Website: Is SF "Literature"? Yes.
The Walkers
"Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works" is now on line at--
Its premise is SF&F authors and works--vintage and current--
reviewed, discussed, and rated by the universal standards of
fine literature: as books, not as "SF&F books." Included:
o a lengthy essay on the nature of quality in fiction in
general and in SF&F specifically;
o a list of SF&F authors of quality, roughly ranked from
five stars ("grand masters") down to one star (good writers
whose works reward reading);
o for each listed author, a list of books of merit;
o those books of merit, listed by title;
o possibly interesting or at least amusing sub-lists:
--the five-star grand masters;
--the four-star greats;
--notable writers of limited output;
--the "top 78" authors (3 or more stars); and,
--some selected "camp" stuff.
o a links list with a link to a dedicated website for each
listed author (where such a site was to be found);
o the essential components of a sound basic SF&F library;
o humorous SF&F of quality;
o religiously themed SF&F of quality;
o "lost classics"--books of substantial merit now likely to be
overlooked or at risk of being forgotten; and,
o "obiter dicta"--a collection of thoughts relating to fine
SF&F but not set forth in the introductory essay.
There is also a set of pages, one per author listed, each solely
about that author, repeating the books-of-merit list for that
author and containing a brief discussion of the author (with
extensive representative quotations) to help you rank that author
on your own reading list.
Owlcroft House cordially invites you to visit, and to e-mail.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Les Shelley
quick scan of the Great Ones I noticed no listing for Philip K. Dick. No
Philip K. Dick? How is this possible?
To Make Amends:
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/exper/kcramer/PKDA.html
"The Walkers" <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
news:90rvuf$gj9$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
The Walkers
"Les Shelley" <ks...@home.com> wrote:
> Okay, maybe I missed it and if I did, well then NEVER MIND, but after
> a quick scan of the Great Ones I noticed no listing for Philip K.
> Dick. No Philip K. Dick? How is this possible?
From the site, verbatim:
"I want to here repeat, with emphasis, that my omission of this or that
author does not necessarily mean that I consign him or her to the
dustbin. A few of the older "canonical" authors are writers I need to
re-visit after many, many years' absence from their works; what I
recall of reading them when their books were new releases doesn't mean
a lot anymore. An example is Phil Dick: I much enjoyed _Eye in the
Sky_ but didn't much care for _The Man in the High Castle_--but I was a
different person then. As someone or other has observed, the past is a
foreign country, and all who live there are strangers."
_The Man in the High Castle_ is among the 49 (I counted) books on the
library table awaiting reading or, in some cases, re-reading.
I have tried very hard to present conclusions reached in accordance
with a uniform esthetic; with so many of the "canonical" authors' books
being ones I read as virtually a child, I have a task indeed before me.
Most, fortunately, are not hard to assign even after decades; but the
rest require a careful adult re-reading, so I postpone comment until I
can give them that measured re-reading.
Do you realize that there are, by report, three or four new SF&F books
published each and every day of each and every year these days?
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker
Owlcroft House
Jeandré
>library table awaiting reading or, in some cases, re-reading.
How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile? I like
to have some non-fiction, non-sf, magazines, reference manuals, and
light stuff in mine: History/horror, science guide; a classic;
National geographic; usability manual; humour.
--
/`\ Jeandré
\ / jea...@techie.com
X
/ \ Text ribbon campaign for HTML free e-mail and Usenet posts
Michael Hargreave Mawson
<jea...@techie.com> writes
>>_The Man in the High Castle_ is among the 49 (I counted) books on the
>>library table awaiting reading or, in some cases, re-reading.
>
>How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile? I like
>to have some non-fiction, non-sf, magazines, reference manuals, and
>light stuff in mine: History/horror, science guide; a classic;
>National geographic; usability manual; humour.
27 - split roughly 70:30 between science fiction and military history
ATB
--
Mike
Michael Hargreave Mawson, author of "Eyewitness in the Crimea,"
to be published by Greenhill Books in March, 2001.
See http://www.hargreave-mawson.demon.co.uk/Books.html for details.
Brenda
Jeandré wrote:
> >_The Man in the High Castle_ is among the 49 (I counted) books on the
> >library table awaiting reading or, in some cases, re-reading.
>
> How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile?
Argh, I have several piles of varying urgency. All the Real Soon books
are nonfiction.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of DOORS OF DEATH AND LIFE
From Tor Books in May 2000
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
The Walkers
Brenda <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>
>
> Jeandré wrote:
>
> > >_The Man in the High Castle_ is among the 49 (I counted) books on
> > >the library table awaiting reading or, in some cases, re-reading.
> >
> > How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile?
>
> Argh, I have several piles of varying urgency. All the Real Soon
> books are nonfiction.
In my count of 49 I included only sf&f books, which currently dominate
even more than usual owing to the development if the site; but I am
also simultaneously reading Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi," a
collection of selected Washington Irving prose (a delightful late
discovery for me), and the two-volume condensation of Toynbee--though
progress on all three has slowed seriously. In the stack waiting, not
counted above, are three non-fiction books related to baseball (I also
run, in season, a 200-page baseball-analysis site).
preac...@my-deja.com
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> A new website, unimaginatively but simply and aptly entitled
> "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works" is now on line at--
You're building a site about "quality" SF and you have no listing on
Delaney? In terms of literary quality, he is simply unsurpassed in the
field of SF.
Karen Lofstrom
: How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile?
Usually hovers between five and ten.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to hell. Here is your accordion.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
<jea...@techie.com> asserted
>>_The Man in the High Castle_ is among the 49 (I counted) books on the
>>library table awaiting reading or, in some cases, re-reading.
>
>How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile?
To read for the first time - about 40. Including re-reads, 788. 8>.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
The Walkers
preac...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <90rvuf$gj9$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> > A new website, unimaginatively but simply and aptly entitled
> > "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works" is now on line at--
>
> You're building a site about "quality" SF and you have no listing on
> Delaney? In terms of literary quality, he is simply unsurpassed in
> the field of SF.
I knew, of course, when I set up the site, that an endless parade of
"but where's . . . ?" comments would come my way. Delaney is, at this
desk, still _sub judice_, as are several comparable others. It says so
on the site:
"I want to here repeat, with emphasis, that my omission of this or that
author does not necessarily mean that I consign him or her to the
dustbin. A few of the older "canonical" authors are writers I need to
re-visit after many, many years' absence from their works; what I
recall of reading them when their books were new releases doesn't mean
a lot anymore. An example is Phil Dick: I much enjoyed _Eye in the
Sky_ but didn't much care for _The Man in the High Castle_ --but I was
a different person then. As someone or other has observed, the past is
a foreign country, and all who live there are strangers."
I have now looked over "Nova" (note I do not say "read"--I couldn't
manage it, as I generally cannot manage works by authors who seem to be
writing primarily to try to strike me up side of the head with how much
they know). I did "Tales of Neveryon"; Delaney can, when he sets his
mind to it, obviously write, in the sense of tell tales in clean,
strong, sound prose; but now he tries to strike me side of the head
with all the biases and bigotry and general folly that he apparently
assumes everyone in the world (save him) is profoundly afflicted with
and in urgent need of recognizing. Sorry, I was 12 years old a *very*
long time ago.
I have "Escape From Neveryon" in the reading stack; I will also get
soon a few of his earlier works, because I want to see a lot of such an
author before I try to render an overall opinion.
You might want to take a look, if you have not done so already, at the
part of the site that can be reached at:
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf/apolog1.html#DETOUR
I urge you to read all of that, but the crux is stated so:
"We (I presume here to speak for you as well as myself) do not know it
all. We may not know each of the possible answers to The Big Questions
that fifty centuries of pondering have elicited, nor the most cogent
arguments for the answers we are aware of; we may not even know all of
The Big Questions themselves. We certainly have no universally
compelling knowledge as to which, if any, of the answers are correct.
But we *are* out of kindergarten and intellectual kinderspiel is no
longer amusing or interesting: tales just meant to serve as Cliff's
Notes for a Big-Questions pop quiz are boring."
I have not damned Delaney. I am sure I will include him in the lists,
but I want a full picture before I assign some level of even the crude
and approximate rankings I use.
"[H]e is simply unsurpassed in the field of SF." Oh? A quick memory
scan: Brian Aldiss; Iain Banks; James Blaylock; Avram Davidson; Mary
Gentle; Richard Grant; M. John Harrison; R.A. Lafferty; Ursula K. Le
Guin; Alan Lightman; Michael Moorcock; Herbert Read; Cordwainer Smith;
Jack Vance; Gene Wolfe--not a one of those writers (not to mention
others I have no doubt omitted through fallible memory) equals Samuel
Delaney? Perhaps the case was bit a bit over-strongly put?
Well, now all the Delaney fans can have their field day here.
--
Eric Walker
Owlcroft House
Susan Stepney
>
> >_The Man in the High Castle_ is among the 49 (I counted) books on the
> >library table awaiting reading or, in some cases, re-reading.
>
> How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile?
To be read shelves:
About 15 metres of SF, and about 12 metres of non-fiction.
Currently reading -- I try to be a serial reader -- no more than one
fiction (with maybe a reread "comfort" book in the middle if it gets
heavy going) and one or two non-fiction on the go at once.
--
_____________________________________________________________________
Susan Stepney tel +44 1223 366343 step...@logica.com
Logica UK Ltd, Betjeman House, 104 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 1LQ, UK
http://public.logica.com/~stepneys/ http://www.logica.com/
Jonathan W Hendry
Really, the to-read pile is part of L-Space; the boundaries are fuzzy
and constantly changing.
Courtenay Footman
>
> >_The Man in the High Castle_ is among the 49 (I counted) books on the
> >library table awaiting reading or, in some cases, re-reading.
>
> How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile?
Three books (I just went to the library):
Gentle's Ash #2, Vinge's _Tangled Up in Blue_, and McKillip's _The Book of
Atrix Wolfe_.
--
Courtenay Footman I have again gotten back on the net, and
c...@lightlink.com again I will never get anything done.
(All mail from non-valid addresses is automatically deleted by my system.)
Michael Stemper
>How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile?
Clarification, please. When I saw the term "currently reading pile", I
took it to mean "books that I have started reading, have not finished
reading, and have not put back on the shelf for 'later'". Most of the
other respondents seem to have taken it to mean "books in my posession
that I haven't read yet".
If it's the first, I'm currently reading four books. If it's the second,
my (virtual) incoming pile is somewhere around one hundred books.
>How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile? I like
>to have some non-fiction, non-sf, magazines, reference manuals, and
"Books" or "books and magazines" or "books and magazines and newspapers
and junk mail and cereal boxes and..."?
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
COFFEE.SYS not found. Abort, Retry, Fail?
Martin Wisse
> How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile? I like
> to have some non-fiction, non-sf, magazines, reference manuals, and
> light stuff in mine: History/horror, science guide; a classic;
> National geographic; usability manual; humour.
Reading actively? ATM, three books. (Rereading A Game of Thrones, reading
Serpent's Reach and Neverness). In my to be read pile there are approx.
200 books: the curse of having a decent enough salary to buy a lot
of books but little time to read them in...
Martin Wisse
Randy Money
> <jea...@techie.com> writes
> >>_The Man in the High Castle_ is among the 49 (I counted) books on the
> >>library table awaiting reading or, in some cases, re-reading.
> >
> >How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile? I like
> >to have some non-fiction, non-sf, magazines, reference manuals, and
> >light stuff in mine: History/horror, science guide; a classic;
> >National geographic; usability manual; humour.
Five. A novel, a short story collection if I want a break from the novel,
and three books of essays to dip into when I want. (Those last three are
interchangable with others in my house when I decide I've had enough of
that book.)
Randy
Jeandré
>
>Clarification, please. When I saw the term "currently reading pile", I
>took it to mean "books that I have started reading, have not finished
>reading, and have not put back on the shelf for 'later'".
Yes, books you're actively reading, "currently reading": started one,
in the middle of another...
>If it's the first, I'm currently reading four books.
I used to read serially when I was younger, but over time with heavier
stuff I slipped in more and more "breathing room" reading.
--
Jeandré
k...@go.to
http://go.to/ksr/
Arthur
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> Do you realize that there are, by report, three or four new SF&F books
> published each and every day of each and every year these days?
>
> --
> Cordially,
> Eric Walker
> Owlcroft House
>
Hello Eric, do you review books in files.DOC format?
If you are interested in new authors, please check my page and let me
know.
Thanks
--
Seeking a good SF book? http://www.50megs.com/aalembert
John Andrew Fairhurst
> How many books do raswers have in their currently reading pile? I like
> to have some non-fiction, non-sf, magazines, reference manuals, and
> light stuff in mine: History/horror, science guide; a classic;
>
Up to four books of various sorts from the library (usually Science
Fiction & Crime/Mystery [the two are next to each other in the local
libraries]).
Up to half a dozen Science Fiction books from the local bookshops with
the occasional Clancy type book from the local supermarket.
A couple of Programming/Web Designn books.
Not all together and there have been times when I've got nothing new, but
reread some of the old favourites.
--
John Fairhurst
In Association with Amazon worldwide:
http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk
Jeandré
Have you read Nielson's /Designing web usability/? He's da man!
>In Association with Amazon worldwide:
Have you ever checked out http://www.noamazon.com/ ? You have to click
on the link twice :).
PS: Cool dragon model.
David T. Bilek
>>...Web Designn books.
>
>Have you read Nielson's /Designing web usability/? He's da man!
>
I have a hard time trusting a book on web design that features the
most godawful cover layout and color scheme I have ever had the
displeasure of gazing upon.
But yes, it's a standard.
-David
Quilly Mammoth
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> A new website, unimaginatively but simply and aptly entitled
> "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works" is now on line at--
>
> http://owlcroft.com/sfandf/
>
not what I would call even remotely a place to go for Science Fiction.
Fantasy yes, SF... NO.
In your list of those books that are seminal for any compleat SF
library the first lot has not one SF author. Not one.
Your completely in love with the prose that is required for Fantasy.
In that genre, your selections are well thought out. But you
deliberately slight SF.
I read through to the C's and quit in disgust. No David Brin! What
rock have you been stranded on. Orson Scott Card without "Ender"? No
Bova? No Bliss?
I must protest! Eddison was a writer who used contrived plots in order
to write his stilted prose. Dunsany set the standard that all other
Fantasy writers try to emulate. Most of the rest are standing on the
shoulders.
What is your backround that gives you the right to be the arbiter of
what is good SF? "Eric's Greatest" is one thing. What you have done is
vanity in the extreme Mr. Collins!
Andy Quick
and Fantasy is not Science Fiction. I still pray for the day that
publishers, sellers, libraries, etc. wake up and quit mixing the two. I am
not disparaging fantasy, but am personally not a great fan of the genre. I
detest having to wade through listings and shelves to find hard sci-fi. I
am sure fantasy fans feel the same way in reverse.
--
Andy "Mr. Silver" Quick
Nancy Lebovitz
there are a great many works (Pern is the canonical example) which are
hard to place firmly in either genre.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
lal_truckee
But it's trivial 99% of the time - almost no one could confuse Mission of
Gravity with Lord of the Rings. I suspect chain bookshop employee's are
the only folks who could.
I too wish a little help finding suitable reading material sans swords,
or worse "light sabers" (whatever the hell they are supposed to be.) I
fear that against all appearances good SF continues to be produced and I
just miss finding it amidst the tripe. A worse fear is that publishers
will believe my inability to uncover the wheat in the chaff means I have
no interest in the SF wheat. Circular problem. Didn't seem is prevalent
in the good old golden days ...
Dorothy J Heydt
lal_truckee <lal_t...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <928lf0$g...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>> In article <928jh4$9eu$1...@news3.kcnet.com>, Andy Quick <aqu...@kcnet.com> wrote:
>> >I am probably beating a dead horse here, but Science Fiction is not Fantasy
>> >and Fantasy is not Science Fiction. I still pray for the day that
>> >publishers, sellers, libraries, etc. wake up and quit mixing the two. I am
>> >not disparaging fantasy, but am personally not a great fan of the genre. I
>> >detest having to wade through listings and shelves to find hard sci-fi. I
>> >am sure fantasy fans feel the same way in reverse.
>> >
>> there are a great many works (Pern is the canonical example) which are
>> hard to place firmly in either genre.
>
>But it's trivial 99% of the time - almost no one could confuse Mission of
>Gravity with Lord of the Rings. I suspect chain bookshop employee's are
>the only folks who could.
It's not as simple as that.
For one thing, you're not talking about two separate genres with
an occasional bizarre work that falls between two chairs.
There's a continuous spectrum between SF and F with no clear
dividing line to be found anywhere. MoG and LotR are merely
examples of the opposite ends of the spectrum.
And not only that....
In one of his books on the craft of writing*, Orson Scott Card
publishes an imaginary dialogue between a fan and a bookstore
employee.
"Where's the latest Xanth novel?" asks the fifteenth kid today.
"I found Piers Anthony's books in the sci-fi section, but you
don't have *any* Xanth books there."
"That's because the Xanth books are *fantasy,*" says the
patient bookstore clerk. "They're in the *fantasy* section."
"Well, that's stupid," says the kid. "Why don't you have his
books *together*?" **
Card continues, "Science fiction and fantasy are one literary
community; while there are many who read or write just one, there
are many more who read and write both, and it's foolish to divide
them in the store."
I wrote a story once called "Ghetto" which describes this
situation in allegorical terms, but so far no one has been so
daring (foolish? reckless? nine-parts-asleep?) as to buy it.
--------
*_How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy_, Writers' Digest
Books, 1990. A nice book, much more readable than his fiction.
** Note that both Mr. Card and I are avoiding, here, the question
of whether *any* of Mr. Anthony's work, in whatever genre, is
worth the paper it's printed on.
-------
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Nancy Lebovitz
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>> In article <928jh4$9eu$1...@news3.kcnet.com>, Andy Quick <aqu...@kcnet.com> wrote:
>> >I am probably beating a dead horse here, but Science Fiction is not Fantasy
>> >and Fantasy is not Science Fiction. I still pray for the day that
>> >publishers, sellers, libraries, etc. wake up and quit mixing the two. I am
>> >not disparaging fantasy, but am personally not a great fan of the genre. I
>> >detest having to wade through listings and shelves to find hard sci-fi. I
>> >am sure fantasy fans feel the same way in reverse.
>> >
>> >--
>> You're right, it's a dead horse, and it's been hammered flat is because
>> there are a great many works (Pern is the canonical example) which are
>> hard to place firmly in either genre.
>
>But it's trivial 99% of the time - almost no one could confuse Mission of
>Gravity with Lord of the Rings. I suspect chain bookshop employee's are
>the only folks who could.
I don't think it's the chain bookstore employees who make the shelving
decisions--it's probably either the publishers or the bookstore managers.
I think I'm part of the majority who likes both fantasy and science
fiction--and I wish bookstores would quit hiding the sf in the mainstream
section.
>
>I too wish a little help finding suitable reading material sans swords,
>or worse "light sabers" (whatever the hell they are supposed to be.) I
>fear that against all appearances good SF continues to be produced and I
>just miss finding it amidst the tripe. A worse fear is that publishers
>will believe my inability to uncover the wheat in the chaff means I have
>no interest in the SF wheat. Circular problem. Didn't seem is prevalent
>in the good old golden days ...
>
Your best bet, now that you've started posting here, is to write some
more about what kind of science fiction you like, with examples,
and you'll probably get more recommendations than you have time
to read.
lal_truckee
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> In article <928p37$cvb$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> lal_truckee <lal_t...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >In article <928lf0$g...@netaxs.com>,
> > na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> >> In article <928jh4$9eu$1...@news3.kcnet.com>, Andy Quick <aqu...@kcnet.com> wrote:
> >> >I am probably beating a dead horse here, but Science Fiction is not Fantasy
> >> >and Fantasy is not Science Fiction. I still pray for the day that
> >> >publishers, sellers, libraries, etc. wake up and quit mixing the two. I am
> >> >not disparaging fantasy, but am personally not a great fan of the genre. I
> >> >detest having to wade through listings and shelves to find hard sci-fi. I
> >> >am sure fantasy fans feel the same way in reverse.
> >> >
> >> >--
> >> You're right, it's a dead horse, and it's been hammered flat is because
> >> there are a great many works (Pern is the canonical example) which are
> >> hard to place firmly in either genre.
> >
> >But it's trivial 99% of the time - almost no one could confuse Mission of
> >Gravity with Lord of the Rings. I suspect chain bookshop employee's are
> >the only folks who could.
>
> I don't think it's the chain bookstore employees who make the shelving
> decisions--it's probably either the publishers or the bookstore managers.
Worse, even the nominal managers don't have the authority to stock what
they think will sell, apparently. IMO I was generous using the
nomenclature "bookstore" in the same sentence with these chain retail
operations.
>
> I think I'm part of the majority who likes both fantasy and science
> fiction--and I wish bookstores would quit hiding the sf in the mainstream
> section.
Now that's an interesting thought. Are folks who swing both ways the
majority? I'm willing to admit that, at least by shelve space, folks who
like the swordy stuff are the majority, but do most like SF AND swordy
stuff? I wonder? I find swordy stuff so boring, when I turn to it in
desparation, as to drive me to cold turkey quit reading altogether for
several days.
