the Spring Mystery Quote item..

Mar 23 06:35 UTC 1998

 It's yet another "Mystery Quote" item, just in time for Spring Agora.
 The name of the game is "Guess the Famous Author" and the rules are
 simple:  the last correct guesser enters a quote from a work of prose,
 poetry, fiction, or non-fiction (pretty wide-open, eh?) and anyone who
 wishes may attempt to guess the identity of the author based on clues
 gleaned from the passage.  The reward for a correct guess is the
 privilege of posting the next quote..

 If the quote proves to be too obscure, the poster is encouraged to
 provide minor clues or an additional passage from the work of the same
 writer until someone manages a correct guess.

response 2 of 222:

Mar 23 06:39 UTC 1998

Picking up where we left off in the Winter Agora conference, this was
the last quote (provided by yours truly..)

 -    "Well, Master Cap, is it not a beautiful sheet, and fit to
 -    be named a sea?"
 - 
 -    "This, then, is what you call your lake?" demanded Cap, 
 -    sweeping the northern horizon with his pipe.  "I say, is this,
 -    really, your lake?"
 - 
 -    "Sartain, and if the judgment of one who has lived on the
 -    shores of many others can be taken, a very good lake it is."
 - 
 -    "Just as I expected!  A pond in dimensions, and a scuttle-butt
 -    in taste.  It is all in vain to travel inland, in the hope of 
 -    seeing anything either full-grown or useful.  I knew it would
 -    turn out in just this way."
 - 
 -    "What is the matter with Ontario, Master Cap?  It is large, and
 -    fair to look at, and pleasant enough to drink, for those who
 -    can't get at the water of the springs."
 - 
 -    "Do you call this large?" asked Cap, again sweeping the air with
 -    the pipe.  "I will just ask you what there is large about it. 
 -    Didn't Jasper himself confess that it was only some twenty leagues
 -    from shore to shore?"
 - 
 -    "But uncle," interposed Mabel, "no land is to be seen, except
 -    here on our own coast.  To me it looks exactly like the ocean."
 - 
 -    "This bit of a pond look like the ocean!  Well, Magnet, that
 -    from a girl who has had real seamen in her family is downright
 -    nonsense.  What is there about it, pray, that has even the
 -    outline of a sea on it?"
 - 
 -    "Why, there is water -- water -- water; nothing but water for
 -    miles on miles, far as the eye can see."

response 4 of 222:

Mar 23 11:50 UTC 1998

Fenimore Cooper?

response 6 of 222:

Mar 23 17:59 UTC 1998

it sounds like Cooper, but then I"m unfavourably biased..

response 8 of 222:

Mar 23 23:26 UTC 1998

Here's my quote:

    "'Eventually, computers and robots will run things.  Humans 
will manage those machines, but that doesn't require courage or 
strength, or any characteristics like those.  In fact, men are 
outliving their usefulness.  All you need are sperm banks to keep 
the species going, and those are coming along now.  Most men are 
rotten lovers, women say, so there's not much loss in replacing 
sex with science.
    'We're giving up free range, getting organized, feathering our 
emotions.  Efficiency and effectiveness and all those other pieces 
of intellectual artifice.  And with the loss of free range, the 
cowboy disappears, along with the mountain lion and gray wolf.  
There's not much room left for travelers.
    'I'm one of the last cowboys.  My job gives me free range of a 
sort.  As much as you can find nowadays.  I'm not sad about it.  
Maybe a little wistful, I guess.  But it's got to happen, it's 
the only way we'll keep from destroying ourselves.  My contention 
is that male hormones are the ultimate cause of trouble on this 
planet.'"

response 10 of 222:

Mar 24 06:41 UTC 1998

Oh hell, I've read that.  Is it Jack Chalker?

response 12 of 222:

Mar 24 11:07 UTC 1998

Not Gary Snyder.  Not Jack Chalker.  (Who's he, btw?)

response 14 of 222:

Mar 24 13:20 UTC 1998

How about John Perry Barlow?

response 16 of 222:

Mar 24 19:16 UTC 1998

I guessed Arthur Miller, by the way, because the sentiment
expressed in the quote has a lot in common with the way the
Clark Gable character views things in Miller's and John
Huston's film "The Misfits". But the specifics in the
quote don't seem all that Millerish, though, and "free-
range" wasn't a buzzword back in 1960 when the film was
made, so I don't hold out much hope that I'm right.

response 18 of 222:

Mar 24 21:55 UTC 1998

Barry Longyear?

response 20 of 222:

Mar 24 23:15 UTC 1998

Orson Scott Card?

response 22 of 222:

Mar 25 00:12 UTC 1998

Zalazny?

response 24 of 222:

Mar 25 04:04 UTC 1998

Loren Eisley?