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Re: Exposition
Gee, it's nice that someone thinks I'm right most of the time (Now, if I can
just convince my wife...). :-)
The expository dialog trick is used in "Doctor Who" where we have the Doctor
explain things to his companions (usually from Earth, around our current
time), because they would NOT be familiar with the new planet or time that
they had arrived in. Once in awhile, the Doctor's companion would have to
explain things to him!
Also, check the "X-Files" - sometimes they go overboard - Mulder explaining
to Scully (who is supposed to be a doctor), some medical fact, for instance.
HItchhiker's Guide - on the other hand, is supposed to be funny, and
therefore, he (Douglas Adams) can get away with annoying or pendantic
things. (Also, the major narrative is really the Guide itself, and on
occasion, Arthur can ask questions of the guide).
Allan Edels
-----Original Message-----
From: Philidor11@aol.com <Philidor11@aol.com>
To: Edels@email.msn.com <Edels@email.msn.com>
Cc: dinosaur@usc.edu <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Date: Sunday, April 18, 1999 5:44 PM
Subject: Re: Exposition
>In a message dated 4/18/99 3:40:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>Edels@email.msn.com writes:
>
><< By the way - in short story Science Fiction - don't spend a lot of time
> explaining equipment or theories - especially if all the characters
involved
> should already know about them. >>
>
>Mr. Edels is as usual correct, though I have to carve out an exception for
>expository narrative whose tone makes the author a successful character.
>Expository dialogue also works, though I do wonder whether the character
who
>is supposed to be listening doesn't let his mind wander onto less pedantic
>preoccupations. There's a reason the ancient mariner (the Coleridge poem)
>could stoppeth only one of three 'gallants' on their way into a wedding,
and
>I suspect he got an elbow in the ribs from one of the other two.
>At any rate, here's some Hitchhiker for an example of brilliant exposition:
>
>And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of
specialist
>industry: custom-made luxury planet building. The home of this industry was
>the planet Magrathea, where hyperspatial engineers sucked matter
through
>white holes in space to form it into dream planets - gold planets, platinum
>planets, soft rubberplanets with lots of earthquakes - all lovingly made
to
>meet the exacting standards that the Galaxy's richest men naturally came
to
>expect.
>But so successful was this venture that Magrathea itself soon became
the
>richest planet of all time and the rest of the Galaxy was reduced to abject
>poverty. And so the system broke down, the Empire collapsed, and a
long
>sullen silence settled over a billion worlds, disturbed only by the pen
>scratchings of scholars as they laboured into the night over smug little
>treatises on the value of a planned political economy.
>Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the obscurity
of
>legend.