Review - Out Of Their Minds

Out Of Their Minds is pretty old SF compared to what I usually read, written in the 70s. Reading it now, most if not all of the ideas aren't new to me, but I imagine they were a lot fresher back when it was written. At first it seems to be quite serious, with the careful set up and slow build up, but it doesn't surprise me that it becomes more ridiculous as it goes along -- that's the way humans think, after all, and the crazy beliefs we've had in the past don't have to make that much sense. It's always interesting to me to read fiction that is about fiction. I especially liked that Don Quixote was a part of this world -- although that is probably at least partially because I just read Don Quixote myself. I also liked the point about Gettysburg, and therefore war in general... how we fictionalise it, when we try to imagine it now, and the fictions of 'dignity in death' and so on.

It's interesting to read as early SF (early as compared to what I usually read), and it isn't a bad story in itself. It's easy to read; the prose is a little slow/dense in places, but not so much so that it actually caused a problem for me.

It does hurt the brain a little when you think what the point of it was from the thought-creatures' point of view: our new ways of writing fiction adding underdeveloped characters to their world. Now, somewhere in that imagined world, Horton and Kathy must be eternally wandering around as outsiders in a world they are actually a part of. I don't know if it's intentional or not that Horton and Kathy kind of add to those undeveloped, not-good-or-bad characters -- Kathy is hardly developed as a character at all, and Horton, for all his background, we never get a clear picture of. I kind of doubt it, and then I remember that them author guys sure are clever.