> >
> >I too wish a little help finding suitable reading material sans swords,
> >or worse "light sabers" (whatever the hell they are supposed to be.) I
> >fear that against all appearances good SF continues to be produced and I
> >just miss finding it amidst the tripe. A worse fear is that publishers
> >will believe my inability to uncover the wheat in the chaff means I have
> >no interest in the SF wheat. Circular problem. Didn't seem is prevalent
> >in the good old golden days ...
> >
> Your best bet, now that you've started posting here, is to write some
> more about what kind of science fiction you like, with examples,
> and you'll probably get more recommendations than you have time
> to read.
Been around a long time (years posting actually), and have access to Dark
Carnival for browsing, so I'm not hurting, but there are occasions when I
finish my travel stash and turn desparately to whomever has books for
sell for a quick fix. Drug dealers segregate their wares better than
bookleggers.
Nancy Lebovitz
lal_truckee <lal_t...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <928v7e$f...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>>
>> I think I'm part of the majority who likes both fantasy and science
>> fiction--and I wish bookstores would quit hiding the sf in the mainstream
>> section.
>
>Now that's an interesting thought. Are folks who swing both ways the
>majority? I'm willing to admit that, at least by shelve space, folks who
>like the swordy stuff are the majority, but do most like SF AND swordy
>stuff? I wonder? I find swordy stuff so boring, when I turn to it in
>desparation, as to drive me to cold turkey quit reading altogether for
>several days.
>
the impression here and at the conventions I go to that most people
like both, or at least don't talk about strongly disliking either
genre.
My vague impression is that the strongest sub-genre taste isn't
for science fiction in general--it's for hard science fiction, but
it's definitely a minority taste.
When you talk about fantasy as the swordy stuff, do you mean that
your default idea of fantasy is the kind set in generic medieval
settings? It's possible that you wouldn't like any sort of fantasy,
but there are definitely other sorts of fantasy than that.
The Blue Rose
<lal_t...@my-deja.com> inscribed upon cyber virtuality:
>In article <928v7e$f...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
*snip*
>>
>> I think I'm part of the majority who likes both fantasy and science
>> fiction--and I wish bookstores would quit hiding the sf in the mainstream
>> section.
>
>Now that's an interesting thought. Are folks who swing both ways the
>majority? I'm willing to admit that, at least by shelve space, folks who
>like the swordy stuff are the majority, but do most like SF AND swordy
>stuff? I wonder? I find swordy stuff so boring, when I turn to it in
>desparation, as to drive me to cold turkey quit reading altogether for
>several days.
*snip*
Well I definately read far more Fantasy, but I wouldnt call it swordy
stuff by any means. Much of what I have read includes swords, but
little of it revolves around the sword stuff, and tho none springs to
mind, I am sure there must be some non-swordy fantasy around :)
But I also like SF as well. My tastes in that are far more limited,
but for example I have IMB - Player of games, Inversions and
Excession, Cyteen, Vorkosiverse series, MK Wrens Phoenix trilogy,
I also have a good selection of stuff I class as a combination of the
SF(spacey stuff) and Fantasy (swordy stuff). Examples:
Pern - of course
Keltiad series - P K Morrison
Many Coloured Land Saga - Julian May
Harms Way - Colin Greenland
Ancient Future - traci Harding
Jaran series - Kate Elliott
So there you go :)
Stacey
-- Stacey Hill
"On the other hand, you have a whole new set of fingers"
www.geocities.com/theonlybluerose
Lucy Kemnitzer
<lal_t...@my-deja.com> wrote:
But "swordy stuff" and "hard sf" are not the only alternatives. I
generally don't enjoy "swordy stuff," if you mean what I think you
do, and I generally don't enjoy a lot of the books one might call
"hard sf," but I like lots of books which can only really sensibly
be called fantasy and lots of books which can only sensibly be
called sf. And I certainly don't want to be trudging around the
bookstore checking out microcategories to find stuff. Aside
from the problem Dorothy mentions, that favorite authors can be
categorized in either way depending on the book, there's also the
problem that I don't always know in which category I'm going to
find my next favorite.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Frank
<quilly_...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>What is your backround that gives you the right to be the arbiter of
>what is good SF? "Eric's Greatest" is one thing. What you have done is
>vanity in the extreme Mr. Collins!
Nitpick: any claim of "the best" is vanity. There are always people
who say "these are best of the year" or "s/he's the best working in
the field today" or similar statements. But all anyone can really say
is "my favorite"; no one can be arbiter of what's good SF. No one's
background is sufficient.
Dozois has said that a more accurate title for his annual anthology is
"Dozois' favorites at one point," but from a marketing standpoint,
"Year's Best" sells more copies. So you can argue whether the website
lists enough SF or not, or whether your own list would be different;
but in calling it "the best," the website's owners are being no more
vain than anyone else who compiles such a list.
Jeandré
>
>I have a hard time trusting a book on web design that features the
>most godawful cover layout and color scheme I have ever had the
>displeasure of gazing upon.
Don't judge a web usability author by his book?
David Goldfarb
>not disparaging fantasy, but am personally not a great fan of the genre. I
>detest having to wade through listings and shelves to find hard sci-fi. I
>am sure fantasy fans feel the same way in reverse.
And what about those who like both, and pay more attention to whether
a book is well-written and entertaining than to what genre it falls into?
I suspect there are more of us than you think.
--
David Goldfarb <*>| "No-one in the world ever gets what they want
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | And that is beautiful.
aste...@slip.net | Everybody dies frustrated and sad
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | And that is beautiful." -- TMBG
Robert Amesz
>In article <928lf0$g...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>
>[Zzznip]
>
>> You're right, it's a dead horse, and it's been hammered flat is
>> because there are a great many works (Pern is the canonical
>> example) which are hard to place firmly in either genre.
>
>But it's trivial 99% of the time - almost no one could confuse
>Mission of Gravity with Lord of the Rings. I suspect chain bookshop
>employee's are the only folks who could.
Well, having to slay some evil creature of darkness, who is about to
unleash unspeakable horror on some mediaeval society qualifies as a
"mission of gravity" in my book.
Conversely "Lord of the Rings" could be about the construction of a
new, larger ringworld in known space.
Robert Amesz
Rachel Brown
Fantasy
> and Fantasy is not Science Fiction. I still pray for the day that
> publishers, sellers, libraries, etc. wake up and quit mixing the two.
Don't blame those guys, blame the darn authors who persist in mixing the
two. Quick, how do you categorize...
Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, which have an sf rationale for dragons...
Gene Wolfe's Urth books, in which sufficiently advanced science is
indistinguishable from magic...
Mary Gentle's Ash books, in which explaining the fuzzy borders would
constitute a spoiler...
Martha Wells' _City of Bones_, another "sufficiently advanced and
misunderstood science..."
All the talking animal books in which there is no magic and nothing that
couldn't happen in our world happens, except that they're from the point of
view of intelligent animals. (ie, _Watership Down_)
And then there's the whole argument over what constitutes hard sf: can the
science in question be biology? Why not? What about history, or
psychology? What about hard sf classics in which the Earth rotates in the
wrong direction?
Do sf novels with clearly impossible elements like FTL or psionics count as
af or fantasy?
Trust me, you don't want to leave these questions to the booksellers.
Rachel
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> In article <90rvuf$gj9$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> > A new website, unimaginatively but simply and aptly entitled
> > "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works" is now on line at--
> >
> > http://owlcroft.com/sfandf/
> >
> Aptly, you've got to be kidding me. I have read your site and it
> is not what I would call even remotely a place to go for Science
Did you happen to catch the theme music on the site? ("Somewhere, over
the rainbow...")
-- M. Ruff
Quilly Mammoth
The disclaimer that Dazois may make would never appear on the subject
website. In a sense I agree with what you say, however, the hubris is
lacking in the verbiage at the site to make it palatable for me.
The Walkers
posts at once. I am thus obliged to ruthlessly prune quotations;
anyone who feels I have misrepresented them by such pruning can
and should post a reply (most will anyway I suspect).
Quilly Mammoth said, in part:
>I have read your site and . . . .
While I hate to begin a long post by being brusque, I have to
stop right there. You have self-evidently done nothing of the
sort. What you did was jump into and around the site, without
bothering to pay the conventional courtesy of reading first what
the site maker placed first to explain the whys and hows of the
place, or, it seems, very much of anything else he said.
Let me quote a few things that you clearly never saw.
First: "But, because fantasy is much the older field and didn't
turn into a mill until after SF was already well along, the body
of decent works of fantasy is, and will likely remain for a good
while, substantially larger than the body of decent works of
science fiction. Neither form is inherently more suited to
quality work: it is a simple numbers game." You may agree or
disagree, but to scream that because the fantasy list on the site
is longer than the SF list "you deliberately slight SF" is to
show that--as I said--you did not "read" the site.
Then there is the site title itself: "Great . . . "; it is *not*
"The Great . . . . " (If you don't clearly see the difference, I
recommend you to the article "A/An" in Wilson Follett's "Modern
American Usage.") But if such subtlety is lost on you, there is:
"Nor by any means is every author who has produced something
worthy of inclusion in a select library presented here: I'm one
mortal reader.
"(The most numerous unjust omissions will be relatively recent
authors--and 'recent' goes back a good number of years. I read
somewhere that for a particular year in the mid-1990s, the number
of SF&F titles published was about _1,300_; do the arithmetic--
one would have to read three or four books a day, week in and
week out, month in and month out, every single day of the year,
just to keep up, much less try to read anything published before
that year. . . .)"
The site covers works produced during a period of well over a
century. Its purpose is not to be a 100%-guaranteed list of
every single fine SF&F book ever published in that period, an
impossible goal; its purpose is to be a list of some--with hope,
many--of the fine SF&F books from that period, so that readers
unacquainted with this or that author or book can discover that
he or she or it exists and get at least some idea of what those
authors or those books are all about and so decide whether to
find and read those books.
>Your completely in love with the prose that is required for
>Fantasy.
Pleasing use of the English language is not a special requirement
of fantasy: it is something a sane reader looks for in any kind
of literature. That such use is found a good deal more often in
fantasy than SF (===cumulating over that whole period===) is a
historical quirk: for many decades in the period at issue,
"fantasy" was not a publishing category, it was just something
people wrote, and it was little distinguished from any other kind
of writing, so that authors of great talent (such as Herbert
Read) wrote some of it.
The belief that a few certain particular styles of prose--those
that Dunsany used exemplify them well--are mandatory for or
define "fantasy" is simply silly. (Is anything in Read's "Green
Child" the sort of precious writing your tone suggests you mean?)
>I read through to the C's and quit in disgust. No David Brin!
>What rock have you been stranded on.
Ah, now we get to the inevitable "But where's . . . ?!?" Let me
say, a rock not so removed from the shores that I haven't read
Brin. But the message suddenly shifts from "you stink" to "you
stink because you left out somebody I like."
>I must protest! Eddison was a writer who used contrived plots
>in order to write his stilted prose.
I remind you that Ambrose Bierce once remarked along the lines
that there is no harm in being a fool, harm is being a fool at
the top of your lungs. Another thing you obviously didn't read
on the site is the page specifically about Eddison. Eddison had
a complex, learned, and powerful philosophical and theological
vision which he expressed in his works. Whether you think it a
great insight or so much twaddle, saying that his plots were an
excuse for his prose, even setting aside that generations of
poets have fulsomely praised that prose, demonstrates grotesque
ignorance of Eddison (and of generally accepted standards for
fine prose).
>What is your backround that gives you the right to be the
>arbiter of what is good SF?
There are things I was brought up to believe inappropriate, and
posting my c.v. to "prove" my "right" isn't one of them. I'll
tell you what: send me by private e-mail your resume, highlighting
the points that demonstrate your competence to comment on literary
values, and I'll send you back mine promptly, by equally private
e-mail. (The "arbiter" point I discuss later.)
(I will say, however, that I do believe that a preponderance of
my sentences comport with the general acceptations of English
grammar, syntax, and diction, typing errors excepted; I am not
bragging--to brag on being able to use one's mother tongue
unexceptionably would be ridiculous--I am just remarking that I
meet one of what I would consider the very most basic
qualifications for one who would issue wide and deep critiques of
another's work when that work pertains to words.)
(All right, I'm shooting fish in a barrel; but the fish spat at
me.)
Andy Quick started a sub-thread on distinguishing SF from
Fantasy, which the group pretty well talked out. My own feeling,
expressed on the web site, is that one can, with the usual
caveats about close calls, make a distinction that probably could
be generally accepted, but what's the point? Within each class,
if we call them separate classes, there are further sub-classes
almost as distinct (or indistinct) as the big divide, and fans
for each type. Unless you badly need a thesis topic, why bother?
(One thing I want to mention, unimportant as it may be to this
thread. Rachel Brown said, in passing:
>Gene Wolfe's Urth books, in which sufficiently advanced science
>is indistinguishable from magic...
I have always felt that Clark's Shibboleth would read better as
"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from
technology," but Clark was an engineer. [Was it "science" or
"technology"?])
Frank observed:
>Nitpick: any claim of "the best" is vanity. There are always
>people who say "these are best of the year" or "s/he's the best
>working in the field today" or similar statements. But all
>anyone can really say is "my favorite"; no one can be arbiter of
>what's good SF. No one's background is sufficient.
I agree and in part and disagree in part. (Read any good
Supreme Court decisions lately?) That any claim of "the best"
is hard to support is so, which is why the site title omits the
definite article (as mentioned above). But that it is impossible
or even insuperably difficult to reach general agreement or even
true consensus on which works (of any kind in any art) are among
the very best is not clear to me; it is even less clear that that
would be so in an art that relies almost entirely on the intellect
(as opposed to, for example, music or abstract painting) for
assimilation and interpretation of the art involved.
In any event, arbitration (there's what comedians refer to as a
"call-back") is not needed. If I may yet again quote from what
appears on the web site--and, after all, it was a flame of that
site that prolonged this thread--then:
"Evaluation of art is inherently subjective, but reviews are not
thereby rendered arbitrary and useless. The value of a
subjective evaluation turns on three hinges: first, the
consistency of the values and standards the reviewer is using,
for like works must receive like valuations; second, the reader's
ability to understand what those critical values and standards
are and to perceive at what angle they may lie with respect to
the reader's own; and third, the sensibilities and capabilities
of the evaluator, but only because a fool or a clod cannot render
consistent opinions. We do not and should not require some
hypothetical absolute 'correctness' from reviews--only that they
should stand as reasonably reliable guides for us."
>Dozois has said that a more accurate title for his annual
>anthology is "Dozois' favorites at one point," but from a
>marketing standpoint, "Year's Best" sells more copies. So you
>can argue whether the website lists enough SF or not, or whether
>your own list would be different; but in calling it "the best,"
>the website's owners are being no more vain than anyone else who
>compiles such a list.
Ah, but I *didn't* call it "the best." Of course I think that
that's what the lists are--everyone thinks, modesty notwithstanding,
that their opinions are correct or, by definition, those aren't
their opinions--but the main point of the site is to let people read
about authors and works they do not know and decide if they want to
change that condition.
My experience suggests that there is a terrible temporal
pariochalism in this field, with many readers quite unaware of
fine books and authors that predate those readers' first
excursions into these fields, especially if, as is too often and
so sadly the case, those works have fallen out of print.
Attentive visitors to the site will note that I make sharply
clear that I do not have any negative reviews, neither of authors
or particular books. Again quoting the site (and again asking
pardon for doing so):
"I cannot, despite almost half a century of voracious reading in
SF&F, lay claim to an intimate knowledge of all of even the
better authors and works. Since I have adopted a policy of
simply not dealing with mediocre or bad works, I run the risk of
appearing on occasion to be implicitly castigating one or another
author or book when have I simply overlooked him or her or it.
That I regret, but prefer to the drudgery of discussing
inferiority. Critics in all fields seem to deeply enjoy
slice-and-dice dissections of the things they dislike; but such
tirades, besides being cruel, are not to any purpose unless the
critical writing is meant as an enjoyment in itself or a
celebration of the critic's wit, purposes which seem to me to
miss the point of criticism. (Moreover, as Nero Wolfe has
observed, sarcasm is not the rapier of wit its wielders seem to
believe it to be, but merely a club: it may, by dint of brute
force, occasionally raise bruises, but it never cuts or pierces.)
I here simply speak of what I know and like and hope you find
that speaking of interest and value."
Finally, I take note of Matt Ruff's observation:
>Did you happen to catch the theme music on the site?
>("Somewhere, over the rainbow...")
It may--or may not--interest readers to know that in the earliest
edition of the site, all the major pages had music, which I
quickly removed owing to the number of visitors whose remarks, in
sum, boiled down to "music on sites sucks," which is a perfectly
sound opinion and the reason I removed that music; I left only
the front page with sound, a piano solo, simply because it was
quite soft and unobtrusive (I do not know how to adjust natural
volume in a MIDI file), and a bit wistful at that. The possibly
relevant point is that all the removed music, as best I recall
it, was science-fiction related: the Cantina Band, the Dr. Who
theme, The Hulk theme, and I forget just what else.
For a fact, I do not have a MIDI file of a soft solo piano playing
"Somewhere over the starbow . . . ."
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
"Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works"
Zebee Johnstone
Robert Rogoff <r0g...@m1ndspr1ng.c0m> wrote:
>In <92bvj2$kt3$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com>
>wrote:
>
>>While I hate to begin a long post by being brusque, I have to
>>stop right there. You have self-evidently done nothing of the
>>sort. What you did was jump into and around the site, without
>>bothering to pay the conventional courtesy of reading first what
>>the site maker placed first to explain the whys and hows of the
>>place, or, it seems, very much of anything else he said.
>
Websites can be read any way that works. If someone puts up a site
and says "you'll manage best by navigating this way" then it seems
sensible to do so.
IF you want to understand what's going on, read the README file. Or
show your lack of that sense to all...
Zebee
The Walkers
ze...@zip.com.au wrote:
> In rec.arts.sf.written on Wed, 27 Dec 2000 02:18:48 -0600
> Robert Rogoff <r0g...@m1ndspr1ng.c0m> wrote:
> >In <92bvj2$kt3$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com>
> >wrote:
> >
> >>While I hate to begin a long post by being brusque, I have to
> >>stop right there. You have self-evidently done nothing of the
> >>sort. What you did was jump into and around the site, without
> >>bothering to pay the conventional courtesy of reading first what
> >>the site maker placed first to explain the whys and hows of the
> >>place, or, it seems, very much of anything else he said.
> >
> >Web sites are not meant to be read in linear, narrative order. If
> >you [snipped by Zebee]
Using Deja News, I cannot locate the post Zebee is responding to, and I
would certainly like to read it. Clicking on the poster for a Deja
News "profile" of hime comes up empty. On DN, Zebee's reply post looks
like the start of a brand-new thread.
> Websites can be read any way that works. If someone puts up a site
> and says "you'll manage best by navigating this way" then it seems
> sensible to do so.
>
> IF you want to understand what's going on, read the README file. Or
> show your lack of that sense to all...
(I'm not sure if it is good form to thank someone for agreeing with a
point of view, but good form or not, I do.)
Moreover, whether or not one reads a site "linearly" is, in the end,
not crucial; what matters is reading it, period. By not taking it the
way the maker laid it out, a visitor risks probable temporary confusion
and misunderstanding--but eventually, that should all disappear. *But*
that confusion and misunderstanding will not disappear if the confused
visitor never visits all or most of the site pages.
Now no law says that by visiting a site one is obliged either to look
at it as the designer hoped and intended, or to visit most or all of
it: don't like it---leave. But I, perhaps out of touch with the times,
do think that it *is* a law of courtesy that one does not flame a
product one has made no perceptible effort to investigate or
understand.
Evelyn C. Leeper
See the FAQ:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8. What is the difference between science fiction and fantasy?
See Q#7.
This also has been done to death. Virtually every answer you give will
fail to clearly indicate which category a large number of books belong
to. Familiar books mentioned that test the boundary conditions include
Anne McCaffrey's "Dragon" series, Piers Anthony's "Apprentice Adept"
series, STAR WARS, and anything that uses FTL. The most concise
definition I've heard was given by John Clute in a radio broadcast 22
March 1997: " "Science fiction: the model is that it is a kind of story
which argues from this world a kind of possible outcome. It's possibly
an improbable outcome, but it is arguable. Fantasy essentially, as I
have been seeing it, is a series of stories, self-coherent stories (a
term we use, kind of a bad neologism to describe stories which as [it]
were understand themselves as stories; they're told stories), that are
set in worlds that are technically impossible, that we can't argue. We
may believe in them, but we can't argue them."
A more complete listing of the borderline cases includes:
Poul Anderson's "Operation" stories, collected in OPERATION CHAOS
Piers Anthony's "Apprentice Adept" series
James Blaylock's "Elfin Ship"
Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Darkover" series
David Brin's PRACTICE EFFECT
Rick Cook's "Wizard's Bane" series
L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt"s "Incomplete Enchanter" series
Charles de Lint's SVAHA
C. S. Friedman's "Coldfire" series
Lyndon Hardy's "Master of the Five Magics" series
Robert A. Heinlein's MAGIC, INC.
