Notable "new" authors?
Niko
I just stick with my "to-be-read" pile) it occurs to me that I seem to have
gotten rather insular in my reading habits, relying a little too heavily on
a core group of trusted authors. After getting burned a few times too many
with "exciting" newcomers that were beyond disappointing, I find that it
takes a heck of a lot of positive word-of-mouth to spark my interest in
anyone new.
So, I'm curious: In the last few years have their been any particularly
noteworthy new authors that seem worth catching from the ground up?
I'm interested in hearing about anyone, really, but for the record: My
personal tastes run toward fantasy, although I don't have much patience with
straight-forward Eddings-ish quest stories anymore. Favorite authors that
spring to mind: Patricia McKillip, GG Kay, Martha Wells, Paula Volsky, Greg
Keyes, Jack Vance (i.e. "Lyonesse"), Chaz Brenchley.
TIA! :) Jen
Sea Wasp
> Thinking about my reading for the last few years (and foreseeable future, if
> I just stick with my "to-be-read" pile) it occurs to me that I seem to have
> gotten rather insular in my reading habits, relying a little too heavily on
> a core group of trusted authors. After getting burned a few times too many
> with "exciting" newcomers that were beyond disappointing, I find that it
> takes a heck of a lot of positive word-of-mouth to spark my interest in
> anyone new.
>
> So, I'm curious: In the last few years have their been any particularly
> noteworthy new authors that seem worth catching from the ground up?
Can you give us an idea of what would be "new" in terms of timeline?
Last two years, last five years, last fifteen? Makes a rather large
difference in who can be recommended.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
lal_truckee
>
>
> Can you give us an idea of what would be "new" in terms of timeline?
> Last two years, last five years, last fifteen? Makes a rather large
> difference in who can be recommended.
Important point. I tend to think of "new authors" as anyone who didn't
publish before 1950...
Jens Kilian
> So, I'm curious: In the last few years have their been any particularly
> noteworthy new authors that seem worth catching from the ground up?
Alastair Reynolds and Charles Stross, perhaps.
--
mailto:j...@acm.org As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
http://del.icio.us/jjk
Elaine Thompson
>So, I'm curious: In the last few years have their been any particularly
>noteworthy new authors that seem worth catching from the ground up?
>
>I'm interested in hearing about anyone, really, but for the record: My
>personal tastes run toward fantasy, although I don't have much patience with
>straight-forward Eddings-ish quest stories anymore. Favorite authors that
>spring to mind: Patricia McKillip, GG Kay, Martha Wells, Paula Volsky, Greg
>Keyes, Jack Vance (i.e. "Lyonesse"), Chaz Brenchley.
hmm... well, I also like McKillip, Kay, Wells, and Keyes, and once
liked Volsky, so I'll try to pull out of memory a few names of newer
writers whose work I've found worth keeping in the hopes there's
enough overlap in what we like about those writers that some will work
for you. ("newer' Defined as I read their first books in the last ten
years or so.)
<mumble> Kritzer's _Fires of the Faithful_ and _Turning the Storm_, a
duology were quite good. published as pb originals. I haven't read
her later work yet.
Also pb originals, Carol Berg's trilogy containing _Transformation,
Restoration, and one more I can't remember. Nice world building,
character types fleshed out enough to be three-dimensional. Lots of
character torture for the main guy, if that makes a difference.
Original handling of demons, to the best of my knowledge. Her stand
alone that followed was pretty good, too. Her later series could have
used some editing but wasn't bad.
Not a new writer, but ... Bujold's recent fantasies, _Curse of
Chalion_, _Paladin of Souls_ and _Hallowed Hunt_ are very worth
reading.
Michelle Sagara's _Cast in Shadow_, the start of a new series from
Michelle Sagara West, who might as well be a new writer under the
Sagara name because her original quartet as Sagara was back in the
80s.
Jo Walton's stuff. _The King's Name_ & _The King's Peace_ which are
alternate world Arthurian, with excellent characterization, and a neat
take on religion, the Trollope/dragon book _Tooth & Claw_, and another
coming out sometime before the end of the year. And one other I
didn't like so well, which is probably why I can't remember the title.
