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quantumfoam posted:Mythopoeic thing: Both Ursula LeGuin & Katherine Kurtz were finalist nominees for the 1973 Mythopoeic Award when that essay came out. SF-LOVERS people who lived through that era believed that Katherine Kurtz was the direct target of that essay. Neither LeGuin or Kurtz ended up winning the 1973 Mythopoeic Award (Evangeline Walton did), so any drama about it got memory-zoned fast and hard, like how Asimov and Pournelle and Ellison kept getting hall-passes to assault and harass people at conventions without consequences for decades and decades. whatever the contemporary drama was i know which author's work aged better, i read a couple of Deryni books in the 90s, when WoT still felt fresh and and they weren't great. I can't image another 30-odd years has improved them much.
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Nov 3, 2022 04:30
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fritz posted:Honestly when it comes to New Zealand sff authors, the top of my list is and always will be Hugh Cook. Nobody like him then or since. Criminally underrated and under read. A pretty good pick for the decaying worlds poster as well.
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Nov 3, 2022 06:02
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quantumfoam posted:Mythopoeic thing: Both Ursula LeGuin & Katherine Kurtz were finalist nominees for the 1973 Mythopoeic Award when that essay came out. SF-LOVERS people who lived through that era believed that Katherine Kurtz was the direct target of that essay. Neither LeGuin or Kurtz ended up winning the 1973 Mythopoeic Award (Evangeline Walton did), so any drama about it got memory-zoned fast and hard, like how Asimov and Pournelle and Ellison kept getting hall-passes to assault and harass people at conventions without consequences for decades and decades. Don't compare literary criticism to sexual assault and harassment, what's wrong with you
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Nov 3, 2022 07:45
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Metis of the Hallway posted:Don't compare literary criticism to sexual assault and harassment, what's wrong with you They're not, they're mentioning an entirely different (and much, much worse) scandal that was also memory holed. There's no equivalency there.
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Nov 3, 2022 08:00
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:New Twenty Palaces book out by Harry Connelly. Only one more left in the series By the way, I think the ebook versions (at least the ones available on Amazon) got cleaned up - I've just finished Child of Fire and it's nowhere near as riddled with formatting and spelling errors as I remember it being.
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Nov 3, 2022 11:35
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branedotorg posted:whatever the contemporary drama was i know which author's work aged better, i read a couple of Deryni books in the 90s, when WoT still felt fresh and and they weren't great. I can't image another 30-odd years has improved them much. Poughkeepsie got brought up in the thread a few years back and so I tracked down one of the early Deryni books (not the one in the essay, but I think the first in the next series) and I couldn't make myself finish it. The me of 30+ years ago liked them a bunch, but he was a lot less picky about things.
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Nov 3, 2022 11:44
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i liked the deryni books quite a bit but it sure wasnt for the prose
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Nov 3, 2022 13:53
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I'm reading the first Deryni trilogy right now (on the third book). I inherited a giant box of old fantasy paperbacks and started going through them to see if any of the older works that aren't talked about much anymore hold up still. The Deryni books.... really don't. The tonal shift in the trilogy is really strange, the first book is exceedingly YA, all young heir learning about his magical heritage. The second and third then dive headfirst into Church politics and you get entire chapters of ecclesiastical debates. The worldbuilding is also strange - the first book is ostensibly in a fantasy world with a Catholic stand-in church but no real world references as far as I remember. Then the second book starts and you get references to Christ and the crucifixion but with fantasy place names.
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Nov 3, 2022 15:31
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fritz posted:Honestly when it comes to New Zealand sff authors, the top of my list is and always will be Hugh Cook. Hell yeah. Thanks for reminding me I've still got his Oceans of Light trilogy to read; just need to get around to converting them to something my ereader'll take. It hates Lulu pdfs and I've never figured out why...
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Nov 3, 2022 15:49
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ShutteredIn posted:and you get entire chapters of ecclesiastical debates. RUNS TO READ Thank you this sounds like EXACTLY my kind of candy!