Rosemary Kirstein's STEERSWOMAN and THE OUTSKIRTER'S SECRET
Julian May's "Pliocene Exile" series
Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonrider" series
Walter M. Miller's CANTICLE FOR LEIBOVITZ
James Morrow's THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS
Kristine Kathryn Rusch's ALIEN INFLUENCES
Robert Silverberg's "Majipoor" series
Christopher Stasheff's "Warlock" series
Michael Swanwick's IRON DRAGON'S DAUGHTER
Sheri Tepper's "The World of the True Game" books
Lawrence Watt-Evans's "Three Worlds" series
Lawrence Watt-Evans's CYBORG AND THE SORCERERS and THE
WIZARD AND THE WAR MACHINE
Walter Jon Williams's METROPOLITAN and CITY ON FIRE
Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun"
Roger Zelazny's LORD OF LIGHT
(anything with faster-than-light (FTL) travel, time travel,
parallel worlds/universes, psionics, or shoddy science)
(Often someone suggests that fantasy and science fiction can be easily
divided and this list is brought up, the original poster responds by
saying they haven't read any of these so they can't say which category
they go in. This is not likely to convince people that such a division
is possible. :-) )
Of course, you can also check out Jerry Oltion's essay on this in the
March 1997 issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION.
[Provided by Evelyn Leeper [evelyn...@geocities.com].]
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
Golden ages always shine more brightly from a distance. -Jack Shafer
Quilly Mammoth
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> In article <slrn94jb1g...@zipperii.zip.com.au>,
> ze...@zip.com.au wrote:
>
> > In rec.arts.sf.written on Wed, 27 Dec 2000 02:18:48 -0600
> > Robert Rogoff <r0g...@m1ndspr1ng.c0m> wrote:
> > >In <92bvj2$kt3$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, The Walkers
<wal...@owlcroft.com>
> > >wrote:
> > >
> > >>While I hate to begin a long post by being brusque, I have to
> > >>stop right there. You have self-evidently done nothing of the
> > >>sort. What you did was jump into and around the site, without
> > >>bothering to pay the conventional courtesy of reading first what
> > >>the site maker placed first to explain the whys and hows of the
> > >>place, or, it seems, very much of anything else he said.
> > >
> > >Web sites are not meant to be read in linear, narrative order. If
> > >you [snipped by Zebee]
>
> Using Deja News, I cannot locate the post Zebee is responding to, and
I
> would certainly like to read it.
snip
Your wish is my command. I renamed the thread, therefore I shall
repost the comment.
In article <90rvuf$gj9$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> A new website, unimaginatively but simply and aptly entitled
> "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works" is now on line at--
>
> http://owlcroft.com/sfandf/
>
Aptly, you've got to be kidding me. I have read your site and it is
not what I would call even remotely a place to go for Science Fiction.
Fantasy yes, SF... NO.
In your list of those books that are seminal for any compleat SF
library the first lot has not one SF author. Not one.
Your completely in love with the prose that is required for Fantasy. In
that genre, your selections are well thought out. But you
deliberately slight SF.
I read through to the C's and quit in disgust. No David Brin! What
rock have you been stranded on. Orson Scott Card without "Ender"? No
Bova? No Bliss?
I must protest! Eddison was a writer who used contrived plots in order
to write his stilted prose. Dunsany set the standard that all other
Fantasy writers try to emulate. Most of the rest are standing on the
shoulders.
What is your backround that gives you the right to be the arbiter of
what is good SF? "Eric's Greatest" is one thing. What you have done is
vanity in the extreme Mr. Collins!
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
Though in retrospect I would correct it to say "Blish". I didn't feel
commenting on your site germane to the other debate. However, since
the post which announces your site reappeared I took that opportunity.
Let me restate my point. While all have their greatest list, the tenor
of your site suggests that "it" is _the_ _only_ one with merit. It
says to me that you are the expert, and all others mere amatuers.
Hence the referance to Mr Collins. Yes, I did spend the better part of
an hour at your site. If I have missed something in that brief tour,
than I suggest a rework of your site.
Kyle Haight
Robert Rogoff <r0g...@m1ndspr1ng.c0m> wrote:
>In <92bvj2$kt3$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com>
>
>>I have always felt that Clark's Shibboleth would read better as
>>"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from
>>technology," but Clark was an engineer.
One of the old Infocom games included a reference to P. David Lebling's
law: "Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology."
I've always enjoyed the contrapositive of Clarke's law: "Any technology
distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
--
Kyle Haight
kha...@alumni.ucsd.edu
Quilly Mammoth
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> Please excuse the length of this post: it is replying to *16*
> posts at once. I am thus obliged to ruthlessly prune quotations;
> anyone who feels I have misrepresented them by such pruning can
> and should post a reply (most will anyway I suspect).
>
> Quilly Mammoth said, in part:
>
> >I have read your site and . . . .
>
> While I hate to begin a long post by being brusque, I have to
> stop right there. You have self-evidently done nothing of the
> sort. What you did was jump into and around the site, without
> bothering to pay the conventional courtesy of reading first what
> the site maker placed first to explain the whys and hows of the
> place, or, it seems, very much of anything else he said.
>
> Let me quote a few things that you clearly never saw.
>
Please don't say what I did or did not do.
Let me start by saying that your title indeed does not have the
word "the" in it.
You mischarecterize my reading of your site. What better way to start a
debate than by immediately denigrating the others starting point?
However, I spent the better part of an hour in it. I read the first
page in its entirety. I read every review through the C's. I did not
form my opinion on the website's entirety until I read the part of your
site where you define a good library.
I did read the part about Fantasy being the larger body of work. I
understand the reference to the "Mill" effect as well. I feel that
you, still, have ignored works that should be included. I find that
the lack of inclusion reflective of a general felling that Science
Fiction isn't literature. I feel that this is germane due to the
following on your site: "For long now the _literati_ have scorned both
science-fiction and fantasy books, when they have deigned to notice
them at all.". Your further allegorical reference to your site being
a "wine card" would lead one to believe that it includes a selection of
reds as well as whites, and those between.
While trying to produce a list that is all inclusive is a daunting
task; I would expect that a site that sets its standards so high might
include a Hugo and Nebula winner (twice) in its list. I speak
of "Ender's Game." While you make a great deal of my "screaming" about
one book not included, the fact is that I picked three out from the
first batch. None of which are newcomers. Again you use the
debater's tactic of picking one point, and in fact, snipping the other
two authors. This is an obvious effort to change the meaning of my
paragraph to your ends. A low tactic indeed! Which you then translate
to "you stink because you left out somebody I like." In fact, I don't
particularly care for most of what Dr. Brin writes lately.
Nevertheless, he has written some work which I, and many others
admire. All three of these authors have won the Hugo. I searched no
further, admittedly, but I would be willing to bet that I would find
the same throughout.
Regarding our friend Eddison. Again you start by insulting me
personally, whereas I attack the writer, which no doubt you feel is
thus an attack on you. However, I repeat, and I think you will agree,
that Eddison's work is primarily prose. Which I protest is not the
sole denominator of Literature. Your reaction to this, where you say
that "generations of poets have fulsomely praised that prose" is
indicative of what you feel is the ultimate test of literature.
Furthermore, your attack on me where you claim I did not read that
particular author's page, is untrue. Your very own treatment of him is
in essence that his faults should be overlooked due to the beauty of
his prose. You also state on your page devoted to Eddison that others
take my view as well. In my opinion, the "Worm" is an epic tale. The
key being epic, when it comes to epic prose, I would prefer Melville.
I object most strongly to the Pedant's defense. "My opponent has made
grammatical errors, therefore he is a dolt, and his argument is
therefore worthless." That is a low defense of yourself, and your
site. My qualifications in literature are not academic, I have a BA in
History as well as a Master in the same field. This very question
speaks to the tone and tenor of your site and your arguments here; "we
are not worthy"seems to be inferred. At least, that is how I feel when
I read what you say. At the bottom of your page is a request for
critique, I have done so and therefore "spit at you" by your light.
Nor did I make wide and deep criticism of your work. In fact I praised
the Fantasy portion of your list. I think that you protest a wide-
ranging attack on your site too much.
I did not decide on the entirety of your site until I had read
the "basic library" you recommend. Surely, you must admit that one
must read the whole of the page to find the link in the text. This
link lies at the bottom of the page. Thus giving the lie to your
statement that I had not read the site. In reading the list, and the
comments therein, I came to the following conclusions.
1. You have read more Fantasy than SF, and feel it to be the parent to
an upstart child. Therefore, Fantasy is to be taken more seriously.
2. You feel that prose is the ultimate factor in deciding what is, or
is not, good literature.
Your site does not take the word "the" in its' title. However,
everything else in it screams "the" in my opinion.
This is written on the fly, so to speak, without a rewrite and so
forth. Therefore there will, undoubtably, be grammatical errors, for
which I do _not_ apologize. No doubt you will continue to see me as a
less than intelligent buffoon. On the other hand, I will probably
still see you as a Pedant, an intellect of much reading and education,
to whom criticism is unthinkable. Who's position on all that is
written to be as immutable as lead to gold, and just as precious.
The Walkers
Quilly Mammoth <quilly_...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <92cgij$pa$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
[...]
> > Using Deja News, I cannot locate the post Zebee is responding to,
> > and I would certainly like to read it.
>
> snip
>
> Your wish is my command. I renamed the thread, therefore I shall
> repost the comment.
[The post repeated was not the one Zebee was responding to; it was the
one that had started the current surge on the thread renamed.]
> Let me restate my point. While all have their greatest list, the
> tenor of your site suggests that "it" is _the_ _only_ one with merit.
> It says to me that you are the expert, and all others mere amatuers.
> Hence the referance to Mr Collins. Yes, I did spend the better part
> of an hour at your site. If I have missed something in that brief
> tour, than I suggest a rework of your site.
This has been discussed extensively by me and many others on the
UNrenamed original thread, where discussion continues; I will not here
repeat that discussion, but refer anyone interested to the thread
labelled "Website: Is SF "Literature"? Yes."
--
Eric Walker, webmaster
"Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works"
The Walkers
Quilly Mammoth <quilly_...@my-deja.com> wrote:
[A great deal, most of which is snipped below; I do
not feel any need to add much beyond what was said in
the post to which "Quilly Mammoth" was replying, save
as shown below.]
> In reading the list, and the comments therein, I came to the
> following conclusions.
>
> 1. You have read more Fantasy than SF, and feel it to be the parent
> to an upstart child. Therefore, Fantasy is to be taken more
> seriously.
>
> 2. You feel that prose is the ultimate factor in deciding what is, or
> is not, good literature.
>
> Your site does not take the word "the" in its' title. However,
> everything else in it screams "the" in my opinion.
To me, it is flabbergasting, stunning, that anyone can look at the
site, read the many posts that have gone back and forth here, and still
say things like that. I see no point in supplying more quotations, or
any discussion, if that is the product of what has already gone forth.
> This is written on the fly, so to speak, without a rewrite and so
> forth. Therefore there will, undoubtably, be grammatical errors, for
> which I do _not_ apologize. No doubt you will continue to see me as
> a less than intelligent buffoon. On the other hand, I will probably
> still see you as a Pedant, an intellect of much reading and
> education, to whom criticism is unthinkable. Who's position on all
> that is written to be as immutable as lead to gold, and just as
> precious.
As Jacques Barzun (I believe it was) has put it, ideas offered up in
careless language are like food served on a dirty plate.
--
Eric Walker, webmaster
"Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works"
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
Holly E. Ordway
(www.owlcroft.com/sfandf). I'm always interested in some critical views
on sf and fantasy. There's some interesting stuff there. There's also a
lot of stuff that puts my hackles up, and I can see why it rubs other
people the wrong way. Ordinarily, when I run across something moderately
interesting like this, I'll glance it over and pass it by; but as I'd
like to encourage critical thinking on sf and fantasy, (and because,
Eric, despite the fact that I disagree with many of the points you have
been making in the other thread, you are clearly *discussing* the
topic), I figured I'd give some more detail on my reactions to the site.
One note: I didn't read the whole web site, or even a large part of it,
before starting to reply. It's not necessary to read the entirety of
something to make at least a tentative critical judgment on it (if it
weren't possible, I'd never have made it out of my university library
alive... one *has* to learn effective and efficient evaluation as a
survival skill!)
OK. Now on to a disinterested look at the site.
Home page. Egad, what an awful combination of colors. Very difficult to
read, especially the site directory. Purple or red on black =
practically invisible.
Content: I'm a big fan of brevity, so your style kind of grates on my
nerves a bit. It's verbose. You take several paragraphs to say what
could be said in a sentence or two. Now, that's a personal preference on
my part, but it does cause me to want to skip and skim my way through. A
clearer and more concise style would probably get readers like me to
stay around longer.
Now there are some things in *what* you say that rub me the wrong way.
Let's start with the first sentence:
"Let's face reality: too many--most--web sites about science-fiction and
fantasy literature recall, for the civilized reader, American Bandstand:
"Uh, wull, Dick, I give it a 86 'cause it had a good beat an' yuh could
dance to it.""
You're making an assumption about your audience's experiences that may
very well be warranted in a lot of cases -- but not in mine. My reaction
to reading this was, "I don't even know of many web sites about sf and
fantasy, and the ones I do know of are quite articulate about the works
they discuss, not anything like what you are referring to." So I'm
starting off my reading experience feeling rather alienated from the
reviewer, which isn't the greatest start.
Next sentence:
"If your sensibilities suggest to you that Eric Eddison and Ernest
Bramah have written better fantasy than Piers Anthony and Katherine
Kurtz, or that Cordwainer Smith and M. John Harrison have written better
science fiction than Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, this site will be
of interest to you; if not, not."
I see what you're trying to say here: you don't want to waste people's
time if they don't share your tastes. But -- why?
This puts me off, because you're starting off by pre-judging these
authors. You're telling me that Kurtz is worse than Eddison (I do
presume you mean E.R. Eddison? I've never seen him referred to as Eric
Eddison), without telling me *why*. Seems like you have some pretty
strong conceptions about what's good and bad -- and you're not sharing
the basis for them, just making what appears (at this point) to be a
snap judgment. I may agree with you if you tell me *why*, but this
opening makes me distrust your critical judgment.
Also, why are you trying to scare off the people who don't already share
your tastes? I would say that the true challenge, and interest, would be
in arguing your case to someone who doesn't already agree with you.
Convince me that Eddison is better than Kurtz! Convince me that Heinlein
deserves to be ranked next to Asimov!
Even if I come out of reading your reviews with my opinions unchanged, I
will (hopefully) have some new insights into why some people prefer
certain authors, and maybe some insights into the authors I like as
well.
Skipping down a bit, you say: "For long now the literati have scorned
both science-fiction and fantasy books, when they have deigned to notice
them at all; the responses from within the community of science-fiction
and fantasy readers (and writers) almost invariably call to mind the old
saying "I can save myself from my enemies, but only God can save me from
my friends." "
I agree with you about the "literati", though I wouldn't choose that
word, and I feel bound to point out that the situation has changed
significantly in the past ten years or so. I can suggest titles if you
want; I have a verrrry long bibliography ;)
OTOH, I think you're needlessly slamming sf and fantasy readers. I know
that *I* don't approach a sf or fantasy book with lowered standards. The
discussions I've read on this group indicate to me that there are really
a lot of people who take sf/f very seriously as literature, and discuss
it, and hold it to high standards. So I don't know where you're coming
from with this; it sounds like a personal reaction (maybe the readers
*you* know are like that). It is certainly not the kind of snide remark
that I'd expect on a site that discusses fantasy and science fiction; as
a reader in that "community," it makes me feel second-rate. And I don't
think that's justified.
I'll skip to the Apologia. Ahhhhhhh, relief, black text on a light-
colored background. This is much more readable.
In Apologia, Part 1, you say:
"Many--truth to say, most--SF&F sites select and evaluate works with, to
put it genteelly, undemanding critical standards; those standards
reflect, but also perpetuate, the literary demands of the readership of
the sites and in turn the books. A generally undemanding readership has
inescapable consequences: if the readers will buy anything, anything is
what will be published. Certainly, as the book rack in any supermarket
will demonstrate, large numbers of mainstream "anythings" are also
published and read. But mainstream critics and discerning readers not
only distinguish with no difficulty a Jacqueline Susanne from a Gore
Vidal, they understand that the two are writing to very different
readerships and apply to those authors and their works appropriately
differing standards; SF&F authors are, rightly or wrongly, widely
perceived as all writing to a common readership, a readership that by
and large does not, many would say cannot, distinguish excellent from
mediocre or worse writing."
I feel insulted.
I'm not kidding. This is very insulting. You're saying that "mainstream"
readers can tell apart good and bad quality work with no trouble, but sf
and fantasy readers can't. You say that there is a "good mainstream"
audience and a "bad mainstream" audience, but only one sf/f audience.
First of all, I don't know where you get the "widely perceived" part of
SF/F authors writing to a common readership. If you're getting it from
outside the genre, then it's biased to start with. From outside the
genre, sf/f is all just spaceships and elves anyway. Junk. From inside
the genre, I think you will find quite a variety of readerships. For one
thing, I'm willing to bet that the Forgotten Realms tie-in novels reach
a different readership than Gene Wolfe's novels. But that's not even a
clear-cut distinction, because when I want something challenging, I'll
reach for Wolfe, but when I want a fun, light fluffy book, I'll pick up
Salvatore's Dark Elf trilogy, which is about as fluffy as you can get
without the book actually drifting off the shelf. Does that make me an
undiscerning reader? Does someone who reads Gore Vidal *never* pick up a
Jacqueline Susanne?
Do you see how this kind of generalizing about your readership is
putting me off from even getting to your reviews?
I skipped over the parts on The Utility of Criticism and Literary
Quality in Fiction. I'm sure you have some good ideas in there, but if
you were a student in my English composition class, I'd make you outline
those sections, tell me what are the actual points you are making, and
rewrite it in clear prose. You're trying to communicate complicated
concepts, and that's leading you into complicated and overly complex
syntax, which is obscuring the very points you are trying to make.
Skipping down to Some Essential Critical Reading: you're quite right to
latch onto Tolkien and MacDonald as important. However -- and this is an
important point -- their discussion of "fantasy" is a discussion of a
much narrower "fantasy" than the "fantasy" we know now. They're talking
about a very specific, tight interpretation of "fantasy", which was
pretty much all there was at the time those essays were written, and
treating it as the general case. What was true then, must be taken with
careful consideration now. Many of Tolkien's points have held up well,
such as his comments on "escape," but, for instance, his comments about
eucatastrophe and its central importance to a fantasy just aren't
applicable to a lot of modern fantasy. You'll realize this if you read
more widely; I'm cautioning you because "On Fairy-Stories" is rich,
heady stuff, and it can lead you astray if you don't read more widely in
critical material.
Le Guin's collection of essays is good. However, she also has an axe to
grind, and some very specific personal preferences that she defends as
general truth. In "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," she shreds Kurtz's and
Zelazny's language as all wrong for fantasy, while holding up Eddison
and Dunsany as "the real thing." A very sound counter-argument that must
be considered, is that Kurtz and Zelazny are doing very different things
with the language than Eddison and Dunsany. It's like criticizing an
orange for not being red and crunchy like an apple, without considering
what an orange is supposed to taste like. Now, you may or may not think
that Zelazny's use of language in The Chronicles of Amber *works*, butit
is at least important to consider what the effect *is*, not just what it
*isn't*. And I think Le Guin goes pretty far off on that.
I've only skimmed the Aldiss, but he also has a critical agenda, and I
wouldn't take his word as gospel truth.
In Defining SF&F, I'll just refer you to read the introduction to C.N.
Manlove's Modern Fantasy: Five Studies; and Ann Swinfen's In Defence of
Fantasy, if you can find it; and also Richard Mathews' Fantasy: The
Liberation of the Imagination. No sense reinventing the wheel; get a
sense of how other people have approached the problem.
In Apologia Part 2, the first paragraph, you say:
"The journeyman writer--or, let's be frank, the hack--will compose a
science fiction or fantasy tale for but one reason: the standards for
quality in the field, as with any "genre," are materially lower than in
mainstream publishing; it is, simply put, far easier to get published. "
This is the kind of thing that is a) unsubstantiated, b) based on your
own perceptions, and c) going to drive people up the wall.
*How on earth do you KNOW* that the "hack" is choosing to write sf
because the standards are lower? Could it be that this unskilled writer
is choosing to write a science fiction or fantasy story because....
that's the story that he has burning in his head trying to get out?
As it is, your comment is a nasty slur on science fiction and fantasy
publishers and writers, and it's entirely without substantiation.
Frankly, it causes me to question your capacity to draw reasonable
conclusions about the works you're discussing.
I skipped over the rest of the Apologia. If you have some points to
make, I suggest trying to be more concise and clear; it would help.
You're also, overall, setting yourself up as extremely knowledgable
about the field. I object to that tone. From the point of view of giving
your own personal opinions and reviews, NO PROBLEM -- I'll read what you
have to say, and digest your argument, and see if I agree or not or if
you've changed my ideas. From the point of view of being a critical
study of the field -- which your apologia seems to be trying to do -- I
don't see you as convincingly familiar with the critical work that's
been done in the field. It's the sweeping statements that do it. The
more *I* have studied the field, the more *cautious* I am about making
sweeping statements.
On to the authors.
Hm, this is difficult. I scanned through the authors, and for the most
part, they don't have commentary (or at least, most of the authors that
I've read don't have commentary yet). I noticed a definite bias toward
the older fantasy authors (Morris, Dunsany, Eddison, Cabell). No problem
there, that's good stuff, but I do think you'll run into a problem if
you take them as a model for fantasy. The genre has changed, developed,
grown. Authors are doing things differently now.
