Kevin's Watch

Can't help myself. Just love the series!

i love the gap

just one quick question; when you cross the gap using gap drive do you have to use it to get back?

Spoiler

morn's gap sickness only kicked in on her 2nd crossing but if so how did she get back the first time?

i just finished the Gap Cycle last night! fabulous!!! i love it. Donaldson't best writing as far as i'm concerned!! (phew...i'm in trouble now, aren't i!)

You're safe in the Gap Series discussion. We all like the gap best here!

An excellent and inventive topic. *smiles*

Still, I see your point... This has been discussed before, the Gap series is perhaps my favourite Sci Fi series... in truth, I don't read that many... but the Gap would probably rank up there with most Sci Fi films I've seen.

It's the realism... I mean other Sci Fi's present stories and ideas that are idealisticly "Out of this world". But with the Gap series, the characters, the technology, implants and cypernetic surgery, you can't picture them happenin, but they are realistic in how they are set up and explained. And the characters are not "heroic" in the purest sense of the term, they are complex, doing things for their own reasons... Who the hero is depends largely on your point of view; They're amazing.

Revan wrote:An excellent and inventive topic. *smiles*

Still, I see your point... This has been discussed before

Says the prime culprit for redundant threads I never pretended this thread was other than praise from me.

tazzyjoe said;

just one quick question; when you cross the gap using gap drive do you have to use it to get back?

i'll TRY and answer my own question then.didn't want to hijack the thread but if anyone can answer questions on gap then the people who proclaim to love the series should know. right?

anyway, ofcourse if you use gap drive to cross the gap then you need it to get back. but why o why didn't morn try and blow up the ship that first took her across the gap?i'm sure that she had crossed before. is there something about gap sickness i dont know or have forgotten? maybe. i'm just rambling now. i love the series and still have two more books to go.

p.s i also believe that the gap series is S.D best work. still got the 3rd chrons of T.C to get through to change my mind though.

The trigger (for Morn) was high G, not gap crossings.

Murrin wrote:The trigger (for Morn) was high G, not gap crossings.

Beat me to it!

Pretty profound the way the Universe Spoke to Morn when she was suffering through GS.

Incredibly Noble the way she busted her own arm that time to stop it.

I too Loved the series, only read it once, this fall, I'd say it's a close second behind the TCOTC for my favorite book series.

To get a little more detailed about it, Gap crossing was what caused Morn's high-G problem. High-G never bothered her before her first Gap crossing. And she can Gap all she wants, and it never bothers her.

But her first Gap crossing turned high-G into a trigger for her. Now she can never experience high-G without the sickness hitting her.


I, alas, have stopped reading The Gap. I read halfway through the 2nd book, and just don't want to read any more of Morn's pain and horror. It may be SRD's greatest exploration of what a human can go through, but I don't want to go through any more of it. There's, what, three and half more books of it? No thanks!

amazing! i could NEVER in a million YEARS have stopped reading halfway thru the second book if only for the reason that i HAD to have resolution to the story! to KNOW that the bad guys get what they deserve and the good guys prevail! you really really should finish it Fist...it's a GREAT story!!!

Fist and Faith wrote:I, alas, have stopped reading The Gap. I read halfway through the 2nd book, and just don't want to read any more of Morn's pain and horror. It may be SRD's greatest exploration of what a human can go through, but I don't want to go through any more of it. There's, what, three and half more books of it? No thanks!

But wouldn't it be uplifting to see the strength of the characters to strive despite the pain, to overcome the horror and succeed, or to redeem themselves? Trust me, it's the pain and horror that gives their actions true heroic quality.

Lucimay wrote:amazing! i could NEVER in a million YEARS have stopped reading halfway thru the second book if only for the reason that i HAD to have resolution to the story! to KNOW that the bad guys get what they deserve and the good guys prevail! you really really should finish it Fist...it's a GREAT story!!!

I have no doubt the good guys prevail. heh. Although, with SRD, I wouldn't have assumed the bad guys get what they deserve. Foul and the Ravers certainly didn't in the 1st Chrons, which was as far as he originally planned to go. (Foul only lost, he didn't pay any penance/justice, or suffer any retribution.) And only samadhi might have paid any price in the 2nd.

Loremaster wrote:But wouldn't it be uplifting to see the strength of the characters to strive despite the pain, to overcome the horror and succeed, or to redeem themselves? Trust me, it's the pain and horror that gives their actions true heroic quality.

That's all true. And I've read and loved books and movies like that. But when I'm reading a fantasy/sci-fi book, I want other things, too. You know what I mean? I want to be awed by the beauty, strength, joy, and honor of people and creatures like the Haruchai, Giants, Ranyhyn, Fremen, and Earthsea's dragons. Or be numb with the possibilities of things like Earthpower, melange and True Names. Yes, in my fantasy/sci-fi, I want to see those things in conjunction with the pain, struggles, and triumphs of Covenant, Paul, and Ged. I consider Harry Potter to be very good fluff. Great fantasy elements, but no substance. (At least the first book.) The Gap is the flip-side: all substance, but no fantasy/sci-fi. At least nothing serious.

It's not Star Wars, Fist - nor should it be. Anyway, instead we have the Amnion, a rich political setting, amazing technology . . . I think there is alot of sci-fi substance. (Sci-fi should never have fantasy-like elements in it.)

No one is forcing you to read the Gap, Fist. I'm a just bit stunned.

Loremaster wrote:It's not Star Wars, Fist - nor should it be.