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Nov 3, 2022 15:49
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StrixNebulosa posted:RUNS TO READ I should clarify they aren’t interesting or thought provoking debates - they’re all basically “if somebody can do magic are they automatically evil?” There might be an interesting analysis of the series as a closeted gay priests metaphor but I really don’t think Katherine ever intended it. Edit: I just found a chat log where she says she intended the Deryni to be a stand-in for Jews. Now I’m even more confused. ShutteredIn fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Nov 3, 2022 |
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Nov 3, 2022 15:55
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ShutteredIn posted:The worldbuilding is also strange - the first book is ostensibly in a fantasy world with a Catholic stand-in church but no real world references as far as I remember. Then the second book starts and you get references to Christ and the crucifixion but with fantasy place names. i genuinely love this haphazard yolo-rear end worldbuilding and you don't see it much anymore.
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Nov 3, 2022 15:56
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neongrey posted:i genuinely love this haphazard yolo-rear end worldbuilding and you don't see it much anymore. Yeah they have a definite charm for me. Kinda similar to the charm of ancient carvings. They aren't necessarily always *good* but sometimes interesting and different is better than good. Nobody does stuff like that anymore. People only did it when the genre was new and everyone was still figuring out what worked and what didn't. Again, for me they're the high school play of fantasy novels. They aren't *good* but sometimes they still manage to be charming.
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Nov 3, 2022 16:14
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ShutteredIn posted:I should clarify they aren’t interesting or thought provoking debates - they’re all basically “if somebody can do magic are they automatically evil?” drat. Still going to read more Deryni, as I did enjoy the first one. But-- , got any recs for fantasy/sci-fi novels that do have this, but more interesting?
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Nov 3, 2022 16:20
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neongrey posted:i genuinely love this haphazard yolo-rear end worldbuilding and you don't see it much anymore. Yeah, that was kind of a thing with Kurtz I think. I have salty memories of her Lammas Night, which should have been a cool "witches get together to hex Nazis in WWII" book but had all its witches as upper-class well-connected nobs who had no reason whatsoever for the paranoid secrecy about magic they had - if it's that powerful and works that well then it would've been a weapon of war/statecraft/spying since Elizabeth I, and restricted to the Right Kind Of People* Only. Which would've been a very different (and quite possibly better) novel. (*ie came from the Right Families and went to the Right Schools)
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Nov 3, 2022 16:26
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I remember always mixing up Katherine Kurtz and Katharine Kerr at the library and secondhand shops. They both wrote a similar sort of generic Celtic fantasy, only one was called Deryni and the other was Deverry.
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Nov 3, 2022 16:45
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Speaking of entire chapters of debates, I just finished the sixth arc of Foreigner (#16-#18) and had a blast, although it did not go at all where I expected -- based on the first few chapters I figured the big crisis would be reunioner/mospheiran relations on Alpha breaking down completely so the Kyo ship jumping in halfway through the first book and preempting everything else caught me completely flat-footed. Glad to see that Bren is getting better at delegation, though. My biggest complaint is that book #18 spent a lot of time on Cajeiri's perspective as he learns all sorts of alarming things about his family's history and it's like, yes, horrible family secrets coming to life, a legacy of murder and treachery going back generations, significant implications for the political stability of the Aishidi'tat, but what I am actually here for is Bren meeting with the Committee of Linguistics, please give me more of that instead.
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Nov 3, 2022 17:24
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I finished Nona the Ninth. I liked it the most out of all of the Locked Tomb books, mostly because of the first third which is fun to read. I also liked the flashbacks. Later on it gets more like the other books with lots of characters from the past showing up and delivering snarky and/or petulant dialogue at each other. Still interested to see where the story goes in the final book.
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Nov 3, 2022 18:21
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StrixNebulosa posted:But-- , got any recs for fantasy/sci-fi novels that do have this, but more interesting? I enjoyed the book a lot but it's definitely not for everyone - lots and lots of cruelty and violence. e: Not fantasy, but The Name of the Rose has this and is a classic for a reason.
