Re: OT<?>: Linguist Heros was Re: No pronoun, no article

On Mon, Oct 20, 2003 at 10:19:00AM -0700, JS Bangs wrote:
> > heroes" in fiction, but I think there are more than we want to believe.
> >   For instance, the hero of _The Languages of Pao_ by Jack Vance, who's
> > name escapes me.    The already mentioned _Babel 17_, of course.  Most
> > recently, _The Scar_ by China Mieville has a linguist heroine.  In fact,
> > she even makes a snide remark about someone mistranslating the pluperfect.
> > I'm away from my library, but I have a book called _Aliens and
> > Linguists_ which is an examination of linguistics in science-fiction and
> > fantasy.  I *know* it lists other examples, but they escape me at the
> > moment.  (I think C. J. Cherryh has had some linguist heroes, as well.)
_Hellspark_, by Janet Kagan.

Disney's _Atlantis_ features a linguist protaganist, but sadly, in the
second half of the movie the "linguistics" become so ludicrous as to
ruin the whole thing for anyone who knows anything about the subject.

> Hiro Protagonist of Snowcrash is not exactly a linguist, but he does do a
> lot of linguistics in the course of the novel.
It's more the case that others do the actual linguistics for him, but
linguistics does feature prominently in the plot, which in goes into quite
some speculative detail on the original purpose and nature of language
itself.

-Mark

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