I read it as a teenager, which is exactly when his stories seem most plausible and exciting.
But there was one that bugged me even at the time. He talked about an advanced biology class, in which he was unable to participate because he hadn't done any of the required reading. He castigated them for having wasted so much time on things he could look up, like anatomical diagrams.
He expected the entire class to stop while he looked up each and every word they used. They couldn't possibly make any progress under those conditions. Biology students spend a lot of time memorizing stuff so that they can have a common language. There are just a lot of different individual things inside a body.
It doesn't surprise me that a lot more of his stories have some aspect that I missed as a teenager, and don't reflect nearly as well on him in context.
jfengel|1 year ago
But there was one that bugged me even at the time. He talked about an advanced biology class, in which he was unable to participate because he hadn't done any of the required reading. He castigated them for having wasted so much time on things he could look up, like anatomical diagrams.
He expected the entire class to stop while he looked up each and every word they used. They couldn't possibly make any progress under those conditions. Biology students spend a lot of time memorizing stuff so that they can have a common language. There are just a lot of different individual things inside a body.
It doesn't surprise me that a lot more of his stories have some aspect that I missed as a teenager, and don't reflect nearly as well on him in context.
nabla9|1 year ago
QED is maybe the best of these. The Character of Physical Law is also good.