that impressed by the trailer, but the characters are pretty fixed in my mind and I mainly think of it as a book to be read rather than anything else. Many years ago there was a TV adaptation that was just okay.

I'm cautiously optimistic. I loved the series as a kid and just told my kiddos (8, 9, & 10) that we'd all read it together. I would be REALLY surprised if they managed to find a good Charles Wallace, though. Where do you find someone who looks like a five year old but can speak clearly enough to pull off sounding like a cocky grad student?

-Disciple

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I wasn't that impressed by the trailer, but the characters are pretty fixed in my mind and I mainly think of it as a book to be read rather than anything else. Many years ago there was a TV adaptation that was just okay.

I'm cautiously optimistic. I loved the series as a kid and just told my kiddos (8, 9, & 10) that we'd all read it together. I would be REALLY surprised if they managed to find a good Charles Wallace, though. Where do you find someone who looks like a five year old but can speak clearly enough to pull off sounding like a cocky grad student?

-Disciple

Yeah, that's a challenge.

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[image]

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The big takeaway from this thread to me is that you all come across like cultural buffoons. A Wrinkle in Time is one of the greatest young adult novels of all time, and you don't really need the "young adult" classification.

I'm actually kind of surprised that I didn't remember more about it, as it's always been in the back of my mind as SF of cultural significance. I skimmed through a few passages and it dredged up some memories, like them traveling to the 2-D world. I remember the books we read from had a weird looking cover with some sort of crazy looking mash-up animal.

My guess is that we read it in school (maybe 5th grade?) at a time when I was just starting to devour Michael Crichton, so it probably had a hard time competing with dinosaurs eating people.

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Sorry. I spent all my time reading Hume and Baudrillard.

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Sorry. I spent all my time reading Hume and Baudrillard.

You're being sarcastic, but don't underestimate L'Engle as a thinker or writer.

This thread has been redeemed by the mention of the master, Ray Bradbury.

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Sorry. I spent all my time reading Hume and Baudrillard.

Not in 5th grade, you didn't.

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Sorry. I spent all my time reading Hume and Baudrillard.

Not in 5th grade, you didn't.

I think fifth grade was Tom Sawyer.

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TIL Cody is still in 5th grade

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The big takeaway from this thread to me is that you all come across like cultural buffoons. A Wrinkle in Time is one of the greatest young adult novels of all time, and you don't really need the "young adult" classification.

I was gobsmacked that Cody hadn't read it, but just as gobsmacked by the ongoing discussion by some of you.

It is a great book but it's solidly a kids' book, not even young adult, it's for kids. No one dies or suffers permanent injury despite it being what you would expect from the circumstances, several characters and places act as what you might call "silliness relief" (where something being weird and irrelevant is used to lighten the tension in a similar way to comedy relief), and of course the main character is 13, and her brother and friend who tag along are also children. Yes it gets into fourth-dimensional geometry but it also does it as simply as it can, takes half a chapter just to explain it, and even includes an illustration or two to help. Yes it touches on child abuse and parental abandonment but it only touches on them, at no point does it really examine them. Yes it has religious overtones but IMHO they make the book strange more than they make it adult.
It's a great book to introduce kids to science fiction, or help them towards more out-there science fiction, but it's not very "grown up". Not every good book needs to be "grown up".
No idea on the "girls read it" thing, I encountered it because it was required reading in 4th or 5th grade (sounds like a kids' book, yeah?).
As for Cody having not even heard of it, I'm surprised enough to think he might be lying, but at the same time he's one of those weird people that seem to have somehow gone through life without experiencing all the things people normally experience and then come to them later with too much emotion and scrutiny (but then, he approaches lots of things with too much emotion and scrutiny).

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The big takeaway from this thread to me is that you all come across like cultural buffoons. A Wrinkle in Time is one of the greatest young adult novels of all time, and you don't really need the "young adult" classification.

I was gobsmacked that Cody hadn't read it, but just as gobsmacked by the ongoing discussion by some of you.

