I've had two different editions, both unexpanded paperbacks (one a UK edition, one US) and they both had the map in. I'm pretty sure it's standard.
The language: yes. I mean, there's this idea that deep knowledge about the world by looking into the structure of language (and as it turns out in the book, that's true just often enough to get you into trouble.) I mean, it's not as if we're immune to this sort of punning ourselves; shallow pomo criticism loves to indulge in a Telling Pun, and much of modern philosophy is about catching leaps of logic that we don't notice because they're embedded in conventional language structures. In Riddley's language this is a lot more obvious, and it's really apparent how much the world is interpretation for these people... until, bang, you slam face-first into hard chemistry.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 11:16 pm (UTC)The language: yes. I mean, there's this idea that deep knowledge about the world by looking into the structure of language (and as it turns out in the book, that's true just often enough to get you into trouble.) I mean, it's not as if we're immune to this sort of punning ourselves; shallow pomo criticism loves to indulge in a Telling Pun, and much of modern philosophy is about catching leaps of logic that we don't notice because they're embedded in conventional language structures. In Riddley's language this is a lot more obvious, and it's really apparent how much the world is interpretation for these people... until, bang, you slam face-first into hard chemistry.