The Supreme Fantasy Since Written by an American

[Joe Bernstein]

The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm
currently reading, quotes two different writers about the book whose
remarks appeared in the <Washington Post Book World>: Michael Dirda
and someone whom I, perhaps anachronistically, suspect of being John
Clute. Understandably (given Harper's motives in quoting) but still
curiously, both quotes end with nearly identical words.

"the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
"The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute

I suppose this odd coincidence raises questions of its own, but I'm
more interested in the two obvious questions that follow on from
what these overlapping phrases *say*.

1) Was it really?

Obvious alternative candidates that spring to *my* mind include
<The Wonderful Wizard of Oz>, <The Circus of Dr Lao>, and <The Last
Unicorn> without even trying. Writers I like less should also be
considered - Howard, Lovecraft, CA Smith; Poe; Cabell... And any
number, besides Beagle, in the postwar years; if nothing else, seems
to me Donaldson's first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant have a decent
claim, or Le Guin's first three Earthsea books.

The only one of these I'd seriously consider next to <Little, Big>,
brainstorming aside, is <The Last Unicorn>, and while I'd hesitate
to judge "best" between them, I might be persuaded that "greatest"
really does belong to Crowley instead.

But what do y'all think?

2. Is it still?

In other words, the titular question. What's great, unequivocally
American (note I didn't cite Susan Cooper up there, and no, Guy
Gavriel Kay won't count either), and post-<Little, Big> ?

To be honest, in the couple of hours since I thought of these questions
I've focused mainly on the first, so I don't have my list ready here.

One thing worth noting is that this particular ranking game favours
authors of One Big Books (a phrase I got from Andrew Wheeler). It
isn't obvious to me that any single book by Cabell could beat
<Little, Big> even if I liked Cabell; Baum's begins a series; and
so forth. One reason I'm not giving suggestions for the second question
is that I keep thinking of authors (e.g. McKillip) and not books.

Have fun with this. My online access these days is sharply limited
(more on this in few days), but I'll try to follow any resulting
discussion.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com

[David Goldfarb]

In article <57650f7d-749e-4cc8...@googlegroups.com>,

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>What's great, unequivocally
>American (note I didn't cite Susan Cooper up there, and no, Guy
>Gavriel Kay won't count either), and post-<Little, Big> ?

Tim Powers comes to mind. Most particularly _Last Call_.

--
David Goldfarb |"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I
goldf...@gmail.com | craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | meaningful vision of human life -- so I became
| a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop
| so you can meet girls." -- M. Cartmill

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <57650f7d-749e-4cc8...@googlegroups.com>,
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big> ..
>
>1) Was it really?

I can't tell. My son raved about it and I couldn't get past
Chapter One. Theoretically, all sorts of neat things were going
to happen in subsequent chapters, but I couldn't get that far; it
was what MZB used to call "earthquake fiction," meaning she
wished all the characters would be swallowed up by an earthquake.

So I'll never know.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <57650f7d-749e-4cc8...@googlegroups.com>,
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm

>

>"the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
>"The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute
>
>

>1) Was it really?

Not having read it, I can't say but

>2. Is it still?
>

I would say it would have to be quite good to top GOT or all the CMAs in
Dresden.

--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[Brian M. Scott]

On Wed, 7 Nov 2012 18:13:30 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:57650f7d-749e-4cc8...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>,
> which I'm currently reading, quotes two different writers
> about the book whose remarks appeared in the <Washington
> Post Book World>: Michael Dirda and someone whom I,
> perhaps anachronistically, suspect of being John Clute.
> Understandably (given Harper's motives in quoting) but
> still curiously, both quotes end with nearly identical
> words.

> "the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
> "The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." -
> ?Clute

> I suppose this odd coincidence raises questions of its
> own, but I'm more interested in the two obvious questions
> that follow on from what these overlapping phrases *say*.

> 1) Was it really?

No. I don't think that I even managed to finish it.

[...]

> But what do y'all think?

That any attempt to name 'the best (or greatest) fantasy
written by an American' (or by anyone else) deserves
ridicule.

[...]

Brian

[Anthony Nance]

Ted Nolan <tednolan> <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote:
> In article <57650f7d-749e-4cc8...@googlegroups.com>,
> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>>The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm
>
>>
>>"the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
>>"The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute
>>
>>
>
>>1) Was it really?
>
> Not having read it, I can't say but
>
>>2. Is it still?
>>
>
> I would say it would have to be quite good to top GOT or all the CMAs in
> Dresden.

I am caffeine deprived (being remedied, though) and will surely
smack my forehead upon learning, but I'd like to know how hard
to smack it: What are "GOT" and "CMAs"?

Tony

[Anthony Nance]

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm
> currently reading, quotes two different writers about the book whose
> remarks appeared in the <Washington Post Book World>: Michael Dirda
> and someone whom I, perhaps anachronistically, suspect of being John
> Clute. Understandably (given Harper's motives in quoting) but still
> curiously, both quotes end with nearly identical words.
>
> "the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
> "The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute
>
> I suppose this odd coincidence raises questions of its own, but I'm
> more interested in the two obvious questions that follow on from
> what these overlapping phrases *say*.
>
> 1) Was it really?

Hard for me to say for two reasons:
- Objectively, what are the metrics? What are the hallmarks of
"best/greatest"? And you might have to draw a lasso around
"fantasy" too, which is a quagmire all its own.

- Subjectively, I've tried three times to read _Little, Big_ ,
and stalled very quickly each time.

In general, I lean Brian's way, minus the ridicule: how can you
possibly pin things down without running aground on a host of
semantic discussions and edge cases?

> Obvious alternative candidates that spring to *my* mind include
> <The Wonderful Wizard of Oz>, <The Circus of Dr Lao>, and <The Last
> Unicorn> without even trying. Writers I like less should also be
> considered - Howard, Lovecraft, CA Smith; Poe; Cabell... And any
> number, besides Beagle, in the postwar years; if nothing else, seems
> to me Donaldson's first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant have a decent
> claim, or Le Guin's first three Earthsea books.
>
> The only one of these I'd seriously consider next to <Little, Big>,
> brainstorming aside, is <The Last Unicorn>, and while I'd hesitate
> to judge "best" between them, I might be persuaded that "greatest"
> really does belong to Crowley instead.
>
> But what do y'all think?

I'd also consider works by Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, and
Roger Zelazny at the very least. And I'll ignore YA only
because I (perhaps incorrectly) think you want to exclude it.

> 2. Is it still?
>
> In other words, the titular question. What's great, unequivocally
> American (note I didn't cite Susan Cooper up there, and no, Guy
> Gavriel Kay won't count either), and post-<Little, Big> ?

That's what, early 1980s, right? <google> <OH NEAT[1]> Yes, it
was published in 1981. Zelazny, Vance, Gene Wolfe, GRRMartin,
Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher and many others have published
highly-regarded will-probably-be-read-years-from-now fantasy
works since then.

So, simplistically and unsatisfyingly: by my tastes and by my metrics,
Crowley's LB was never the best/greatest anything.

Tony
[1] According to Google, today is Bram Stoker's 165th Birthday.

[Tim.B...@redbridge.gov.uk]

I assume that GoT is George 'Shadow' Martin's Games of Thrones.

No idea IRTMO 'CMA;' I may end up like unto a thing of your good self, forehead-wise.

[Anthony Nance]

Ah - seems likely, thanks. In which case, I shall only strike
hard enough to make a small, quickly-fading red mark.

> No idea IRTMO 'CMA;' I may end up like unto a thing of your good self, forehead-wise.

My current guess is "Crowning Moments of Awesome" (more usually "CMoA"),
and referring to the Harry Dresden books.

Tony

[Michael Stemper]

In article <48a5d977-4cdc-4d01...@googlegroups.com>, Tim.B...@redbridge.gov.uk writes:
>On Thursday, 8 November 2012 12:29:37 UTC, Anthony Nance wrote:
>> Ted Nolan <tednolan> <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote:
>> > In article <57650f7d-749e-4cc8...@googlegroups.com>, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>> >>The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm

>> >>"the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
>> >>"The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute

>> >>1) Was it really?

My reaction was similar to Dorothy's, although I got forty or fifty
pages into it.

>> > I would say it would have to be quite good to top GOT or all the CMAs in
>> > Dresden.

>> I am caffeine deprived (being remedied, though) and will surely
>> smack my forehead upon learning, but I'd like to know how hard
>> to smack it: What are "GOT" and "CMAs"?
>
>I assume that GoT is George 'Shadow' Martin's Games of Thrones.
>
>No idea IRTMO 'CMA;'

I figured that it meant "Crowning Moments (of) Awesome", but I'm not
familiar with Dresden's work, so this may be way off-base.

--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
COFFEE.SYS not found. Abort, Retry, Fail?

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <k7g8jg$5bi$1...@dont-email.me>,

The latter, I think, are "Country Music Awards," which just
happened and can be seen if you surf the web incautiously. But
maybe this is not the case in this context.

[David Johnston]

On 11/7/2012 7:13 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm
> currently reading, quotes two different writers about the book whose
> remarks appeared in the <Washington Post Book World>: Michael Dirda
> and someone whom I, perhaps anachronistically, suspect of being John
> Clute. Understandably (given Harper's motives in quoting) but still
> curiously, both quotes end with nearly identical words.
>
> "the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
> "The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute
>
> I suppose this odd coincidence raises questions of its own, but I'm
> more interested in the two obvious questions that follow on from
> what these overlapping phrases *say*.
>
> 1) Was it really?
>

Well I hated it, so it's a good candidate.

[Wayne Throop]

: Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
: The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, [...]
: "the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda

: "The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute

: [...]
: 1) Was it really?

My problem with such a question and/or claim, is that it implies
that greatitude and/or bestitude is both linear and audience independent.
So... it's pretty close to being a meaningless question.

: Have fun with this.

Well, in the sense of wrangling over what the "greatest" and/or
"best" fantasy works are, sure, could be fun. I do note that we've
already run into the "boundary between science fiction and fantasy"
issue, since somebody advocated considering works by Zelazny, and his
arguably-most-famous work, Lord of Light, isn't a fantasy. It's actually
science fiction, roughly as "hard" as Niven. (There are probably other
bumps up against that boundary elsewhere, but that's one I happened
to notice.)

[Joe Bernstein]

On Wednesday, November 7, 2012 8:21:27 PM UTC-8, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

> In article <57650f7d-749e-4cc8...@googlegroups.com>, Joe
> Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> >The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm

> >"the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
> >"The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute

> >1) Was it really?

> Not having read it, I can't say but

Odd that replies so far have consisted largely of people finding ways to
say so, rather than people sticking up for this or that favourite. Not
what I expected.

(When, in the past, I've talked about John Crowley here, I've *never* gotten
the impression <Little, Big> was so widely hated that mentioning it could
derail a discussion, the way the Thomas Covenant books often are. Except
that y'all aren't talking about "hate" so much as, well, not-like. Which
makes it even weirder.)

> >2. Is it still?

> I would say it would have to be quite good to top GOT or all the CMAs in
> Dresden.

I have no qualms at all saying <Little, Big> is greater than either the
whole of Ice & Fire to date, or the best individual work therein (which,
hmmm, yeah, probably is <A Game of Thrones>).

"Best" is probably way too subjective to make arguments about it even
enjoyable, let alone meaningful, but "greatest" points to something
that I believe (despite periodic outbreaks here of mass insistence to
the contrary) has *some* objectivity to it. When literary critics
talk about something as "great", there's usually at least some element
of the specific meaning: "Offers lots to think and talk about". Which,
in turn, often gets interpreted as meaning, lots of the kinds of things
literary critics *like* to think and talk about. But even if you take
the volume of speculation about Westeros that <A Game of Thrones>, in
particular, can spawn, as evidence of its greatness, I don't think that
even comes close to the many ways <Little, Big> is provably "great" in
this sense. This is the reason, for example, that I'm inclined to
concede that both <The Last Unicorn> and for that matter Crowley's own
<Engine Summer> are, if not *worse* than <Little, Big>, anyway less
great.

I've been contemplating picking up Jim Butcher's books again, having
read the first few Dresdens about a decade ago, and remembering very
little. So I won't comment.

[Joe Bernstein]

On Thursday, November 8, 2012 4:57:29 AM UTC-8, Anthony Nance wrote:

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> > 1) Was it really?

> Hard for me to say for two reasons: - Objectively, what are the
> metrics? What are the hallmarks of "best/greatest"?

I just posted some remarks about this.

> And you might
> have to draw a lasso around "fantasy" too, which is a quagmire all
> its own.

One whose quagmirishness I've consistently belittled for decades, here
as elsewhere. Outside cases like "Fantasy is all speculative fiction
that isn't hard science fiction", relatively few of the really great
works are in widely recognised borderlands, and I suspect any such can
fairly easily defend themselves against any attempt to rule them out.

I'm not really trying to get an academic discussion going here,
mostly just a thread about favourites. So...

> I'd also consider works by Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, and Roger
> Zelazny at the very least.

Mmm. <The Broken Sword> or <Three Hearts and Three Lions> ? The latter,
I'd lump with <The Last Unicorn> as perhaps a competitor for "best", but
probably not for "greatest"; I don't remember <The Broken Sword> well
enough to consider it. What by Vance? (Pre-1981 and outright fantasy.)
If under Zelazny you mean Amber, I'm very dubious; if not, I have to ask
what you *do* mean.

> And I'll ignore YA only because I
> (perhaps incorrectly) think you want to exclude it.

No, I just excluded individual examples one by one. Gregorian's <Broken
Citadel> and Alexander's Prydain books just aren't in the right league.
Cooper grew up British, and her fantasy specifically derives from
homesickness for Britain. I mentioned Le Guin. I mentioned McKillip as
*post*-1981, thereby implying I don't actually consider the Riddlemaster
trilogy her best work. (It's also only debateably YA. Her best certainly
YA book as of 1981 was <The Forgotten Beasts of Eld>, which is a stronger
candidate than anything by Alexander but not, I think, strong enough.)

> > 2. Is it still?

> > In other words, the titular question. What's great, unequivocally

> > American and post-<Little, Big> ?

> That's what, early 1980s, right? <google> <OH NEAT[1]> Yes, it was
> published in 1981. Zelazny, Vance, Gene Wolfe, GRRMartin, Brandon
> Sanderson, Jim Butcher and many others have published highly-regarded
> will-probably-be-read-years-from-now fantasy works since then.

Zelazny *since* 1981? Huh? In Wolfe's case, do you mean the Latro
books or something else?

I'm amused to be the first person in this thread to mention Robert
Jordan, by the way.

[David DeLaney]

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>On Thursday, November 8, 2012 4:57:29 AM UTC-8, Anthony Nance wrote:
>> I'd also consider works by Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, and Roger
>> Zelazny at the very least.
>
>Mmm. <The Broken Sword> or <Three Hearts and Three Lions> ? The latter,
>I'd lump with <The Last Unicorn> as perhaps a competitor for "best", but
>probably not for "greatest"; I don't remember <The Broken Sword> well
>enough to consider it. What by Vance? (Pre-1981 and outright fantasy.)
>If under Zelazny you mean Amber, I'm very dubious; if not, I have to ask
>what you *do* mean.

Anderson also has Operation Chaos. Vance, let's see... we're looking for PRE-
1981 now? The Dying Earth and The Eyes of the Overworld, and probably at least
one Lyonesse book. Zelazny: Amber qualifies, though how good it is is
debatable, but a LOT of stuff is debatable, which brings us back to the "how
DO we determine this objectively?" question. One could also consider any of
Creatures of Light and Darkness, Jack of Shadows, and Roadmarks to be at least
half-fantasy, and Changeling and Madwand are outright high fantasy. Dilvish
is 1982 so misses the cutoff, and A Dark Traveling is 1987... but The Last
Defender of Camelot collection is 1980.

>No, I just excluded individual examples one by one. Gregorian's <Broken
>Citadel> and Alexander's Prydain books just aren't in the right league.
>Cooper grew up British, and her fantasy specifically derives from
>homesickness for Britain.

You're probably keeping out the Green Knowe books then too. But what about
Half Magic etc.?

