Kool Aid Served Daily

I just picked up Accidental Goddess by Linnea Sinclair last night. It read just like Finders Keepers and Gabriel's Ghost. The formula is that an attractive short blonde who isn't any good in relationships falls in love with an older and bigger man. The man has been wrapped up in his career and is surprised that he suddenly has feelings for someone. There is some other interstellar faction also trying to wipe out the good guys. During a struggle, one of the two reveals some deep dark strength to save the day. But that secret casts them in a light which takes away from their humanity. The other struggles with acceptance and when they finally do, the roles flip with the emotional turmoil. In the end, they accept each other and defeat the baddies.

The difference between Sinclair and other SF authors is that her work is blatantly romantic and could easily be marketed in that genre. This deviation is enough to re-expose to me the nature of what constitutes a following. If we examine Modesitt, Heinlein, Anthony, Chalker, Norton, they all have a core formula they follow in their writings. As readers, we get attached not only to the characters, but to the formula we know will be used in new settings. Eventually I got tired of Chalker and his degradation of females - as I went back to works I used to like, I found that theme present. But every time I pick up a new Modesitt series (or jump in the Recluse series), I know what type of characters I'm going to get and what they are going to have to learn.

I can see that with the monster (my son) as well. He wants animals with swords. He prefers cats, but mice, owls, etc. will do. He wants them to talk and I don't think it matters if humans are present or not. Like all good parents, we tried to control guns in the house. We used to also read the books before we let him loose on them. Between work, my own readings, and coaching, I don't have time to weed out stuff for him. We now trust him to tell us that something is not good for him - it works. But he gets his daily doses of violence.

The interesting thought from all this is whether the same formulas work in operating systems? Do I flock to Unix based systems because I like the formula of small tools which can interconnect via pipes? Do I want to avoid Macs because I had a bad experience with them in grad school? I.e., the UI was non-intuitive for me. Okay, I also thought the mini mac was a clunker. I want to like them because all of the cool people like them.

Did Linux work because it plagiarized the proprietary Unix styles? Will the success of OpenSolaris be because it presents the winning formula of Solaris and couples it with the openness that Linux and the BSDs championed?

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