I have a really bad headache at the moment, so I didn't really read the
discussions on the authors that had them. If you tighten up your prose
style a bit, I think they'd be well worth reading. Tell the reader what
you see in these authors! If you want to argue for these authors being
great, do it! Show me! And ditch the whole introduction and apologia and
critical analysis, at least until you have a better feeling for the
critical work done in the field. You don't need any of that to present
arguments why certain authors or books are worthwhile; in fact, it
currently stands as a nearly impenetrable barrier between the potential
reader and the actual review/discussions, which strike me as possibly
quite interesting.
That's my reaction. Now I'm going to have an aspirin -- hope these
comments were useful to some degree.
--Holly
Quilly Mammoth
methods or habits. Just your selection and overall tone. Though I am
sure that someone more able will critique it in due course.
If your attitude towards the Science Fiction and Fantasy reading
community was not readily apparent from the content of the first page
on your site, this last post has shown the light of truth upon it.
Comments interspersed, unfortunately.
In article <92dh2k$pbh$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> In article <92dbpl$kqs$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> Quilly Mammoth <quilly_...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> [A great deal, most of which is snipped below; I do
> not feel any need to add much beyond what was said in
> the post to which "Quilly Mammoth" was replying, save
> as shown below.]
>
> > In reading the list, and the comments therein, I came to the
> > following conclusions.
> >
> > 1. You have read more Fantasy than SF, and feel it to be the parent
> > to an upstart child. Therefore, Fantasy is to be taken more
> > seriously.
> >
> > 2. You feel that prose is the ultimate factor in deciding what is,
or
> > is not, good literature.
> >
> > Your site does not take the word "the" in its' title. However,
> > everything else in it screams "the" in my opinion.
>
> To me, it is flabbergasting, stunning, that anyone can look at the
> site, read the many posts that have gone back and forth here, and
still
> say things like that.
If during the next week or so when more readers have time to follow the
thread, and go to your site, and I find myself alone in my take of your
tenor, than I shall recant. In the mean time, I repeat what your site
says to me: that you are _the_ authority. It is sad that I am made to
feel that way about your site, because you have obviously put a great
deal of work into it. On the actual author's pages there are some
interesting things.
> I see no point in supplying more quotations, or
> any discussion, if that is the product of what has already gone forth.
>
> > This is written on the fly, so to speak, without a rewrite and so
> > forth. Therefore there will, undoubtably, be grammatical errors,
for
> > which I do _not_ apologize. No doubt you will continue to see me as
> > a less than intelligent buffoon. On the other hand, I will probably
> > still see you as a Pedant, an intellect of much reading and
> > education, to whom criticism is unthinkable. Who's position on all
> > that is written to be as immutable as lead to gold, and just as
> > precious.
>
> As Jacques Barzun (I believe it was) has put it, ideas offered up in
> careless language are like food served on a dirty plate.
>
Here's a quote to you from Daffy Duck.
":^ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp
pppppppppppppp!"
The Walkers
length of this post; it responds in depth to a long post.
In article <Xns901794C785439...@24.2.2.74>,
holly-...@home.com.xxx (Holly E. Ordway) wrote:
[snips of interesting text for brevity only]
> Home page. Egad, what an awful combination of colors. Very
> difficult to read, especially the site directory. Purple or
> red on black = practically invisible.
That strongly depends on one's system. One chap said much the
same, then e-mailed me that on his system at work it looked
wonderful. When I wrote our corporate database, my partner told
me he couldn't read many of the screens; I suggested he tune his
monitor's adjustments; he did, and the problems disappeared.
But, if some see the page that way, it might need tending to.
(That front page is the only one with much color effects.)
> Content: I'm a big fan of brevity, so your style kind of grates
> on my nerves a bit. It's verbose. You take several paragraphs
> to say what could be said in a sentence or two. Now, that's a
> personal preference on my part, but it does cause me to want
> to skip and skim my way through. A clearer and more concise
> style would probably get readers like me to stay around
> longer.
A style like this, Polonius?
"I like brevity, so to me your style--paragraphs for what could
be said in sentences--grates, and inclines me to just skim the
text. Concision would probably hold readers like me longer."
Or this?
TEXT RAMBLES STOP CONCISION ESSENTIAL STOP
But what about those folk who enjoy a ramble?
A digression: For most literary purposes, concision is a virtue
rightly trumpeted by all authorities. But sometimes we turn to
prose as to certain meals: not for nourishment, but for flavor.
Learning speed reading has always seemed to me, save perhaps for
harried clerks, as appropriate as learning speed eating. If we
are enjoying the substance, do we not wish to prolong that
enjoyment? A verbose style is not the "substance" of the kind of
prose I address here: the thoughts it conveys are. If we are
gathered round a cheery fire in comfy chairs, having a delightful
chat with sympathetic friends, do we feel a need to compress our
thoughts, rush our speech, pack in all the dense meaning we can?
Or do we just nod and smile and drink our port and savor the
occasional goodness of life? </DIGRESSION>
After years of writing procedural manuals (no sentence over 20
words in length, never use a semicolon, and like constraints), it
may be sheer reaction; but it's also a way of saying "this is
intended to be taken at leisure--it's an essay, a ramble, not a
newspaper article." Doubtless such a style will put some readers
off; but doubtles a telegraphic style would put others off. The
gain or loss being unknowable (though likely a push), I went
forth with what felt comfortable. It's intended as what one
might call a cozy-armchair-chat style.
> Now there are some things in *what* you say that rub me the
> wrong way. Let's start with the first sentence:
>
> "Let's face reality: too many--most--web sites about science-
> fiction and fantasy literature recall, for the civilized
> reader, American Bandstand: 'Uh, wull, Dick, I give it a 86
> 'cause it had a good beat an' yuh could dance to it.'"
>
> You're making an assumption about your audience's experiences
> that may very well be warranted in a lot of cases -- but not
> in mine. My reaction to reading this was, "I don't even know
> of many web sites about sf and fantasy, and the ones I do
> know of are quite articulate about the works they discuss, not
> anything like what you are referring to." So I'm starting off
> my reading experience feeling rather alienated from the
> reviewer, which isn't the greatest start.
I have paid my dues. I pine for the lost hours of my life I
spent looking, one after another, at the hundreds of websites
turned up by search engines fed broad terms. It was when I came
to a "review" of _The Elf Queen of Shannara_ that began "This
book is a masterpiece of literature . . . ." that, as Dorothy
Parker put it, Tonstant Weader fwowed up. Possibly that is an
egregious example, but it is in tune with the vast majority of
the sites I saw. If you have found only a few sites, feed Google
the search term "science fiction" and start grinding. And if the
few you have till now found are reasonably sane, count yourself
fortunate. How you did it--perhaps investigating only trusted
recommendations?--I don't know, but I envy you.
> Next sentence:
>
> "If your sensibilities suggest to you that Eric Eddison and
> Ernest Bramah have written better fantasy than Piers Anthony
> and Katherine Kurtz, or that Cordwainer Smith and M. John
> Harrison have written better science fiction than Robert
> Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, this site will be of interest to
> you; if not, not."
>
> I see what you're trying to say here: you don't want to waste
> people's time if they don't share your tastes. But -- why?
Umm . . . because I'd be wasting their time? The site, as every
denizen of this newsgroup is likely by now aware, is not premised
on being all things to all readers. It was designed as a service
to readers with tastes of a certain sort who might be interested
in locating unfamiliar authors whose works might please them.
I believe that readers with differing tastes can each find some
guidance on the site, even if that guidance is to stay far away
from anything I recommend. But I think it right to be up front
*in* front.
> This puts me off, because you're starting off by pre-judging
> these authors. You're telling me that Kurtz is worse than
> Eddison (I do presume you mean E.R. Eddison? I've never seen
> him referred to as Eric Eddison), without telling me *why*.
> Seems like you have some pretty strong conceptions about what's
> good and bad -- and you're not sharing the basis for them, just
> making what appears (at this point) to be a snap judgment. I
> may agree with you if you tell me *why*, but this opening makes
> me distrust your critical judgment.
No, I'm post-judging them: I only judge authors after I've read
them. (Yes, I mean E.R. Eddison.) And I do think you're asking
for an awful lot out of the first few lines of the cover page of
the site, even were I using -7 type sizing. One who knows those
authors knows what I am saying; one who does not will, of course,
have to read the site to find out.
> Also, why are you trying to scare off the people who don't
> already share your tastes? I would say that the true challenge,
> and interest, would be in arguing your case to someone who
> doesn't already agree with you. Convince me that Eddison is
> better than Kurtz! Convince me that Heinlein deserves to be
> ranked next to Asimov!
Ah, youth! Life--at least my life now--is too short for that.
Disputation for the sheer fun of it is OK at times: arguably
that is what we are engaged in here. But, as C.S. Lewis
remarked in the opening of _On Prayer,_ there comes a time when
one tires of disputation with the unconvinced and wants to just
sit down and have a nice chat about fine points with agreeable
friends. Like everyone, I like to be liked and to be agreed
with; but I also like to be open and honest, and if, in so doing,
I cause some to dislike me or disagree with me, my life goes on.
> Even if I come out of reading your reviews with my opinions
> unchanged, I will (hopefully) have some new insights into why
> some people prefer certain authors, and maybe some insights
> into the authors I like as well.
Which is why all are welcome--provided each has read that which
was cut into the stone over the gate. (ObLit.)
> Skipping down a bit, you say: "For long now the literati have
> scorned both science-fiction and fantasy books, when they have
> deigned to notice them at all; the responses from within the
> community of science-fiction and fantasy readers (and writers)
> almost invariably call to mind the old saying 'I can save
> myself from my enemies, but only God can save me from my
> friends.'"
>
> I agree with you about the "literati", though I wouldn't choose
> that word, and I feel bound to point out that the situation has
> changed significantly in the past ten years or so. I can
> suggest titles if you want; I have a verrrry long bibliography
> ;)
I wonder if it has changed that much. A good number of books
seriously treating SF&F is still but a few grains of sand on a
big beach. I think that on the whole SF&F is still pretty much
scorned by the literary industry (which would prefer the term
"establishment"--remember Louis Nye and "We in the doctor
business . . . ."?).
> OTOH, I think you're needlessly slamming sf and fantasy readers.
> I know that *I* don't approach a sf or fantasy book with
> lowered standards. The discussions I've read on this group
> indicate to me that there are really a lot of people who take
> sf/f very seriously as literature, and discuss it, and hold it
> to high standards. So I don't know where you're coming from
> with this; it sounds like a personal reaction (maybe the
> readers *you* know are like that). It is certainly not the kind
> of snide remark that I'd expect on a site that discusses
> fantasy and science fiction; as a reader in that "community,"
> it makes me feel second-rate. And I don't think that's
> justified.
Where I'm coming from is those lost hours. Do it: do a search
on any engine for "science fiction" or some such broad term and
go through, oh, say, a couple of hundred sites (yes, I really
did, in fact lots more than that)--and in order, not by how
interesting each one's notes look. I suggest that you too might
develop a "personal reaction."
(I don't even speak--lying just as I do so speak--of the
uncounted hours spent over the course of decades watching and
listening in sf&f specialty bookstores and by the sf&f shelves in
general bookstores.)
As to snide and off-putting: if the shoe fits, wear it. As it
clearly doesn't fit you, why struggle to get into it just so you
can be outraged by how it pinches?
As with sf sites, it's a numbers game. Think about it: if I
*didn't* think there *is* a substantial community of sensible
readers for sf&f, whyever would I have invested the long, often
tedious hours I spent building the site? But "a substantial
community" in absolute terms can still be a small minority in
relative terms, which is what those lost hours (pretty soon I'll
have to start initial-capping the term) showed me, in what I
thought a plain way, to be the case.
(The "tedious" comes because I manually draft and edit all my own
HTML so that the site will be 100% standards-compliant; finding
and repairing HTML constructions that look fine on some browsers
but are still breaches of standards is usually tedious.)
> In Apologia, Part 1, you say:
>
> "Many--truth to say, most--SF&F sites select and evaluate works with,
> to put it genteelly, undemanding critical standards; those standards
> reflect, but also perpetuate, the literary demands of the readership
> of the sites and in turn the books. A generally undemanding
> readership has inescapable consequences: if the readers will buy
> anything, anything is what will be published. Certainly, as the book
> rack in any supermarket will demonstrate, large numbers of mainstream
> "anythings" are also published and read. But mainstream critics and
> discerning readers not only distinguish with no difficulty a
> Jacqueline Susanne from a Gore Vidal, they understand that the two
> are writing to very different readerships and apply to those authors
> and their works appropriately differing standards; SF&F authors are,
> rightly or wrongly, widely perceived as all writing to a common
> readership, a readership that by and large does not, many would say
> cannot, distinguish excellent from mediocre or worse writing."
>
> I feel insulted.
Please credit me with saying what I mean. When I say "rightly or
wrongly" I don't mean "rightly"; when I say "perceived," I mean
perceived--by implication, but I think clear implication--by
those *not* in the community of persons who read SF&F. Those are
the same implied critics who are the "many" who would say, &c.
> I'm not kidding. This is very insulting. You're saying that
> "mainstream" readers can tell apart good and bad quality work
> with no trouble, but sf and fantasy readers can't. You say that
> there is a "good mainstream" audience and a "bad mainstream"
> audience, but only one sf/f audience.
With all due politeness, no, I am *not* saying that; you're
reading that, which is not the same thing. For instance, I said
explicitly that "mainstream critics and discerning readers"
perceive multiple audiences, not that everyone who reads
mainstream stuff does. But those are the very folk, as I tried
to explain just above here, who do not or cannot make that same
distinction when they see science fiction or fantasy. Perhaps if
I had explicitly inserted the phrase "by those same mainstream
critics and discerning mainstream readers" after the words
"widely perceived" this contretemps could have been avoided; but
it is a long, clumsy phrase that I, rightly or wrongly, thought
clearly implicit.
The words that *are* mine, and which I will not run away from,
are these: a readership that by and large does not distinguish
excellent from mediocre or worse writing. Again, check your shoe
size: if you feel that "by and large" must include you, you will
feel insulted; if, in the context, you feel that it does not, you
will not be, or at any rate ought not to be, insulted.
[... more text related to that misapprehension snipped.]
> I skipped over the parts on The Utility of Criticism and
> Literary Quality in Fiction. I'm sure you have some good
> ideas in there, but if you were a student in my English
> composition class, I'd make you outline those sections, tell
> me what are the actual points you are making, and rewrite it
> in clear prose. You're trying to communicate complicated
> concepts, and that's leading you into complicated and overly
> complex syntax, which is obscuring the very points you are
> trying to make.
To whom? I am not only not immune to criticism, I sought out and
received critical linguistic reviews of most pages of the site
from people whose judgment in language matters I have reason to
trust, and I incorporated most of their suggestions. I was quite
pleased when a fellow with whom I am often at crossed swords over
points of language use on an English-usage newsgroup added a
gratuitous compliment to the site in an unrelated post, remarking
the the language use was--I treasure the word--"impeccable." But
I guess there are always other views that will pecc at it.
> Skipping down to Some Essential Critical Reading: you're quite
> right to latch onto Tolkien and MacDonald as important.
You're an academic and I'm not. I didn't "latch onto" them
because they're "important"; I cited them because I thought their
views extraordinarily insightful. Insightful and important have
major overlaps, but are by no means identical.
> However -- and this is an important point -- their discussion
> of "fantasy" is a discussion of a much narrower "fantasy" than
> the "fantasy" we know now. They're talking about a very
> specific, tight interpretation of "fantasy", which was pretty
> much all there was at the time those essays were written, and
> treating it as the general case. What was true then, must be
> taken with careful consideration now. Many of Tolkien's points
> have held up well, such as his comments on "escape," but, for
> instance, his comments about eucatastrophe and its central
> importance to a fantasy just aren't applicable to a lot of
> modern fantasy. You'll realize this if you read more widely;
> I'm cautioning you because _On Fairy-Stories_ is rich, heady
> stuff, and it can lead you astray if you don't read more widely
> in critical material.
I guess that's why they race horses. I think that, for example,
MacDonald's comments cover writing over a much broader spectrum
than than what is currently held to be fantasy. He wrote before
there really was such a term, and addressed his thoughts and
comments to all fictions that portray worlds beyond the fields we
know. I again hear the plangent tone of academia.
> Le Guin's collection of essays is good. However, she also has
> an axe to grind, and some very specific personal preferences
> that she defends as general truth. In _From Elfland to
> Poughkeepsie,_ she shreds Kurtz's and Zelazny's language as all
> wrong for fantasy, while holding up Eddison and Dunsany as "the
> real thing." A very sound counter-argument that must be
> considered, is that Kurtz and Zelazny are doing very different
> things with the language than Eddison and Dunsany. It's like
> criticizing an orange for not being red and crunchy like an
> apple, without considering what an orange is supposed to taste
> like. Now, you may or may not think that Zelazny's use of
> language in The Chronicles of Amber *works*, butit is at least
> important to consider what the effect *is*, not just what it
> *isn't*. And I think Le Guin goes pretty far off on that.
I am tempted to address the content of those remarks, but let me
leave it that I said that those essays were important reading to
anyone interested in analysis of sf&f, not that between them they
presented a complete, coherent, and unchallengeable theory of
imaginative literature.
> I've only skimmed the Aldiss, but he also has a critical
> agenda, and I wouldn't take his word as gospel truth.
I don't, which is why I noted in passing somewhere--I think
around that very area of the site--that I often disagree with
what he says but that the book is nonetheless important.
> In Defining SF&F, I'll just refer you to read the introduction
> to C.N. Manlove's Modern Fantasy: Five Studies; and Ann
> Swinfen's In Defence of Fantasy, if you can find it; and also
> Richard Mathews' Fantasy: The Liberation of the Imagination. No
> sense reinventing the wheel; get a sense of how other people
> have approached the problem.
With respect, you have quite missed the point. I am setting out
on the site *my* views for the purpose of assuring that visitors
will understand the bases on which authors and books were
selected and rated. It is, as I went to some pains to at least
try to explain in one of the parts you skipped over, The Utility
of Criticism, not my (or any rational person's) intent to claim
some "absolute" correctness for my views, though I--like anyone
*with* views on anything--think my views right: my intent is to
provide understanding of those views.
Reading this or that academic's theories has only, shall we say,
the remotest theoretical chance (think warm snowballs) of making
any substantial change in which authors and books I like and thus
list on the site. My obligation to visitors is to provide some
guide to the criteria used in that listing, no more; nor do I
think most visitors will want any more. If anything I say about
literary values expands or alters anyone's horizons, fine; but
the base purpose of the exposition is to allow them to see how my
horizons and theirs align (or don't) so that they can see to what
extent the site can fulfill its purpose--guiding them to authors
and books they might well enjoy.
> In Apologia Part 2, the first paragraph, you say:
>
> "The journeyman writer--or, let's be frank, the hack--will
> compose a science fiction or fantasy tale for but one reason:
> the standards for quality in the field, as with any "genre,"
> are materially lower than in mainstream publishing; it is,
> simply put, far easier to get published. "
>
> This is the kind of thing that is a) unsubstantiated, b) based
> on your own perceptions, and c) going to drive people up the
> wall.
>
> *How on earth do you KNOW* that the "hack" is choosing to write
> sf because the standards are lower? Could it be that this
> unskilled writer is choosing to write a science fiction or
> fantasy story because.... that's the story that he has
> burning in his head trying to get out?
I do not equate hack and unskilled: hacks are not unskilled,
they are mediocrities; few or none of the actually unskilled are
hacks. A hack is one who plows through writing to make money.
(My desk dictionary--the OED is too heavy to heft save in major
crises--supports me: "a person hired to do routine, often dull
writing; literary drudge.") I put some pains into selecting
words--please try to take account of what I actually write; this
is not the first place you've jumped the rails in indignation
owing to a significant misunderstanding of what I believe is
clear enough English.
*Of course* an unskilled writer might be as you say, though
whether or not such a one will get published depends on many
things, including the potential of her or his work.
> As it is, your comment is a nasty slur on science fiction and
> fantasy publishers and writers, and it's entirely without
> substantiation. Frankly, it causes me to question your
> capacity to draw reasonable conclusions about the works you're
> discussing.
You are entitled to your opinions, as I to mine. But I might ask
you why Robert Silverberg famously dubbed it "the ghetto"? And
why authors who are clearly producing sf&f works are well pleased
when they can be published as mainstream? Since "slur" contains
no implication either way as to truthfulness, yes, what I say is
a slur. But, leaving aside your claim that it is a "nasty" slur,
I contest the sweeping claim that it is a slur on "science
fiction and fantasy publishers and writers"; that's why God gave
us adjectives, to distinguish "some" from "all." Do you really
mean to flat deny that the field is infested with hacks turning
out sludge for uncritical readers? Do you? (Answers of more
than one syllable will be disqualified.)
> I skipped over the rest of the Apologia. If you have some
> points to make, I suggest trying to be more concise and clear;
> it would help.
Madam, I am not a pupil who has asked his teacher to grade his
paper. You undertook that task on your own initiative. Because
I like to engage in civil discourse, I have tried to address all
of your comments with clarifications or explanations where I find
those comments apparently at variance with my opinions as
expressed on the site you have chosen to do a live, running,
line-by-line critique of or in posts here, and to address them
with as much courtesy as disagreement affords; I may not always
have succeeded, but truly, I have tried. I am pained by such
snappy schoolmarm sarcasm as you exhibit above. Have I descended
to picking at the assorted errors in your grammar and syntax?