> I mentioned McKillip as
>*post*-1981, thereby implying I don't actually consider the Riddlemaster
>trilogy her best work. (It's also only debateably YA. Her best certainly
>YA book as of 1981 was <The Forgotten Beasts of Eld>, which is a stronger
>candidate than anything by Alexander but not, I think, strong enough.)

I'd put the Riddlemaster trilogy on a list of great fantasy works in a
heartbeat. I reread it every so often, myself. TFBoE is her only other
pre-1981 book I'd think of, too.

>I'm amused to be the first person in this thread to mention Robert
>Jordan, by the way.

Well, it SEEMS like forever, but the Wheel of Time didn't start blowing until
1990.

Dave, and soon its last known turn shall be revealed. Two more months sigh.
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:18:10 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:a2658a70-58dc-45ac...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> I'm not really trying to get an academic discussion going
> here, mostly just a thread about favourites.

That's a much more reasonable objective than nonsense about
'greatest' and 'best'; I'll even play that game. Some that
I consider exceptionally good, exceptionally enjoyable, or
exceptionally memorable, in no particular order:

_A Rumor of Gems_; _Jurgen_; _Silverlock_; _All the
Windwracked Stars_; the Riddlemaster trilogy, which I
consider to be a single novel (and just about anything else
by McKillip, but that one remains my favorite by far); _The
Last Unicorn_; _Sunshine_; _The Blue Sword_; _The Private
Life of Helen of Troy_ (though it stretches the boundaries
of the genre a bit); _The Curse of Chalion_; damn' near
anything by Michelle Sagara/West; _The Door into
Fire/Shadow/Sunset_; _Bridge of Birds_; _The Perilous Gard_;
_Three Hearts and Three Lions_; _The Night Life of the
Gods_; The Orphan's Tales_; _David and the Phoenix_; the
Chronicles of Prydain; _A Wizard of Earthsea_; _A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_; _Eyes Like
Stars_; _Except the Queen_

(Well, okay: _A Rumor of Gems_ is first on the list because
it's the best relatively recent fantasy that practically no
one seems to know.)

Many of these books simply can't reasonably be compared with
one another; they're on the list for a variety of reasons.

[...]

> I mentioned McKillip as *post*-1981, thereby implying I
> don't actually consider the Riddlemaster trilogy her best
> work. (It's also only debateably YA. Her best certainly
> YA book as of 1981 was <The Forgotten Beasts of Eld>,
> which is a stronger candidate than anything by Alexander
> but not, I think, strong enough.)

I don't think that it's any more YA than the Riddlemaster
trilogy. Possibly less, in fact.

[...]

Brian

[Wayne Throop]

: Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
: I'm not really trying to get an academic discussion going here, mostly

: just a thread about favourites. So...

I'll reveal my shallowness, and throw into the mix
Duncan's "A Man of his Word" / "A Few Good Men",
and Bujold's "Sharing Knife" series.

I doubt they rate as high to many others as they do to me.
I'm also not sure I can fully characterize why they rate so high to me.

[Moriarty]

On Nov 9, 8:54 am, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

> _; the Riddlemaster trilogy, which I
> consider to be a single novel

You do? Even though it's one story, each novel is largely self-
contained. I think, deeply unsatisfying as it would have been, you
could (almost) say the first novel was standalone.

What differentiates Riddle Master from every other series?

-Moriarty

[Kay Shapero]

In article <57650f7d-749e-4cc8...@googlegroups.com>,
j...@sfbooks.com says...

>
> The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm
> currently reading, quotes two different writers about the book whose
> remarks appeared in the <Washington Post Book World>: Michael Dirda
> and someone whom I, perhaps anachronistically, suspect of being John
> Clute. Understandably (given Harper's motives in quoting) but still
> curiously, both quotes end with nearly identical words.
>
> "the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
> "The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute
>
> I suppose this odd coincidence raises questions of its own, but I'm
> more interested in the two obvious questions that follow on from
> what these overlapping phrases *say*.
>
> 1) Was it really?

My guess would be it was sufficiently lit'rary (unreadable)to be
considered respectable to the two quoted. Most of the other US
fantasies being by "genre" writers, dontchaknow. Though you'd think
they'd notice the works of Ray Bradbury, or Peter S. Beagle.
--

Kay Shapero
Address munged, try my first name at kayshapero dot net.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 15:41:11 -0800 (PST), Moriarty
<blu...@ivillage.com> wrote in
<news:7b1c5203-95cf-4174...@v6g2000pbb.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> On Nov 9, 8:54�am, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu>
> wrote:

>> _; the Riddlemaster trilogy, which I
>> consider to be a single novel

> You do? Even though it's one story, each novel is largely
> self- contained.

Hardly: the first volume ends on a cliffhanger. Yes, I know
that _Heir of Sea and Fire_ doesn't take up immediately
where _The Riddlemaster of Hed_ leaves off; the thing is
still an organic whole.

> I think, deeply unsatisfying as it would have been, you
> could (almost) say the first novel was standalone.

I certainly couldn't. The only volume that I could even
imagine considering a standalone is the last, and it's
missing too much of the background.

> What differentiates Riddle Master from every other series?

Every *other* series? Even if it's a genuine trilogy, as
distinct from a single novel unfortunately divided into
three parts for publication, like LotR; it certainly isn't a
series. Michelle Sagara's Elantra Chronicles are a series;
her Sun Sword hexalogy is not.

Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Thu, 08 Nov 2012 23:16:19 GMT, Wayne Throop
<thr...@sheol.org> wrote in <news:13524...@sheol.org> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

I've never been disappointed by Duncan, but I've also never
been thoroughly captivated. I very much liked the Sharing
Knife books and might well rate them higher did I not rate
_The Curse of Chalion_ and _Paladin of Souls_ so much higher
yet.

Brian

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <k7gctj$u4q$1...@dont-email.me>,

Yep!

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <7b1c5203-95cf-4174...@v6g2000pbb.googlegroups.com>,

Ooh! A Riddle!

I know, "man"! No, wait, "a key"!

[David DeLaney]

On Thu, 08 Nov 2012 23:16:19 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
>I'll reveal my shallowness, and throw into the mix
>Duncan's "A Man of his Word" / "A Few Good Men",

Psst: "A Handful of Men" for the second.

>and Bujold's "Sharing Knife" series.
>
>I doubt they rate as high to many others as they do to me.
>I'm also not sure I can fully characterize why they rate so high to me.

I very much liked the Duncan double-tetr. I reread it when it goes by in the
rotation.

Dave

[Wayne Throop]

:: I'll reveal my shallowness, and throw into the mix
:: Duncan's "A Man of his Word" / "A Few Good Men",

: Psst: "A Handful of Men" for the second.

Aaauuuggghhh! *More* misfiring neurons. Dagnabbit.

Anyways, when I said

:: I'm also not sure I can fully characterize why they rate so high to me.

I can *partially* do so, and that's because of the worldbuilding, and
the consistency with which it's used as a story backdrop. I know lots
of folks don't thrill to that sort of thing, but oh well.

Duncan in general is (imo) very good at worldbuilding.
Not in the bolts-and-rivets-and-calculations sense, but in the
nifty-concepts sense. (The Impire. Heh. OK, so it's a funny-once,
but he pulls it off...) Likewise Sanderson, so I rate most of his
stuff very high.

[David Goldfarb]

In article <k7gngv$6ii$1...@dont-email.me>,

David Johnston <Da...@block.net> wrote:
>On 11/7/2012 7:13 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
>> John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>
>>

>> "the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
>> "The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute
>>

>> 1) Was it really?
>>
>
>Well I hated it, so it's a good candidate.

I read it when I was 16, and I was bored by it. I read it again when
I was 32, and was enthralled.

--
David Goldfarb |"It's okay to disagree with me. However, once I
goldf...@gmail.com |explain where you're wrong you're supposed to
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |become enlightened and change your mind.
|Congratulating me on how smart I am is optional."
| -- Karl Johanson

[Titus G]

Joe Bernstein wrote:

> I have no qualms at all saying <Little, Big> is greater than either
> the whole of Ice & Fire to date, or the best individual work therein
> (which, hmmm, yeah, probably is <A Game of Thrones>).

I have recently finished Feast of Crows (Bk 4 of Ice and Fire) and have
enjoyed theseries immensely so have big expectations for Little,Big which I
have just downloaded. Thank you for the thumbs up.

[Wayne Throop]

:::: [...] all the CMAs in Dresden. [...]

Y'know, that'd be a good book title. Maybe.
All the tea in China, all the CMAs in Dresden, yada yada.

But let me also recommend all the CMAs in Alera.

And by the way... I can now imagine Alera as Gunnerkrigg Court's Miss
Jones. Sure, the Alera doesn't look as human, but I think her affect
would be the same. And for much the same reason.

"Aren't you uncomfortable?"
"No."
"Is it because you are a robot?"
"I am not a robot."
--- Antimony and Miss Jones

"That must be difficult. To be alone."
"I would knot know. I am not alone."
--- Isana and Kitai

[jack....@gmail.com]

I'd say Gene Wolfe's _Soldier of the Mist_ requires enough work to
understand what is going on to qualify as literary. As for good, I've
reread it more than _Little, Big_.

--
-Jack

[William F. Adams]

On Nov 8, 4:23 pm, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> >On Thursday, November 8, 2012 4:57:29 AM UTC-8, Anthony Nance wrote:
> >> I'd also consider works by Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, and Roger
> >> Zelazny at the very least.
>
> >Mmm.  <The Broken Sword> or <Three Hearts and Three Lions> ?  The latter,
> >I'd lump with <The Last Unicorn> as perhaps a competitor for "best", but
> >probably not for "greatest"; I don't remember <The Broken Sword> well
> >enough to consider it.  What by Vance?  (Pre-1981 and outright fantasy.)
> >If under Zelazny you mean Amber, I'm very dubious; if not, I have to ask
> >what you *do* mean.
>
> Anderson also has Operation Chaos. Vance, let's see... we're looking for PRE-
> 1981 now? The Dying Earth and The Eyes of the Overworld, and probably at least
> one Lyonesse book.

That was my first thought, but Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden was released
in April 1983.

William

[Howard Brazee]

On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 15:50:46 -0800, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net>
wrote:

>My guess would be it was sufficiently lit'rary (unreadable)to be
>considered respectable to the two quoted. Most of the other US
>fantasies being by "genre" writers, dontchaknow. Though you'd think
>they'd notice the works of Ray Bradbury, or Peter S. Beagle.

The trouble comes when they have funny ways of defining authors and
their works.

I wonder where they put Michael Chabon.

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison

[sfeam]

Joe Bernstein wrote:

> The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm
> currently reading, quotes two different writers about the book whose
> remarks appeared in the <Washington Post Book World>: Michael Dirda
> and someone whom I, perhaps anachronistically, suspect of being John
> Clute. Understandably (given Harper's motives in quoting) but still
> curiously, both quotes end with nearly identical words.
>
> "the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
> "The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute
>
> I suppose this odd coincidence raises questions of its own, but I'm
> more interested in the two obvious questions that follow on from
> what these overlapping phrases *say*.
>
> 1) Was it really?

If the publication dates were only slightly different, I would have
an immediate response. I read _Little, Big_ and Helprin's _Winter's Tale_
in quick succession and I've re-read both of them since.
I wrote an extensive comparison at the time that you can probably
find in the archives. Both tackle similar themes, and both are
very well written. But for me _Winter's Tale_ is just plain better
on any scale I can think of to make the comparison. Unfortunately
for the purpose of your specific question, it was published 2 years
after _Little, Big_ so it was not available for comparison at the
time of initial reviews.

Now, on to the larger question - other candidates for pre-1981 American
fiction that a mainstream reviewer might recognize as great fantasy.
Off the top of my head:
Bradbury - "Dandelion Wine"
Beagle - "The Last Unicorn" (or "A Fine and Private Place")
I personally find AFaPP less engaging that most Beagle
but it did get favorable notice when it came out.
Kipling - Can we count Kipling? He was living in Vermont when he
wrote _The Jungle Book_
Le Guin - "Earthsea" trilogy (_Tehanu_ was written later)
Gardner - "Grendel"

I would myself place any of these well ahead of _Little, Big_.


Ethan Merritt

> Obvious alternative candidates that spring to *my* mind include
> <The Wonderful Wizard of Oz>, <The Circus of Dr Lao>, and <The Last
> Unicorn> without even trying. Writers I like less should also be
> considered - Howard, Lovecraft, CA Smith; Poe; Cabell... And any
> number, besides Beagle, in the postwar years; if nothing else, seems
> to me Donaldson's first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant have a decent
> claim,

Now there you have just _got_ to be kidding.
Donaldson's writing is atrocious; no matter how taken you may
or may not be with his world-building, his books are never going
to make it onto a serious list of great fiction.

> or Le Guin's first three Earthsea books.
>
> The only one of these I'd seriously consider next to <Little, Big>,
> brainstorming aside, is <The Last Unicorn>, and while I'd hesitate
> to judge "best" between them, I might be persuaded that "greatest"
> really does belong to Crowley instead.
>
> But what do y'all think?

>
> 2. Is it still?
>
> In other words, the titular question. What's great, unequivocally

> American (note I didn't cite Susan Cooper up there, and no, Guy
> Gavriel Kay won't count either), and post-<Little, Big> ?
>
> To be honest, in the couple of hours since I thought of these
> questions I've focused mainly on the first, so I don't have my list
> ready here.
>
> One thing worth noting is that this particular ranking game favours
> authors of One Big Books (a phrase I got from Andrew Wheeler). It
> isn't obvious to me that any single book by Cabell could beat
> <Little, Big> even if I liked Cabell; Baum's begins a series; and
> so forth. One reason I'm not giving suggestions for the second
> question is that I keep thinking of authors (e.g. McKillip) and not
> books.
>
> Have fun with this. My online access these days is sharply limited
> (more on this in few days), but I'll try to follow any resulting
> discussion.
>
> Joe Bernstein
>

[Elaine T]

On Wed, 7 Nov 2012 18:13:30 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm
>currently reading, quotes two different writers about the book whose
>remarks appeared in the <Washington Post Book World>: Michael Dirda
>and someone whom I, perhaps anachronistically, suspect of being John
>Clute. Understandably (given Harper's motives in quoting) but still
>curiously, both quotes end with nearly identical words.
>
>"the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
>"The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute
>
>I suppose this odd coincidence raises questions of its own, but I'm
>more interested in the two obvious questions that follow on from
>what these overlapping phrases *say*.
>
>1) Was it really?
>

'Yet written'? Maybe. Personally I prefer the LAST UNICORN, but I
haven't picked up LITTLE BIG in years and probably ought to try again.
It made remarkably little impression on me when I read it years ago.
Earthsea original trilogy partially for how much it packs into three
short books is also way up there.

>
>
>2. Is it still?
>
>In other words, the titular question. What's great, unequivocally
>American (note I didn't cite Susan Cooper up there, and no, Guy
>Gavriel Kay won't count either), and post-<Little, Big> ?
>

I keep thinking of authors, not single works, too. i'd put McKillip
up there, certainly.

If I"m going to praise a fantasy (or other work) as great American
fantasy, I think it ought to have a flavor of America. An awful lot
don't, even if written by Americans. What does come to mind are:

Bull's TERRITORY
Card's ALVIN MAKER
Bujold's SHARING KNIFE
Wrede's FRONTIER

...dang, I had at least one more in mind, and lost it...

Of those I'd say the Bujold is best.

The Bull was extremely irritating, and the Card I stopped partway
through.

Oh, Chabon's SUMMERLAND (pubbed as YA, IIRC), and CJC's RIDER AT THE
GATE, which is actually lost colony sf but reads as a Western to me.


Before anyone asks why not AMERICAN GODS I haven't read it. I've
tried other Gaiman and was uninterested.

--
Elaine T.
Ela...@kethompson.org

[Brian M. Scott]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 03:16:07 GMT, David Goldfarb
<gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu> wrote in
<news:MD7AE...@kithrup.com> in rec.arts.sf.written:

> In article <k7gngv$6ii$1...@dont-email.me>,
> David Johnston <Da...@block.net> wrote:

>>On 11/7/2012 7:13 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:

>>> John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>

>>> "the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
>>> "The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute

>>> 1) Was it really?

>>Well I hated it, so it's a good candidate.

> I read it when I was 16, and I was bored by it. I read it again when
> I was 32, and was enthralled.

