{"id":637,"date":"2012-05-02T19:51:17","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T23:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=637"},"modified":"2017-04-06T20:09:34","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T00:09:34","slug":"still-forms-on-foxfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/still-forms-on-foxfield\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Forms on Foxfield"},"content":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “Communication is the first right. Life is<\/strong> communication. What is death but the irrevocable absence of communication? … Freedom, too, is communication. How can anyone be a prisoner when she can contact any person in the world at any time? ”<\/p>\n

Still Forms on Foxfield<\/strong> by Joan Slonczewski, published in 1980<\/p>\n

It’s not often that I reread books — there are just too many to read that I haven’t read. But once in a while I go back for a second look. I first read Still Forms on Foxfield<\/strong> around 20 years ago, and I had only the vaguest of memories of it.<\/p>\n

Foxfield is a world colonized by Quakers. They assumed that something terrible had happened to Earth because they hadn’t heard from them in 100 years. But then they receive a message from the United Nations Interplanetary — and their representatives have arrived at Foxfield for a visit.<\/p>\n

The Foxfield people are both excited and wary — the visitors have very different ways of doing things. But so do the Commensals, creatures native to Foxfield — plant-like beings that once in a while join together to form the One. They communicate naturally with chemisense but are able to communicate with humans, sometimes imprecisely, by sign language.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of dialogue in the book, as opposed to action, but it’s interesting dialogue — about such things as religion, democracy, and freedom. The Quakers have Meetings in order to discuss what needs to be discussed and make decisions by consensus. Slonczewski is a biology professor, and puts a lot of fascinating biological speculation into her books. She also creates interesting characters and dilemmas.<\/p>\n

Slonczewski is one of my favourite authors — I even created a web site about her books<\/a>. All of her books are worth reading — unfortunately for her fans, she’s too busy being a biology professor to write many books. When asked what my favourite book is I say Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{4.5\/5} “Communication is the first right. Life is communication. What is death but the irrevocable absence of communication? … Freedom, too, is communication. How can anyone be a prisoner when she can contact any person in the world at any time? ” Still Forms on Foxfield by Joan Slonczewski, published in 1980 It’s not often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,28,5,8],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-novels","tag-review","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10568,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions\/10568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}