And you a PhD in English? As I said above, I have had *invited*
line-by-line critiques from people whose linguistic judgments I
respect. No one who ever wrote a single line would not, on
re-examination, change it, but I have no wholesale problems with
the writing on the site; if you do, I regret that.
> You're also, overall, setting yourself up as extremely
> knowledgable about the field. I object to that tone. From the
> point of view of giving your own personal opinions and reviews,
> NO PROBLEM -- I'll read what you have to say, and digest your
> argument, and see if I agree or not or if you've changed my
> ideas. From the point of view of being a critical study of the
> field -- which your apologia seems to be trying to do -- I
> don't see you as convincingly familiar with the critical work
> that's been done in the field. It's the sweeping statements
> that do it. The more *I* have studied the field, the more
> *cautious* I am about making sweeping statements.
You still hadn't, by this point, grasped what I explained above:
the purpose of the Apologia was to make clear to visitors what
the bases were for the selections. If, on reading it, one finds
oneself largely sympathetic to the ideas set out, one can feel
that the books or authors are likely to be of interest to one; if
one finds them largely antipathetic, the site is not likely to be
of any help at all; if one finds agreement here and disagreement
there, it might be of interest to delve more deeply and perhaps
try one or two new authors to see how it goes. That's all.
I will also add something that may infuriate, and that is that
there are still a few people who believe that it remains possible
to have an intelligent and even valuable opinion on a subject
without any reference whatsoever to academics or "the critical
work that's been done in the field" by them. Beyond this,
deponent sayeth not.
> On to the authors.
>
> Hm, this is difficult. I scanned through the authors, and for
> the most part, they don't have commentary (or at least, most
> of the authors that I've read don't have commentary yet). I
> noticed a definite bias toward the older fantasy authors
> (Morris, Dunsany, Eddison, Cabell). No problem there, that's
> good stuff, but I do think you'll run into a problem if you
> take them as a model for fantasy. The genre has changed,
> developed, grown. Authors are doing things differently now.
The individual-author pages are being done top down: five-star
authors (done), then four-star authors (in process), and so on.
A lot of things in the world are being done differently now than
once they were; that does not of itself make those new ways
better, or worse, than the old ones. I don't take anyone as a
"model" for anything; a writer writes, the work is good, bad, or
indifferent: but those determinations do not depend on how much
that writer's work resembles someone else's.
There is also a custom usually followed in Halls of Fame of all
sorts of not having any, or at least very few, active members,
the idea being to allow time enough for both the completion--and
thus final definition--of a candidate's oeuvre and for some
perspective. Of the eleven I chose to give top honors to, only
one is still producing, and he elderly.
> I have a really bad headache at the moment, so I didn't really
> read the discussions on the authors that had them. If you
> tighten up your prose style a bit, I think they'd be well worth
> reading. Tell the reader what you see in these authors! If
> you want to argue for these authors being great, do it! Show
> me! And ditch the whole introduction and apologia and
> critical analysis, at least until you have a better feeling for
> the critical work done in the field. You don't need any of
> that to present arguments why certain authors or books are
> worthwhile; in fact, it currently stands as a nearly
> impenetrable barrier between the potential reader and the
> actual review/discussions, which strike me as possibly quite
> interesting.
Actually, I don't feel that in any case I am *arguing* that any
author is great. I am asserting that I believe so; beyond that,
on the individual-author pages, I try to suggest which elements
are that author's special provenance, and in what mode or form.
The guts of each such page is the collection of illustrative
quotations from that author, for which my comments are only a
context. I do not discuss individual books in any way that I
feel might lessen a new reader's enjoyment of those books, which
includes of course plot, but often more, so the comments are of
necessity generalities about that author. The author's works
themselves "argue" for him or her, on the site and in the wide
world.
All of that is in keeping with the site's base purpose, which I
repeat yet again: tell visitors about authors and books they may
not have read, and give them enough information to decide if they
would like to try some of those authors and books.
The Walkers
Quilly Mammoth <quilly_...@my-deja.com> wrote:
General comments first.
I regret that we seem to have ended up facing one another over crossed
swords. While I don't suppose either of us will ever be inviting the
other for a three-day New Year's visit, let me see if we can reduce the
bile-flow levels.
You have said, if I am not astray, that you feel that I, on the site
and in posts on this group, have asserted a virtually megalomaniacal
claim to have set, once and for all, the esthetic standards for all
readers of sf&f. (That may not be exactly right, but I am dealing in
broad concepts for now.) I have taken exception to what I perceived as
a slur there, and words have flowed back and forth in consequence.
Let me make my point anew. What I said on the site, and what I have
said in this group, constitutes my esthetic theory for reading sf&f
tales. I set it forth in detail on the site so that visitors to the
site can determine if the recommendations I make are likely to be works
for which there is a good probability that they would like the work.
The whole and entire function of the site--intended function--is to be
a place where readers can find leads to authors and books with whom and
which they are not well familiar but whom and which they might well
enjoy. To set forth a list with no substantial explanation of the
criteria used to compile that list is silly. So I set forth those
criteria.
Obviously, I believe that those criteria are the "best" or "true"
criteria, but belief in a thing is not tantamount to assertion that any
and all opposing views are so much doo-doo. Everybody, if we are being
honest, believes that *their* views are the "best" or "true" views, or
those would not *be* their views. I am perhaps a little more open than
some in expressing that belief, but I have never tried to assert, and
regret that some have seen me as asserting, that I believe no other
views bear an instant's consideration.
You clearly disagree with some, perhaps many, of those views. I
suggest that that is really as far as either of us needs go. We, in
the classic formula, can agree to disagree. Or we can keep slugging it
out, a thing of which I tire because slugging is not much to my taste,
however I may keep it up when pressed.
I cordially return your Bronx Cheer, and I think I win because I
actually was raised in the Bronx.
--
Cordially,
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Ordway) wrote:
>I agree with you about the "literati", though I wouldn't choose that
>word, and I feel bound to point out that the situation has changed
>significantly in the past ten years or so. I can suggest titles if you
>want; I have a verrrry long bibliography ;)
*I* want the titles.
If you think that the list is too long for the Usenet, feel free to
mail it to me.
vlatko
--
New address for _Neither Fish Nor Fowl_
http://www.webart.hr/nrnm/eng/index.htm
Interviews: Jo Walton, David Langford, Ken Macleod
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Ordway) wrote:
>I've only skimmed the Aldiss, but he also has a critical agenda, and I
>wouldn't take his word as gospel truth.
Especially regarding Tolkien. One of the theories was that there was
no sex in _Lord of the Rings_ but the ring represents a supressed
sexuality.
Aldiss-Wingrove _Trillion Year Spree_ is still pretty useful as a
history of the genre.
Holly E. Ordway
> holly-...@home.com.xxx (Holly E. Ordway) wrote:
>> Content: I'm a big fan of brevity, so your style kind of grates
>> on my nerves a bit. It's verbose.
>
>But what about those folk who enjoy a ramble?
>
>A digression: For most literary purposes, concision is a virtue
>rightly trumpeted by all authorities. But sometimes we turn to
>prose as to certain meals: not for nourishment, but for flavor.
>Learning speed reading has always seemed to me, save perhaps for
>harried clerks, as appropriate as learning speed eating. If we
>are enjoying the substance, do we not wish to prolong that
>enjoyment?
I wasn't as clear as I might have been. (Probably the headache didn't
help.) There's two parts to what I was trying to say. First: *I*,
personally, tend to prefer a concise style over a more rambling one.
Throughout my comments, I've tried to emphasize that these comments are
based on *my* reaction. I'm not trying to prescribe what you should do,
though I think it does come out that way. I'm trying to say, "This is my
response. It is fairly negative, and here's why."
Second: (This is slightly more objective, I think) Taken as a leisurely,
rambling style, I think that the writing on your web site is still
rather problematic. That's why I chose the word "verbose". Dickens, for
instance, often rambles, but is not verbose. What I get the sense of is
complexity for its own sake; syntax that isn't clear
>A verbose style is not the "substance" of the kind of
>prose I address here: the thoughts it conveys are. If we are
>gathered round a cheery fire in comfy chairs, having a delightful
>chat with sympathetic friends, do we feel a need to compress our
>thoughts, rush our speech, pack in all the dense meaning we can?
>Or do we just nod and smile and drink our port and savor the
>occasional goodness of life?
We're talking at cross-purposes here. I'm not advocating a telegraphic
style. I'm saying that your writing, to me, is *not clear*. You can
ramble all you want, take your time, etc, but what good is it if I'm
missing the thoughts you are trying to convey? It's like in your
fireside circle, if one of your friends tends to mumble, and you're
interested in what he has to say. Are you *never* going to ask him to
speak up, or speak more clearly?
I was [this close] to launching into a lecture on "why clarity is
important in writing", but I've restrained myself, probably to
everyone's relief :) I'll just comment that I consider conciseness to be
*one tool* in aid of clear writing, just as extended elaboration is
another tool. One won't work where the other is needed, but both are in
service to the same goal.
>After years of writing procedural manuals (no sentence over 20
>words in length, never use a semicolon, and like constraints), it
>may be sheer reaction; but it's also a way of saying "this is
>intended to be taken at leisure--it's an essay, a ramble, not a
>newspaper article."
>It's intended as what one
>might call a cozy-armchair-chat style.
I'm a little confused here. Do you want your readers to read with
sustained attention, or casually? It strikes me that there is a basic
conflict between the two ways of reading that you mention in such close
proximity.
>> "Let's face reality: too many--most--web sites about science-
>> fiction and fantasy literature recall, for the civilized
>> reader, American Bandstand: 'Uh, wull, Dick, I give it a 86
>> 'cause it had a good beat an' yuh could dance to it.'"
>>
>> You're making an assumption about your audience's experiences
>> that may very well be warranted in a lot of cases -- but not
>> in mine.
>
>I have paid my dues. I pine for the lost hours of my life I
>spent looking, one after another, at the hundreds of websites
>turned up by search engines fed broad terms. It was when I came
>to a "review" of _The Elf Queen of Shannara_ that began "This
>book is a masterpiece of literature . . . ." that, as Dorothy
>Parker put it, Tonstant Weader fwowed up. Possibly that is an
>egregious example, but it is in tune with the vast majority of
>the sites I saw.
If you put in ANYTHING to a search engine and look at all the sites it
turns up, you will find hundreds of web sites of crap and a few, a very
few, useful sites. This isn't particular to science fiction, by a long
shot! So if that's more or less what you're thinking of, OK, you're
probably right; but it doesn't strike me as a particularly meaningful
comment on the state of science fiction and fantasy reviews.
>And if the
>few you have till now found are reasonably sane, count yourself
>fortunate. How you did it--perhaps investigating only trusted
>recommendations?--I don't know, but I envy you.
I have a finely-tuned crap-filter, and long experience in rapid
evaluation of sources, so I don't waste my time on stupid sites.
Possibly this has been serving me better than I knew!
>> I see what you're trying to say here: you don't want to waste
>> people's time if they don't share your tastes. But -- why?
>
>Umm . . . because I'd be wasting their time?
My point (such as it was) was that if you do a good job of talking about
your recommendations, then it's not going to BE a waste of time for your
readers, even if they don't agree with you. I don't consider it a waste
of time to read C.N. Manlove's studies of fantasy, even though I
disagree with approximately 90% of his critical judgments, because he's
a finely trained mind sharing his perceptions. Basically, I think you're
selling yourself short if you feel the need to warn people off like
this. Do your commentary well, and it'll be interesting to people who
agree with you *and* people who don't.
>> This puts me off, because you're starting off by pre-judging
>> these authors. You're telling me that Kurtz is worse than
>> Eddison (I do presume you mean E.R. Eddison? I
>> may agree with you if you tell me *why*, but this opening makes
>> me distrust your critical judgment.
>
>No, I'm post-judging them: I only judge authors after I've read
>them. (Yes, I mean E.R. Eddison.) And I do think you're asking
>for an awful lot out of the first few lines of the cover page of
>the site, even were I using -7 type sizing. One who knows those
>authors knows what I am saying; one who does not will, of course,
>have to read the site to find out.
Well -- you're the one who objected to my skimming through other parts
of your site. If your comments don't stand up to close reading, maybe
you should reconsider them.
The text is there. It's on the web site for anyone to read. I've been
very consistent in saying *my* reaction, this makes *me* feel this way,
*I* interpret this a certain way. Maybe I'm an oddball reader, but this
is the way *I* read it.
Incidentally, I *have* read the authors you mention in that sentence,
and I *don't* automatically know what you are saying, so you might find
it useful to examine your assumptions that everyone is going to react
the same way to that statement.
Also, if I *hadn't* read those authors, and I reacted (as I did) with
suspicion of a snap judgment on your part, why *should* I continue to
read the rest of the site to find out the basis for that judgment? This
isn't required reading. If the first page makes me think you're not a
useful critic, then I'll just leave.
>
>> OTOH, I think you're needlessly slamming sf and fantasy readers.
>> I know that *I* don't approach a sf or fantasy book with
>> lowered standards.
>
>Where I'm coming from is those lost hours. Do it: do a search
>on any engine for "science fiction" or some such broad term and
>go through, oh, say, a couple of hundred sites (yes, I really
>did, in fact lots more than that)--and in order, not by how
>interesting each one's notes look. I suggest that you too might
>develop a "personal reaction."
No thanks. I know better than to waste my time going through all those
sites. I also know better than to waste my time going through hundreds
of sites individually on *any* topic. Yes, there are a lot of idiots out
there, and a lot of them have web sites. So?
I just don't quite get what you're trying for here. If your audience is
intelligent readers, why are you wasting your energy blasting stupid
readers, especially in a way that can very easily be read as insulting
the very people whom you want to reach?
>As to snide and off-putting: if the shoe fits, wear it. As it
>clearly doesn't fit you, why struggle to get into it just so you
>can be outraged by how it pinches?
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I didn't "struggle" to fit into
anything. I fit, quite well, into the shoe of "science fiction and
fantasy reader". And it was *that* category that I felt that you had
insulted.
You may not have *intended* me to feel insulted as a sf/f reader;
clearly (from your reply above) you were intending those remarks to a
particular kind of reader that doesn't include people like me. *My*
point is that no matter what you *intended*, your text makes *me* feel
insulted.
>
>
>Please credit me with saying what I mean. When I say "rightly or
>wrongly" I don't mean "rightly"; when I say "perceived," I mean
>perceived--by implication, but I think clear implication--by
>those *not* in the community of persons who read SF&F. Those are
>the same implied critics who are the "many" who would say, &c.
>
>> I'm not kidding. This is very insulting. You're saying that
>> "mainstream" readers can tell apart good and bad quality work
>> with no trouble, but sf and fantasy readers can't. You say that
>> there is a "good mainstream" audience and a "bad mainstream"
>> audience, but only one sf/f audience.
>
>With all due politeness, no, I am *not* saying that; you're
>reading that, which is not the same thing.
Honestly, I'm not trying to twist what you're saying. When I restate
something that you've said, it's because I'm trying to figure out what
you mean. This is part of what I mean, above, about your writing not
being clear. You put conditions and modifiers on your statements in
weird ways, and you seem to be using shades of meaning that are slightly
different from what I'd get from a word. I am simply *not getting* the
meaning that you intend. I'm getting *something else* from the text. If
you constantly feel the need to explain what you meant, honestly, it
might be an indication that your text isn't saying what you mean.
>> Skipping down to Some Essential Critical Reading: you're quite
>> right to latch onto Tolkien and MacDonald as important.
>
>You're an academic and I'm not. I didn't "latch onto" them
>because they're "important"; I cited them because I thought their
>views extraordinarily insightful. Insightful and important have
>major overlaps, but are by no means identical.
I'm not sure what me being an academic has to do with this comment.
(BTW, I don't consider myself an academic. I don't work in academia. I'm
a technical writer. I do have a thorough grounding in the field -- my
Ph.D. that I just finished was on the modern fantasy novel -- but my
approach was about as un-typically-academic as you can get and still get
a degree.) Anyway, I think they're both important and insightful, and I
didn't intend to suggest otherwise.
>> Le Guin's collection of essays is good. However, she also has
>> an axe to grind, and some very specific personal preferences
>> that she defends as general truth. In _From Elfland to
>> Poughkeepsie,_ she shreds Kurtz's and Zelazny's language as all
>> wrong for fantasy, while holding up Eddison and Dunsany as "the
>> real thing." A very sound counter-argument that must be
>> considered, is that Kurtz and Zelazny are doing very different
>> things with the language than Eddison and Dunsany. It's like
>> criticizing an orange for not being red and crunchy like an
>> apple, without considering what an orange is supposed to taste
>> like. Now, you may or may not think that Zelazny's use of
>> language in The Chronicles of Amber *works*, butit is at least
>> important to consider what the effect *is*, not just what it
>> *isn't*. And I think Le Guin goes pretty far off on that.
>
>I am tempted to address the content of those remarks, but let me
>leave it that I said that those essays were important reading to
>anyone interested in analysis of sf&f, not that between them they
>presented a complete, coherent, and unchallengeable theory of
>imaginative literature.
Your comments on the content of these remarks would be interesting,
actually.
But anyway -- I wasn't trying to suggest that you're taking them as a
complete theory. I was responding to the fact that you refer to a grand
total of four critical works on fantasy literature. These four works
aren't going to give you a balanced view of the subject, that's all.
>
>> No sense reinventing the wheel; get a sense of how other people
>> have approached the problem.
>
>With respect, you have quite missed the point. I am setting out
>on the site *my* views for the purpose of assuring that visitors
>will understand the bases on which authors and books were
>selected and rated.
>
>Reading this or that academic's theories has only, shall we say,
>the remotest theoretical chance (think warm snowballs) of making
>any substantial change in which authors and books I like and thus
>list on the site.
I didn't intend that it would. But you do spend quite a lot of time on
critical approaches to the subject, which makes me think that you're
interested in that kind of approach. And if you are, well, there's a lot
of interesting stuff out there. Other people have tackled many of the
same issues that you are tackling. It's quite likely that your take on
them will be your own, even after reading others' takes -- but hopefully
seeing how other people approach an issue can give you some insight into
better ways to approach it in your *own* way.
I have my own ideas about fantasy literature and its development,
structure, interpretation, and so on. Many of these ideas had their
genesis just from reading fantasy. But reading and thinking about other
critics' ideas helped me give my own ideas solidity and coherence, and
sparked new ideas. That's what I meant.
>> I skipped over the rest of the Apologia. If you have some
>> points to make, I suggest trying to be more concise and clear;
>> it would help.
>
>Madam, I am not a pupil who has asked his teacher to grade his
>paper. You undertook that task on your own initiative.
No. You are someone who has put his essays in public view for the public
to read. You are someone who has invited discussion on those essays in a
public discussion forum. In short, you have NO grounds for getting upset
with me for dissecting your work in any way, shape, or form. You can
disagree with what I say (as you do, reasonably civilly, above), but you
can't take issue with me for taking the initiative to comment on it.
Frankly, I took that initiative because I thought you'd find it helpful.
I'm not the only person who has reacted badly to your site. I thought
I'd go through and point out the instances that caused *me* to react
badly, so that you'd have a clearer idea of where you went wrong with
certain readers. It's tough to get harsh criticism of something that
you've invested a lot of time, effort, and personal energy into.
However, it also sucks to put a lot of effort into something and not get
any honest feedback to help it grow. I tried to give some honest
feedback; I didn't cushion or sweeten what I had to say, but I *did*
always express my thoughts as *MY* reactions.
> I am pained by such
>snappy schoolmarm sarcasm as you exhibit above. Have I descended
>to picking at the assorted errors in your grammar and syntax?
>And you a PhD in English?
Sigh. I'm sure you could find some errors in grammar and sytax in my
posts. I'm not, and am not pretending to be, writing an essay. I'm
responding in a forum that is temporary, in a manner that is spontaneous
and off-the-cuff, to an essay that has been polished and presented as a
finished work for the public to view. If you're reduced to finding
errors in my posts as a comeback to my critique of your site, then I
think you ought to take some time to cool off, frankly.
>As I said above, I have had *invited*
>line-by-line critiques from people whose linguistic judgments I
>respect. No one who ever wrote a single line would not, on
>re-examination, change it, but I have no wholesale problems with
>the writing on the site; if you do, I regret that.
I've seen you posting in rasfc. I'm not sure a deja search would pull
this up, so you might consider posting on the question: how trustworthy
are the comments of a self-selected group?
If you seek out the comments of your friends, they have an interest
(conscious or not) in not being too harsh with you.
If you seek out the comments of people whose judgment you trust, is it
not possible (likely, even) that you are (conciously or not) seeking out
people with similar tastes to your own?
In other words, the fact that you had early readers who approved of your
writing does not invalidate the fact that other readers are finding it
tough going indeed. Don't blame it on the readers. If you do, you will
never grow as a writer.
>> You're also, overall, setting yourself up as extremely
>> knowledgable about the field. I object to that tone.
>
>You still hadn't, by this point, grasped what I explained above:
>the purpose of the Apologia was to make clear to visitors what
>the bases were for the selections.
And you haven't grasped *my* point: that I don't find that the Apologia
does what you are asking it to.
>I will also add something that may infuriate, and that is that
>there are still a few people who believe that it remains possible
>to have an intelligent and even valuable opinion on a subject
>without any reference whatsoever to academics or "the critical
>work that's been done in the field" by them. Beyond this,
>deponent sayeth not.