I was 33 when it came out; it didn't help. I tried at least
once again many years later, and it was still thoroughly
uninviting. The Two Deadlier Words: Who Cares?

Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:30:46 -0800, sfeam
<sf...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote in
<news:k7ji4o$h8u$1...@dont-email.me> in rec.arts.sf.written:

No: he's unequivocally English.

> Le Guin - "Earthsea" trilogy (_Tehanu_ was written later)

There is no _Tehanu_.

[...]

>> Obvious alternative candidates that spring to *my* mind
>> include <The Wonderful Wizard of Oz>, <The Circus of Dr
>> Lao>, and <The Last Unicorn> without even trying.
>> Writers I like less should also be considered - Howard,
>> Lovecraft, CA Smith; Poe; Cabell... And any number,
>> besides Beagle, in the postwar years; if nothing else,
>> seems to me Donaldson's first Chronicles of Thomas
>> Covenant have a decent claim,

> Now there you have just _got_ to be kidding. Donaldson's

> writing is atrocious; [...]

You'll get quite a bit of disagreement on that score, even
from people who can't stand most of his books, like me.
(It's been a long time, but believe that I enjoyed _Daughter
of Regals_ and possibly the Mordant's Need duology.) I'd no
problem with his writing; I just don't care about his
characters. At all.

Brian

[Joe Bernstein]

On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:23:11 PM UTC-8, David DeLaney wrote:

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 4:57:29 AM UTC-8, Anthony Nance wrote:

>>> I'd also consider works by Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, and Roger
>>> Zelazny at the very least.

>> Mmm. <The Broken Sword> or <Three Hearts and Three Lions> ? The latter,
>> I'd lump with <The Last Unicorn> as perhaps a competitor for "best", but
>> probably not for "greatest"; I don't remember <The Broken Sword> well
>> enough to consider it. What by Vance? (Pre-1981 and outright fantasy.)
>> If under Zelazny you mean Amber, I'm very dubious; if not, I have to ask
>> what you *do* mean.

> Anderson also has Operation Chaos. Vance, let's see... we're looking
> for PRE- 1981 now? The Dying Earth and The Eyes of the Overworld,

Duh. Deeply not to my taste (I checked again recentishly) but yeah,
they belong on this sorta list.

> Zelazny: Amber qualifies,
> though how good it is is debatable, but a LOT of stuff is debatable,
> which brings us back to the "how DO we determine this objectively?"
> question. One could also consider any of Creatures of Light and
> Darkness, Jack of Shadows, and Roadmarks to be at least half-fantasy,
> and Changeling and Madwand are outright high fantasy. Dilvish is 1982
> so misses the cutoff, and A Dark Traveling is 1987... but The Last
> Defender of Camelot collection is 1980.

I have qualms about calling a collection "a fantasy" which seems to be
the label in contention here. (See elsewhere in the thread attempts to
distinguish multivolume novels from series from, um, series. LotR is
m.n.; Riddlemaster appears to be series type 1; 1632, say, is series
type 2. I'd say m.n. and series type 1 could be "a fantasy" but no way
series type 2. Type 1 vs. type 2 is, to me, an authorly question: was
it planned in advance?)

Amber. Ouch. Several things about it have echoed through subsequent
fantasy: the sort of gritty courtliness that in the early 1990s someone
tried to call "mannerpunk" (e.g. Willey); "the guns of Avalon", so to
speak; the Primal World concept (though one later user of the idea has
told me he didn't think he'd gotten it from Amber - where, by the way,
it's utterly underdeveloped). So by the terms I've stated - "a lot to
think or talk about" but not confined to things literary critics like
to think or talk about - it's a lot stronger than I snobbishly want it
to be. Though if I had to think about Zelazny's fantasies in those
terms, I'd much rather go with <Jack of Shadows>. (Haven't read the
others.)

[Was I excluding YA on purpose?]

>> No, I just excluded individual examples one by one. Gregorian's <Broken
>> Citadel> and Alexander's Prydain books just aren't in the right league.
>> Cooper grew up British, and her fantasy specifically derives from
>> homesickness for Britain.

> You're probably keeping out the Green Knowe books then too. But what
> about Half Magic etc.?

I'm fond of <Knight's Castle> and Eager's other books, but I don't think
you can make meaningful "best" claims, let alone "greatest", of books that
amount to pastiches. His most original book is <The Well-Wishers>, and to
me it's also his least successful. And, of course, *what* they're
pastiching is British.

(Green Knowe?)

(We're just going to have to agree to disagree about Riddlemaster. If
I had to pick a single book by McKillip to put on this list, it'd be
either <The Changeling Sea>, <The Sorceress and the Cygnet>, or
<Winter Rose>.)

>> I'm amused to be the first person in this thread to mention Robert
>> Jordan, by the way.

> Well, it SEEMS like forever, but the Wheel of Time didn't start blowing
> until 1990. Dave, and soon its last known turn shall be revealed. Two
> more months sigh.

But see the thread subject. I'm asking both about pre- and about post-
1981.

And for post, I'm pleased to see someone's beaten me to <The Curse of
Chalion> (which I do think of as great, but probably not *as* great as
<Little, Big>) and <Bridge of Birds> (which I haven't read, but wanted
to mention in honour of the person I get this e-mail address from,
who shares a name with one of <Little, Big>'s principal characters...).
So all I have to throw in right now is <Moonwise>. Which may well
equal <Little, Big> in greatness, if I only understood it well enough!

[Joe Bernstein]

On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:54:20 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote:

> On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:18:10 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
> wrote in <news:a2658a70-58dc-45ac...@googlegroups.com>
> in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

>> I'm not really trying to get an academic discussion going
>> here, mostly just a thread about favourites.

> That's a much more reasonable objective than nonsense about 'greatest'
> and 'best'; I'll even play that game.

> Some that I consider exceptionally good, exceptionally enjoyable, or
> exceptionally memorable, in no particular order: _A Rumor of Gems_;

? I don't remember it all that well.

> _Jurgen_;

Would that be your pick of Cabell? Or have you read enough Cabell
to have a pick? (I've only read two books.)

> _Silverlock_;

Hmmm. Seems to me <Silverlock> cheats in the "lots to think or talk about"
category.

> _All the Windwracked Stars_;

I might end up agreeing with you on this. I put off writing about this
in my book log, ostensibly because I knew there were related books that
I hadn't read yet - but where I'm confident about a book, that doesn't
stop me.

> _Sunshine_; _The Blue Sword_;

I wouldn't really consider either of these for "greatest" or "best".
(How many times need I restate my objective? The last time I defined
"my favourite book" was sometime around 1992, and the definition was
*three* books, <The Last Unicorn>, <War and Peace>, and <Little, Big>.
Probably "favourites" wasn't quite the word I wanted either.)

> damn' near anything by Michelle Sagara/West;

Is there anything you can put into words about what I'm missing here?
I read the Sagara ?quintet and the two Hunters books, and found I had
no interest at all in going on to the really thick West volumes.

> _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_;

OK, yep, we had collectively ignored that one.

> (Well, okay: _A Rumor of Gems_ is first on the list because it's the
> best relatively recent fantasy that practically no one seems to know.)

I'll see that and raise you Alaya Dawn Johnson's <Racing the Dark>.
Unfortunately, per her website, the third book in that trilogy is
indefinitely postponed; she's writing "urban fantasy" to pay the bills.

[Joe Bernstein]

Ack. Um.

When <Love & Sleep> came out, we had this whole routine we had to do
at The Stars Our Destination, where I worked at the time. People would
come in wanting to buy the book that'd been on the front page of the
<Chicago Tribune> book review, with the utterly cool photo, and we'd be
like, "Um, it's a sequel. And people have very mixed opinions about
the book it's a sequel to. So if you haven't read anything by Crowley,
may we point you to these other books that are *much* more unanimously
praised?" And the other books were either <Three Novels> (for <Engine
Summer>) or <Little, Big>.

See, the people complaining about putting everything on one standard
do have one thing right: if the standard in question isn't *your*
standard, you're going to find the results disconcerting at least.
<Little, Big> is, in my opinion, unequivocally greater than Ice & Fire
in whole or in part, but that's because I use a definition of "greater"
that not only is formulated by literary critics, but is mildly biased
in favour of their concerns. I don't feel all that apologetic about
this by and large - having spent quite enough of my life reifying
secondary worlds, I *know* things like allusion and meaningful repetition
have more value - but the fact is, <Little, Big> massively *fails* to
offer many of the rewards Ice & Fire *does* have. Not only does it
entirely lack in combat scenes, for example, but it has very little at
all to say about honour. What <Little, Big> is, is a novel about the
human relationship with the fey, as seen almost entirely from the human
side; and so it presages Crowley's mostly less spec-ficnal subsequent
work. It is a tribute to and summing up of British fantasy (one of its
sharpest contrasts with Helprin's <Winter's Tale>) in American dress;
and so it's quiet and moving, rather than majestic and moving. And so on.

So, I mean, yeah, I *hope* you enjoy the hell out of it, but if you don't,
it'll be *all my fault*, and I'm sorry.

Joe Bernstein

PS I think I actually caught something vaguely resembling a flaw in the
ending, this time round, last night. We're given as good as a promise
that Grandfather Trout will meet Marge Juniper again, but it comes so
close to the end that Crowley doesn't find a way to visibly fulfill the
promise, at least near as I can tell. So plot-wise, it's a hole, and
technique-wise, it represents his reaching further than he can grasp in
the whole technique of meaningful repetition.

[Joe Bernstein]

On Friday, November 9, 2012 10:30:49 AM UTC-8, sfeam wrote:

> Joe Bernstein wrote:

> > 1) Was it really?

> If the publication dates were only slightly different, I would have
> an immediate response. I read _Little, Big_ and Helprin's _Winter's
> Tale_ in quick succession and I've re-read both of them since. I wrote
> an extensive comparison at the time that you can probably find in the
> archives. Both tackle similar themes, and both are very well written. But
> for me _Winter's Tale_ is just plain better on any scale I can think of
> to make the comparison. Unfortunately for the purpose of your specific
> question, it was published 2 years after _Little, Big_ so it was not
> available for comparison at the time of initial reviews.

I'm going to have to look up your comparison, because I find its results
deeply unobvious. But I haven't read <Winter's Tale> in over a decade,
so would have to re-read it too. I'm thinking that when I'm caught up,
I'll post a "Novels of John Crowley", even though one was done back when
James Nicoll came up with the idea; I could re-read <Winter's Tale> while
writing that.

At any rate, <Winter's Tale> is certainly a logical candidate for my
*other* question.

> Now, on to the larger question - other candidates for pre-1981
> American fiction that a mainstream reviewer might recognize as great
> fantasy. Off the top of my head:
> Bradbury - "Dandelion Wine"

Haven't read.

> Beagle - "The Last Unicorn" (or "A Fine and Private Place")
> I personally find AFaPP less engaging that most Beagle but it did
> get favorable notice when it came out.

I did list <The Last Unicorn> as my own strongest alternative candidate.

> Kipling - Can we count Kipling? He was living in Vermont when he
> wrote _The Jungle Book_

No.

> Le Guin - "Earthsea" trilogy (_Tehanu_ was written later)

Listed right after your last comment, below.

> Gardner - "Grendel"
> I would myself place any of these well ahead of _Little, Big_. Ethan Merritt

<The Jungle Book> ?

I realise none of these is an outright lightweight, but still you
*really* can't have thought much of <Little, Big>.

>> if nothing else, seems
>> to me Donaldson's first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant have a decent
>> claim,

> Now there you have just _got_ to be kidding. Donaldson's writing is
> atrocious; no matter how taken you may or may not be with his world-
> building, his books are never going to make it onto a serious list
> of great fiction.

I plan to re-read when the latest last Thomas Covenant book shows up
(?fourth in the current trilogy?). That said, Donaldson's writing
varies considerably. What I *remember* is, first, that it goes
*downhill* especially in the second Thomas Covenant set, but that
in "Mordant's Need" he's all better again. Granted he isn't as
euphonious as some writers, but "atrocious" is too strong, and even
"bad" is limited to two or so books.

Joe Bernstein

[Kay Shapero]

In article <7avo98tjrsed28m6a...@4ax.com>,
how...@brazee.net says...

>
> On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 15:50:46 -0800, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net>
> wrote:
>
> >My guess would be it was sufficiently lit'rary (unreadable)to be
> >considered respectable to the two quoted. Most of the other US
> >fantasies being by "genre" writers, dontchaknow. Though you'd think
> >they'd notice the works of Ray Bradbury, or Peter S. Beagle.
>
>
> The trouble comes when they have funny ways of defining authors and
> their works.
>
> I wonder where they put Michael Chabon.

I dunno, but after I fought my way through his Yiddish Policeman's Union
to the point that the protagonist did something so mindbogglingly stupid
that I decided that if there WAS a pony in there somewhere I didn't want
it anyway, I put it back on the library shelf and have not essayed any
of his other works.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 17:15:19 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:746533d7-1a36-4dd3...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:54:20 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote:

>> On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:18:10 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
>> wrote in <news:a2658a70-58dc-45ac...@googlegroups.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.written:

> [...]

>>> I'm not really trying to get an academic discussion
>>> going here, mostly just a thread about favourites.

>> That's a much more reasonable objective than nonsense
>> about 'greatest' and 'best'; I'll even play that game.

>> Some that I consider exceptionally good, exceptionally
>> enjoyable, or exceptionally memorable, in no particular
>> order: _A Rumor of Gems_;

> ? I don't remember it all that well.

Ellen Steiber. Most of it takes place in the old port city
of Arcato. Verges on magical realism. If you've read it,
you're only the third person I've run across besides me who
has. (The other two are Delia Sherman, who had Steiber as a
student in a workshop, and Ellen Kushner.)

>> _Jurgen_;

> Would that be your pick of Cabell? Or have you read
> enough Cabell to have a pick? (I've only read two
> books.)

I've read at least _Jurgen_ and the six published in the
Ballantine Adult Fantasy series; I'm not sure whether I've
read more than that. I read _Jurgen_ long before that, and
I'd read the arithmetic lesson even before that, so it
simply made the biggest impression on me. (I even inserted
a *very* thinly disguised Jurgen into the imitation
Traveller in Black story that I wrote many years ago.)

>> _Silverlock_;

> Hmmm. Seems to me <Silverlock> cheats in the "lots to
> think or talk about" category.

But I don't care about that category.

[...]

>> _Sunshine_; _The Blue Sword_;

> I wouldn't really consider either of these for "greatest" or "best".

And I won't play the greatest/best game, because I think
that it's ridiculous. I will say that I consider _The Blue
Sword_ an absolute gem of what I think of loosely as high or
traditional fantasy and a Paradebeispiel of the subgenre.
And _Sunshine_ is easily my favorite vampire story, sets up
a world that I'd love to visit again, and is also on my
shortlist of really good alien contact stories.

> (How many times need I restate my objective? The last
> time I defined "my favourite book" was sometime around
> 1992, and the definition was *three* books, <The Last
> Unicorn>, <War and Peace>, and <Little, Big>. Probably
> "favourites" wasn't quite the word I wanted either.)

I'll grant that 'favorite book' isn't as silly as
'best/greatest book', but I still find it pretty silly.
Favorite book_s_ are another matter.

>> damn' near anything by Michelle Sagara/West;

> Is there anything you can put into words about what I'm
> missing here? I read the Sagara ?quintet

Do you mean the tetralogy _The Sundered_, her first
published novels? I consider them distinctly her weakest
work, though I liked them well enough at the time.

> and the two Hunters books, and found I had no interest at
> all in going on to the really thick West volumes.

The people. They're real, and I find them exceptionally
engaging and worth caring about. It doesn't hurt that the
protagonist of the Elantra books, Kaylin Neya, could almost
have been deliberately designed to appeal to me. Jewel, in
the Sun Sword and House War novels, is another of that
general type, though she doesn't hit my target dead centre
as Kaylin does. Alexis, from the novella 'The Black
Ospreys', Kiriel (from the Sun Sword), and Duster (from the
House Wars) are three more. But really it's all of the
people, including the ones who aren't human.

The worlds, and the world-building that went into them.
Both the Essalieyan universe and the Elantra universe are
complex, multi-layered worlds.