I intend to try Naomi Novik's series, soon. And just recently pulled
the Miller/Lee Liaden series off the shelf (my husband has been
reading them all along) and liked them very much.
Hope this helps. Come back and report after you look into the
recommedations you get? It's always good to see what worked.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Konrad Gaertner
>
> So, I'm curious: In the last few years have their been any particularly
> noteworthy new authors that seem worth catching from the ground up?
>
> I'm interested in hearing about anyone, really, but for the record: My
> personal tastes run toward fantasy, although I don't have much patience with
> straight-forward Eddings-ish quest stories anymore. Favorite authors that
> spring to mind: Patricia McKillip, GG Kay, Martha Wells, Paula Volsky, Greg
> Keyes, Jack Vance (i.e. "Lyonesse"), Chaz Brenchley.
Calibration: I didn't care for Kay, really like Wells, and haven't
read any of the others. (I've never even heard of Brenchley before.)
Checking my booklog by copyright date:
2004:
MaryJanice Davidson's vampire romance spoof series
Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series
Stephan Zielinski's _Bad Magic_
(all are urban fantasy)
2005:
Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime series (spinoff from Thursday Next)
Charlaine Harris' _Grave Sight_
Robin Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy
Justine Larbalestier's Magic Madness series
C.E. Murphy's _Urban Shaman_
Laura Resnick's Manhattan Magic series
Brandon Sanderson's _Elantris_
(all urban fantasy except the last)
2006:
Larwence Watt-Evans' _Wizard Lord_ (high fantasy)
Patricia Briggs' _Moon Called_ (urban fantasy)
Naomi Novik's _His Majesty's Dragon_ (historical fantasy)
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - - - email: gae...@aol.com
http://kgbooklog.livejournal.com/
"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
-- James Nicoll
Niko
> Can you give us an idea of what would be "new" in terms of timeline? Last
> two years, last five years, last fifteen? Makes a rather large difference
> in who can be recommended.
Heh...I actually originally had a time-frame in there, then took it out to
be more flexible or something with "a few". Maybe a bit *too* flexible. :)
My original range was 3-5 years, though going back further would be fine,
too.
Jen
Niko
> Also pb originals, Carol Berg's trilogy containing _Transformation,
> Restoration, and one more I can't remember. Nice world building,
> character types fleshed out enough to be three-dimensional. Lots of
> character torture for the main guy, if that makes a difference.
> Original handling of demons, to the best of my knowledge. Her stand
> alone that followed was pretty good, too. Her later series could have
> used some editing but wasn't bad.
Ah, I don't know why Carol Berg wasn't on my original list of favorites. I
usually mention her and Martha Wells in the same breath. I agree about her
latest series being a bit off, but I loved "Transformation" enough to more
than make up for it.
Bodes well for the others you mentioned. Merci! :)
Jen
Elaine Thompson
>"Elaine Thompson" <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>> Also pb originals, Carol Berg's trilogy containing _Transformation,
snip
>
>Ah, I don't know why Carol Berg wasn't on my original list of favorites. I
>usually mention her and Martha Wells in the same breath. I agree about her
>latest series being a bit off, but I loved "Transformation" enough to more
>than make up for it.
>
>Bodes well for the others you mentioned. Merci! :)
Thought of another couple: Glenda Larke, an Australian writer now
living (I gather) in Malaysia. Isles of Glory trilogy, I think
they're all in print now (pb ) in the US. Even if she does have
characters named Blaze and Flame, which caused me to nearly put the
first one back down in the store, but something had already grabbed
me. I didn't think she was really going to do what the foreshadowing
promised, and she did. My husband and I both liked them. (We both
liked the Berg, too, for whatever calibration that provides.) She
also wrote _Havenstar_ under her real name, Glenda Noramly (I think).
And Alma Alexander for _SEcrets of Jin-Shei_ and _Changer of Days_.