It doesn't infuriate me in the least. I agree wholeheartedly. The reason
I brought in the critical work that I'm familiar with, is that *you* are
taking a critical approach (at least in parts), and *you* brought in a
couple of critical works. If you are going to take a non-academic
approach, great. If you're going to take a non-academic approach and get
some ideas from one or two critics, fine. But if you make it *seem* like
you are going to take a fully critical approach, and you refer to a tiny
segment of the available critical work on the subject, I *will* call you
on it.
>> I noticed a definite bias toward the older fantasy authors
>> (Morris, Dunsany, Eddison, Cabell). No problem there, that's
>> good stuff, but I do think you'll run into a problem if you
>> take them as a model for fantasy. The genre has changed,
>> developed, grown. Authors are doing things differently now.
>
>A lot of things in the world are being done differently now than
>once they were; that does not of itself make those new ways
>better, or worse, than the old ones.
I didn't say that. I'm saying they're *different*.
>I don't take anyone as a
>"model" for anything; a writer writes, the work is good, bad, or
>indifferent: but those determinations do not depend on how much
>that writer's work resembles someone else's.
The dominance of certain authors in the "five star group" did imply that
you favored their style over that of recent authors. I was thinking,
actually, of how Le Guin clearly uses the style of Dunsany or Eddison as
a model of "good fantasy prose" to contrast with the "bad fantasy prose"
of Kurtz. Since you cite Le Guin's collection of essays, I thought you
might be following the same interpretive route.
>Actually, I don't feel that in any case I am *arguing* that any
>author is great. I am asserting that I believe so;
The setup in the critical sections suggests that you *are* going to
argue -- when I protested the "snap judgment" of ranking Eddison over
Kurtz, in the early sentences of your first page, didn't you say that
that's not the case, and that the reader would have to "read the site to
find out"? Well, find out *what*? That you prefer Eddison over Kurtz? I
don't have a problem with a personal-likings ranking; I'm pointing out
that you are setting up some implied expectations that you don't fulfil.
Anyway, I'm done with commenting on this. I've said my piece, and given
my reactions; and you can take them or leave them. As I said before, I
approached the site as a disinterested reader who wanted to give some
helpful feedback on a project that I think is interesting and
worthwhile. I don't have any axes to grind, not even little pocket
knives. Feel free to ignore it all.
--Holly
Holly E. Ordway
>On Wed, 27 Dec 2000 20:24:37 GMT, holly-...@home.com.xxx (Holly E.
>Ordway) wrote:
>
>>I agree with you about the "literati", though I wouldn't choose that
>>word, and I feel bound to point out that the situation has changed
>>significantly in the past ten years or so. I can suggest titles if you
>>want; I have a verrrry long bibliography ;)
>
>*I* want the titles.
>
>vlatko
Here goes. These are specifically related to *fantasy* literature, not
science fiction (except for a few that provided some insight to fantasy
as a sideline to talking about sf). All of these are works that I've
either read or examined closely. There's more out there that I didn't
get a chance to look at (had to stop reading *sometime* or I'd *never*
have finished! :)
I've starred the ones that I found particularly interesting. Hope you
find something interesting!
Aldiss, Brian W. Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science
Fiction. New York: Doubleday, 1973.
Anderson, Angelee Sailer. "Lord Dunsany: The Potency of Words and the
Wonder of Things." Mythlore 55 (Autumn 1988): 10-12.
Ashley, Leonard R.N. "Lord Dunsany (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett,
Baron Dunsany)". Dictionary of Literary Biography, v. 153: Late-
Victorian and Edwardian British novelists. First series. Ed. George M.
Johnson. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1995
Asimov, Isaac. Asimov on Science Fiction. New York: Doubleday, 1981.
*Attebery, Brian. The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From
Irving to Le Guin. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1980.
--. "Reclaiming the Modern World for the Imagination." Mythlore 56
(Winter 1988): 24-31.
*--. Strategies of Fantasy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University
Press, 1992.
Bayer-Berenbaum, Linda. The Gothic Imagination: Expansion in Gothic
Literature and Art. East Brunswick, NJ: Associated University Presses,
1982.
Becker, Allienne R. The Lost Worlds Romance: From Dawn till Dusk.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.
Bleiler, E.F. "Introduction to the Dover Edition." Introduction.
Supernatural Horror in Literature. By H.P. Lovecraft. 1945. New York:
Dover, 1973. iii-viii.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Classic Fantasy Writers. New York: Chelsea House,
1994.
--. Modern Fantasy Writers. New York: Chelsea House, 1995.
*Boyer, Robert H., and Kenneth J. Zahorski, eds., Fantasists on Fantasy:
A Collection of Critical Reflections by Eighteen Masters of the Art. New
York: Avon, 1984.
Brewer, Elisabeth. T.H. White's The Once and Future King. Rochester, NY:
Boydell & Brewer, 1993.
Brownson, Siobhan Craft. "Lord Dunsany (Edward John Moreton Drax
Plunkett, Baron Dunsany)". Dictionary of Literary Biography, v. 156:
British short-fiction writers, 1880-1914: the romantic tradition. Ed.
William F. Naufftus. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1996.
Burger, Douglas A. "The Shire: A Tolkien Version of Pastoral." Coyle
149-154.
Camp, L. Sprague de. Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of
Heroic Fantasy. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1976.
Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles
Williams, and their friends. New York: Ballantine, 1981.
Carter, Lin. "Farewell to the Dreamlands." Introduction. The Doom that
Came to Sarnath. By H.P. Lovecraft. New York: Del Rey, 1971.
Cavaliero, Glen. The Supernatural and English Fiction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Cerasini, Marc A. and Charles Hoffman. Robert E. Howard. Mercer Island,
WA: Starmont House, 1987.
Collings, Michael R. In the Image of God: Theme, Characterization, and
Landscape in the Fiction of Orson Scott Card. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1990.
*--. "Words and Worlds: The Creation of a Fantasy Universe in Zelazny,
Lee, and Anthony." The Scope of the Fantastic-Theory, Technique, Major
Authors: Selected Essays from the First International Conference on the
Fantastic in Literature and Film. Eds. Robert A. Collins and Howard D.
Pearce. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985: 173-182.
Collins, Robert A. "Swann on Swann: The Conscious Uses of Fantasy."
Coyle 23-29.
Coyle, William, ed. Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second
International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Davidson, H.R. Ellis. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. New York:
Penguin, 1964.
Day, William Patrick. In the Circles of Fear and Desire: A Study of
Gothic Fantasy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Edwards, Malcolm, and Robert Holdstock, Realms of Fantasy. New York:
Doubleday & Co., 1983.
*Egoff, Sheila A. Worlds Within: Children's Fantasy from the Middle Ages
to Today. Chicago: American Library Association, 1988.
Evans, Gwyneth. "Where Have All the Fairies Gone?" Mythlore 83 (Autumn
1997): 12-21, 53.
Filmer, Kath. "La Belle Dame sans Merci: Cultural Criticism and the
Mythopoeic Imagination in George MacDonald's Lilith." Mythlore 58
(Summer 1989): 17-20.
--. "Presence and Absence: God in Fantasy Literature." Christianity and
Literature 47.1 (1997): 59-74.
--. Ed. The Victorian Fantasists: Essays on Culture, Society and Belief
in the Mythopoeic Fiction of the Victorian Age. New York: Macmillan
Press, 1991.
Friedman, Lenemaja. Mary Stewart. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990
Gasque, Thomas J. "Tolkien: The Monsters and the Critters." Isaacs and
Zimbardo 151-163.
Gordon-Wise, Barbara Ann. The Reclamation of a Queen: Guinevere in
Modern Fantasy. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Haggerty, George E. Gothic Fiction / Gothic Form. University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989.
Hammond, Wayne G. "The Critical Response to Tolkien's Fiction." Reynolds
and GoodKnight 226-232.
Hartwell, David G. "Dollars and Dragons: The Truth About Fantasy." New
York Times 29 Apr. 1990, late ed., sec. 7 (Book Review Desk): 1.
Heldreth, Lillian M. "The Mercy of the Torturer: The Paradox of
Compassion in Gene Wolfe's World of the New Sun." Modes of the
Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Twelfth International Conference on
the Fantastic in the Arts. Eds. Robert A. Latham and Robert A. Collins.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.
Heller, Terry. The Delights of Terror: An Aesthetics of the Tale of
Terror. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
*Herron, Don, ed. The Dark Barbarian: The Writings of Robert E. Howard-A
Critical Anthology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.
--. "The Dark Barbarian." Herron 149-181.
Howard, Robert E. Selected Letters 1931-1936. Ed. Glenn Lord, Rusty
Burke, S.T. Joshi, and Steve Behrends. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon
Press, 1991.
Howard, Thomas. The Achievement of C.S. Lewis: A Reading of His Fiction.
Whaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1980.
Hunter, Lynette. Modern Allegory and Fantasy: Rhetorical Stances of
Contemporary Writing. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.
Irwin, W.R. The Game of the Impossible: A Rhetoric of Fantasy. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1976.
Isaacs, Neil D., and Rose A. Zimbardo, eds. Tolkien and the Critics:
Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1968.
Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London:
Routledge, 1981.
Joshi, S.T. Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.
--. The Weird Tale. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Kay, Guy Gavriel. Interview with Andrew A. Adams. January 1995.
--. "Energize! what sci-fi, fantasy bring to the mainstream." Toronto
Star 19 Feb. 1994: L15+.
Knight, George. "Robert E. Howard: Hard-Boiled Heroic Fantasist." The
Dark Barbarian: The Writings of Robert E. Howard-A Critical Anthology.
Ed. Don Herron. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.
Killheffer, Robert K.J. Rev. of The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel
Kay and The Tower of Beowulf by Parke Godwin. The Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction Dec. 1995: 36-45.
Krulik, Theodore. Roger Zelazny. New York: Ungar Publishing Co., 1986.
Lathrop, Francis. Review of Swords in the Mist, Swords against Wizardry,
and The Swords of Lankhmar. Fantastic 19, No. 1 (Oct. 1969): 129-30.
Le Guin, Ursula K. Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words,
Women, Places. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.
*--. The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction.
New York: Berkley, 1979.
Leiber, Fritz. "Howard's Fantasy." Herron 3-15.
Lewis, C.S. The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1958.
--. An Experiment in Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1961.
--. Introduction. Phantastes. By George MacDonald. 1946. Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1981. v-xii.
--. "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said." 1966.
Boyer and Zahorski 115-118.
Lindskold, Jane M. Roger Zelazny. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993.
Lindskoog, Kathryn. Journey into Narnia. Pasadena, CA: Hope Publishing
House, 1998.
Little, Edmund. The Fantasists: Studies in J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis
Carroll, Mervyn Peake, Nikolay Gogol, and Kenneth Grahame. Amersham,
England: Avebury, 1984.
*Lovecraft, H.P. Supernatural Horror in Literature. 1945. New York:
Dover, 1973.
MacAndrew, Elizabeth. The Gothic Tradition in Fiction. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1979.
MacDonald, George. "The Fantastic Imagination." 1893. Boyer and Zahorski
14-21.
*MacRae, Cathi Dunn. Presenting Young Adult Fantasy Fiction. New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1998.
Manlove, Colin. Christian Fantasy from 1200 to the Present. Notre Dame,
Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.
--. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Patterning of a Fantastic World. New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1993.
*--. The Fantasy Literature of England. New York: St. Martin's Press,
1999.
--. The Impulse of Fantasy Literature. Kent, OH: Kent State University
Press, 1983.
--. Modern Fantasy: Five Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1975.
Matheson, Sue. "C.S. Lewis and the Lion: Primitivism and Archetype in
the Chronicles of Narnia." Mythlore 55 (Autumn 1988): 13-18.
*Mathews, Richard. Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination. New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1997.
Messent, Peter B., ed. Literature of the Occult: A Collection of
Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981.
Michalson, Karen. Victorian Fantasy Literature: Literary Battles with
Church and Empire. Lewiston, NY: The Edward Mellen Press, 1990.
Moorcock, Michael. Wizardry and Wild Romance: A study of epic fantasy.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1987.
Padol, Lisa. "Whose English? Language in the Modern Arthurian Novel."
Mythlore 78 (Winter 1995): 20-24, 29.
*Paxson, Diana. "The Tolkien Tradition." Mythlore 39 (Summer 1984): 23-
27, 37.
Pennington, John. "Phantastes as Metafiction: George MacDonald's Self-
Reflexive Myth." Mythlore 53 (Spring 1988): 26-29.
Prescott, Orville. Introduction. The Worm Ouroboros. By E.R. Eddison.
1926. New York: Ballantine Books, 1967. xiii-xvii.
*Prickett, Stephen. Victorian Fantasy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 1979.
Propp, V[ladimir]. Morphology of the Folktale. 1928. First English
translation 1958. Laurence Scott, trans. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1968.
Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A history of gothic fictions
from 1765 to the present day. Volume 2: The modern gothic. London:
Longman, 1996.
Raffel, Burton. "The Lord of the Rings as Literature." Isaacs and
Zimbardo 218-246.
Randall, Neil. "Shifting Focalization and the Strategy of Delay: The
Narrative Weaving of 'The Fionavar Tapestry.'" Canadian Literature
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aRJay
<wal...@owlcroft.com> writes
>But what about those folk who enjoy a ramble?
A good point but what of those who still have to pay by the second to
read your ramble, a concise (and quick to load) summary might well be
enough to allow them to make an informed decision as to the worth of
your ramble against the cost of their connection time, rather than say I
can't read all that and leave unenlightened.
--
How does a rocket/jet engine work?
"It's not that hard.
Stuff goes in, stuff happens, stuff goes out faster than it came in."
- Ian Stirling
aRJay
Karen Lofstrom
: If we are
: gathered round a cheery fire in comfy chairs, having a delightful
: chat with sympathetic friends, do we feel a need to compress our
: thoughts, rush our speech, pack in all the dense meaning we can?
: Or do we just nod and smile and drink our port and savor the
: occasional goodness of life?
Mr. Walker, you are in no way as superior and amusing as you believe
yourself to be. The more I read of your posts here, the less and less
likely I am to look at your web site.
Of course, there's a certain eerie fascination to watching you preen and
spread your tail feathers. You're like a character in a story, writing his
own dialogue. But do you really want to be a case study in egotism?
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, it may take one to know one. We're all bozos on this bus :(
Lawrence Person
holly-...@home.com.xxx (Holly E. Ordway) wrote:
> Vlatko Juric-Kokic <vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 27 Dec 2000 20:24:37 GMT, holly-...@home.com.xxx (Holly E.
> >Ordway) wrote:
> >
> >>I agree with you about the "literati", though I wouldn't choose that
> >>word, and I feel bound to point out that the situation has changed
> >>significantly in the past ten years or so. I can suggest titles if you
> >>want; I have a verrrry long bibliography ;)
> >
> >*I* want the titles.
> >
> Here goes.
A good start, but if you limit it to things you've reading you're missing
a lot of things. perhaps the best place to start is:
Marshall B. Tymn, Roger C. Schlobin and L. W. Currey's A Research Guide to
Science Fiction Studies. It also includes fantasy, with over 400 works
described and evaluated, not including the list of dissertations in the
back. Last time I looked there were several copies listed at
www.abebooks.com. The Cluite/Grant Encyclopedia of Fantasy is also a must.
--
Lawrence Person
lawrenc...@jump.net
Lame Excuse Books Now Online at: http://www.abebooks.com
Nova Express Website: http://www.delphi.com/sflit/novaexpress/
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Ordway) wrote:
> I can suggest titles if you
>>>want; I have a verrrry long bibliography ;)
>>
>>*I* want the titles.
>
>Here goes. These are specifically related to *fantasy* literature, not
>science fiction
Thanks. Just what I want.
>I've starred the ones that I found particularly interesting. Hope you
>find something interesting!
Oh, yes! I've read a couple of them, but I want *more*. :-)
Quilly Mammoth
> Obviously, I believe that those criteria are the "best" or "true"
> criteria, but belief in a thing is not tantamount to assertion that
any
> and all opposing views are so much doo-doo.
is a position that most take. Including myself. I have always hoped
that I can have my views on different matters tempered by reasonable
argument.
One comment left below.
In article <92eokv$o47$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
A citizen of that boro certainly has first claim.
I lived in Northern New Jersey during high school, many years ago. I
first learned the "Bronx Cheer" from the girls who accompanied us back
to Bergen county. They were usually giving them to the boys they left
behind ;^)
Don't forget a nice Stilton with your Port. Though my favorite is a
crisp white with some double creame Brie and water crackers along side.
Often a perfect combination while reading, IMHO.
> --
> Cordially,
> Eric Walker, webmaster
> "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works"
> http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
>
> Sent via Deja.com
> http://www.deja.com/
>
Quilly Mammoth
The Walkers
all over the place. One hopes that no essentials were elided.
> > A verbose style is not the "substance" of the kind of
> > prose I address here: the thoughts it conveys are. If we are
> > gathered round a cheery fire in comfy chairs, having a
> > delightful chat with sympathetic friends, do we feel a need
> > to compress our thoughts, rush our speech, pack in all the
> > dense meaning we can? Or do we just nod and smile and
> > drink our port and savor the occasional goodness of life?
> We're talking at cross-purposes here. I'm not advocating a
> telegraphic style. I'm saying that your writing, to me, is
> *not clear*. You can ramble all you want, take your time, etc,
> but what good is it if I'm missing the thoughts you are trying
> to convey? It's like in your fireside circle, if one of your
> friends tends to mumble, and you're interested in what he has
> to say. Are you *never* going to ask him to speak up, or speak
> more clearly?
Understood. We just don't have a meeting of the minds on the
clarity of the text at issue. Clarity is in part a function of
text itself and in part of the particular reader addressing that
text. I'm in a box here: if I point out again that persons
whose language abilities I respect, invited to mercilessly
critique the site, after several back-and-forth rounds of
page-by-page suggestion and amendment found the results
satisfactory, and that other visitors of known linguistic ability
spontaneously remarked on the satisfactory language use on the
site, I am put in the position of appearing by inference to be
disparaging your ability to read that text; if I don't point
those things out, I am put in the position of either acquiescing
in a contention I very much disagree with or arguing on a purely
personal appraisal. As Peter Wimsey once remarked in an
analogous dilemma, don't quite know how to answer that one.
> > It's intended as what one might call a cozy-armchair-chat
> > style.
> I'm a little confused here. Do you want your readers to read
> with sustained attention, or casually? It strikes me that
> there is a basic conflict between the two ways of reading
> that you mention in such close proximity.
I don't think that a person who lingers over a pleasant
experience is necessarily, or even probably, paying only casual
attention to that experience. When I sit in a cozy armchair to
chat with friends, I, and I believe they, are quite attentive to
what each is saying. But that does not mean that we present our
thoughts to each other with courtroom-lawyerly brevity; we
usually spin out those ideas just because such talk is pleasant.
That's not analogy, that's actual experience, so I can give no
better answer.
> >> "Let's face reality: too many--most--web sites about
> >> science-fiction and fantasy literature recall, for the
> >> civilized reader, American Bandstand: 'Uh, wull, Dick, I
> >> give it a 86 'cause it had a good beat an' yuh could
> >> dance to it.'"
> >>
> >> You're making an assumption about your audience's
> >> experiences that may very well be warranted in a lot of
> >> cases -- but not in mine.
> >
> > I have paid my dues. I pine for the lost hours of my life I
> > spent looking, one after another, at the hundreds of websites
> > turned up by search engines fed broad terms. It was when I
> > came to a "review" of _The Elf Queen of Shannara_ that began
> > "This book is a masterpiece of literature . . . ." that, as
> > Dorothy Parker put it, Tonstant Weader fwowed up. Possibly
> > that is an egregious example, but it is in tune with the vast
> > majority of the sites I saw.
> If you put in ANYTHING to a search engine and look at all the
> sites it turns up, you will find hundreds of web sites of crap
> and a few, a very few, useful sites. This isn't particular to
> science fiction, by a long shot! So if that's more or less
> what you're thinking of, OK, you're probably right; but it
> doesn't strike me as a particularly meaningful comment on the
> state of science fiction and fantasy reviews.
What he said: "too many--most--web sites about science-fiction
and fantasy literature recall . . . ." What he did not say:
that is unique to sf&f websites. I believe that if, after
surveying hundreds of randomly selected but relevant sites, I
found a large fraction--"most"--to be what you justly call "sites
of crap," I am perfectly justified in saying exactly what I said.
If what a substantial majority of sf&f review sites are like is
not meaningful to the state of sf&f reviews on sites, I am missing
something. (Do recall that I particularly refer only to web sites,
not to any print journals or books.)
> >> I see what you're trying to say here: you don't want to
> >> waste people's time if they don't share your tastes.
> >> But -- why?
> >
> > Umm . . . because I'd be wasting their time?
> My point (such as it was) was that if you do a good job of
> talking about your recommendations, then it's not going to BE a
> waste of time for your readers, even if they don't agree with
> you. I don't consider it a waste of time to read C.N.
> Manlove's studies of fantasy, even though I disagree with
> approximately 90% of his critical judgments, because he's a
> finely trained mind sharing his perceptions. Basically, I
> think you're selling yourself short if you feel the need to
> warn people off like this. Do your commentary well, and it'll
> be interesting to people who agree with you *and* people who
> don't.