The emotional depth, often conveyed indirectly and by
understatement, especially when she's writing as Michelle
West in the Essalieyan universe. I tend to read her much
more closely than most, partly for pleasure and partly out
of necessity. Her writing as Michelle Sagara in the
Chronicles of Elantra has the same general characteristics
but is a bit more accessible, I think.

[...]

Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 17:02:42 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:280d4221-7250-4467...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:23:11 PM UTC-8, David
> DeLaney wrote:

[...]

>> Vance, let's see... we're looking for PRE- 1981 now? The
>> Dying Earth and The Eyes of the Overworld,

> Duh. Deeply not to my taste (I checked again recentishly)
> but yeah, they belong on this sorta list.

I'd include the original Dying Earth stories, but that's it;
he completely lost the touch after them.

>> Zelazny: Amber qualifies, though how good it is is
>> debatable, but a LOT of stuff is debatable, which brings
>> us back to the "how DO we determine this objectively?"
>> question. One could also consider any of Creatures of
>> Light and Darkness, Jack of Shadows, and Roadmarks to be
>> at least half-fantasy, and Changeling and Madwand are
>> outright high fantasy. Dilvish is 1982 so misses the
>> cutoff, and A Dark Traveling is 1987... but The Last
>> Defender of Camelot collection is 1980.

> I have qualms about calling a collection "a fantasy" which
> seems to be the label in contention here. (See elsewhere
> in the thread attempts to distinguish multivolume novels
> from series from, um, series. LotR is m.n.; Riddlemaster
> appears to be series type 1;

No. It's a three-volume novel. I can almost understand
calling it a trilogy, something between a three-volume novel
and a genuine series, but by no stretch of the imagination
can it be considered it series.

L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero/Miranda trilogy, on the other
hand, feels to me like a real trilogy. Michelle West's Sun
Sword hexalogy is just that; it's not a single long novel.
I've not made up my mind about the Malazan decalogy, but I'm
leaning towards considering it a huge novel.

> 1632, say, is series type 2.

_1632_ is the first volume of an open-ended series. That's
not the only kind. Mark Del Franco's Connor Grey novels are
a closed series of six volumes, apparently planned as such,
though the closed nature of the series was far from evident
until the last volume. Jes Battis's Tess Corday novels are
a closed series of five volumes; here again the closed
nature of the series was not apparent until the last volume,
but in this case I don't know whether it was planned from
the start: to me the last volume has a rushed feel.

[...]

> Amber. Ouch. Several things about it have echoed through
> subsequent fantasy: the sort of gritty courtliness that
> in the early 1990s someone tried to call "mannerpunk"
> (e.g. Willey);

Elizabeth Willey, _The Well-Favored Man_ et seq.? Much as I
like Zelazny in general, I'll take her novels over all but
the first or possibly first two of the Amber novels. Martha
Wells, too, albeit in somewhat different vein.

[...]

Brian

[Howard Brazee]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 18:37:22 -0800, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net>
wrote:

>> The trouble comes when they have funny ways of defining authors and
>> their works.
>>
>> I wonder where they put Michael Chabon.
>
>I dunno, but after I fought my way through his Yiddish Policeman's Union
>to the point that the protagonist did something so mindbogglingly stupid
>that I decided that if there WAS a pony in there somewhere I didn't want
>it anyway, I put it back on the library shelf and have not essayed any
>of his other works.

He has a smaller book that is more fantasy with kids, magical beings,
and baseball that is a much easier read.

[Titus G]

Thank you for your concerns and further explanations. I shall report back
here once I have sampled it.

My current candidate for the supreme fantasy ever written by an American is
_Decision Points_. (But I didn't get very far through it.)

[David DeLaney]

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:23:11 PM UTC-8, David DeLaney wrote:
>> One could also consider any of Creatures of Light and
>> Darkness, Jack of Shadows, and Roadmarks to be at least half-fantasy,
>> and Changeling and Madwand are outright high fantasy. Dilvish is 1982
>> so misses the cutoff, and A Dark Traveling is 1987...

>Though if I had to think about Zelazny's fantasies in those
>terms, I'd much rather go with <Jack of Shadows>. (Haven't read the
>others.)

Out of those mentioned, READ CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS. It is at least
on a par with Lord of Light, and better than Jack of Shadows, to my taste.

>> You're probably keeping out the Green Knowe books then too. But what
>> about Half Magic etc.?
>
>I'm fond of <Knight's Castle> and Eager's other books, but I don't think
>you can make meaningful "best" claims, let alone "greatest", of books that
>amount to pastiches. His most original book is <The Well-Wishers>, and to
>me it's also his least successful. And, of course, *what* they're
>pastiching is British.
>
>(Green Knowe?)

British, apologies. LM Boston?

Garth Nix is ... okay, Australian, so Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen aren't in the
running. Pity.

Diane Duane was American, though, and the Young Wizards series certainly
counts under YA, and I think the Tales of the Five and Cats' Tailes series
should count too.

Diana Wynne Jones has to count one way or another. Howl's Moving Castle,
Archer's Goon, Deep Secret...

>> Well, it SEEMS like forever, but the Wheel of Time didn't start blowing
>> until 1990. Dave, and soon its last known turn shall be revealed. Two
>> more months sigh.
>
>But see the thread subject. I'm asking both about pre- and about post- 1981.

Okay, fair enough!

><Bridge of Birds> (which I haven't read, but wanted
>to mention in honour of the person I get this e-mail address from,
>who shares a name with one of <Little, Big>'s principal characters...).

READ IT. READ IT NOW. We'll wait.

You'll thank us once you're done. Then go find and read The Story of the Stone.
Eight Skilled Gentlemen is a step down in quality, sadly, but that only means
it's Very Good rather than Near Mint.

>So all I have to throw in right now is <Moonwise>. Which may well
>equal <Little, Big> in greatness, if I only understood it well enough!

Michelle Sagara/West's works have to go in here somewhere too: from her
older The Sundered tetralogy which almost nobody has heard of but which they
SHOULD have, to the Sun Sword setting with its ten or so books so far, to
the Elantra setting. The Sun Sword six-book series is a wonderfully complex
epic fantasy, though I admit it doesn't make outside literary references
three times a page like Silverlock does, or anything.

[David DeLaney]

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>> _Jurgen_;
>
>Would that be your pick of Cabell? Or have you read enough Cabell
>to have a pick? (I've only read two books.)

Jurgen is NOT the best Cabell. It's the most FAMOUS, and possibly the most
"epic fantasy travelogue"-style one... I'd put Something About Eve ahead of
it, and Figures of Earth (though others might dispute that) and the The Silver
Stallion collection.

>> damn' near anything by Michelle Sagara/West;
>
>Is there anything you can put into words about what I'm missing here?
>I read the Sagara ?quintet and the two Hunters books, and found I had
>no interest at all in going on to the really thick West volumes.

If by "Sagara quintet" you mean the Elantra series (Cast In Foo), then they're
not all that much like her others. The two Hunters books are in the same world
as the Sun Sword sextet and her current House War series, and are more in-depth
than the Hunter duology. And if you can find her The Sundered books, that's
yet another setting unrelated to the rest, closer to high fantasy. (Certainly
high CONCEPT; the Sundered of Lernan and Malthan are pretty close to what
other theologies would label "angels" and "demons", but it's an origin story
I haven't seen elsewhere and an interesting magic system AND a paranormal
romance from like a decade before that became a Category, though I guess
Sharon Green was doing that sort of stuff back then too...)

Anyone want to toss M.A. Foster into the mix? Either the ler series or the
Morphodite series...

[sfeam]

Joe Bernstein wrote:

> On Friday, November 9, 2012 10:30:49 AM UTC-8, sfeam wrote:
>
>> Joe Bernstein wrote:
>
>> > 1) Was it really?
>
>> If the publication dates were only slightly different, I would have
>> an immediate response. I read _Little, Big_ and Helprin's _Winter's
>> Tale_ in quick succession and I've re-read both of them since. I
>> wrote an extensive comparison at the time that you can probably find
>> in the archives. Both tackle similar themes, and both are very well
>> written. But for me _Winter's Tale_ is just plain better on any scale
>> I can think of to make the comparison. Unfortunately for the purpose
>> of your specific question, it was published 2 years after _Little,
>> Big_ so it was not available for comparison at the time of initial
>> reviews.
>
> I'm going to have to look up your comparison, because I find its
> results
> deeply unobvious. But I haven't read <Winter's Tale> in over a
> decade,
> so would have to re-read it too. I'm thinking that when I'm caught
> up, I'll post a "Novels of John Crowley", even though one was done
> back when James Nicoll came up with the idea; I could re-read
> <Winter's Tale> while writing that.
>
> At any rate, <Winter's Tale> is certainly a logical candidate for my
> *other* question.

Oh, the other question.
Best American fantasy post 1981?
I'll stick with consideration of works that are _about_ America
as well as being _American_, if you see what I mean.

Sean Stewart
_Night Watch_ is the one I appreciate best for its sense of place
overlaid with wonder. Problematic because the sense of place is
Vancouver in this case, but _Galveston_ and _Mockingbird_ are
squarely American. Those don't resonate as much for me because
their places are places I've never been.
Beagle
_Folk of the Air_. Berkeley this time, unmistakable sense of
place even if it calls itself Avicenna. Followed by "Julie's
Unicorn" and other vignettes. He does East Coast as well,
come to think of it. "Lila the Werewolf" is a gem.
Lindholm
_Wizard of the Pigeons_. I hesitate to put this one on the list.
Lindholm's story-telling is solid, but I wouldn't rate her in the
first rank of prose stylists. WoP is somewhat dated now, as it is
tied very much to the time (post-Vietnam War) as well as the place
(Seattle). Nevertheless, I really liked it at the time.
McKillip
_Stepping from the Shadows_ (1982). You know I'm a sucker for
almost anything by McKillip. SftS is more a story of becoming a
fantasist than it is a fantasy itself, but again the sense of
place and time anchors the work (California coast - late 60's).
And yes, I lived through the same place and time, or nearly so,
which may bias my fondness for it. Come to that, I see that
everything I've listed so far betrays my ties to the Pacific NW.

Let's see if I can drag my thoughts Eastward.

Helprin
_Winter's Tale_. Oops, San Francisco again, but just long enough
to take the train cross-continent to a magical upstate Hudson
Valley, and then down the river to New York, imagined, fantastic,
magical, nostalgic, and visionary. _Memoir From Antproof Case_
strives for more but accomplishes less.
Dean
_Tam Lin_ in particular, but also _Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary_.


Considered but rejected:
Wolfe (_Peace_, _Free, Live Free_) Gene Wolf has written some
great fantasy, but they are not the ones identifiably set in
America.
Card (_Alvin Maker_, et seq). No. Just no.



Ethan

[David Goldfarb]

In article <k7ku4g$van$1...@dont-email.me>,

sfeam <sf...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>Sean Stewart
> _Night Watch_ is the one I appreciate best for its sense of place
> overlaid with wonder. Problematic because the sense of place is
> Vancouver in this case, but _Galveston_ and _Mockingbird_ are
> squarely American. Those don't resonate as much for me because
> their places are places I've never been.

I gained much appreciation for _Galveston_, _Mockingbird_, and
_Perfect Circle_ after I moved to Houston.

--
David Goldfarb |"Obviously proud of knowing a word I didn't know,
goldf...@gmail.com |Horace carefully repeated, 'Meretricious!'.
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |Whereupon I replied, 'And a happy new year to you.'"
| -- Isaac Asimov

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:48:49 -0500, David DeLaney
<d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in
<news:slrnk9roo...@gatekeeper.vic.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

[...]

>>> damn' near anything by Michelle Sagara/West;

>> Is there anything you can put into words about what I'm
>> missing here? I read the Sagara ?quintet and the two
>> Hunters books, and found I had no interest at all in
>> going on to the really thick West volumes.

> If by "Sagara quintet" you mean the Elantra series (Cast
> In Foo),

Of which there are now eight.

But my guess is that Joe is thinking of her first tetralogy,
The Sundered.

> then they're not all that much like her others.

I don't agree: I think that they exhibit all of her
trademarks, but in a toned-down form.

[...]

> Anyone want to toss M.A. Foster into the mix? Either the
> ler series or the Morphodite series...

No, though it's a reasonable suggestion.

Hm; R.A. Lafferty really ought to be in there somewhere,
though I think that the short stories are better than his
novels.

Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:40:48 -0500, David DeLaney
<d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in
<news:slrnk9ro9...@gatekeeper.vic.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:23:11 PM UTC-8, David
>> DeLaney wrote:

>>> One could also consider any of Creatures of Light and
>>> Darkness, Jack of Shadows, and Roadmarks to be at least
>>> half-fantasy, and Changeling and Madwand are outright
>>> high fantasy. Dilvish is 1982 so misses the cutoff, and
>>> A Dark Traveling is 1987...

>> Though if I had to think about Zelazny's fantasies in
>> those terms, I'd much rather go with <Jack of Shadows>.
>> (Haven't read the others.)

> Out of those mentioned, READ CREATURES OF LIGHT AND
> DARKNESS. It is at least on a par with Lord of Light, and
> better than Jack of Shadows, to my taste.

To my taste it's not quite up to _Lord of Light_, but I'd
put it way ahead of _Jack of Shadows_,

[...]

> Diane Duane was American, though, and the Young Wizards
> series certainly counts under YA, and I think the Tales
> of the Five and Cats' Tailes series should count too.

I would not classify _Door Into Fire/Shadow/Sunset_ as YA,
any more than I'd classify Riddlemaster as YA (though that's
how it was originally published). Nor would I classify _A
Wizard of Earthsea_ as YA. I don't mean to suggest that
they're unsuitable; I just don't think that they warrant any
age-related classification. (My notion of YA is fuzzy, but
it's more coherent than the marketing category.)

> Diana Wynne Jones has to count one way or another. Howl's
> Moving Castle, Archer's Goon, Deep Secret...

But she's British.

[...]

>> <Bridge of Birds> (which I haven't read, but wanted to
>> mention in honour of the person I get this e-mail
>> address from, who shares a name with one of <Little,
>> Big>'s principal characters...).

> READ IT. READ IT NOW. We'll wait.

> You'll thank us once you're done. Then go find and read
> The Story of the Stone. Eight Skilled Gentlemen is a step
> down in quality, sadly, but that only means it's Very
> Good rather than Near Mint.

I agree on all counts.

Brian

[Howard Brazee]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:40:48 -0500, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David
DeLaney) wrote:

>Out of those mentioned, READ CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS. It is at least
>on a par with Lord of Light, and better than Jack of Shadows, to my taste.

I haven't read any Zelazny that I didn't consider top rate. But I
rate _Lord of Light_ considerably more enjoyable than _Creatures of
Light and Darkness_. Roger had to work a lot more for the latter
though.

[Chris Buckley]

On 2012-11-10, Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 17:15:19 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
><j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
><news:746533d7-1a36-4dd3...@googlegroups.com>
> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>
>> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:54:20 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
>>> On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:18:10 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
>>> wrote in <news:a2658a70-58dc-45ac...@googlegroups.com>
>>> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>
>> [...]
>
>>>> I'm not really trying to get an academic discussion
>>>> going here, mostly just a thread about favourites.
>
>>> That's a much more reasonable objective than nonsense
>>> about 'greatest' and 'best'; I'll even play that game.
>
>>> Some that I consider exceptionally good, exceptionally
>>> enjoyable, or exceptionally memorable, in no particular
>>> order: _A Rumor of Gems_;
>
>> ? I don't remember it all that well.
>
> Ellen Steiber. Most of it takes place in the old port city
> of Arcato. Verges on magical realism. If you've read it,
> you're only the third person I've run across besides me who
> has. (The other two are Delia Sherman, who had Steiber as a
> student in a workshop, and Ellen Kushner.)

I've read it; at this point I think I've read it 3 times! But I'm not
sure I count as separate - I had never heard of it until you mentioned
it (and _Chase the Morning_) in a thread a while back. Thank you!
It's definitely good - I put it in the same class as good McKillip, who I
also really like.

But I'm not sure I put it at the same level as _Little,Big_ . I will reread the
Steiber and McKillip more often, but I view _Little,Big_ as a much deeper
and ambitious book - I notice new details in it upon rereading, and rereading
requires thinking, not just enjoying. I would definitely say _Little,Big_ should
be in the running for greatest American fantasy, but not the others.