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Nov 3, 2022 22:02
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I searched the last several pages and saw no mentions, but has anyone read/have any impressions of The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler? Descriptions make it sound very Blindsight but it's hard to trust Amazon reviews
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Nov 3, 2022 22:14
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anilEhilated posted:e: Not fantasy, but The Name of the Rose has this and is a classic for a reason. DOn't wimp out and just watch the movie, the book is a great piece of literature. The movie is drat good, but do both. I'd say book first.
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Nov 3, 2022 22:39
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The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002UGU33Q/ The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y0FIM/ The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RD854O/ pradmer fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Nov 3, 2022 |
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Nov 3, 2022 23:00
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anilEhilated posted:The Sad Tale of Brothers Grossbart. Note: the main characters are real assholes and engage in this mostly to justify their crimes. I didn't like Brothers Grossbart much, but mostly because I found it sort of boring - or at least it just drags on and lingers too long on almost every plot beat, deflating the parts that were interesting. The subplot with the turnip farmer was my favorite part, but that was only maybe 5% of the whole book. I was also reading it right after Between Two Fires, though, so maybe my bar was set too high after that. But it is on sale for $2, so it could be worth a shot if it sounds interesting!
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Nov 3, 2022 23:29
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I don't know if this has been posted yet, but Mercedes Lackey is part of a Valdemar Kickstarter with lots of maps for the cartography/RPG-inclined (and also for a prestige TV show in the works): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zoe-crowdfunding/mercedes-lackeys-world-of-valdemar It's already reached its financial goals, and I doubt Misty would attach herself to something that wouldn't deliver, so the project is definitely worth checking out (and yes, I'm a huge Mercedes Lackey nerd). Also: https://www.themarysue.com/mercedes-lackey-valdemar-last-herald-mage-vanyel-adaptation/ Dementropy fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Nov 3, 2022 |
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Nov 3, 2022 23:30
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StrixNebulosa posted:drat. Still going to read more Deryni, as I did enjoy the first one. There's an entire branch of the 1632 books that consists of theological debates concerning the meaning of the main time-travel event.
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Nov 4, 2022 03:38
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fritz posted:Honestly when it comes to New Zealand sff authors, the top of my list is and always will be Hugh Cook. Had never heard of this author before. Looked him up on Wikipedia last night and thought "Hm, this guy seems odd." Today I wandered into a charity shop and spotted one of his books (The Wizards and the Warriors) hidden on the top shelf. If that's not a sign, what is? Based on the first chapter it seems not dissimilar to Jack Vance's Rhialto stories.
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Nov 4, 2022 10:45
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Sailor Viy posted:Had never heard of this author before. Looked him up on Wikipedia last night and thought "Hm, this guy seems odd." Today I wandered into a charity shop and spotted one of his books (The Wizards and the Warriors) hidden on the top shelf. If that's not a sign, what is? Yeah, the Chronicles of Darkness books are kind of a maximalist Jack Vance. The neat trick of the series is that each novel is self-contained but have this Rashomon type thing going on where heroes in one novel are minor characters in others or outright villains. Books that end on a satisfying note have their endings mentioned in another but are revealed to be empty. The reader's understanding of the nature of the world is upturned multiple times. The Women and the Warlords is a really interesting as a quasi-feminist auto-critique of the series (and functionally the Daenerys parts of ASOIAF). Overall, the whole series is worth libgening (they're long out of print unfortunately) as they're absolutely bursting with fun pulpy ideas. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Nov 4, 2022 |
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Nov 4, 2022 11:34
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fez_machine posted:The Women and the Warlords is a really interesting as a quasi-feminist auto-critique of the series (and functionally the Daenerys parts of ASOIAF). Overall, the whole series is worth libgening (they're long out of print unfortunately) as they're absolutely bursting with fun pulpy ideas. They often function as critiques and/or pisstakes of generic fantasy (with occasional bits of "oh yeah I can guess what he just read and thought was cool"; the bit where he'd recently enjoyed a Culture novel is one of my faves). Things like Watashi's prophecy and the orcs in Wormlord are so obviously the result of him looking at the standard cliches and thinking nah gently caress this I'm going to absolutely curbstomp that and the attitudes behind it. And even in the small things; the bit where one protagonist's having trouble and goes to his aged tribal shaman, skulls and shrunken heads all over the wall and all, and sits down for a nice cup of tea and some sensible advice about his family problems is another favourite of mine. He does have a lot of the Vancian flavour, with a darker edge and, well, a deeper sensibility I guess. Vance always has a kind of... fluffiness? indifference? that Cook didn't. He was going somewhere with the Chronicles of an Age of Darkness and I'm really sorry he never got the chance to show us where.