I hope that to be so. But I don't want to entice visitors in
under false pretences. I have received several e-mails and posts
vituperatively assailing me for omitting Robert Heinlein or Isaac
Asimov, despite the very second paragraph on the front page
explicitly naming those two as examples of what is *not* on the
site. What greater flow of venom would be directed at me if I
invited all comers in without warning?
> >> This puts me off, because you're starting off by pre-judging
> >> these authors. You're telling me that Kurtz is worse than
> >> Eddison (I do presume you mean E.R. Eddison? I
> >> may agree with you if you tell me *why*, but this opening
> >> makes me distrust your critical judgment.
> >
> > No, I'm post-judging them: I only judge authors after I've
> > read them. (Yes, I mean E.R. Eddison.) And I do think
> > you're asking for an awful lot out of the first few lines
> > of the cover page of the site, even were I using -7 type
> > sizing. One who knows those authors knows what I am
> > saying; one who does not will, of course, have to read the
> > site to find out.
> Well -- you're the one who objected to my skimming through
> other parts of your site. If your comments don't stand up to
> close reading, maybe you should reconsider them.
Read them as close as you like: I said that if you think Eddison
is obviously better than Kurtz, the site will be of interest to
you but that if you do not so think the site will not be of
interest to you. What part of that doesn't stand up?
I have not undertaken, explicitly or by the remotest stretch for
implication, to explain then and there *why* Eddison is superior
because that is not, then and there, at all the point. If you
know who Kurtz and Eddison--and Ernest Bramah and Piers Anthony
and M. John Harrison and Cordwainer Smith and Robert Heinlein and
Isaac Asimov--are, you will at once have a crystal-clear sense of
whether or not the site will interest you. (Even if you never
heard of a one of them, the tone of the statement carries
implications I think clear, but that's not now relevant.)
> Incidentally, I *have* read the authors you mention in that
> sentence, and I *don't* automatically know what you are saying,
> so you might find it useful to examine your assumptions that
> everyone is going to react the same way to that statement.
Same box, same dilemma.
> Also, if I *hadn't* read those authors, and I reacted (as I
> did) with suspicion of a snap judgment on your part, why
> *should* I continue to read the rest of the site to find out
> the basis for that judgment? This isn't required reading. If
> the first page makes me think you're not a useful critic, then
> I'll just leave.
That is always every visitor's privilege. But if you see a book
entitled "Smoking Kills," do you automatically suspect, because
that's all that appears on the cover, that the author of that
thick book made a snap judgment on the effects of smoking?
> >> OTOH, I think you're needlessly slamming sf and fantasy
> >> readers. I know that *I* don't approach a sf or fantasy
> >> book with lowered standards.
> >
> >Where I'm coming from is those lost hours. Do it: do a search
> >on any engine for "science fiction" or some such broad term
> >and go through, oh, say, a couple of hundred sites (yes, I
> >really did, in fact lots more than that)--and in order, not by
> >how interesting each one's notes look. I suggest that you too
> >might develop a "personal reaction."
>
> No thanks. I know better than to waste my time going through
> all those sites. I also know better than to waste my time
> going through hundreds of sites individually on *any* topic.
> Yes, there are a lot of idiots out there, and a lot of them
> have web sites. So?
So? So there are a lot of idiots out there, that's "so." I did
not want to *assume* any such thing _a priori_, I didn't even
know that it was so (though my scattershot site viewing to that
time suggested it), so I accepted the wasting of my time as the
price of finding out--finding out with enough definition that no
one could later say I was assuming something that isn't true.
I concluded, with the Lost Hours as proof, that I could say that
many sf&f readers have low standards. I said that. I did not
say all sf&f readers have low standards. Really. Read it. And
my point is that if you dispute the statement *as made* (which I
doubt from your remarks above about "a lot of idiots out there"),
then offer some equally hard-won counter-evidence.
> I just don't quite get what you're trying for here. If your
> audience is intelligent readers, why are you wasting your
> energy blasting stupid readers, especially in a way that can
> very easily be read as insulting the very people whom you want
> to reach?
The people I hope to reach will readily understand that I am not
insulting them. That is not a proposition: it is a tautology.
I'm not exactly trying for anything there; I am, so to speak,
clearing the table. I don't know if it makes any difference to
anyone's reading, but, if a writer has a definite imaginary
reader in mind as he works, with me that imaginary reader was,
throughout, someone with virtually no experience of science
fiction or fantasy authors or their books.
> I was responding to the fact that you refer to a grand total of
> four critical works on fantasy literature. These four works
> aren't going to give you a balanced view of the subject, that's
> all.
I certainly hope they don't. I don't *want* a "balanced" view
any more than did those authors; I want works that present, in
more detail and--the authors being who they are--vastly better
writing than mine, points of view that correspond to those I
entertain and on which the site is based.
I think that those whose views, if included, might make a
"balanced" presentation would find the views I set forth "boring
or absurd or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since
I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kind of writing
that they evidently prefer," as Professor Tolkien pithily put it.
> >> I skipped over the rest of the Apologia. If you have some
> >> points to make, I suggest trying to be more concise and
> >> clear; it would help.
> >
> >Madam, I am not a pupil who has asked his teacher to grade his
> >paper. You undertook that task on your own initiative.
> No. You are someone who has put his essays in public view for
> the public to read. You are someone who has invited discussion
> on those essays in a public discussion forum. In short, you
> have NO grounds for getting upset with me for dissecting your
> work in any way, shape, or form. You can disagree with what
> I say (as you do, reasonably civilly, above), but you can't
> take issue with me for taking the initiative to comment on
> it.
I do not quite accept the "no way, shape, or form" proviso; I
think that certain shapes and forms are inappropriate. I am not
there disagreeing with what you say--though I do disagree--but
with the shape or form in which you say it. If you think I am
over-reacting, that is an issue that can be discussed; but that
some reaction would follow that tone should not surprise.
> I am pained by such snappy schoolmarm sarcasm as you exhibit
> above. Have I descended to picking at the assorted errors in
> your grammar and syntax? And you a PhD in English?
> Sigh. I'm sure you could find some errors in grammar and sytax
> in my posts. I'm not, and am not pretending to be, writing an
> essay. I'm responding in a forum that is temporary, in a
> manner that is spontaneous and off-the-cuff, to an essay that
> has been polished and presented as a finished work for the
> public to view. If you're reduced to finding errors in my
> posts as a comeback to my critique of your site, then I think
> you ought to take some time to cool off, frankly.
I am not so reduced, which was my very point. "I suggest trying
to be more concise and clear," which simply translates, without
any need to assume hypersensitivity, into "you are verbose and
unclear," does not seem, at least to me, like reasoned
discussion. And I always take time to cool off (well, almost
always) before answering posts; but I didn't get much cooler.
Perhaps it is best to let this go as crossed sensibilities and
move on.
> >As I said above, I have had *invited* line-by-line critiques
> >from people whose linguistic judgments I respect. No one who
> >ever wrote a single line would not, on re-examination, change
> >it, but I have no wholesale problems with the writing on
> >the site; if you do, I regret that.
> I've seen you posting in rasfc. I'm not sure a deja search
> would pull this up, so you might consider posting on the
> question: how trustworthy are the comments of a self-selected
> group?
I am unclear what self-selected group is referred to. The
individuals I meant responded to a post in alt.english.usage
asking for comments on the site. They are "self-selected" in
that they volunteered to assist or, in the larger view, in that
they chose to participate in that forum. rasfc is not germane.
> If you seek out the comments of your friends, they have an
> interest (conscious or not) in not being too harsh with you.
Agreed, but that very assuredly--save for the confines of civil
courtesy--was not an relevant issue here. Those folk were
initially strangers, though that is no longer so.
> If you seek out the comments of people whose judgment you
> trust, is it not possible (likely, even) that you are
> (conciously or not) seeking out people with similar tastes to
> your own?
You can have--unless you are well familiar with a.e.u.--no idea
of how tearfully funny that is. The exchanges here have been
mild-mannered compared to what happens when prescriptionist
grammarians meet descriptivist grammarians. (And a.e.u. is the
*genteel* English-usage forum; try alt.usage.english only while
wearing asbestos.)
> In other words, the fact that you had early readers who
> approved of your writing does not invalidate the fact that
> other readers are finding it tough going indeed. Don't blame
> it on the readers. If you do, you will never grow as a writer.
I didn't and don't argue that none do, will, or should find it
tough going. But I do find the diction--"blame"--interesting.
I have no great interest in assigning blame. I have tried to
render a service to a certain class of persons. I do not make
money, or any other form of return, from doing so, so have no
special incentive to widen the class of persons using the site
beyond those I hope I can be of service to.
My limitations in ability to render service define that class.
I am not able, inherently, to say anything useful or interesting
to one who, to use an example someone mentioned, believes that
exploding spaceships define a good book. I have other relevant
limitations; how I say my say is another of them.
> >> You're also, overall, setting yourself up as extremely
> >> knowledgable about the field. I object to that tone.
> >
> >You still hadn't, by this point, grasped what I explained
> >above: the purpose of the Apologia was to make clear to
> >visitors what the bases were for the selections.
> And you haven't grasped *my* point: that I don't find that the
> Apologia does what you are asking it to.
If you do not think it gives a visitor a sufficient idea of what
kinds of authors and books are listed, I regret that. A defect
here or a vagueness there I can deal with if those are pointed
out with some particularity--that sort of thing is what all those
rounds of critique involved--but if the thing fails entire for a
given reader, there is little I can do except express my regret.
> > I will also add something that may infuriate, and that is
> > that there are still a few people who believe that it
> > remains possible to have an intelligent and even valuable
> > opinion on a subject without any reference whatsoever to
> > academics or "the critical work that's been done in the
> > field" by them. Beyond this, deponent sayeth not.
> It doesn't infuriate me in the least. I agree wholeheartedly.
> The reason I brought in the critical work that I'm familiar
> with, is that *you* are taking a critical approach (at least in
> parts), and *you* brought in a couple of critical works. If
> you are going to take a non-academic approach, great. If
> you're going to take a non-academic approach and get some ideas
> from one or two critics, fine. But if you make it *seem* like
> you are going to take a fully critical approach, and you refer
> to a tiny segment of the available critical work on the
> subject, I *will* call you on it.
I hope we are now up to speed on that, but I will repeat it: I
am laying out the esthetic scheme by which authors and books were
selected for listing on the site. I think it valid, but that is
immaterial save to have some side fun with in other venues; the
purpose in laying it out is to inform the visitor how this one
critic judges so that that visitor can decide if that one
critic's judgments are likely to have turned up works that that
visitor might enjoy reading. The critical works cited are not a
broad base but only deeper and far richer statements of the same
esthetic, or something much like it (save Aldiss, who is for me
more of a historical reference than a critical one).
> >> I noticed a definite bias toward the older fantasy authors
> >> (Morris, Dunsany, Eddison, Cabell). No problem there,
> >> that's good stuff, but I do think you'll run into a
> >> problem if you take them as a model for fantasy. The
> >> genre has changed, developed, grown. Authors are doing
> >> things differently now.
> >
> >A lot of things in the world are being done differently now
> than once they were; that does not of itself make those new
> ways better, or worse, than the old ones.
> I didn't say that. I'm saying they're *different*.
Agreed. I was not disputing, only amplifying.
> > I don't take anyone as a "model" for anything; a writer
> > writes, the work is good, bad, or indifferent: but those
> > determinations do not depend on how much that writer's work
> > resembles someone else's.
> The dominance of certain authors in the "five star group" did
> imply that you favored their style over that of recent authors.
> I was thinking, actually, of how Le Guin clearly uses the style
> of Dunsany or Eddison as a model of "good fantasy prose" to
> contrast with the "bad fantasy prose" of Kurtz. Since you cite
> Le Guin's collection of essays, I thought you might be
> following the same interpretive route.
No, it's what I call the "Hall of Fame" syndrome--you don't
normally include practicing artists in such a Hall because, one,
their oeuvre is not complete, and two, perspectives change--well,
not change, but clarify--with time. Several of my "four-star"
authors are writers I was much tempted to give five stars save
for such considerations. I also want to quote here something
else from the site, about the stars:
"The purpose of the stars is not to save God the trouble of
deciding which wing of Heaven who will occupy; it is to give you
some idea of who I think are the better writers in the field and
some gross, not fine, idea of how good each is. I believe you
would be rewarded by reading every writer I list on this site;
at most, the stars might suggest an order in which to proceed to
those with whom you are not familiar."
James Blaylock, for example (whose half-done individual-author
site page has lain untouched for a full week now largely owing to
usenet correspondence loads) seems to me likely to end up a
five-star writer, and his work is quite unlike any of the
five-star writers I now list (indeed, as I noted somewhere, one
striking thing about the 11 five-star authors is how little any
one of them resembles any of the others). There are many others
in more or less the same boat (at least on my ocean). Indeed, in
the first edition of the site, R.A. Lafferty was four stars;
after I got to read some of his very-limited-distribution stuff,
I upped that to five stars.
> >Actually, I don't feel that in any case I am *arguing* that
> >any author is great. I am asserting that I believe so;
> The setup in the critical sections suggests that you *are*
> going to argue -- when I protested the "snap judgment" of
> ranking Eddison over Kurtz, in the early sentences of your
> first page, didn't you say that that's not the case, and that
> the reader would have to "read the site to find out"? Well,
> find out *what*? That you prefer Eddison over Kurtz? I don't
> have a problem with a personal-likings ranking; I'm pointing
> out that you are setting up some implied expectations that you
> don't fulfil.
The part after the snip explained that I present quotations from
the authors, who may thus be said to be "arguing" their own
cases, the quotations embedded in text from me, mainly explaining
which particular excellence of the author each quotation is
intended to illustrate. I do, in that framing text, say in which
specific ways I think that author demonstrates the generic
qualities set out in the Apologia; I suppose that could be
considered "arguing" the case for that author's inclusion, but I
think of it as just helping the visitor decide if that author is
one he or she wants to try.
(I will certainly concede, however, that the job is far from
finished, with many score authors yet to be discussed individually;
my hope is that the discussions already complete will to some extent
flesh out, as cases in point, the principles in the Apologia, so as
to let visitors see how they function in action.)
> Anyway, I'm done with commenting on this. I've said my piece,
> and given my reactions; and you can take them or leave them.
> As I said before, I approached the site as a disinterested
> reader who wanted to give some helpful feedback on a project
> that I think is interesting and worthwhile. I don't have any
> axes to grind, not even little pocket knives. Feel free to
> ignore it all.
Well, as you see, I hardly did. Feedback is, of course, always
helpful, whether praising or blaming. I am glad that you think
the project worthwhile. I just hope that somebody somewhere is
by it steered to an author or particular book they might not
otherwise have found and enjoys what they read in consequence.
Sharing the wealth is the sole and whole purpose of the site.
The Walkers
Quilly Mammoth <quilly_...@my-deja.com> wrote:
[...]
> Don't forget a nice Stilton with your Port. Though my favorite is a
> crisp white with some double creame Brie and water crackers along
> side.
> Often a perfect combination while reading, IMHO.
Now there is a matter on which we *heartily* agree. I also find the
curious combination of a hard, sharp cheese--Romano, for example--and a
discreet quantity of raisins delightful. (Suggested by the Christmas
cheeses described in James Blaylock's book _The Elfin Ship_.)
The Walkers
aRJay <aR...@escore.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <92emn2$mss$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, The Walkers
> <wal...@owlcroft.com> writes
> >But what about those folk who enjoy a ramble?
>
> A good point but what of those who still have to pay by the second to
> read your ramble, a concise (and quick to load) summary might well be
> enough to allow them to make an informed decision as to the worth of
> your ramble against the cost of their connection time, rather than
> say I can't read all that and leave unenlightened.
Dead right: I am thoroughly guilty of pariochialism--I cannot absorb
the idea of paying by connect time, though I know a great many folk are
subject to that constraint.
I gather that there are newsreader setups that allow rapid online
gathering of material to be worked through later offline; are there not
such toys for websites? I know some kinds of such software
exist--indeed, I have rolled a number of my own (my baseball website,
in season, downloads close to a thousand web pages every night)--but
whether they are esoterica or commonplaces for folk with the more
popular operating systems (this is an OS/2 shop), I just don't know.
Were this Heaven and time meaningless, I'd eventually construct a
highly condensed version--but then again, in Heaven, who has connect
limitations? Sigh. In this world, it will not, I regret, ever happen.
Sorry.
(But I have tried to keep load times as short as possible, with
absolutely minimal graphics--and at that none vital, all you Lynx
users--and page lengths mostly in the 40-45 Kbyte range.)
Nancy Lebovitz
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>Quotations have been ruthlessly pruned for brevity; assume [...]
>
>James Blaylock, for example (whose half-done individual-author
>site page has lain untouched for a full week now largely owing to
>usenet correspondence loads) seems to me likely to end up a
>five-star writer, and his work is quite unlike any of the
>five-star writers I now list (indeed, as I noted somewhere, one
>striking thing about the 11 five-star authors is how little any
>one of them resembles any of the others). There are many others
>in more or less the same boat (at least on my ocean). Indeed, in
>the first edition of the site, R.A. Lafferty was four stars;
>after I got to read some of his very-limited-distribution stuff,
>I upped that to five stars.
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
The Walkers
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
[...]
> Which Lafferty works strike you as being so remarkable?
That's hard to answer, because I acquired a bunch all at once and went
through them in a rush. Just to list what I got, several at once and
the rest soon before or after:
_Slippery and Other Stories_
_The Man Who Made Models_
_Snake in His Bosom and Other Stories_
_Heart of Stone, Dear and Other Stories_
_Episodes of the Argo_
_Serpent's Egg_
_And Now Walk Gently Through the Fire_
_Not to Mention Camels_
_Aurelia_
(Irrelevant because still unread, but I mention them as part of the
swag, are _Tales of Chicago_, _Tales of Midnight_, _The Flame is
Green_, and _Half a Sky_.)
Thinking back and trying to sort as best I can, I think what most
impressed me was the stunningly compressed manic humor Lafferty can
press into extraordinarily short stories. To steal a metaphor off the
Lafferty page on the site, it's like an intellectually challenging Bugs
Bunny cartoon: endless impossibilities, all casually accepted by the
characters, fired at the reader in machine-gun style, with hardly a
stray bullet. In general, one of Lafferty's excellences is his ability
to compress--even his novels have that ceaselessly rapid-fire cartoon
pacing.
Lafferty's longer works are all heavily freighted with dense meanings
expressed in the unique or nearly unique Lafferty style, which got him
his four stars with me; but his ability to just rear back and make one
laugh till the tears come and well beyond got him my fifth star.
Nancy Lebovitz
OK--though part of what I was curious about was which of the small
press Lafferty fiction you thought was better than the best stories
in _Nine Hundred Grandmothers_. (And I strongly recommend _Iron Tears_
and _Lafferty in Orbit_.)
I think of Lafferty as part of the tall tale tradition rather than
similar to cartoons--but the tall tale style *is* a way of getting
effects quickly.
>
>Lafferty's longer works are all heavily freighted with dense meanings
>expressed in the unique or nearly unique Lafferty style, which got him
>his four stars with me; but his ability to just rear back and make one
>laugh till the tears come and well beyond got him my fifth star.
>
Have you read _Space Chantey_? It's his take on the Odyssey, and
one of his funnier books.
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> Finally, I take note of Matt Ruff's observation:
>
>> Did you happen to catch the theme music on the site?
>> ("Somewhere, over the rainbow...")
>
> It may--or may not--interest readers to know that in the earliest
> edition of the site, all the major pages had music, which I
> quickly removed owing to the number of visitors whose remarks, in
> sum, boiled down to "music on sites sucks," which is a perfectly
> sound opinion and the reason I removed that music; I left only
> the front page with sound, a piano solo, simply because it was
> quite soft and unobtrusive
On my system, at least, web page MIDI files cause a big Sound Blaster
splash page to pop up in the middle of the screen, so it's maybe not as
subtle as you were intending.
-- M. Ruff
The Walkers
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
[...]
> OK--though part of what I was curious about was which of the small
> press Lafferty fiction you thought was better than the best stories
> in _Nine Hundred Grandmothers_. (And I strongly recommend _Iron
> Tears_ and _Lafferty in Orbit_.)
I have _Iron Tears_, _Lafferty in Orbit_, and _Does Anyone Else Have
Something Further to Add?_ on order from Wildside Press. There is not
much by Lafferty save some *very* rare (and correspondingly hideously
expensive) I don't by now have.
I'm not sure that the small-press stuff is necessarily any better than
things in _Nine Hundred Grandmothers_, indeed proably not as that
collection is some of his best, but the tales there are of several
kinds, while--perhaps by chance--much of what was in the chapbooks, and
certainly what came in the random order I read those chapbooks, was
just one funny story after another, the hysteria thus cumulating.
Incidentally, if anyone can confirm a couple of things, I'd be well
pleased. One, is it so that the third volume of _More Than
Melchesidech_, to be titled _Argo_ (*not* "Episodes of the Argo,"
another matter) was never actually published? Is it so that the final
two volumes of the Coscuin series, to be titled _Sardinian Summer_ and
_First and Last Island_, were never actually published?
Assuming none of those exist, I lack three novels--_East of Laughter_,
_The Elliptical Grave_, and _Dotty_--and nearly a dozen of the
chapbooks, all, as noted, rare and expensive.
The best bibliography I was able to construct, concatenating several
sources, is at--
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf/AUTHORS/RALafferty.html
(Note--It omits his non-sf&f works and his poetry.)
