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Antti posted:I can also only think of a few examples where the cover is even tangentially related to the story. By which I mean the ship and the planet on the cover resemble anything described. Because it's always a ship and a planet.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:09
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Popular Human posted:So what would you all have liked to have seen nominated for a Hugo instead? Mike Carey's The Girl With All The Gifts.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:11
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What does 'tumblr-bait' mean exactly and why is it a problem? For the book itself rather than its exaggerated reception.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:17
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Peel posted:What does 'tumblr-bait' mean exactly and why is it a problem? For the book itself rather than its exaggerated reception. Well, no, I guess that's too mean-spirited. Humanities graduates do some useful and important things.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:23
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Peel posted:What does 'tumblr-bait' mean exactly and why is it a problem? For the book itself rather than its exaggerated reception. Something added to the book that had no impact on the story and could have been removed entirely or replaced with any other arbitrary semantic limitation. To me, it read as insincere lip service to gender issues.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:31
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It's included in the book but it doesn't ever actually matter at all, it's just there and explained that "oh I don't know how to tell the difference between the sexes" half a dozen times throughout. You could pull it out and have the exact same story.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:39
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Which is, incidentally, part of the reason why I said Banks did it better. In Player of Games the fact that the main character gets into the habit of thinking in a foreign language influences his value system and his behaviour and nearly causes his mission to fail. It's not just a pointless idiocrasy, it actually matters.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:44
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Cardiovorax posted:It's just intentionally insulting shorthand for "issues that humanities majors and teenagers with too much free time would consider deep and pressing but which nobody else does." That she probably shouldn't have had trouble with it except insofar as she's suffered the equivalent of horrific brain damage in a way not to my memory emphasised in the text is the better criticism. RVProfootballer posted:Something added to the book that had no impact on the story and could have been removed entirely or replaced with any other arbitrary semantic limitation. To me, it read as insincere lip service to gender issues. I dislike the book's reception but that's a problem with the reception, not the book.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Honestly I'm disappointed that the Wheel of Time didn't get the nod. For all of its many faults, it shaped the genre, and that's what I expect from a Hugo winner. By that argument, the Shannara books are even more deserving of one when they finally wrap up.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:46
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fritz posted:By that argument, the Shannara books are even more deserving of one when they finally wrap up. There might be a Shannara book out there that deserves a Hugo, I dunno. I only read the first one and it was immensely derivative, basically a straight Tolkien reskin. I do like some of Brook's other stuff that I've read, especially Magic Kingdom for Sale. It's fluff but it's fluff I've re-read more than once.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:50
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Peel posted:I don't think 'nobody' finds gender coding and identity relevant to their lives, and even if we grant it as a marginal concern, it's a completely valid choice of vector for Breq's struggling with cultural differences. Who gives a poo poo if some people on a website somewhere are annoying about it? Hieronymous Alloy posted:There might be a Shannara book out there that deserves a Hugo, I dunno. I only read the first one and it was immensely derivative, basically a straight Tolkien reskin.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:50
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Cardiovorax posted:It's just intentionally insulting shorthand for "issues that humanities majors ... Careful, this way lies Heinlein.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:There might be a Shannara book out there that deserves a Hugo, I dunno. I only read the first one and it was immensely derivative, basically a straight Tolkien reskin. But you can't deny that their influence on the genre is immense. No Brooks means no Jordan, so if Jordan gets the nod Brooks should too. (n.b. I don't think Jordan should have been nominated). (also you do sort of have to admit the first part of 'The Eye of the World' is kind of familiar to LotR readers)
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Aug 19, 2014 16:24
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I'm excited about the generically-covered Alastair Reynolds book. It sounds like it might be a return to form for him.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:29