It's somewhat the same situation, but with our positions reversed, as
our opinions on Zelazny's fantasy. I recognize _Creatures of Light and Darkness_
as a good, ambitious and deeper fantasy than _Jack of Shadows_ .
However, I rank _Jack of Shadows_ higher. For me, Zelazny just "gets it right";
the emotional impact is very high. It's not as high as "A Rose for
Ecclesiastes", which I regard as probably the greatest SF short story, but it's
very well done.

It's this dual scale of very subjective "rightness" as well as more objective
depth and goals that makes these debates interesting and unresolvable. I rank
the Dean, McKillip, Steiber, and McKinley high in the getting it right category. To
those I might add Stevermer (_A College of Magics_) and Reamy (_Blind Voices_ ,
which I'm surprised has not been mentioned, since it is quintessenally American).

In the very top category, I would put _Little,Big_ , _The Last Unicorn_ , and
_A Wizard of Earthsea_ . (I personally liked _Winter's Tale_ much less than
_Little,Big_ , thought they share many characteristics).

As a somewhat off the wall suggestion, I might include George R.R. Martin in the
overall discussion (though not at the very top). Not the obvious one that's
already been mentioned (but I don't think ranks highly), but _The Armageddon Rag_ .
However, I'm not sure it qualifies.

Chris

[Brian M. Scott]

On 10 Nov 2012 15:02:01 GMT, Chris Buckley <al...@sabir.com>
wrote in <news:slrnk9sr3...@pc5.sabir.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> On 2012-11-10, Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

>> On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 17:15:19 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
>><j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
>><news:746533d7-1a36-4dd3...@googlegroups.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.written:

>>> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:54:20 PM UTC-8, Brian M.
>>> Scott wrote:

[...]

>>>> Some that I consider exceptionally good, exceptionally
>>>> enjoyable, or exceptionally memorable, in no particular
>>>> order: _A Rumor of Gems_;

>>> ? I don't remember it all that well.

>> Ellen Steiber. Most of it takes place in the old port city
>> of Arcato. Verges on magical realism. If you've read it,
>> you're only the third person I've run across besides me who
>> has. (The other two are Delia Sherman, who had Steiber as a
>> student in a workshop, and Ellen Kushner.)

> I've read it; at this point I think I've read it 3 times!
> But I'm not sure I count as separate - I had never heard
> of it until you mentioned it (and _Chase the Morning_) in
> a thread a while back. Thank you!

My pleasure!

> It's definitely good - I put it in the same class as good McKillip, who I
> also really like.

> But I'm not sure I put it at the same level as
> _Little,Big_ . I will reread the Steiber and McKillip
> more often, but I view _Little,Big_ as a much deeper and
> ambitious book - I notice new details in it upon
> rereading, and rereading requires thinking, not just
> enjoying.

Since I didn't enjoy it, and in fact failed twice to finish
it, I put it far below the others. From my point of view
it's simply a failure.

> I would definitely say _Little,Big_ should be in the
> running for greatest American fantasy, but not the
> others.

Well, as I said before, I think that the whole concept of
'greatest American fantasy' is ridiculous.

> It's this dual scale of very subjective "rightness" as
> well as more objective depth and goals that makes these
> debates interesting and unresolvable.

If I understand at all what's covered by 'more objective
depth and goals', they're largely things that are irrelevant
to me, though there is probably some non-trivial overlap of
the former with the kinds of depth that I care about.

> I rank the Dean, McKillip, Steiber, and McKinley high in
> the getting it right category. To those I might add
> Stevermer (_A College of Magics_) and Reamy (_Blind
> Voices_ , which I'm surprised has not been mentioned,
> since it is quintessenally American).

I think that we mean more or less the same thing here,
though Dean doesn't belong on my version of that list --
like Jo Walton, she's a good writer who mostly writes books
that don't much appeal to me -- and I was never sufficiently
interested to pick up the Reamy. (Part of the problem
there, I suspect, is that I don't much care for the
background setting. 'Quintessentially American' is not, on
the whole, likely to be a strong positive recommendation for
me, I'm afraid!)

[...]

Brian

[Howard Brazee]

I remember how much I enjoyed _Little, Big_, and I remember enjoying
_The Last Unicorn_. But I don't much remember the books.

Which disqualifies them for me to consider them great.

[Kay Shapero]

In article <ihmr98lv5n6kh4iho...@4ax.com>,
how...@brazee.net says...

>
> On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 18:37:22 -0800, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net>
> wrote:
>
> >> The trouble comes when they have funny ways of defining authors and
> >> their works.
> >>
> >> I wonder where they put Michael Chabon.
> >
> >I dunno, but after I fought my way through his Yiddish Policeman's Union
> >to the point that the protagonist did something so mindbogglingly stupid
> >that I decided that if there WAS a pony in there somewhere I didn't want
> >it anyway, I put it back on the library shelf and have not essayed any
> >of his other works.
>
> He has a smaller book that is more fantasy with kids, magical beings,
> and baseball that is a much easier read.

It wasn't so much that it was a difficult read. It's that it was a DULL
read. I don't mind dreary environments, dreary characters, or dreary
events, but please, not all in the same story with the gain on Stupid
turned way up.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2012 17:54:20 -0800, Kay Shapero
<k...@invalid.net> wrote in
<news:MPG.2b08a523e...@news.eternal-september.org>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> I don't mind dreary environments, dreary characters, or
> dreary events, but please, not all in the same story with
> the gain on Stupid turned way up.

I generally do mind those things, but this is still a superb
skewering.

Brian

[Joe Bernstein]

On Friday, November 9, 2012 10:44:25 AM UTC-8, Elaine T wrote a post
which was, by the way, much the least painful to turn correctly
quoted in Google Groups of the ones I've quoted in this thread...:

> On Wed, 7 Nov 2012 18:13:30 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
> <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

> >2. Is it still?
> >
> >In other words, the titular question. What's great, unequivocally
> >American (note I didn't cite Susan Cooper up there, and no, Guy
> >Gavriel Kay won't count either), and post-<Little, Big> ?

[snipped where I thought of authors rather than works, so was unprepared
to supply answers to this one]

> I keep thinking of authors, not single works, too. i'd put McKillip
> up there, certainly.

Ack, I'd remembered another must-mention book, and now I've forgotten it
again. Well, if we're lucky, someone else's post will either mention
or remind me of it.

> If I"m going to praise a fantasy (or other work) as great American
> fantasy, I think it ought to have a flavor of America.

Well, I'm being literalist. After all, let's face it, <Little, Big>
isn't especially America-flavoured, though almost entirely set here.
So I'm going to stick to the criterion "by an American".

> An awful lot
> don't, even if written by Americans. What does come to mind are:
>
> Bull's TERRITORY
> Card's ALVIN MAKER
> Bujold's SHARING KNIFE
> Wrede's FRONTIER
>
> ...dang, I had at least one more in mind, and lost it...
>
> Of those I'd say the Bujold is best.
>
> The Bull was extremely irritating, and the Card I stopped partway
> through.

I own but haven't read the Bull. Hadn't even *heard* of the Wrede,
which boggles me; I didn't think I was *that* far out of touch.
(But is it YA? I follow new YA less assiduously than new adult books.)

> Oh, Chabon's SUMMERLAND (pubbed as YA, IIRC), and CJC's RIDER AT THE
> GATE, which is actually lost colony sf but reads as a Western to me.

<Summerland> is another owned-but-not-read. It looks like I should
rely on Ms. Shapero as having opposite tastes to mine, so since she
hated Chabon, I should love him.

> Before anyone asks why not AMERICAN GODS I haven't read it. I've
> tried other Gaiman and was uninterested.

Not <American Gods> because not "by an American", harrumph. Although
he has, like Susan Cooper, moved here.

I'm tempted to mention Midori Snyder's <The Assassination of Michael
McBride> as a fantasy Western, though not, I think, in the same league
as "The Sharing Knife" or (admittedly) <American Gods>.

[Joe Bernstein]

On Friday, November 9, 2012 6:52:26 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote:

> On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 17:15:19 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
> <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
> <news:746533d7-1a36-4dd3...@googlegroups.com>
> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>
> > On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:54:20 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> >> On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:18:10 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
> >> wrote in <news:a2658a70-58dc-45ac...@googlegroups.com>
> >> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>
> > [...]
>
> >>> I'm not really trying to get an academic discussion
> >>> going here, mostly just a thread about favourites.
>
> >> That's a much more reasonable objective than nonsense
> >> about 'greatest' and 'best'; I'll even play that game.
>
> >> Some that I consider exceptionally good, exceptionally
> >> enjoyable, or exceptionally memorable, in no particular
> >> order: _A Rumor of Gems_;
>
> > ? I don't remember it all that well.
>
> Ellen Steiber. Most of it takes place in the old port city
> of Arcato. Verges on magical realism. If you've read it,
> you're only the third person I've run across besides me who
> has. (The other two are Delia Sherman, who had Steiber as a
> student in a workshop, and Ellen Kushner.)

Yes, I've read it. Please see <ff9ans$d9a$1...@reader1.panix.com>
where actually part of what I say is that I had, even then, mere
months after the reading, difficulty remembering it.

I concede that it has excellences, some of which I named in that
post, but if a book's going to pose serious competition to
<Little, Big> or even, um, <Lord Foul's Bane> for me, I have to
be able to remember significant bits years later.

> > (How many times need I restate my objective? The last
> > time I defined "my favourite book" was sometime around
> > 1992, and the definition was *three* books, <The Last
> > Unicorn>, <War and Peace>, and <Little, Big>. Probably
> > "favourites" wasn't quite the word I wanted either.)
>
> I'll grant that 'favorite book' isn't as silly as
> 'best/greatest book', but I still find it pretty silly.
> Favorite book_s_ are another matter.

Yeah, but here's the thing. I'm hoping that this thread will
produce a list of mebbe a hundred or so books. If it gets the
number of participants it already has, and each lists two dozen,
that ain't happening.

See, I think <Little, Big> is a reasonable candidate for what to
hand someone in 2250 who wonders whether American 20th-century
fantasy has anything worthwhile to offer. I don't want to hand
that person a list of five hundred books, because then he'll just
say "Oh, you like everything, you're no use."

This is another way of phrasing the answer I gave Stephen Sterling
when I identified myself at a World Fantasy Convention (my only con
to date) as an interloper - a critic - and he histrionically asked
why. Canon formation is an evil, no doubt about it, but it's so much
better than the evil of complete oblivion which is the alternative.

Snipping bunches. Your explanation of what's good about Sagara / West
implies that I'll have to revisit her, but it can wait until that's
logistically doable.

[sfeam]

Elaine T wrote:

> On Wed, 7 Nov 2012 18:13:30 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
> <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>
>>The Harper edition of John Crowley's novel <Little, Big>, which I'm
>>currently reading, quotes two different writers about the book whose
>>remarks appeared in the <Washington Post Book World>: Michael Dirda
>>and someone whom I, perhaps anachronistically, suspect of being John
>>Clute. Understandably (given Harper's motives in quoting) but still
>>curiously, both quotes end with nearly identical words.
>>
>>"the best fantasy yet written by an American." - Dirda
>>"The greatest fantasy ever written by an American." - ?Clute
>>
>>I suppose this odd coincidence raises questions of its own, but I'm
>>more interested in the two obvious questions that follow on from
>>what these overlapping phrases *say*.
>>
>>1) Was it really?
>>
>
>

> 'Yet written'? Maybe. Personally I prefer the LAST UNICORN, but I
> haven't picked up LITTLE BIG in years and probably ought to try again.
> It made remarkably little impression on me when I read it years ago.
> Earthsea original trilogy partially for how much it packs into three
> short books is also way up there.

>
>>
>>
>>2. Is it still?
>>
>>In other words, the titular question. What's great, unequivocally
>>American (note I didn't cite Susan Cooper up there, and no, Guy
>>Gavriel Kay won't count either), and post-<Little, Big> ?
>>
>
>

> I keep thinking of authors, not single works, too. i'd put McKillip
> up there, certainly.
>

> If I"m going to praise a fantasy (or other work) as great American

> fantasy, I think it ought to have a flavor of America. An awful lot

> don't, even if written by Americans. What does come to mind are:
>
> Bull's TERRITORY
> Card's ALVIN MAKER
> Bujold's SHARING KNIFE
> Wrede's FRONTIER

Yes. I really like these.
Joe: the full titles are _Thirteenth Child_, _Across the Great Barrier_,
and _The Far West_.
But for all that I like them, they are rather slight and I think
are aimed at the YA market. They don't reach the level of general
hilarity found in her collaborations with Caroline Stevermer, and
at least for me don't reach the level of world-building in, say,
_The Raven Ring_. But yes, the world being built is distinctly an
alternative America.

Which reminds me. Caroline Stevermer has a YA American fantasy also,
_River Rats_. Also recommended.

> ...dang, I had at least one more in mind, and lost it...
>
> Of those I'd say the Bujold is best.
>
> The Bull was extremely irritating, and the Card I stopped partway
> through.

I was not terribly impressed by Bull's fantasy.
That was the reason it wasn't on my list.

> Oh, Chabon's SUMMERLAND (pubbed as YA, IIRC), and CJC's RIDER AT THE
> GATE, which is actually lost colony sf but reads as a Western to me.
>
>

> Before anyone asks why not AMERICAN GODS I haven't read it. I've
> tried other Gaiman and was uninterested.

More reasons:
1) Gaiman is not American
2) Even if you grant his physical presence on this continent,
he doesn't seem to have picked up its zeitgeist. If there is
any sense of place to speak of in _American Gods_, it's not the
nominal Wisconsin and other landscape I've lived in.
3) It's not particularly well written, and the ideas that I liked
in it are not original to Gaiman. Heck, I'd recommend Adams'
_Long Dark Teatime of the Soul_ as covering much the same ground
and being both more entertaining and better constructed.
It's not American either, of course, but then it doesn't claim to be.
Two thumbs down from me.

[Titus G]

Joe Bernstein wrote:

>>>>> I'm not really trying to get an academic discussion
>>>>> going here, mostly just a thread about favourites.

It has been a great thread for me as now I have Crowley and Butcher to look
forward to reading.
A favourite of mine is _The Magicians_ , Grossman and Patrick Rothfuss'
Kingkiller Chronicles would make the list before Bujold or Grr Martin.

[David DeLaney]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2012 16:57:40 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>> Oh, Chabon's SUMMERLAND (pubbed as YA, IIRC), and CJC's RIDER AT THE
>> GATE, which is actually lost colony sf but reads as a Western to me.
>
><Summerland> is another owned-but-not-read. It looks like I should
>rely on Ms. Shapero as having opposite tastes to mine, so since she
>hated Chabon, I should love him.
>
>> Before anyone asks why not AMERICAN GODS I haven't read it. I've
>> tried other Gaiman and was uninterested.
>
>Not <American Gods> because not "by an American", harrumph. Although
>he has, like Susan Cooper, moved here.
>
>I'm tempted to mention Midori Snyder's <The Assassination of Michael
>McBride> as a fantasy Western, though not, I think, in the same league
>as "The Sharing Knife" or (admittedly) <American Gods>.

Hm. Tad Williams is American, it turns out, so let's toss all of
Memory,_Sorrow,_and_Thorn, Otherland, Shadowmarch (which JUST finished this
last weekend), Tailchaser's Song, The War of the Flowers, and his new
angel series in there for consideration.

Sheri S. Tepper? Harry Turtledove? Carrie Vaughn? ... Lawrence Watt-Evans?

[Ahasuerus]

On Nov 12, 2:28 am, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
[snip]

> Sheri S. Tepper? Harry Turtledove? Carrie Vaughn? ... Lawrence Watt-Evans?

<blink>Carrie Vaughn?</blink>

[Michael Stemper]

In article <MPG.2b08a523e...@news.eternal-september.org>, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> writes:
>In article <ihmr98lv5n6kh4iho...@4ax.com>, how...@brazee.net says...
>> On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 18:37:22 -0800, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:

>> >> I wonder where they put Michael Chabon.
>> >
>> >I dunno, but after I fought my way through his Yiddish Policeman's Union
>> >to the point that the protagonist did something so mindbogglingly stupid
>> >that I decided that if there WAS a pony in there somewhere I didn't want
>> >it anyway, I put it back on the library shelf and have not essayed any
>> >of his other works.
>>
>> He has a smaller book that is more fantasy with kids, magical beings,
>> and baseball that is a much easier read.
>
>It wasn't so much that it was a difficult read. It's that it was a DULL
>read.