> I think of Lafferty as part of the tall tale tradition rather than
> similar to cartoons--but the tall tale style *is* a way of getting
> effects quickly.
The cartoon analogy came to me as I was trying to find a way to
describe the intensely rapid-fire style of the tales. But they do
indeed, as you say, have a definite tall-tales flavor as well.
> >Lafferty's longer works are all heavily freighted with dense
> >meanings expressed in the unique or nearly unique Lafferty style,
> >which got him his four stars with me; but his ability to just rear
> >back and make one laugh till the tears come and well beyond got him
> >my fifth star.
>
> Have you read _Space Chantey_? It's his take on the Odyssey, and
> one of his funnier books.
Yes, yes, and yes.
(For anyone curious about that "or nearly unique," Charles Finney does
things much like in his collection _The Ghosts of Manacle_.)
The Walkers
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold <Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
[...]
> On my system, at least, web page MIDI files cause a big Sound Blaster
> splash page to pop up in the middle of the screen, so it's maybe not
> as subtle as you were intending.
Yikes! I've not heard of that before, and wonder how common (or
avoidable) it is. If it isn't rare, I'd best pull the thing.
(Have you investigated to see if that can be disabled or bypassed?
It's not just me, there are a fair number of sites with MIDI on at
least the front page, and I'd think you'd want to avoid the effect.)
That is, of course, representative of the problems of developing a site
on one system only. (Page colors is another--a few people have
problems with the front page owing to varying monitor settings; most
have no such problem; so what does one do?)
Terry Austin
"The Walkers" <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
news:92j61j$5v3$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <3A4CDDFB...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold <Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > On my system, at least, web page MIDI files cause a big Sound Blaster
> > splash page to pop up in the middle of the screen, so it's maybe not
> > as subtle as you were intending.
>
> Yikes! I've not heard of that before, and wonder how common (or
> avoidable) it is. If it isn't rare, I'd best pull the thing.
>
> (Have you investigated to see if that can be disabled or bypassed?
> It's not just me, there are a fair number of sites with MIDI on at
> least the front page, and I'd think you'd want to avoid the effect.)
It's easier to avoid pages that do annoying, pointless things
like play MIDIs without asking.
>
> That is, of course, representative of the problems of developing a site
> on one system only. (Page colors is another--a few people have
> problems with the front page owing to varying monitor settings; most
> have no such problem; so what does one do?)
>
Use sensible design standards, like high-contrast color combinations.
Terry Austin
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
Now, this is completely off topic.
>It's not just me, there are a fair number of sites with MIDI on at
>least the front page, and I'd think you'd want to avoid the effect.)
There are people who completely disable sound with Web pages, like me.
>That is, of course, representative of the problems of developing a site
>on one system only. (Page colors is another--a few people have
>problems with the front page owing to varying monitor settings; most
>have no such problem; so what does one do?)
Change the page so *everybody* can see it. It's not a problem with
monitor settings. Your front page, as well as Apologia, suffers from
*too many colours*. A cleaner, leaner design would be much better.
Also, while your pages are compliant with HTML 4.0, there's a bit you
should note: there are some things you should have done, which are not
covered by HTML standards, like ...
... including text links somewhere on a more prominent place,
splitting your pages further so they load quicker, putting the links
explanations in a colour that's more noticeable on a tan background
(like black or something), putting the links for just the four main
sections, not using the underline for a text that's not a link, not
putting the w3c notice on every page because it gets annoying in a
hurry, not putting the animated GIF's as rules because they just draw
the attention away from the text ...
The site needs a bit of internal organisation, too, AFAI could
conclude from a quick look at the source code. It seems you put
everything in a single directory. Separate directories for sections
and subsections would make it easier for you to update.
Finally, the following is *not* a good policy: "So, if your browser
experiences any difficulties with this page, upgrade or change that
browser!" It's you who should make effort to make it easier for people
to see your page, and not visitors who should upgrade their browsers.
The Walkers
I am both surprised and pained by some of the observations I quote
below. Both emotions derive from my having tried to make the site
exemplary of safe, interoperable, agreeable web-page design. While I
offer replies below to the comments, I don't want anyone to think that
I am disputing or dismissing them, because how a page "feels" to the
bulk of visitors is not only vital, it is a matter of a host's
obligation to be courteous to guests. The replies are intended to
explain why I did certain things certain ways, to see if that changes
anyone's opinions, and possibly to solicit further comments so I can
decide which changes (if, to be honest, any) to implement.
In article <92j8q...@enews3.newsguy.com>,
"Terry Austin" <tau...@hyperbooks.com> wrote:
> It's easier to avoid pages that do annoying, pointless things like
> play MIDIs without asking.
First: at the top of the page, immediately below the page title, so
that for all visitors, regardless of their browser-window sizing, it is
not only clearly visible but prominent, appears:
(If you hear sound and want to stop it or fiddle with it,
you should find a controller at the bottom of this page.)
in which statement the word "controller" is a link to that very
controller, such that if the rather soft and slow piano solo is
nevertheless annoying, a quick pair of clicks--one to jump, one to
stop--shuts it off (or controls the volume or anything else that an
HTML MIDI controller should do.)
That is the one and only page with any sound, or other effect--no Java,
no Javascript, no frames, no Flash, no any of that nonsense, not even
any graphics save some mostly neutral page backgrounds and two
dividers.
Second: with due respect, aren't the words "annoying" and "pointless"
sort of, um, prejudicially charged? Page content is page content: what
is pointless may be annoying, though not necessarily, but is sound
intrinsically pointless, pointless *by definition* as it were?
Mind, while I sort of like the effect, it's not as if I'm wedded to it.
I took sound off several other pages, leaving it only for the front
page as what I hoped would be a pleasing little bit of wistfulness. If
I become convinced that a substantial minority (or more) of visitors
don't like it, it will go. So far, the reactions have varied from
"pretty nice" to "don't like sound, but thanks for the controller, no
problem." ("So far" obviously means until now.)
Then,
In article <mr9q4t4oqt3n536qd...@news.cis.dfn.de>,
Vlatko Juric-Kokic <vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
> There are people who completely disable sound with Web pages, like
> me.
Which, of course, is fine. I myself used to cruise with image loading
off, but so many sites are now so badly designed that you need images
loaded just to see where to click for basic functions.
> >That is, of course, representative of the problems of developing a
> >site on one system only. (Page colors is another--a few people have
> >problems with the front page owing to varying monitor settings; most
> >have no such problem; so what does one do?)
>Change the page so *everybody* can see it. It's not a problem with
>monitor settings. Your front page, as well as Apologia, suffers from
>*too many colours*. A cleaner, leaner design would be much better.
Saving out the front page, I think they are largely pretty spare; I am
surprised by the comment on the Apologia, which is black text on a
bland light pastel background. The only exceptions are the page title,
in large blue letters, and the site directory, with colored (but
monocolored) text, and some tertiary boilerplate at the very page
bottom. (OK, there are a *few* ultra-thin rainbow divider lines.)
The front page has, yes, a lot of colors. Mostly it's white text on an
almost solid black background, but the section heads, and some text,
are in other colors. I think of it as the neon sign over the doorway.
I don't think a room ought to be lit by neon signs, but outside over
the doorway . . . .
But it *is* a problem with monitor settings. Most people use their
monitors out of the box, without adjustment; most monitors out of the
box have brightness and contrast, and often color intensity, maxed out.
As with television sets, few ever fiddle with the controls, and often
don't realize how bad the images they're getting are.
Here is a rather good guide to setting the basic pair, brightness and
contrast:
http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton/notes/brightness_and_contrast/
Once those are in order, color intensity is not much of a problem.
That said, one must recognize that a lot of people do not have their
monitors adjusted very well. Does that mean every page has to be dead
black on full white to be satisfactory? The question is partly
rhetorical and party actual. While opinions are opinions, mine is that
color as such is not *automatically* a terrible thing. Obviously a lot
of intense green and pink on bright yellow is not going to please many
people possessed of full color vision. But where, between such folly
and monochrome, is the line?
On my monitor, the front page is pleasing--obviously: who willingly or
knowingly sets up a displeasing page? If I get enough grumbling
e-mails (or posts) to offset the complimentary ones received, I guess I
will re-do it _ab origino_. What else can I say?
>Also, while your pages are compliant with HTML 4.0, there's a bit you
>should note: there are some things you should have done, which are
>not covered by HTML standards, like ...
[I break the list onto separate lines for comment--but first . . . .]
I am, to be honest, a little disgruntled by the casualness of that
"while"; there are, I think, precious few sites that are compliant with
any level of W3C HTML, including most of the biggest on the web.
Getting a page into compliance involves a lot of niggly work, with back
and forth fix-and-check effort. I wouldn't want to say the number of
times some "absolutely trivial" change has broken the standardization,
however fine it still actually looks on a browser.
Every time one sees "This page optimized for viewing with . . . "
(unless it's that charming "any browser" logo so rarely seen) followed
by some brand name (yeah, right, like there's more than two brand names
you'd see), one is entitled to think that the self-styled webmaster is
a jackass or a pig or both. OK, every page on the web *should* be 100%
compliant, so what's the big deal if mine are? Mumble, mumble . . . .
Anyway . . . .
>... including text links somewhere on a more prominent place,
Sorry, I just flat don't know what's meant there. Is that the
site-directory links? Or what?
>splitting your pages further so they load quicker,
Well I did, you know; look at the Apologia. I think a reasonable size
for the text of a low-graphics page is 40K to 50K, and I think only two
pages on the site (out of almost 200) exceed 50K, and those not by
much. At some point, page splitting becomes counter-productive.
>putting the links explanations in a colour that's more noticeable on a
>tan background (like black or something),
Again, I don't know just what you refer to; all unvisited links are in
a fairly bright red. Could you mean the site directories at the
bottoms of the pages? There are several page backgrounds of slightly
different pastel tones used, and I diligently hand-tuned the
site-directory text colors for each such background for clear
legibility. Obviously, my monitor and yours do not display alike.
That brings us back to the earlier question as to whether
interoperability absolutely mandates black on white.
>putting the links for just the four main sections,
I *think* you're saying that the site directories should restrict
themselves to just the "higher-level" pages. If--I repeat *if*--I am
understanding you aright, I could scarcely disagree more vehemently.
One of the most hateful things I can find on a website is the absence
of a clear, FULL site directory anywhere it will fit. (Obviously, ESPN
cannot list 10,000 pages at the bottom of each of those 10,000 pages;
but with about two dozen core pages, I can and I think I should.)
>not using the underline for a text that's not a link,
Is the underlined text, which is obviously a list header, in the
utterly site-standard link color? I try very hard to always use color
in a consistent manner. What is or is not a link should be 100%
obvious to anyone.
>not putting the w3c notice on every page because it gets annoying in a
>hurry,
Say what? It's a tiny image dead at the bottom of each page, in
amongst what is obviously boilerplate. I'm W3C compliant and proud of
it; that's why the W3C created that image, to encourage people to make
their pages compliant so they can display that image. I am slowly
coming to think that you have a chip on your shoulder.
>not putting the animated GIF's as rules because they just draw the
>attention away from the text ...
Minority report (minority of one as so far reported); several people
have commented on how nice and crisp those look. If a line about 1
pixel thick draws attention away from text that it is separating into
distinct sections, I think we're all in trouble.
>The site needs a bit of internal organisation, too, AFAI could
>conclude from a quick look at the source code. It seems you put
everything in a single directory. Separate directories for sections
>and subsections would make it easier for you to update.
As a matter of fact, the individual-author pages are in a subdirectory.
The other pages are few enough that I can take care of them. Thank you
for your generous solicitude.
>Finally, the following is *not* a good policy: "So, if your browser
>experiences any difficulties with this page, upgrade or change that
>browser!" It's you who should make effort to make it easier for
> people to see your page, and not visitors who should upgrade their >
browsers.
That also, in honesty, gravels me. Either you understand the notorious
"browser wars" or you don't. I, and a heck of a lot of other people,
were and are *very* tired of being pawns in the wars between M$ and
Netscrape, wars fought in good part with non-standard "proprietary
extensons" to HTML. I did and do go through a lot of unpleasant time
and effort to make sure that any visitor using a browser--famous or
minor make, graphic or text-only--meeting the universally recognized
standards of the W3C can see the site properly.
Any browser--let me give this a little emphasis, **ANY** BROWSER--that
has trouble with any aspect of 100%-W3C-compliant HTML is a vile,
perfidious, perverse, evil monstrosity, and any right-thinking soul in
the known universe will urge the user of such a browser to deep-six it
and get an *honest* one. OK?
--
Keith Ray
<wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
[...]
> It may--or may not--interest readers to know that in the earliest
> edition of the site, all the major pages had music, which I
> quickly removed owing to the number of visitors whose remarks, in
> sum, boiled down to "music on sites sucks," which is a perfectly
> sound opinion and the reason I removed that music; I left only
> the front page with sound, a piano solo, simply because it was
> volume in a MIDI file), and a bit wistful at that. The possibly
> relevant point is that all the removed music, as best I recall
> it, was science-fiction related: the Cantina Band, the Dr. Who
> theme, The Hulk theme, and I forget just what else.
[...]
You should also know that white text [on black or colored background]
sucks too.
My browser is set to display black text on a white background. Somehow
your white text is still being displayed as white, but the background is
also being displayed as white (per my preferences), resulting in a
largely "blank" page.
See <http://www.dsiegel.com/tips/wonk2/background.html> and
<http://cancernet.nci.nih.gov/usability/>, well as a books and web sites
about user-interface-design.
Matthew Austern
> While trying to produce a list that is all inclusive is a daunting
> task; I would expect that a site that sets its standards so high might
> include a Hugo and Nebula winner (twice) in its list.
I don't think that trying to produce an all-inclusive list is a
worthwhile goal. I think that lists produced by consensus (all of
those "top 100" lists that we saw last year, for example), tend to be
bland and boring. What's the point of such a list? Why would anyone
ever want to have one?
A list that reflects one person's strong opinions, especially if that
person is able to write about their opinions in an intelligent way,
is must more likely to be interesting. Sure, any one person's opinions
are likely to be quirky---the more deeply that person has thought about
literature, the quirkier. (Tolstoy wrote a ferocious anti-Shakespeare
broadside.) Sure, if I read a personal list I'll undoubtedly find
judgments that I disagree with. So what? At least this way I'm
more likely to learn things that I didn't know already, to find a
way of looking at some book that I might not have thought of on my
own.
Quilly Mammoth
I don't disagree per se. That was not what the argument was about.
Most would agree that it takes a personal opinion to decide what
is "best". In fact, the absence of a personal opinion would negate the
very concept of "best" or "greatest" unless one merely judged by the
sales volume. Which is not a determing factor in the context of this
debate. Having thousands of people send in their top 100 books will
average out, in many cases, to include those books which are best
promoted. Those sort of lists produce results that I, as well, find
mundane.
Nancy Lebovitz
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>In article <92i642$b...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>
>[...]
>pleased. One, is it so that the third volume of _More Than
>Melchesidech_, to be titled _Argo_ (*not* "Episodes of the Argo,"
>another matter) was never actually published? Is it so that the final
>two volumes of the Coscuin series, to be titled _Sardinian Summer_ and
>_First and Last Island_, were never actually published?
I believe (but can't solidly confirm) that the trilogy was _The
Devil is Dead_, _Archipelago_, and _More than Melchizidek_ (that
last was published in three volumes).
>Assuming none of those exist, I lack three novels--_East of Laughter_,
>_The Elliptical Grave_, and _Dotty_--and nearly a dozen of the
>chapbooks, all, as noted, rare and expensive.
Not that I want to torture you or anything, but I saw a bunch of
unpublished Lafferty manuscripts for sale on abebooks for about
$200 each. They weren't there the last time I checked. I didn't
buy any of them.
Lee Ann Rucker
<r.ph...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> What about hard sf classics in which the Earth rotates in the
>wrong direction?
That would be Niven, on Louis Wu's birthday, right?
<GD&R>
--
Working at Apple for Javasoft
laru...@apple.com <- new address!
Also at (but not very often) leeann...@eng.sun.com
Lee Ann Rucker
<lal_t...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>Now that's an interesting thought. Are folks who swing both ways the
>majority? I'm willing to admit that, at least by shelve space, folks who
>like the swordy stuff are the majority, but do most like SF AND swordy
>stuff? I wonder? I find swordy stuff so boring, when I turn to it in
>desparation, as to drive me to cold turkey quit reading altogether for
>several days.
Once out of sheer desperation I picked up a book with "Avalon" in the
title - that turned out to be the first of many Zelaznys I've read and
loved.
I think it gets so much shelf space because it's so easy to churn out -
not that I'm saying there isn't *good* "swordy stuff", though I'd be hard
pressed to name any.
I wonder - if F and SF were split so that SF fans didn't have to wade
through F, would the fans of classic fantasy wish that the
write-by-numbers stuff could be shoved off out of the way, so they don't
have to wade through it?
Nancy Lebovitz
Lee Ann Rucker <laru...@apple.com> wrote:
>In article <9297dj$md5$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, lal_truckee
><lal_t...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>>Now that's an interesting thought. Are folks who swing both ways the
>>majority? I'm willing to admit that, at least by shelve space, folks who
>>like the swordy stuff are the majority, but do most like SF AND swordy
>>stuff? I wonder? I find swordy stuff so boring, when I turn to it in
>>desparation, as to drive me to cold turkey quit reading altogether for
>>several days.
>
>Once out of sheer desperation I picked up a book with "Avalon" in the
>title - that turned out to be the first of many Zelaznys I've read and
>loved.
>
>I think it gets so much shelf space because it's so easy to churn out -
>not that I'm saying there isn't *good* "swordy stuff", though I'd be hard
>pressed to name any.
I'm not convinced that mediocre fantasy is easier to write than mediocre
science fiction--there was a lot of mediocre science fiction in the
sixties. (See the "B" side of a lot of Ace Doubles, and sometimes
both sides.)
Rachel Brown
>
> >wrong direction?
>
> That would be Niven, on Louis Wu's birthday, right?
Well, it's definitely Niven. I picked that as a canonical example of bad
science in a hard sf novel. However, as I haven't ever managed to get more
than about ten pages into any Niven novel, I'm not speaking from personal
experience, and that was about ten years ago.
Say, anyone want to recommend a really good Niven novel? Has he written
anything that might appeal to a fan of Bujold, Cherryh, Banks, etc?
Rachel
Nancy Lebovitz
>anything that might appeal to a fan of Bujold, Cherryh, Banks, etc?
>
Star_ fondly. _World of Ptaavs_ is my favorite of his novels.
I get the impression from your list of favorites that you might like
somthing a little more intelligent and intense than Niven offers,
though. Imho, at his best, he wrote about a fairly benevolant
universe full of interesting things rather than saying much about
strong emotions or doing serious world-building.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Brown <r.ph...@worldnet.att.net> asserted
If you don't like _A Gift from Earth_, or any of the stories in one of
the collections like _Flatlander_ or _Crashlander_, you might as well
give up trying.
Might still be worth trying some of the collaborations though (_The Mote
in God's Eye_, for instance, is imho a classic).
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
GSV Three Minds in a Can
<na...@unix3.netaxs.com> asserted
<snip>
>I'm not convinced that mediocre fantasy is easier to write than mediocre
>science fiction--there was a lot of mediocre science fiction in the
>sixties. (See the "B" side of a lot of Ace Doubles, and sometimes
>both sides.)
Today it seems easier to get mediocre fantasy published and read though.
Look in the FSF rack in any non-book store and you'll see acres of
mediocre fantasy by the usual suspects. The only mediocre SF seems to be
collected under StarTrekWars banner (and the occasional ElRon brick).
Of course, I quite =like= mediocre fantasy, in reasonable doses. Whereas
mediocre SF (usually with the science all wrong) makes me cringe. I was
reading some 195x pulp last week where the rocket was pushing back the
boundaries of speed at 75k miles per hour, and actually had to land on
an uncharted planet (in another star system) after a couple of days for
repairs. Yeah, right!! (_Colonists of Space_, Charles Carr, Digit UK.
Score 2/10, and that's being generous).
Michael Hargreave Mawson
<G...@quik.freeuk.com> writes
>Bitstring <01c07095$c72c9680$ea00500c@default> from the wonderful Rachel
>Brown <r.ph...@worldnet.att.net> asserted
>>Say, anyone want to recommend a really good Niven novel? Has he written
>>anything that might appeal to a fan of Bujold, Cherryh, Banks, etc?
>Might still be worth trying some of the collaborations though (_The Mote
>in God's Eye_, for instance, is imho a classic).
If you like Bujold, I'm sure you would like "Mote in God's Eye" - not
that they are remotely similar, but they do appeal to the same sort of
reader (me). Intelligent MilSF and a whole lot more.
ATB
--
Mike
Michael Hargreave Mawson, author of "Eyewitness in the Crimea,"
to be published by Greenhill Books in March, 2001.
See http://www.hargreave-mawson.demon.co.uk/Books.html for details.
William December Starr
"Rachel Brown" <r.ph...@worldnet.att.net> said:
>>> What about hard sf classics in which the Earth rotates in the
>>> wrongdirection?
>>
>> That would be Niven, on Louis Wu's birthday, right?
>
> Well, it's definitely Niven. I picked that as a canonical example
> of bad science in a hard sf novel.
I don't know if I'd call that "bad science." More like an "oops,"
really: he got the science part -- that the Earth rotates, and what
that implies -- right; he just made a sign error.
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>