(no subject)

I'm thinking some more about Worth the Candle, compared to most other fiction with a first-person narrator and dramatic irony.

The typical approach is to have the character clearly observe all the elements, then fail to put them together, e.g. Adrian Mole being told about an illicit love affair, but thinking the speaker just made a grammar error. I always found that excruciating. If the character can't put two and two together, how did they notice all those details in the first place?

Worth the Candle is more subtle. Juniper is uninterested in something, barely notices it, and only mentions it in passing. Then later, someone else calls him out on it and it turns out it was important. It turns out this is also excruciating. How did I not realize what was being implied there? If Juniper didn't notice how he was ruining his relationships, and I didn't notice it either from the clues that were presented, then does that mean I wouldn't notice if I ruined my relationships?

Originally posted in response to yet more orc discourse

Submicroscopic by S.P. Meek was published back in 1931. The main character is a human who falls into a sci-fi setting full of both humans and evil nonhumans. One of the nonhuman races has black skin, and has no intelligence, creativity, or mercy. They can copy devices and tools made by other people, but they can never independently develop something new. Their main motivation is to mindlessly kill and pillage, so they have to be killed first.

The other evil nonhumans have yellow skin. They’re scientific geniuses, but also merciless imperialists. They can be negotiated with to some extent, but they will never have empathy for human lives. They also need to be killed before they kill humans.

This is clearly an adventure story, and the author isn’t outright saying anything other than “fighting monsters is cool.” At the same time, it’s pretty dang clear what the author is using as a basis for his monsters, and readers who object to that are doing so for an understandable reason.