For my part, a dull read is a difficult read. It's a sufficient, but not
a necessary, condition for difficulty.

--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
If it's "tourist season", where do I get my license?

[Howard Brazee]

_Discord's Apple_?

[David DeLaney]

Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net> wrote:
>Ahasuerus <ahas...@email.com> wrote:
>>On Nov 12, 2:28�am, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>[snip]
>>> Sheri S. Tepper? Harry Turtledove? Carrie Vaughn? ... Lawrence Watt-Evans?
>>
>><blink>Carrie Vaughn?</blink>
>
>_Discord's Apple_?

The Kitty Norville series is getting into some interesting areas...

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2012 17:09:27 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:69a97928-0fd4-4b92...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> On Friday, November 9, 2012 6:52:26 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote:

>> On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 17:15:19 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
>> <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
>> <news:746533d7-1a36-4dd3...@googlegroups.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.written:

>>> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:54:20 PM UTC-8, Brian M.
>>> Scott wrote:

[...]

>>>> Some that I consider exceptionally good, exceptionally
>>>> enjoyable, or exceptionally memorable, in no particular
>>>> order: _A Rumor of Gems_;

>>> ? I don't remember it all that well.

>> Ellen Steiber. Most of it takes place in the old port city
>> of Arcato. Verges on magical realism. If you've read it,
>> you're only the third person I've run across besides me who
>> has. (The other two are Delia Sherman, who had Steiber as a
>> student in a workshop, and Ellen Kushner.)

> Yes, I've read it. Please see
> <ff9ans$d9a$1...@reader1.panix.com> where actually part of
> what I say is that I had, even then, mere months after
> the reading, difficulty remembering it.

> I concede that it has excellences, some of which I named
> in that post, but if a book's going to pose serious
> competition to <Little, Big> or even, um, <Lord Foul's
> Bane> for me, I have to be able to remember significant
> bits years later.

That can't be a criterion for me: with the exception of some
very old favorites, I generally don't remember significant
bits. What I remember are my reactions, especially my
emotional reactions, my opinion of the book, and possibly
some characters or images.

I do, however, have to finish the book, and I have to enjoy
it. Both of the books that you mention here fail both of
these basic criteria.

>>> (How many times need I restate my objective? The last
>>> time I defined "my favourite book" was sometime around
>>> 1992, and the definition was *three* books, <The Last
>>> Unicorn>, <War and Peace>, and <Little, Big>. Probably
>>> "favourites" wasn't quite the word I wanted either.)

>> I'll grant that 'favorite book' isn't as silly as
>> 'best/greatest book', but I still find it pretty silly.
>> Favorite book_s_ are another matter.

> Yeah, but here's the thing. I'm hoping that this thread
> will produce a list of mebbe a hundred or so books. If
> it gets the number of participants it already has, and
> each lists two dozen, that ain't happening.

> See, I think <Little, Big> is a reasonable candidate for
> what to hand someone in 2250 who wonders whether American
> 20th-century fantasy has anything worthwhile to offer.

And I don't. If anything, I think that it's a good way to
persuade him that it hasn't. I also think that the idea of
handing him just one or two books is, to be blunt, asinine.

Come to think of it, I also don't care what anyone in 2250
may think about 20th-century American fantasy.

> I don't want to hand that person a list of five hundred
> books, because then he'll just say "Oh, you like
> everything, you're no use."

While five hundred is probably rather more than is
necessary, someone who offers that response is an idiot on
whom I see no reason to waste much time.

> This is another way of phrasing the answer I gave Stephen
> Sterling when I identified myself at a World Fantasy
> Convention (my only con to date) as an interloper - a
> critic - and he histrionically asked why. Canon
> formation is an evil, no doubt about it, but it's so much
> better than the evil of complete oblivion which is the
> alternative.

I don't accept the premise that these are the only two
possibilities, and I'm not at all sure that I'd agree with
your choice even if I did.

But it's clear (as if it weren't already!) that we've
completely different perspectives here. Reviewers can be
useful, once one learns enough about their tastes, but I've
no use for critics, be they of books, music, or restaurants.
I don't care about their opinions: in matters of taste mine
are the only opinions that really matter to me. I don't
consider their judgements in any way privileged, and I don't
care what they have to say (unless it's entertaining in its
own right): it adds nothing of value to the book, musical
performance, piece of music, etc.

(By the way, I'm getting e-mail copies of your replies; this
is apparently the current Google Groups default, but it can
be overridden.)

Brian

[Ahasuerus]

On Nov 12, 12:32 pm, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
> Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net> wrote:

> >Ahasuerus <ahasue...@email.com> wrote:
> >>On Nov 12, 2:28 am, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
> >>[snip]
> >>> Sheri S. Tepper? Harry Turtledove? Carrie Vaughn? ... Lawrence Watt-Evans?
> >>
> >><blink>Carrie Vaughn?</blink>
> >
> >_Discord's Apple_?
>
> The Kitty Norville series is getting into some interesting areas...

I may not be the best person to comment on modern urban fantasy since
I view even well regarded UF like the Mercy Thompson series as little
more than mediocre chick lit, but _Kitty and the Midnight Hour_ was a
particularly poor specimen.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2012 03:01:16 -0500, David DeLaney
<d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in
<news:slrnka199...@gatekeeper.vic.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> Hm. Tad Williams is American, it turns out, so let's toss
> all of Memory,_Sorrow,_and_Thorn, Otherland, Shadowmarch
> (which JUST finished this last weekend), Tailchaser's
> Song, The War of the Flowers, and his new angel series in
> there for consideration.

I tend to get bogged down in his books; the problem, I
think, is that I don't care enough about enough of the
characters. I'd also put Otherland more on the science
fiction side.

> Sheri S. Tepper? Harry Turtledove? Carrie Vaughn? ...

No, though Vaughn's _Discord's Apple_ was a step in the
right direction. The Kitty stories are enjoyable enough,
but I'd definitely put them behind Patricia Briggs, Ilona
Andrews, Jim Butcher, and Seanan McGuire. And maybe Eileen
Wilks. (And yes, Ilona Andrews counts even if the Ilona
half is originally Russian.)

Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:03:22 -0800, sfeam
<sf...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote in
<news:k7pldc$4bu$1...@dont-email.me> in rec.arts.sf.written:

> Elaine T wrote:

[...]

>> Before anyone asks why not AMERICAN GODS I haven't read
>> it. I've tried other Gaiman and was uninterested.

> More reasons:

[...]

> 3) It's not particularly well written, and the ideas that I liked
> in it are not original to Gaiman. Heck, I'd recommend Adams'
> _Long Dark Teatime of the Soul_ as covering much the same ground
> and being both more entertaining and better constructed.
> It's not American either, of course, but then it doesn't claim to be.
> Two thumbs down from me.

In my experience anything by Gaiman beats anything by Adams.
And I'm not a Gaiman fan, though I quite liked _Stardust_
and _Neverwhere_ and was moderately entertained by _American
Gods_ and _Anansi Boys_

Brian

[Joe Bernstein]

On Friday, November 9, 2012 9:08:15 PM UTC-8, David DeLaney wrote:

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

[YA]

> Diane Duane was American, though, and the Young Wizards series
> certainly counts under YA, and I think the Tales of the Five
> and Cats' Tailes series should count too.

You do realise your phrasing "was American" gave me the heebie-
jeebies until I could verify she's still living. What you mean
is that she moved to Ireland, right?

Since I've read less than half, and for all I know less than 10%,
of the Young Wizards series, I'm ill equipped to judge. (I've
read either 3 or 4 books. It seems to have grown every time I
run across it, so I have no idea how many digits the number of
volumes now has. Snark snark, but I did like what I read enough
to want to catch up, and this steady growth keeps making that
undoable.)

That said, "like". I remember all of the Duane books I've read as
emotionally powerful, but I'm not convinced that makes them serious
candidates for high honours. If I hadn't now endured several false
alarms re <The Door into Starlight> I might feel more charitable.

>> <Bridge of Birds> (which I haven't read, but wanted
>> to mention in honour of the person I get this e-mail address from,
>> who shares a name with one of <Little, Big>'s principal characters...).

> READ IT. READ IT NOW. We'll wait. You'll thank us once you're done.
> Then go find and read The Story of the Stone. Eight Skilled
> Gentlemen is a step down in quality, sadly, but that only means
> it's Very Good rather than Near Mint.

Um. See. I worked for over four years at The Stars Our
Destination, whose owner, Alice Bentley, had strong opinions
about several writers. I found that I usually largely, though
not entirely, shared those opinions. So shortly after I started
working there, I made a list of Alice's favourite writers whom
I hadn't read, and swore I wouldn't until I no longer worked there.
Simply in order to give myself a *bit* of distance, and customers
a *bit* more diversity in the opinions they'd get from the staff.

So I finally tackled Lois McMaster Bujold, ironically, on the visit
to Chicagoland which also saw my last work at the store. Octavia
Butler has been on long-term logistical hold (I own a bunch of her
early stuff, but rarely have access both to those and to a library
with the later at the same time).

And Barry Hughart? Look, he's the writer Alice liked so much, she
*reprinted him*, and was the first to do so, *before* the SFBC.
And I actually proofed a buncha pages from one of the books after
scanning. (Which is how I know you can proof something without
reading it, for some values of "proof".) I don't need to thank
any of you for pushing me to read him, I got four straight years
of such pushes and then some at Stars. Well, I'll read him whenever
I get to it. Logistics is again an issue: my copies are far away.
But it seems there's been a *third* reprint, and Seattle Public
Library has some copies. So we'll see.

> Michelle Sagara/West's works have to go in here somewhere too:

Well, they've been getting plenty of support. I'm actually kinda
surprised. Jim Butcher threw me, since I tend simply to lump him in
as another (if non-imitative) "urban fantasy" writer, but he was in
keeping with the initial tendency to name primarily writers or works
of relatively recent vintage. Sagara / West is much more baffling.
Is this a random local cluster of enthusiasts, or the same sort of
group resulting from one reader that I'd like to spawn re, say,
Linda Haldeman, Gillian Bradshaw, or Joyce Ballou Gregorian? (None
of whom, be it noted, I've yet named as qualifying for the list I'm
imagining.) Or is it that we snobs have really missed two crucial
writers of the past few decades?

I remember essentially nothing from either the six books of hers or
the four books by Dave Duncan, or is that David Duncan, that I've read,
but I do remember *liking* the Duncan, and not nearly so much the
Sagara / West. So if I *had* to pick one of them for the list based
on what I know right now, I'd be siding with Wayne Throop, not y'all.

[Andrew Plotkin]

Here, Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> On Friday, November 9, 2012 9:08:15 PM UTC-8, David DeLaney wrote:
>
> > Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>
> [YA]
> > Diane Duane was American, though, and the Young Wizards series
> > certainly counts under YA, and I think the Tales of the Five
> > and Cats' Tailes series should count too.
>
> You do realise your phrasing "was American" gave me the heebie-
> jeebies until I could verify she's still living. What you mean
> is that she moved to Ireland, right?

Yes.

> Since I've read less than half, and for all I know less than 10%,
> of the Young Wizards series, I'm ill equipped to judge. (I've
> read either 3 or 4 books. It seems to have grown every time I
> run across it, so I have no idea how many digits the number of
> volumes now has. Snark snark, but I did like what I read enough
> to want to catch up, and this steady growth keeps making that
> undoable.)

The series is up to nine books (with three more in the "cat"
side-series). That's not *too* enormous considering that the first one
appeared in 1983! (The most recent three were 2003, 2005, 2010.)
If you want to catch up, it probably won't outrun you.

--Z

--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*

[Brian M. Scott]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2012 12:02:03 -0800 (PST), Ahasuerus
<ahas...@email.com> wrote in
<news:e1502f19-8f0e-4345...@s12g2000vbw.googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> On Nov 12, 12:32�pm, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:

[...]

>> The Kitty Norville series is getting into some interesting areas...

> I may not be the best person to comment on modern urban
> fantasy since I view even well regarded UF like the Mercy
> Thompson series as little more than mediocre chick lit,

A great deal of it, including the Mercy Thompson/Alpha and
Omega series, is neither chick lit by any reasonable
definition nor (in my opinion) mediocre.

> but _Kitty and the Midnight Hour_ was a particularly poor
> specimen.

Whether that's true or not -- I started the series with
_Kitty Goes to Hell_, I think -- it's irrelevant, since
_Kitty and the Midnight Hour_ is the first volume of what
are now ten, and Dave is clearly talking about more recent
novels.

Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:25:48 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:e9260ab4-32d3-493f...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> On Friday, November 9, 2012 9:08:15 PM UTC-8, David
> DeLaney wrote:

[...]

>> Michelle Sagara/West's works have to go in here somewhere
>> too:

> Well, they've been getting plenty of support. I'm
> actually kinda surprised. Jim Butcher threw me, since I
> tend simply to lump him in as another (if non-imitative)
> "urban fantasy" writer, but he was in keeping with the
> initial tendency to name primarily writers or works of
> relatively recent vintage.

Why should it make any difference that he writes urban
fantasy? (And not exclusively, at that: the Alera Codex is
in the high/traditional mold.)

> Sagara / West is much more baffling. Is this a random
> local cluster of enthusiasts, or the same sort of group
> resulting from one reader that I'd like to spawn re, say,
> Linda Haldeman, Gillian Bradshaw, or Joyce Ballou
> Gregorian?

Dave and I are completely independent enthusiasts.

> (None of whom, be it noted, I've yet named as qualifying
> for the list I'm imagining.)

I thought about Gregorian; I just didn't enjoy the trilogy
quite enough, excellent as it is. I forgot about Bradshaw,
I'm sorry to say, but she's certainly worth consideration in
my book, if not necessarily short-listing.

> Or is it that we snobs have really missed two crucial
> writers of the past few decades?

There is no such thing as a crucial writer.

[...]

Brian

[Kay Shapero]

In article <k7qvm9$bpe$1...@dont-email.me>, mste...@walkabout.empros.com
says...

>
> In article <MPG.2b08a523e...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> writes:
> > n article <ihmr98lv5n6kh4iho...@4ax.com>,
> > how...@brazee.net says...
> >> On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 18:37:22 -0800, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net>
> >> wrote:
>
> >> >> I wonder where they put Michael Chabon.
> >> >

> >> > dunno, but after I fought my way through his Yiddish Policeman's

> >> > Union o the point that the protagonist did something so
> >> > mindbogglingly stupid hat I decided that if there WAS a pony in
> >> > there somewhere I didn't want t anyway, I put it back on the
> >> > library shelf and have not essayed any f his other works.

> >>
> >> He has a smaller book that is more fantasy with kids, magical
> >> beings, and baseball that is a much easier read.
> >

> > t wasn't so much that it was a difficult read. It's that it was a

> > DULL ead.

>
> For my part, a dull read is a difficult read. It's a sufficient, but
> not a necessary, condition for difficulty.

Fair 'nuff.

[David DeLaney]

Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

>(By the way, I'm getting e-mail copies of your replies; this
>is apparently the current Google Groups default, but it can
>be overridden.)

(I am also, and agreed. Just so you know.)

[David DeLaney]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:25:48 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>On Friday, November 9, 2012 9:08:15 PM UTC-8, David DeLaney wrote:
>> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>[YA]
>> Diane Duane was American, though, and the Young Wizards series
>> certainly counts under YA, and I think the Tales of the Five
>> and Cats' Tailes series should count too.
>
>You do realise your phrasing "was American" gave me the heebie-
>jeebies until I could verify she's still living. What you mean
>is that she moved to Ireland, right?

Actually I think what I meant is that I momentarily confused her inode with
that of Diana Wynne Jones. Apologies.

