On 6/3/2022 10:55 PM, A Friend wrote:
> In article
> <388239669.675993943.113429.anim8rfsk-cox.net@news.easynews.com>,
> anim8rfsk <anim8rfsk@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> A Friend <nope@noway.com> wrote:
>>> In article <utpk9hp6g98ot93iqr8ldpd1gcuei65lsn@4ax.com>, The Horny Goat
>>> <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 02 Jun 2022 08:41:55 -0400, A Friend <nope@noway.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In article <4ugg9h9akjca0utss9igfvrbhmecbsl48n@4ax.com>, The Horny Goat
>>>>> <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, 01 Jun 2022 18:26:59 -0400, A Friend <nope@noway.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In article <t78lv7$jao$5@dont-email.me>, Adam H. Kerman
>>>>>>> <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>>>>>> By the same "logic" since Huck Finn is fiction, not biographical, "I
>>>>>> don't think a new more modern take on the character is necessarily out
>>>>>> of lne."
>>>>
>>>> One presumes you know a lot of the truly woke would love to consign
>>>> Huck Finn to the flames. Pure anathema to everything they claim to
>>>> believe.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think Huckleberry Finn is the great American novel, so I wouldn't
>>> suppress it in any way. At its core, it's a story of redemption and
>>> hope.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> You're comparing what many consider to be The Great American Novel to
>>>>> Tom Swift. You're also comparing a classic work in which racial
>>>>> identity is essential to a trivial series in which it is not. There is
>>>>> nothing in any Tom Swift book that demands he be white. He is, of
>>>>> course, but he doesn't *have* to be. Tom's race never moves the story
>>>>> in any direction at all.
>>>>
>>>> I don't pretend to have read all the Swifts but the few I've read
>>>> scream "potboiler" or "paid by the word" to me. We're NOT talking
>>>> Charles Dickens here!
>>>
>>>
>>> No, we're not. Years and years ago, I was offered a quick $500 to
>>> write a Tom Swift, but I didn't feel comfortable taking the job, so I
>>> passed. No disrespect to the character or the publisher intended; I
>>> just didn't feel as if I was right for it.
>>
>> Do you recall the title, or at least the series?
>
>
> It would have been one of the Tom Swift Jr. books, and I remember
> thinking that I wanted to send him to Pluto because I knew a lot about
> Pluto. (I was going to call it Peril on Pluto.) If they had an idea
> or title in mind themselves, they never mentioned it. I was familiar
> with the books and was tempted, but I'd just finished one in another
> franchise, and that experience had been so disagreeable that I wasn't
> ready to do another such book. In retrospect, I should have done it.
>
> Since there's no possibility of that book ever happening, I can tell
> you that I'd worked out some stuff concerning a Plutonian lifeform that
> Tom unexpectedly finds there. It was just some wiggly stuff that oozed
> out to eat sunlight once in a great while, but it convinces Tom that if
> there is any possibility of life existing in even the most hostile
> environment, it will be found there.

> In fact, Tom decides that life is
> the whole point of the universe.

Surely there'd be pushback about Tom exceeding his metaphysical remit...