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Eh, I don't think the Shannara books have been all that influential, but as above I've only read the first one, and it seemed like one of approximately a thousand pure Tolkien clones that littered bookstores back in the 80's. When did the series start getting "good"? It looks like the first book in the second trilogy was published in 1990, so that's the same year as Eye. It's hard for readers today to remember back to 1990's American fantasy. One of the original jacket quotes for Eye was from Piers Anthony; Gaiman and Pratchett were british authors nobody this side of the pond had heard of. Having a prophesied hero who everybody was scared of, female characters who were independent and had their own goals and weren't just love interests, and a total absence of elves were all pretty revolutionary concepts back then. So was even a semi-realistic depiction of the stress that having to save the world would put on main characters. I think we'd have the Wheel of Time without Terry Brooks, but we probably wouldn't have Song of Ice and Fire without Jordan (even setting aside Jordan's jacket quote of "Brilliant" on the front cover of Game of Thrones). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 16:37
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:There might be a Shannara book out there that deserves a Hugo, I dunno. I only read the first one and it was immensely derivative, basically a straight Tolkien reskin. His word and void stuff was pretty decent as well. I was pretty sad when one of his more recent series tied it together with the Shannara stuff and basically turned it into the same cookie cutter Bildungsroman stories that every one of his Shannara trilogies is.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:51
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mystes posted:I think it's better to not even think of covers for sci-fi books as actually attempting to depict anything in the story. They're more like cues to show potential buyers what type of book they should expect. Reynolds is SERIOUS SPACE SCI-FI so he gets pictures of random space stuff. You're right, of course. But this and Hugochat is far too great an opportunity to bring us back to Charles Stross and this old gem:  I don't want to speculate what the message for buyers is there. 
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Aug 19, 2014 17:22
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how does that kind of cover-art travesty happen to a legitimate, well-established author
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Aug 19, 2014 18:01
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Eh, I don't think the Shannara books have been all that influential, but as above I've only read the first one, and it seemed like one of approximately a thousand pure Tolkien clones that littered bookstores back in the 80's. When did the series start getting "good"? It looks like the first book in the second trilogy was published in 1990, so that's the same year as Eye. Those thousand clones were there in the 1980s pretty much because Sword of Shannara was there in the 1970s and demonstrated that people would buy that stuff.
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Aug 19, 2014 18:10
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PupsOfWar posted:how does that kind of cover-art travesty happen to a legitimate, well-established author He actually has a blog post on it http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/03/cmap-6-why-did-you-pick-such-a.html
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Aug 19, 2014 18:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Eh, I don't think the Shannara books have been all that influential, but as above I've only read the first one, and it seemed like one of approximately a thousand pure Tolkien clones that littered bookstores back in the 80's. When did the series start getting "good"? It looks like the first book in the second trilogy was published in 1990, so that's the same year as Eye. The Lord of the Rings was published in the mid fities, and although it was very successful for two decades there were no Tolkien clones. Then in 1977 Ballantine published The Sword of Shannara and showed you could write a successful tolkienesque quest fantasy without first spending decades inventing fake languages and getting a PhD in linguistics. In the eighties there may not have been much difference between Shannara and other Tolkien clones except Shannara was there first and without Shannara most of the others would never have been written. That's the influence Brooks and Shannara had on the field.
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Aug 19, 2014 21:25
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Drakhoran posted:The Lord of the Rings was published in the mid fities, and although it was very successful for two decades there were no Tolkien clones. Then in 1977 Ballantine published The Sword of Shannara and showed you could write a successful tolkienesque quest fantasy without first spending decades inventing fake languages and getting a PhD in linguistics.
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Aug 19, 2014 21:36
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Whoever suggested Magician's Land is amazing. I never read any books in the Magician's trilogy so I started with the first book and I love it. I am only a few days in and I am already over half way done with the book. I can't wait to start number 2 and 3 after this.
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Aug 19, 2014 23:07
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I'm sure D&D had a lot to do with the rising popularity of fantasy back then, but for the glut of Tolkien clones in the eighties I mainly blame Shannara. It would take a few more years for the hight school and college students who played D&D to grow up, hone their writing skills, and get publishing contracts.