>But it seems there's been a *third* reprint, and Seattle Public
>Library has some copies. So we'll see.

ok

>> Michelle Sagara/West's works have to go in here somewhere too:
>
>Well, they've been getting plenty of support. I'm actually kinda
>surprised. Jim Butcher threw me, since I tend simply to lump him in
>as another (if non-imitative) "urban fantasy" writer, but he was in
>keeping with the initial tendency to name primarily writers or works
>of relatively recent vintage. Sagara / West is much more baffling.
>Is this a random local cluster of enthusiasts, or the same sort of
>group resulting from one reader that I'd like to spawn re, say,
>Linda Haldeman, Gillian Bradshaw, or Joyce Ballou Gregorian? (None
>of whom, be it noted, I've yet named as qualifying for the list I'm
>imagining.) Or is it that we snobs have really missed two crucial
>writers of the past few decades?

Don't know. I just know she's on my "buy in hardback if that's where it first
shows up" list now. Which is a fairly short list.

>I remember essentially nothing from either the six books of hers or
>the four books by Dave Duncan, or is that David Duncan, that I've read,
>but I do remember *liking* the Duncan, and not nearly so much the
>Sagara / West. So if I *had* to pick one of them for the list based
>on what I know right now, I'd be siding with Wayne Throop, not y'all.

Characters, and societies, and magic systems, and she actually thinks through
some consequences thereof, and interesting gods and demons, and and and stuff.
The Sun Sword series is higher on the degree-of-difficulty scale than, say,
Agatha Christie or Isaac Asimov, but not to the point where I bounce. And I'm
fairly sure it will reward rereading, I'm just still in R now, S is in the
future.

[Elaine T]

>
>>> Michelle Sagara/West's works have to go in here somewhere too:
>>

...

>>Well, they've been getting plenty of support.

...

>
>Don't know. I just know she's on my "buy in hardback if that's where it first
>shows up" list now. Which is a fairly short list.

...

>
>Characters, and societies, and magic systems, and she actually thinks through
>some consequences thereof, and interesting gods and demons, and and and stuff.
>The Sun Sword series is higher on the degree-of-difficulty scale than, say,

What he said. Characters, societies - lots of variety in societies -
differing magic systems in different milieues (sp?), pantheons that
aren't Earth normal with the numbers filed off, and characters that
aren't your basic westerner in fancy dress.

OTOH, I haven't been thrilled with her latest installments in the
doorstopper series, CITY foo, etc. I'm not convinced they needed to
be written an dpublished. Maybe she needed to know it all, but I
found myself wanting her to GET ON WITH IT. She finally is, but I
lost reading momentum during the extended revsiting of history.

And I'm not as enthralled with the character Jewel that she's been
focusing on as some others.

Her recent YA, SILENCE, was a cut above most YA w/ghosts and
necromancers, etc.


--
Elaine T.
Ela...@kethompson.org

[Michael Stemper]

In article <slrnk9roo...@gatekeeper.vic.com>, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) writes:
>Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:

>>> _Jurgen_;
>>
>>Would that be your pick of Cabell? Or have you read enough Cabell
>>to have a pick? (I've only read two books.)
>
>Jurgen is NOT the best Cabell. It's the most FAMOUS,

Interesting. It's the only one that I've read (which fact aligns with
"most famous"), and I really enjoyed it. In fact, I found it mostly
laugh-out-loud hilarious.

For some reason that escapes me, I haven't re-read it yet.

> and possibly the most
>"epic fantasy travelogue"-style one...

Do his other books still involve strange worlds/places? I seem to recall
that Piper and Niven mined his work extensively for the names of planets.

> I'd put Something About Eve ahead of
>it, and Figures of Earth (though others might dispute that) and the The Silver
>Stallion collection.

I put _The Silver Stallion_ on my "to buy" list several years back, on
Lawrence's recommendation. I didn't pick up on it being a collection, though.
How does Cabell's short fiction compare to his novels?

--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>

There is three erors in this sentence.

[Joe Bernstein]

Harry TURTLEDOVE? And people call *Donaldson's* writing atrocious?

-- JLB

[Joe Bernstein]

On Monday, November 12, 2012 10:16:27 AM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote, quoting me, and so on back:

>>>>> Some that I consider exceptionally good, exceptionally
>>>>> enjoyable, or exceptionally memorable, in no particular
>>>>> order: _A Rumor of Gems_;

>>>> ? I don't remember it all that well.

>>> Ellen Steiber. [...] If you've read it,

>>> you're only the third person I've run across besides me who
>>> has.

>> Yes, I've read it. Please see
>> <ff9ans$d9a$1...@reader1.panix.com> where actually part of
>> what I say is that I had, even then, mere months after
>> the reading, difficulty remembering it.
>> I concede that it has excellences, some of which I named
>> in that post, but if a book's going to pose serious
>> competition to <Little, Big> or even, um, <Lord Foul's
>> Bane> for me, I have to be able to remember significant
>> bits years later.

> That can't be a criterion for me: with the exception of some very
> old favorites, I generally don't remember significant bits. What I
> remember are my reactions, especially my emotional reactions, my
> opinion of the book, and possibly some characters or images. I do,
> however, have to finish the book, and I have to enjoy it. Both of
> the books that you mention here fail both of these basic criteria.

Possibly we have different meanings for "significant bits". (I'm
beginning to wonder whether we actually speak the same language,
the way this keeps happening.) I don't mean "important elements of
the plot and setting", I mean "at least some of: theme, distinctive
character, plot element, or setting element, distinctive aspect of
style, conceivable real-world political implication, moving scene,
revelatory scene, ..." In other words, something actually rather like
what you describer yourself as remembering. For Steiber's book, I
basically remember that I thought it was a good book, and that's *it*.
I remember more from Duncan's tetralogy years *earlier*.

>> See, I think <Little, Big> is a reasonable candidate for
>> what to hand someone in 2250 who wonders whether American
>> 20th-century fantasy has anything worthwhile to offer.

> And I don't. If anything, I think that it's a good way to persuade
> him that it hasn't. I also think that the idea of handing him just
> one or two books is, to be blunt, asinine. Come to think of it, I
> also don't care what anyone in 2250 may think about 20th-century
> American fantasy.

>> This is another way of phrasing the answer I gave Stephen
>> Sterling when I identified myself at a World Fantasy
>> Convention (my only con to date) as an interloper - a
>> critic - and he histrionically asked why. Canon
>> formation is an evil, no doubt about it, but it's so much
>> better than the evil of complete oblivion which is the
>> alternative.

> I don't accept the premise that these are the only two possibilities,
> and I'm not at all sure that I'd agree with your choice even if I did.
> But it's clear (as if it weren't already!) that we've completely
> different perspectives here. Reviewers can be useful, once one learns
> enough about their tastes, but I've no use for critics, be they of
> books, music, or restaurants. I don't care about their opinions: in
> matters of taste mine are the only opinions that really matter to me.
> I don't consider their judgements in any way privileged, and I don't
> care what they have to say (unless it's entertaining in its own right):
> it adds nothing of value to the book, musical performance, piece of
> music, etc.

I'm pretty sure what you're saying here is logically incoherent, but not
quite sure. I identify myself as a "critic" rather than a "reviewer"
for two reasons:

1) I'm writing a history of fantasy. Although much of its content amounts
to reviews of various works, reviewers (in normal parlance, which may not
be your meaning) don't generally review books that are thousands of years
old.
2) Furthermore, some of its content *isn't* just reviews. Sometimes
there's something worth saying that isn't specific to a particular work.

What do you consider the dividing line between "critic" and "reviewer"?
You identify restaurant critics as critics, even though their actual
activities normally involve nothing but conventional reviewing. Is it,
then, that you simply abjure whatever anyone *labeled* as a "critic" says?

And separately, whence comes this strange ruling-out of experience? I
mean, if I say "<My Girlfriend is a Gumiho> is a very good Korean TV
drama, and it's fantasy too", I'm reviewing, and you might care to listen;
but if I say "Korean TV dramas tend to have very conservative morals and aesthetics, so you shouldn't expect scantily clad women and should expect melodrama", I'm criticising, and it's worthless to you; still more so if I say "<My Girlfriend is a Gumiho>, despite its fantasy content, is a
thoroughly conventional Korean TV drama, created by the most successful
people in the business". Huh? Wherefore why is that?

> (By the way, I'm getting e-mail copies of your replies; this is
> apparently the current Google Groups default, but it can be overridden.)

I apologise, to you and anyone else I've cc'd this way. It appears to
vary depending on who I'm answering. I also thank you, because in
trying to figure out what was happening I also found out how to self-cc
my own posts, which I prefer to do.

[Anthony Nance]

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> On Monday, November 12, 2012 1:40:13 AM UTC-8, Ahasuerus wrote:
>

>> On Nov 12, 2:28am, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> > Sheri S. Tepper? Harry Turtledove? Carrie Vaughn? ... Lawrence Watt-Evans?
>
>> <blink>Carrie Vaughn?</blink>
>
> Harry TURTLEDOVE? And people call *Donaldson's* writing atrocious?

I believe a lot of people are tossed off by <what they perceive is>
Donaldson's tin ear, including some unusual word choices/usages.


Quick unrelated thought from elsethread, re: Jim Butcher:
Given some of your stated preferences and criteria, I think you
have a better chance of enjoying Butcher's Codex Alera series
(six books, first one is _Furies of Calderon_ ) than his Harry
Dresden series.

Tony

[Anthony Nance]

Chris Buckley <al...@sabir.com> wrote:

> On 2012-11-10, Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 17:15:19 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
>><j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
>><news:746533d7-1a36-4dd3...@googlegroups.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>>
>>> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:54:20 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>

>>>> On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 11:18:10 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com>
>>>> wrote in <news:a2658a70-58dc-45ac...@googlegroups.com>
>>>> in rec.arts.sf.written:

[snip lots of good stuff, since I'm only chiming in on one little piece]


> As a somewhat off the wall suggestion, I might include George R.R. Martin
> in the overall discussion (though not at the very top). Not the obvious
> one that's already been mentioned (but I don't think ranks highly), but
> _The Armageddon Rag_ . However, I'm not sure it qualifies.


Agreed all the way - I really enjoyed the book, but I don't think
it qualifies for what Joe is looking for.

Tony

[David DeLaney]

Michael Stemper <mste...@walkabout.empros.com> wrote:

>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) writes:
>>Jurgen is NOT the best Cabell. It's the most FAMOUS,
>
>Interesting. It's the only one that I've read (which fact aligns with
>"most famous"), and I really enjoyed it. In fact, I found it mostly
>laugh-out-loud hilarious.
>
>For some reason that escapes me, I haven't re-read it yet.
>
>> and possibly the most
>>"epic fantasy travelogue"-style one...
>
>Do his other books still involve strange worlds/places? I seem to recall
>that Piper and Niven mined his work extensively for the names of planets.

Oh yes. Jurgen just takes it up to 11. The original Dom Manuel visits a few
fairly odd places, the members of the Silver Stallion go questing, the
protagonist in Something About Eve goes journeying through an entire landscape
of Other... but Jurgen had a whirlwind tour of a great many Famous Nonplaces.

>> I'd put Something About Eve ahead of
>>it, and Figures of Earth (though others might dispute that) and the The Silver
>>Stallion collection.
>
>I put _The Silver Stallion_ on my "to buy" list several years back, on
>Lawrence's recommendation. I didn't pick up on it being a collection, though.
>How does Cabell's short fiction compare to his novels?

He's got the hang of short fiction, lemme put it that way. The Silver Stallion
isn't quite a collection; it's the adventures of each member of the Fellowship
that Manuel collected, after the latter's death. He has some other collections
that -are- short fiction - Gallantry, Chivalry, and The Line of Love come
to mind because each is a collection of stories about descendants of Manuel
in some degree or other that follow one or another of the three modes of
living, gallant, chivalrous, or romantic, and their various misadventures.

[Robert Carnegie]

If the previous author provided a separate "Reply-To" e-mail address,
New Google Groups does the "cc" thing. It seems to want to do it on
this message from me to you, as well.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:35:20 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:20c0a01c-fe86-4912...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

This is closer to the sort of thing that I remember than I
understood from 'significant bits', though I suspect that it
covers more ground and that your memories are significantly
more specific than most of mine.

> For Steiber's book, I basically remember that I thought it
> was a good book, and that's *it*. I remember more from
> Duncan's tetralogy years *earlier*.

Whereas I remembered the gems, Lucinda (though not her
name), Alasdair (also not by name), the flavor of his home,
something of the flavor of Arcato, Hermes, the presence of
other gods, the little dragon, the mixed but still
satisfying emotional flavor of the ending, and the image of
Silvershod's hooves striking sparks that became gems (though
not his name or the full tale). (Past tense because this
discussion prompted me to dig it out.)

[...]

>>> This is another way of phrasing the answer I gave Stephen
>>> Sterling when I identified myself at a World Fantasy
>>> Convention (my only con to date) as an interloper - a
>>> critic - and he histrionically asked why. Canon
>>> formation is an evil, no doubt about it, but it's so much
>>> better than the evil of complete oblivion which is the
>>> alternative.

>> I don't accept the premise that these are the only two possibilities,
>> and I'm not at all sure that I'd agree with your choice even if I did.

>> But it's clear (as if it weren't already!) that we've
>> completely different perspectives here. Reviewers can be
>> useful, once one learns enough about their tastes, but
>> I've no use for critics, be they of books, music, or
>> restaurants. I don't care about their opinions: in
>> matters of taste mine are the only opinions that really
>> matter to me. I don't consider their judgements in any
>> way privileged, and I don't care what they have to say
>> (unless it's entertaining in its own right): it adds
>> nothing of value to the book, musical performance, piece
>> of music, etc.

> I'm pretty sure what you're saying here is logically
> incoherent, but not quite sure.

That's a response that I certainly didn't expect, and one
that I don't really understand, unless it's based on my
careless placement of 'restaurants'. I don't think that
I've ever actually encountered a restaurant critic, though I
may have run across one or two who'd have liked to be seen
as such. I wanted to make it very clear that I wasn't
talking just about books and didn't notice that the sentence
structure put the list in the wrong place.

> I identify myself as a "critic" rather than a "reviewer"
> for two reasons:

> 1) I'm writing a history of fantasy. Although much of its
> content amounts to reviews of various works, reviewers
> (in normal parlance, which may not be your meaning) don't
> generally review books that are thousands of years old.

> 2) Furthermore, some of its content *isn't* just reviews.
> Sometimes there's something worth saying that isn't
> specific to a particular work.

> What do you consider the dividing line between "critic"
> and "reviewer"?

I take it that a reviewer's primary function is to provide
enough information for me to have a reasonable shot at
deciding whether something is worth my money or time. A
critic, as I use the term, is more interested in: evaluating
the whatever-it-is and justifying that evaluation on grounds
of supposed special expertise; analyzing it; and placing it
in some broader context.

> You identify restaurant critics as critics, even though
> their actual activities normally involve nothing but
> conventional reviewing. Is it, then, that you simply
> abjure whatever anyone *labeled* as a "critic" says?

No, of course not. See above.

> And separately, whence comes this strange ruling-out of
> experience? I mean, if I say "<My Girlfriend is a
> Gumiho> is a very good Korean TV drama, and it's fantasy
> too", I'm reviewing, and you might care to listen; but if
> I say "Korean TV dramas tend to have very conservative
> morals and aesthetics, so you shouldn't expect scantily
> clad women and should expect melodrama", I'm criticising,
> and it's worthless to you;

It's not really relevant to this discussion, since it is not
a critique of a single work. Nor is it what I'm talking
about when I distinguish 'reviewer' from 'critic', or
(obviously!) when I say that I don't consider critics'
opinions privileged: it's an empirical observation, not an
opinion.

> still more so if I say "<My Girlfriend is a Gumiho>,
> despite its fantasy content, is a thoroughly conventional
> Korean TV drama, created by the most successful people in
> the business". Huh? Wherefore why is that?

Here again you're acting as a reviewer.

(Don't worry about the e-mailed copies; I figured that you
probably didn't realize that the system was sending them.)

Brian

[Joe Bernstein]

On Monday, November 12, 2012 3:14:58 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:25:48 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
> <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
> <news:e9260ab4-32d3-493f...@googlegroups.com>
> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>
> > On Friday, November 9, 2012 9:08:15 PM UTC-8, David
> > DeLaney wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> Michelle Sagara/West's works have to go in here somewhere
> >> too:
>
> > Well, they've been getting plenty of support. I'm
> > actually kinda surprised. Jim Butcher threw me, since I
> > tend simply to lump him in as another (if non-imitative)
> > "urban fantasy" writer, but he was in keeping with the
> > initial tendency to name primarily writers or works of
> > relatively recent vintage.