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Nov 4, 2022 12:36
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Runcible Cat posted:They often function as critiques and/or pisstakes of generic fantasy (with occasional bits of "oh yeah I can guess what he just read and thought was cool"; the bit where he'd recently enjoyed a Culture novel is one of my faves). Things like Watashi's prophecy and the orcs in Wormlord are so obviously the result of him looking at the standard cliches and thinking nah gently caress this I'm going to absolutely curbstomp that and the attitudes behind it. And even in the small things; the bit where one protagonist's having trouble and goes to his aged tribal shaman, skulls and shrunken heads all over the wall and all, and sits down for a nice cup of tea and some sensible advice about his family problems is another favourite of mine. Yeah, I remember someone on a podcast remarking that he didn’t think Vance ever really liked anyone and I think that fits. Cook's dark humor seems to have a bit more weight.
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Nov 4, 2022 13:37
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https://twitter.com/apocrobot/status/1577997093041487872?cxt=HHwWgICytdv_leYrAAAA My local Amazon shows the 23rd of this month as the release date for the Kindle version.
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Nov 4, 2022 14:31
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Steelheart (Reckoners #1) by Brandon Sanderson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ARHAAZ6/ Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MZV3TMJ/ Devices and Desires (Engineer #1) by KJ Parker - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002B9MHPY/ Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ZDK0NC/ Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy (#1) by Steven Campbell - Free https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FZ4OPI4/
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Nov 4, 2022 22:43
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genericnick posted:https://twitter.com/apocrobot/status/1577997093041487872?cxt=HHwWgICytdv_leYrAAAA Oh wow! That is much sooner than I was expecting!
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Nov 4, 2022 22:58
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I just finished Blindsight. I don't think I mentioned it before, but Watts is a family friend and the bleak thesis and ending absolutely fits his personality, including the "congratulatory" email I received upon the birth of my daughter. I really liked it, but man what a depressing epilogue.
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Nov 5, 2022 00:30
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Professor Shark posted:the "congratulatory" email I received upon the birth of my daughter. Go on...
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Nov 5, 2022 01:18
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Danhenge posted:Go on...
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Nov 5, 2022 01:31
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Professor Shark posted:I just finished Blindsight. I don't think I mentioned it before, but Watts is a family friend and the bleak thesis and ending absolutely fits his personality, including the "congratulatory" email I received upon the birth of my daughter. at least it wasn't Thomas Ligotti.
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Nov 5, 2022 02:00
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Danhenge posted:Go on... Gonna take a guess here based on reading Watts’ blog for a decade: “You brought a new person into a doomed world! Congratulations…???”
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Nov 5, 2022 02:14
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Professor Shark posted:I just finished Blindsight. I don't think I mentioned it before, but Watts is a family friend and the bleak thesis and ending absolutely fits his personality, including the "congratulatory" email I received upon the birth of my daughter. 
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Nov 5, 2022 04:46
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Kestral posted:Gonna take a guess here based on reading Watts’ blog for a decade: “You brought a new person into a doomed world! Congratulations…???” Yeah, something along these lines, but much longer and more specific. It made me sad but I think it was supposed to be a joke(?).
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Nov 5, 2022 09:38
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Professor Shark posted:Yeah, something along these lines, but much longer and more specific. It made me sad but I think it was supposed to be a joke(?). This is the Watts-est thing, gods bless him.
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Nov 5, 2022 10:08
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