• (tears) The Twenty-One Balloons by William Sherman Pene du Bois

    From James Nicoll@21:1/5 to All on Sun May 11 09:17:56 2025
    The Twenty-One Balloons by William Sherman Pene du Bois

    How did Professor William Waterman Sherman, late of San Francisco,
    end up floating in the North Atlantic on a raft composed of the
    wreckage of a flotilla of balloons?

    https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/west-of-java
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  • From Ahasuerus@21:1/5 to William Hyde on Sun May 11 22:29:34 2025
    On 5/11/2025 3:08 PM, William Hyde wrote:
    James Nicoll wrote:
    The Twenty-One Balloons by William Sherman Pene du Bois

    How did Professor William Waterman Sherman, late of San Francisco,
    end up floating in the North Atlantic on a raft composed of the
    wreckage of a flotilla of balloons?

    https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/west-of-java

    The first novel to feature the supply-and price relationship that I read
    was Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer", in which a huge gold strike had reduced the price of the metal to the point that gold reserves became
    essentially worthless.

    Jules Verne's _La chasse au météore_ (_The Chase of the Golden
    Meteor_/_The Meteor Hunt_/etc) explored this issue half a century
    earlier. It wasn't one of Verne's better novels -- although I haven't
    read the latest and greatest translation (https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-books/9780803296343/the-meteor-hunt/) which expunged his son's additions and restored Jule Verne's original
    text -- but it was of some interest.

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