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Aug 19, 2014 23:20
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Drakhoran posted:Then in 1977 Ballantine published The Sword of Shannara and showed you could write a successful tolkienesque quest fantasy without first spending decades inventing fake languages and getting a PhD in linguistics. Lord Foul's Bane was out that year, too. Though I can imagine that one being, uh, less influential.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:35
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Autonomous Monster posted:Lord Foul's Bane was out that year, too. As was A Spell for Chameleon, the first of the Xanth books. In retrospect I'm probably not giving Nine Princes in Amber enough credit, it was published in 1970. Leiber was writing Lankhmar books as of 1939, Vance was writing stuff by the 50's.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:In retrospect I'm probably not giving Nine Princes in Amber enough credit, it was published in 1970. I read the first 3 chapters of this about a year ago and couldn't go on. I know Zelazny is A Big Name in SF/F, but the writing was painful. Does it get better?
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Aug 20, 2014 02:57
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Barbe Rouge posted:I read the first 3 chapters of this about a year ago and couldn't go on. I know Zelazny is A Big Name in SF/F, but the writing was painful. Does it get better? Yes but amber is probably his weakest work. IIRC he was unashamed about the fact that he wrote them to make money.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:14
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Barbe Rouge posted:I read the first 3 chapters of this about a year ago and couldn't go on. I know Zelazny is A Big Name in SF/F, but the writing was painful. Does it get better? Not notably. If you don't like it in the first 3 chapters, you probably won't like it. I mean, in the first chapters, you have the references to Corwin's "worst, if wiser, self," that "In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay...", and "I knew the me I shaved and this was the guy behind the mirror." The plot is gonna get a hell of a lot weirder soon, mind you.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:17
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I skipped every single Hellride sequence in the entire series. Am i a bad person? (Seriously though, did i actually miss anything? The first one just felt like 'let me describe this acid i just took', and that's only slightly less tedious than someone talking about their dreams last night.)
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Aug 20, 2014 04:47
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Eh, I don't think the Shannara books have been all that influential Sword of Shannara is the most influential book of the modern Fantasy era, outside LotR. It's steered the direction of the market for the past thirty years. After LotR was a huge seller publishers were trying to figure out how to replicate its success. Fantasy sold well enough to a small niche but it wasn't mainstream by any means. At the time it was mostly "barbarian fiction," Leiber, Moorcock, Cohan reprints, etc. It was Judy del Rey at Ballantine that had the insight that readers didn't want fantasy, they wanted more Tolkien. So she purposely sought the most Tolkien- derivative manuscript she could find. Enter Brooks. I've read that Books started writing Shannara as a sequel to LotR, but can't find any verification of that. In any case, del Rey was proven right as Shannara rocketed up the best-seller lists. Ballantine sought other Tolkienesque works and even had a set of guidelines for works they would publish: they had to star a male hero who would overcome a world-threatening foe in a battle of good verses evil, the setting needed to be primarily pastoral, and the hero need to be guided by an aged magical figure. Other publishers quickly saw how well this worked for Ballentine and followed suit. That's why though the 80s and 90s the Fantasy section at the bookstore was crammed with bland samey Heroic Fiction. Heck, the fact that there's even a Fantasy section in bookstores can probably be attributed to Shannara. Now why the public was so desperate for this particular sub-Tolkien schlock is anyone's guess but man did they eat it up. This trend wouldn't change until Song of Ice and Fire started drawing in big sales and things started to shift towards gritty, "realistic" Fantasy. Not that Martin was the first to write such, or even the best (I'd guess Cook is the real progenitor of the trend but I'm not well read enough to say for certain). But if the history of the genre shows anything it's that quality doesn't matter one whit.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:52
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Finished The Magician's Land. My star ratings for the three books would probably be: The Magicians - 5 stars The Magician King - 4 stars (after the first read I would have said 3.5, but "reading" a second time via audiobook in the last couple of weeks made me appreciate it more) The Magician's Land - 4.5 stars Like I expounded earlier, the final battle of Fillory chapter was the best, but other standout sections were Janet's story, everything from Eliot's POV, and the journal. Great series, gently caress the haters, long live Ember and Umber ... oh wait
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Aug 20, 2014 11:34
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I've also just finished the Magicians books. I didn't mind them, they're okay filler. Some of the character development is alright, and they move along at a good pace and are decently entertaining. I guess the problem for me is the series was completely lacking in gravitas. It never really escaped the feeling of all the magic and fantasy world stuff just being a play thing for a bunch of self-absorbed young people. The stakes never felt particularly high, and Fillory itself felt really bland and thin. I was more interested in some of the things we heard only about in passing, like the Lovecraftian magical monsters out there, and the magicians warding off cosmic catastrophes, and Asmodeous killing Reynard.