> Why should it make any difference that he writes urban
> fantasy? (And not exclusively, at that: the Alera Codex is
> in the high/traditional mold.)

Ya know, it's tempting to agree with you, but the fact is,
it *should* make a difference.

I sometimes refer more or less contemptuously to "the trilogists".
What I mean by this is actually the spate of secondary-world
fantasists of the 1980s who wrote trilogies galore. Now, note
that this group includes people like Barbara Hambly, of genuine
merit, as well as, say (modulo # of books per series) David
Eddings. The reason I get to be contemptuous of them as a group,
even though some of the individuals are good, is that
they participated in a publishing boom, and standards were lower
than they normally are.

Similar would go for, say, vampire novels in the early 1990s.

The difference with "urban fantasy" at least since about 2002 is
that this is no ordinary publishing boom. It's somewhere between
15% and 40% of *all* mass market paperbacks printed in the US,
near as I can guess, year after year.

I've read Jim Butcher's first few books, and there are several
unusual things about them, considered as "urban fantasy". One,
he doesn't write anything like chick lit. (For an example of
a man writing about a male protagonist in chick lit mode, see
someone named McCullough mentioned in one of my old book logs.)
Two, he obviously draws much less than normal on these books'
common source, Laurell Hamilton. (In particular, I don't remember
anything obviously derived from the romance genre, though I
was less familiar with that genre a decade ago, when I read him,
than I am now. Pretty much all other "urban fantasy" of this
sort that I've read clearly has romance ancestry, whether via
Hamilton or otherwise.) So he's kind of on the far edge of
that microgenre in terms of how much he personally deserves
insults aimed at "urban fantasy" as a whole.

But that doesn't mean the insults have no basis. Note the
writer of secondary-world fantasy whose ability to write
elementary English I savaged some here years back, Dawn Cook.
Well, *she* turned into a bestseller when she took up the
pseudonym Kim Harrison and turned to "urban fantasy". I
assume, but do not know, that she also started getting properly
edited, but still. I can toss in McCullough and Lisa Shearin
as other "urban fantasy" writers of very dubious merit. (To
be fair, Shearin's are set on a secondary world.)

All of that said: I like Kelley Armstrong, and expect to
read the entire Otherworld series. I've been trying to find
a way to get farther than <Kitty and the Midnight Hour>, even
though that didn't entirely sell me on Carrie Vaughn. And...
shoot, wish I could multitask from the computer I'm posting
from - there's some series with titles like <Magic in the Bone>
and <Magic at the Gates> that I like, but of course I should,
since it's been getting mythopoeic.

I'm not making the case that all "urban fantasy" is bad.
I'm making the case that it's fair to look down on it en bloc,
because as a publishing phenomenon it has low standards.

> > Sagara / West is much more baffling. Is this a random
> > local cluster of enthusiasts, or the same sort of group
> > resulting from one reader that I'd like to spawn re, say,
> > Linda Haldeman, Gillian Bradshaw, or Joyce Ballou
> > Gregorian?
>
> Dave and I are completely independent enthusiasts.
>
> > (None of whom, be it noted, I've yet named as qualifying
> > for the list I'm imagining.)
>
> I thought about Gregorian; I just didn't enjoy the trilogy
> quite enough, excellent as it is. I forgot about Bradshaw,
> I'm sorry to say, but she's certainly worth consideration in
> my book, if not necessarily short-listing.

Thing is, it's debateable whether she's "an American" any more,
though she was when she wrote her most important fantasy. (And
since I don't understand those books, nor find what I do understand
especially fruitful, I'm not putting them forward. More recently
her historicals have included some with fantasy elements, least in
<Island of Ghosts>, medium in <Horses of Heaven>, and most in, um,
the werewolf book. I suspect only the last reads as real fantasy,
and I wouldn't put it forward at all.)

Haldeman's <Esbae> is a reasonable choice to put up against
<Silverlock>, in terms of outside referents; it so happens
that I, personally, have gotten far more from Haldeman's musical
references than I ever did from Myers's literary ones. But I'm
still pretty sure I don't want it on the list.

[Joe Bernstein]

On Friday, November 9, 2012 9:16:16 PM UTC-8, David DeLaney wrote:

> Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote (quoting, um, Brian Scott):

> >> _Jurgen_;

> >Would that be your pick of Cabell? Or have you read enough Cabell
> >to have a pick? (I've only read two books.)

> Jurgen is NOT the best Cabell. It's the most FAMOUS, and possibly
> the most "epic fantasy travelogue"-style one... I'd put Something

> About Eve ahead of it, and Figures of Earth (though others might
> dispute that) and the The Silver Stallion collection.

Unfortunately, <Figures of Earth> is the one I've read. See, for
some reason I decided to read the Poictesme books in series order.
So I started with that weird dialogue, and then went on to <Figures
of Earth>, and that's when I decided I didn't like Cabell.

Even if my book never gets written, I'll probably eventually read
him, but I'll be interested to see whether he's more bearable in
publication order - whether he earns my respect that way, before
turning into the crank who wrote those two books.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 11/14/12 3:38 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> On Monday, November 12, 2012 3:14:58 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:25:48 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
>> <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
>> <news:e9260ab4-32d3-493f...@googlegroups.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>>
>>> On Friday, November 9, 2012 9:08:15 PM UTC-8, David
>>> DeLaney wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>> Michelle Sagara/West's works have to go in here somewhere
>>>> too:
>>
>>> Well, they've been getting plenty of support. I'm
>>> actually kinda surprised. Jim Butcher threw me, since I
>>> tend simply to lump him in as another (if non-imitative)
>>> "urban fantasy" writer, but he was in keeping with the
>>> initial tendency to name primarily writers or works of
>>> relatively recent vintage.
>
>> Why should it make any difference that he writes urban
>> fantasy? (And not exclusively, at that: the Alera Codex is
>> in the high/traditional mold.)
>
> Ya know, it's tempting to agree with you, but the fact is,
> it *should* make a difference.

Why? I write urban fantasy (Digital Knight), space opera (Grand Central
Arena), high fantasy (Phoenix Rising), and hard SF (Boundary) -- so far
that's it, although I have two other subgenres in the pipeline.

>
> I've read Jim Butcher's first few books, and there are several
> unusual things about them, considered as "urban fantasy". One,
> he doesn't write anything like chick lit.

So? Urban Fantasy isn't "chick lit", whatever that is.

(For an example of
> a man writing about a male protagonist in chick lit mode, see
> someone named McCullough mentioned in one of my old book logs.)
> Two, he obviously draws much less than normal on these books'
> common source, Laurell Hamilton.

Laurell is hardly the "common source". She's one popular example of the
Vampire Shagger sub-division of Urban Fantasy, but hardly the common
source of it all. Its roots go back to at least the 1920s, and the
modern era's foundations are more Chelsea-Quinn Yarbro, Saberhagen's
Dracula, and Anne Rice's Lestat, mixed in with Charles DeLint and, for
that matter, Kolchak and the X-Files.




--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Wayne Throop]

:: I've read Jim Butcher's first few books, and there are several

:: unusual things about them, considered as "urban fantasy". One, he
:: doesn't write anything like chick lit.

: "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com>
: So? Urban Fantasy isn't "chick lit", whatever that is.

Not necessarily... but select a random urban fantasy out of
things-published-this-month, and odds are very good that the protagonist
is female, and at some point has an overwhelming attraction to some
vampire/werewolf/demon/dragon/god/whatnot (and most often, whom she had
previously despised to varying degrees), culminating in a one or more
sex scenes.

Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with stories having those
elements. Sometimes it's done well. Just... lately, most aren't,
even more than Sturgeon's law requires.

At any rate, I gather that's the phenomenon being referred to above.

[Joe Bernstein]

On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 9:39:37 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott
wrote a post that I just spent an hour writing a reply to.
Apparently Google Groups assumes it can't take an actual hour
to write any post, so while I was in the middle of formatting,
all my work went away. Argh.

I don't have another hour for this (just re-wrapping everything
took over 10 minutes) so will have to be terser, and not quote.
Brian Scott and I more or less agree that criticism, as against
reviewing, involves evaluation, especially in regard to formal,
generic, or other standards; analysis; and contextualisation.
We disagree, I think, strongly, on two other things:

1) Are any of these things normally used by reviewers? I'd
certainly say so.

2) Do these things have value in their own right? He has retreated
to one of his original statements - that he doesn't "privilege"
critics' opinions. (Well, I don't either.) But by saying "I've no
use for critics", "I don't care what they say", and more recently
mentioning "supposed expertise", he implies a sort of soft anti-
intellectualism - perhaps not saying criticism shouldn't exist, but
clearly saying he considers knowledge worthless, when it's knowledge
about things aesthetic.

If I can find a way to post without this sort of risk of erasure, I
may try again with the longer post, which was replete with examples
and such. I think I can get away with one right now. Something
like the following sentence was in many reviews of the relevant book
when it appeared; but it's pure contextualisation. "<Snow Crash> is
the best cyberpunk novel since <Neuromancer>."

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 11/14/12 6:12 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:

> If I can find a way to post without this sort of risk of erasure, I
> may try again with the longer post, which was replete with examples
> and such.

Two ways:

1) Just copy the post to a text editor, write your response, then go
back to Google Gropes and THEN post your reply by a simple cut-and-paste.

2) Use a free newsserver like eternal-september and any newsreader
software (I use Thunderbird).

[Kurt Busiek]

"The current popular trend in the genre" isn't the genre. Assuming that
the Dresden Files isn't urban fantasy because it's not part of the
fangbanger trend is sorta like assuming that PSYCHO isn't horror
because it doesn't have sparkly vampires in it.

kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!

[Wayne Throop]

: Kurt Busiek <ku...@busiek.com>
: "The current popular trend in the genre" isn't the genre. Assuming

: that the Dresden Files isn't urban fantasy because it's not part of
: the fangbanger trend is sorta like assuming that PSYCHO isn't horror
: because it doesn't have sparkly vampires in it.

Well sure, but I thought that's what he was saying. That Dresden
isn't like the majority of urban fantasy. The phrasing:

I've read Jim Butcher's first few books, and there are several
unusual things about them, considered as "urban fantasy". One, he
doesn't write anything like chick lit.

indicates to me, consider it as urban fantasy, and it's unusual.
That doesn't seem to me to say it isn't urban fantasy.

[Kurt Busiek]

On 2012-11-15 00:13:15 +0000, thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) said:

> : Kurt Busiek <ku...@busiek.com>
> : "The current popular trend in the genre" isn't the genre. Assuming
> : that the Dresden Files isn't urban fantasy because it's not part of
> : the fangbanger trend is sorta like assuming that PSYCHO isn't horror
> : because it doesn't have sparkly vampires in it.
>
> Well sure, but I thought that's what he was saying. That Dresden
> isn't like the majority of urban fantasy.

Well, I wouldn't equate the current popular trend with the majority, either.

> The phrasing:
>
> I've read Jim Butcher's first few books, and there are several
> unusual things about them, considered as "urban fantasy". One, he
> doesn't write anything like chick lit.
>
> indicates to me, consider it as urban fantasy, and it's unusual.
> That doesn't seem to me to say it isn't urban fantasy.

Maybe. If so, I'd say it's unusual only from a very shalllow look at
urban fantasy -- amending my earlier note, it'd then be sorta like
considering PSYCHO unusual for the horror genre because it's not like
TWILIGHT.

Peter Beagle's URBAN FANTASY ANTHOLOGY divides the genre into three
loose categories -- mythic fiction, paranormal romance and noir
fantasy. Or, as I tend to think of it, "classic" urban fantasy,
fangbangers and asskickers of the fantastic.

Dresden falls very solidly in the noir fantasy/asskickers area, which
is not an outlier. I think he's mistaking the fangbanger contingent for
the whole genre, and seeing Dresden as an outsider to that subsection
as it's an outlier to the whole shebang.

[David DeLaney]

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>The difference with "urban fantasy" at least since about 2002 is
>that this is no ordinary publishing boom. It's somewhere between
>15% and 40% of *all* mass market paperbacks printed in the US,
>near as I can guess, year after year.

You're including "paranormal romance" in with it then, I _think_?

>shoot, wish I could multitask from the computer I'm posting
>from - there's some series with titles like <Magic in the Bone>
>and <Magic at the Gates> that I like, but of course I should,
>since it's been getting mythopoeic.

Devon Monk's series. I'm buying it, the latest installment _Magic for a Price_
(not "Prince") came out this weekend.

>I'm not making the case that all "urban fantasy" is bad.
>I'm making the case that it's fair to look down on it en bloc,
>because as a publishing phenomenon it has low standards.

Sturgeon's Law takes WORK to get around, you know.

>> Dave and I are completely independent enthusiasts.

We may even be at right angles to each other, though we'd have to use the
vector-transport system over Amtrak to be quite sure.

[David DeLaney]

Kurt Busiek <ku...@busiek.com> wrote:
>Peter Beagle's URBAN FANTASY ANTHOLOGY divides the genre into three
>loose categories -- mythic fiction, paranormal romance and noir
>fantasy. Or, as I tend to think of it, "classic" urban fantasy,
>fangbangers and asskickers of the fantastic.

Each of which has its own subdivisions, of course. (What sprang to mind was
the 'deceased detective' subdivision for noir fantasy - Waggoner, Petrucha,
and Holm come immediately to brain...)

[David DeLaney]

Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 9:39:37 PM UTC-8, Brian M. Scott
>wrote a post that I just spent an hour writing a reply to.
>Apparently Google Groups assumes it can't take an actual hour
>to write any post, so while I was in the middle of formatting,
>all my work went away. Argh.

...

>If I can find a way to post without this sort of risk of erasure,

Compose in Notepad or Wordpad, or the Mac equivalent. When done, cut and
paste into the Google posting window. (Things like this can occur on various
web forums as well, and Google inherits it because it's trying to make Usenet
INTO a webforum... My email system does a related thing, in that if I take
longer than about five minutes to compose a reply to any one email, it
replies and sends it off just fine but then throws an error that closes out
the mailbox and removes any changes I made, when I go back to "read the next
email" mode. Annoying, I agree.)

[Kurt Busiek]

On 2012-11-15 01:24:11 +0000, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) said:

> Kurt Busiek <ku...@busiek.com> wrote:
>> Peter Beagle's URBAN FANTASY ANTHOLOGY divides the genre into three
>> loose categories -- mythic fiction, paranormal romance and noir
>> fantasy. Or, as I tend to think of it, "classic" urban fantasy,
>> fangbangers and asskickers of the fantastic.
>
> Each of which has its own subdivisions, of course. (What sprang to mind was
> the 'deceased detective' subdivision for noir fantasy - Waggoner, Petrucha,
> and Holm come immediately to brain...)

If you mean Chris F. Holm, I just read his first (and then met him in
Wisconsin); the book was terrific and he seems like a great guy.

[David Johnston]

On 11/14/2012 5:31 PM, Kurt Busiek wrote:
> On 2012-11-15 00:13:15 +0000, thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) said:
>
>> : Kurt Busiek <ku...@busiek.com>
>> : "The current popular trend in the genre" isn't the genre. Assuming
>> : that the Dresden Files isn't urban fantasy because it's not part of
>> : the fangbanger trend is sorta like assuming that PSYCHO isn't horror
>> : because it doesn't have sparkly vampires in it.
>>
>> Well sure, but I thought that's what he was saying. That Dresden
>> isn't like the majority of urban fantasy.
>
> Well, I wouldn't equate the current popular trend with the majority,
> either.
>
>> The phrasing:
>>
>> I've read Jim Butcher's first few books, and there are several
>> unusual things about them, considered as "urban fantasy". One, he
>> doesn't write anything like chick lit.
>>
>> indicates to me, consider it as urban fantasy, and it's unusual.
>> That doesn't seem to me to say it isn't urban fantasy.
>
> Maybe. If so, I'd say it's unusual only from a very shalllow look at
> urban fantasy -- amending my earlier note, it'd then be sorta like
> considering PSYCHO unusual for the horror genre because it's not like
> TWILIGHT.

I have no problem with considering Twilight unusual for the horror
genre. (Probably because it's paranormal romance.)