It is a great book but it's solidly a kids' book, not even young adult, it's for kids. No one dies or suffers permanent injury despite it being what you would expect from the circumstances, several characters and places act as what you might call "silliness relief" (where something being weird and irrelevant is used to lighten the tension in a similar way to comedy relief), and of course the main character is 13, and her brother and friend who tag along are also children. Yes it gets into fourth-dimensional geometry but it also does it as simply as it can, takes half a chapter just to explain it, and even includes an illustration or two to help. Yes it touches on child abuse and parental abandonment but it only touches on them, at no point does it really examine them. Yes it has religious overtones but IMHO they make the book strange more than they make it adult.
It's a great book to introduce kids to science fiction, or help them towards more out-there science fiction, but it's not very "grown up". Not every good book needs to be "grown up".
No idea on the "girls read it" thing, I encountered it because it was required reading in 4th or 5th grade (sounds like a kids' book, yeah?).
As for Cody having not even heard of it, I'm surprised enough to think he might be lying, but at the same time he's one of those weird people that seem to have somehow gone through life without experiencing all the things people normally experience and then come to them later with too much emotion and scrutiny (but then, he approaches lots of things with too much emotion and scrutiny).

I disagree with several of your notions of what would make it more than a kids book, but I'm just glad you read it and seemed to like it.

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I disagree with several of your notions of what would make it more than a kids book,

such as?

but I'm just glad you read it and seemed to like it.

I mean I'm glad too, but it's not like it's a cultural touchstone like LotR or better yet Harry Potter (whatever people make think of any of those books), ultimately it doesn't matter if you've read it or not, unless you do something like make a thread mockingly asking if a multi-million-dollar game is ripping off a fucking children's book.

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I disagree with several of your notions of what would make it more than a kids book,

such as?

but I'm just glad you read it and seemed to like it.

I mean I'm glad too, but it's not like it's a cultural touchstone like LotR or better yet Harry Potter (whatever people make think of any of those books), ultimately it doesn't matter if you've read it or not, unless you do something like make a thread mockingly asking if a multi-million-dollar game is ripping off a fucking children's book.

It was a cultural touchstone for me and many people I know. I don't think of it as an effing children's book.

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I disagree with several of your notions of what would make it more than a kids book,

such as?

but I'm just glad you read it and seemed to like it.

I mean I'm glad too, but it's not like it's a cultural touchstone like LotR or better yet Harry Potter (whatever people make think of any of those books), ultimately it doesn't matter if you've read it or not, unless you do something like make a thread mockingly asking if a multi-million-dollar game is ripping off a fucking children's book.

It was a cultural touchstone for me and many people I know. I don't think of it as an effing children's book.

I'm pretty sure this is just an age thing. It wasn't like other things I'd read when I read it (as a young adult), but today it's pretty tame, both in terms of actual content and more abstract themes. I don't think GV is looking at it from a historical context, I think he's looking at it as it was presented to him. (Same with other under-30s in this thread.)

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I disagree with several of your notions of what would make it more than a kids book,

such as?

but I'm just glad you read it and seemed to like it.

I mean I'm glad too, but it's not like it's a cultural touchstone like LotR or better yet Harry Potter (whatever people make think of any of those books), ultimately it doesn't matter if you've read it or not, unless you do something like make a thread mockingly asking if a multi-million-dollar game is ripping off a fucking children's book.

It was a cultural touchstone for me and many people I know. I don't think of it as an effing children's book.

I'm pretty sure this is just an age thing. It wasn't like other things I'd read when I read it (as a young adult), but today it's pretty tame, both in terms of actual content and more abstract themes.

This is what I was talking about, yes.

I don't think GV is looking at it from a historical context, I think he's looking at it as it was presented to him. (Same with other under-30s in this thread.)

What's the context I'm missing? the communism allegory? I picked up on that not long after I first read it and honestly I found it kind of obtuse but also ham-handed, but that's kind of what I expect from a kids' book.

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I don't think GV is looking at it from a historical context, I think he's looking at it as it was presented to him. (Same with other under-30s in this thread.)

What's the context I'm missing? the communism allegory? I picked up on that not long after I first read it and honestly I found it kind of obtuse but also ham-handed, but that's kind of what I expect from a kids' book.