By and large, SW is also good fluff. A fun adventure story with the best special effects that each movie's time-period could produce.

Loremaster wrote:Anyway, instead we have the Amnion, a rich political setting, amazing technology . . . I think there is alot of sci-fi substance.

Maybe my patience isn't as good these days as it could be, but, since I hadn't seen any of that in 400+ pages, I figured I'd move along. No Amnion has been mentioned. And the only technologies mentioned were simply that - mentioned, without any sort of sci-fi or pseudo-sci depth.

Loremaster wrote:(Sci-fi should never have fantasy-like elements in it.)

This is an entire thread all its own! Which is Star Wars, fantasy or sci-fi? I'd say it has strong elements of both.

Loremaster wrote:No one is forcing you to read the Gap, Fist.

I'm glad to hear it!

Loremaster wrote:I'm a just bit stunned.

Well, different people sometimes look for different things in books. *shrug*

The GAP, to me, is less of a Sci-Fi story, than it is a dep thiking story about the lives of different people, set in a science fiction setting.

drew wrote:The GAP, to me, is less of a Sci-Fi story, than it is a dep thiking story about the lives of different people, set in a science fiction setting.

That's probably an accurate description.

Thanks, sir.

Loremaster wrote:It's not Star Wars, Fist - nor should it be. Anyway, instead we have the Amnion, a rich political setting, amazing technology . . . I think there is alot of sci-fi substance. (Sci-fi should never have fantasy-like elements in it.

i quote Loremaster of the Green Coat here because i want to address the Sci-Fi issue first (in my attempt to convince Fist to continue reading The Gap Cycle)!i'm SURE i'll make some arguable points here but i'm going to attempt to articulate this anyway and hope i don't botch the job!

there is, for all intents and purposes, two sub-genres of Science Fiction, "hard" Sci-Fi and "soft" Sci-Fi. hard Sci-Fi is a story that is, for the most part, centered around the science in the story while soft Sci-Fi is a story set in space.

Star Wars, to my way of thinking anyway, is soft Sci-Fi. the film Alien, for instance, is NOT a science fiction story, it's a horror story, while Bladerunner, without doubt, science fiction. i just use these two films as i think it's easy to see my point with these examples.

fiction, to me, is conflict, and the struggle of the characters to resolve the conflict. while this is true of both Star Wars and the Gap Cycle, the story of Star Wars could be set ANYWHERE and would still be the same story. in the Gap Cycle, however, the story would NOT be the same story without the science involved. that's the difference between hard and soft sci-fi to me.

it is true, Fist, that Donaldson takes his time in the exposition of the story, but i gotta tell you, it's soooo worth it to continue. the struggles that these characters encounter within the context of the SCIENCE of the story raises thought-provoking questions! we've seen that in some of the threads in the Gap Discussion forum...Zone Implants vs Mutagens, for example...or the arguments about Angus and Sorus Chatelaine's characters...Gap Sickness...etc.
and the complex political situations are exceedingly RELEVANT to political situations extant right NOW.
Donaldson, in true Donaldson form, raises questions that we might LEARN from if we think about them! and for SOME reason, to ME, he does this BETTER in the Gap Cycle than he does in TCTC. it's less obscured in the Gap story than it is in the Chronicles.
by that i mean that i EASILY get "lost" in the "world" of Covenant and simply enjoy being in The Land and discovering it and trying to understand it and imagining myself there, etc. the conflicts are simple, good vs evil. (not that Covenant and Avery don't complicate matters! )

but in the Gap, lines are not so easily drawn. Are the Amnion "evil" or just so ALIEN that we can't UNDERSTAND their motivations? is Warden Dios RESPONSIBLE for his "crimes"? these are just a couple of the questions, there's tons more!

and i'll tell you one thing that REALLY surprised me was Donaldson's grasp of hard science!! wow! the chapters in Forbidden Knowledge that discuss zone implants, the gap drive, mutagens, etc. just BRILLIANT! he's done A LOT of homework on these books! this is why a lot of people who've read them consider them to be some of the BEST sci-fi they've read! i was knocked out by Donaldson's ability to make ME understand the science!

ok...i've babbled enough. i hope you decide to finish the Gap story, Fist. it's a notch or two above a LOT of other hard Sci-Fi and has elevated my opinion of Donaldson's literary contribution to ANY kind of fiction.

Lucimay wrote:by that i mean that i EASILY get "lost" in the "world" of Covenant and simply enjoy being in The Land and discovering it and trying to understand it and imagining myself there, etc. the conflicts are simple, good vs evil. (not that Covenant and Avery don't complicate matters! )

but in the Gap, lines are not so easily drawn. Are the Amnion "evil" or just so ALIEN that we can't UNDERSTAND their motivations? is Warden Dios RESPONSIBLE for his "crimes"? these are just a couple of the questions, there's tons more!

Excellent points.

Lucimay wrote:and i'll tell you one thing that REALLY surprised me was Donaldson's grasp of hard science!! wow! the chapters in Forbidden Knowledge that discuss zone implants, the gap drive, mutagens, etc. just BRILLIANT! he's done A LOT of homework on these books! this is why a lot of people who've read them consider them to be some of the BEST sci-fi they've read! i was knocked out by Donaldson's ability to make ME understand the science!

Most of science in the Gap is well researched, there are some errors (though more the fault of an advisor than SRD's) - the Singularity grenades, singularities forming due to gravitational interaction, Beckman's plans, the nature of the mutagen . . .