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Aug 20, 2014 12:04
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Finished The Magician's Land and it feels like the weakest of the three. I liked bits and pieces (Janet's experiences in the desert) but as a whole it felt kinda meh. I feel like the Alice/niffin material got tied up in too neat a bow, though it was interesting to hear her talk about her experiences floating around and exploring Fillory in ways no one else could and the extent of her powers. I reread The Magicians in anticipation of the release but didn't get around to The Magician King, the latter of which just might be my favorite for Julia's story alone, barring the fox god rape. The one thing I really like about this series is that, for the most part, it moves along at a brisk pace. I can't imagine how drawn out and huge these books would have become in the hands of another fantasy author.
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Aug 20, 2014 16:07
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Bear Sleuth posted:Sword of Shannara is the most influential book of the modern Fantasy era, outside LotR. It's steered the direction of the market for the past thirty years. After LotR was a huge seller publishers were trying to figure out how to replicate its success. Fantasy sold well enough to a small niche but it wasn't mainstream by any means. At the time it was mostly "barbarian fiction," Leiber, Moorcock, Cohan reprints, etc. It was Judy del Rey at Ballantine that had the insight that readers didn't want fantasy, they wanted more Tolkien. So she purposely sought the most Tolkien- derivative manuscript she could find. Enter Brooks. I've read that Books started writing Shannara as a sequel to LotR, but can't find any verification of that. In any case, del Rey was proven right as Shannara rocketed up the best-seller lists. Ballantine sought other Tolkienesque works and even had a set of guidelines for works they would publish: they had to star a male hero who would overcome a world-threatening foe in a battle of good verses evil, the setting needed to be primarily pastoral, and the hero need to be guided by an aged magical figure. Other publishers quickly saw how well this worked for Ballentine and followed suit. That's why though the 80s and 90s the Fantasy section at the bookstore was crammed with bland samey Heroic Fiction. Heck, the fact that there's even a Fantasy section in bookstores can probably be attributed to Shannara. This is all true, I think HA meant artistically influential, in which case number two to Tolkien would be le Guin or Crowley or someone near urban fantasy ground zero, Megan Lindholm or Peter Beagle or someone. Did you mean Glen Cook or Hugh Cook btw, because both are doing similar-sounding stuff about the same time. E: Hey someone bought me a new av cool 
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Aug 20, 2014 16:16
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It's cool to read about the history of fantasy. I've never really known how it developed and why there were so many Tolkien knockoffs etc.
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Aug 20, 2014 16:16
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House Louse posted:This is all true, I think HA meant artistically influential, It could be this is hitting me in a blind spot since I've always ignored the Shannara books as purely derivative. I honestly always thought the D&D books had been the ones that really opened up the market, along with stuff like Xanth, and some of the better 1970's pulp like the Deryni books and so forth. Late 80's fantasy really was a horrible wasteland though; the decade has a few bright spots like Misenchanted Sword but so much of it is so bad. Even good authors like Guy Gavriel Kay and Roger Zelazny were writing relatively bad stuff like Fionavar and the latter Amber books. I can see the merit of the market-expansion argument though. Wheel of Time kinda seems balanced at the halfway point -- you can make a credible argument for both its market influence and its artistic influence, but it wouldn't be at the top of the historical chart in either. It's been a positive influence in some ways and a harmful influence in others (on the one hand, more developed female characters; on the other, Terry Goodkind happened). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 16:33
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House Louse posted:E: Hey someone bought me a new av cool That's the new stupid newbie av
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Aug 20, 2014 16:40
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RVProfootballer posted:That's the new stupid newbie av Shhh! Don't kill his dreams! Oh too late
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Aug 20, 2014 16:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Shhh! Don't kill his dreams! Oh too late I don't think he's a big idiot or makes bad posts, didn't want him to get the wrong idea 
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Aug 20, 2014 16:43
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