First off, kids books are rarely obtuse; that's usually saved for older audiences. :)

But the context you're missing is that those themes that you found common, the things you've seen a bunch of times - they were new when L'Engle wrote about them. She was a trailsetter, and I think she deserves credit for that. (Those themes include the sci-fi stuff, but also a look at politics - the cold war, what happens when a country loses its way - things that aren't often included in children's books.)

::shrug:: Not all books resonate with all readers. If you didn't like it, or weren't impressed with it, fine. I was simply pointing out that a lot of your lack of interest might come from the fact that she wrote about things you find trite, except they weren't trite when she wrote about them. It's definitely not a 'children's book', imo.

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I don't think GV is looking at it from a historical context, I think he's looking at it as it was presented to him. (Same with other under-30s in this thread.)

What's the context I'm missing? the communism allegory? I picked up on that not long after I first read it and honestly I found it kind of obtuse but also ham-handed, but that's kind of what I expect from a kids' book.

First off, kids books are rarely obtuse; that's usually saved for older audiences. :)

But the context you're missing is that those themes that you found common, the things you've seen a bunch of times - they were new when L'Engle wrote about them. She was a trailsetter, and I think she deserves credit for that. (Those themes include the sci-fi stuff, but also a look at politics - the cold war, what happens when a country loses its way - things that aren't often included in children's books.)

::shrug:: Not all books resonate with all readers. If you didn't like it, or weren't impressed with it, fine. I was simply pointing out that a lot of your lack of interest might come from the fact that she wrote about things you find trite, except they weren't trite when she wrote about them. It's definitely not a 'children's book', imo.

Remember the classics, man. That's all I'm saying. (And yes, it's probably an age thing, 'cause "remember the classics" is something old guys say.)

Thanks for your great comments, Claude.

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I don't think GV is looking at it from a historical context, I think he's looking at it as it was presented to him. (Same with other under-30s in this thread.)

What's the context I'm missing? the communism allegory? I picked up on that not long after I first read it and honestly I found it kind of obtuse but also ham-handed, but that's kind of what I expect from a kids' book.

First off, kids books are rarely obtuse; that's usually saved for older audiences. :)

But the context you're missing is that those themes that you found common, the things you've seen a bunch of times - they were new when L'Engle wrote about them. She was a trailsetter, and I think she deserves credit for that. (Those themes include the sci-fi stuff, but also a look at politics - the cold war, what happens when a country loses its way - things that aren't often included in children's books.)

::shrug:: Not all books resonate with all readers. If you didn't like it, or weren't impressed with it, fine.

Actually it's one of my favorite books, that's why I feel so strongly about it, I just think of it as a kids' book.
You have a point about being obtuse, but the thing is I still don't know the point or purpose behind some of it, so it feels like it's being silly or strange just for the sake of it. On the other hand, I wasn't referring to "things that are commonplace" because I'd only read like 3 or 4 sci-fi books up to that point and watched about as many movies in the genre.

I was simply pointing out that a lot of your lack of interest might come from the fact that she wrote about things you find trite, except they weren't trite when she wrote about them. It's definitely not a 'children's book', imo.

I don't think it's trite, I just think it's basic.
I don't know, maybe I should read it again.

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I mean I'm glad too, but it's not like it's a cultural touchstone like LotR or better yet Harry Potter (whatever people make think of any of those books), ultimately it doesn't matter if you've read it or not, unless you do something like make a thread mockingly asking if a multi-million-dollar game is ripping off a fucking children's book.

Jason Jones has always drawn super heavily from literature for themes and plot points. Someone like Eric Trautmann goes so far as to say ripped off in the case of early Halo. It wasn't that offensive of a question to wonder what similarities there were.

Remember what Picasso allegedly said?

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Good artists copy. Great artists steal.

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Wow. A trailer for A Wrinkle in Time came out today, and seeing that it was based on a book I looked it up. Looks like Destiny drew some inspiration…

-Themes of dark vs light
-A darkness the main characters have to fight
-Earth is a "shadowed" planet, in which the darkness surrounds it, but has not conquered it.
-There is a character (Mrs. Whatsit) which is hinted to be a star that sacrificed itself in fighting the darkness, but was not totally destroyed.

Sound familiar? Lots of parallels. Who has read the books? How similar is it?

I can't tell how sarcastic you're being and I don't care because even you should be above this.

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