The first is an alternate history China w/some magic and (IMO) great
characters ranging from an Empress to a seamstress, all tied by the
bond of Jin-Shei. People as different as me and Steve Stirling liked
it. (he said so, somewhere on Usenet. OTOH, my husband didn't read
it.) It is even *a one volume story.* _Changer_ is more of a
typical fantasy with a deposed child queen finding power in the desert
and then returning home. Oh, and it's a duology, overall title is
_Changer_ which is also vol 2's title. First volume is _The Hidden
Queen_.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
r.r...@thevine.net
Based simply and only on the statement that you like fantasy, I'm
going to suggest Erikson's Malazan books. They are dark, gritty,
bloody, and very complex books. There are several threads in this
newsgroup about them, if you want to see what other people think about
them. I started one with the title "Malazan: My thoughts", but there
are others as well.
Rebecca
Doug Weller
wrote:
[SNIP]
>
>2005:
>Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime series (spinoff from Thursday Next)
>Charlaine Harris' _Grave Sight_
>Robin Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy
>Justine Larbalestier's Magic Madness series
>C.E. Murphy's _Urban Shaman_
>Laura Resnick's Manhattan Magic series
>Brandon Sanderson's _Elantris_
>(all urban fantasy except the last)
Why do you call Soldier Son urban fantasy?
[SNIP]
Doug
--
Doug Weller --
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk
Amun - co-owner/co-moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/
David Goldfarb
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>Jo Walton's stuff. _The King's Name_ & _The King's Peace_ which are
>alternate world Arthurian, with excellent characterization, and a neat
>take on religion, the Trollope/dragon book _Tooth & Claw_, and another
>coming out sometime before the end of the year. And one other I
>didn't like so well, which is probably why I can't remember the title.
I second the recommendation for Jo Walton. The one you can't remember
is _The Prize in the Game_, which is set in the Ireland-equivalent
to _King's_ Britain-equivalent.
The new one coming out this August is called _Farthing_ and is
alternate-history mystery rather than fantasy. It's really good
though.
She's started a sequel to _Tooth and Claw_.
--
David Goldfarb |"You think just because there are more of you,
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | that you have Groo outnumbered! Groo will
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | show you that you are wrong!"
| -- Groo the Wanderer
Joe Bernstein
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Jun 2006 11:02:53 GMT, "Niko" <jus...@neo.rr.com> wrote:
> >So, I'm curious: In the last few years have their been any particularly
> >noteworthy new authors that seem worth catching from the ground up?
> >I'm interested in hearing about anyone, really, but for the record: My
> >personal tastes run toward fantasy, although I don't have much patience
> >with straight-forward Eddings-ish quest stories anymore. Favorite
> >authors that spring to mind: Patricia McKillip, GG Kay, Martha Wells,
> >Paula Volsky, Greg Keyes, Jack Vance (i.e. "Lyonesse"), Chaz Brenchley.
Then my tastes and yours march closely together. (I don't like all
of Volsky's books but like some a lot; vaguely similar as regards Keyes;
and haven't read Brenchley, so this is probably a sign that I should.)
So what can I find that Elaine Thompson hasn't already? First, though...
> hmm... well, I also like McKillip, Kay, Wells, and Keyes, and once
> liked Volsky,
"once" ?
> so I'll try to pull out of memory a few names of newer
> writers whose work I've found worth keeping in the hopes there's
> enough overlap in what we like about those writers that some will work
> for you. ("newer' Defined as I read their first books in the last ten
> years or so.)
>
> <mumble> Kritzer's _Fires of the Faithful_ and _Turning the Storm_, a
> duology were quite good. published as pb originals. I haven't read
> her later work yet.
Also quite good. Arguably marginally less painful. (These are the
books <Freedom's Gate> and <Freedom's Apprentice>, to be followed
soon now by <Freedom's Sisters>.) NB that Kritzer's worked, so far,
in a vaguely-Renaissance setting complete with Church (the first
pair) and in Greek-ruled Central Asia from the time after Alexander
(the trilogy) - if you like riffs on Earth history, which the combination
of Kay, Volsky, and at least some Keyes suggests, then these should be
worth your attention on that basis too.
[snip Berg, who has been annoying me for some time by seeming to
be an author I should look at, but with *such* long books all in
trilogies... OK, so now I have more concrete reason to look.]
> Not a new writer, but ... Bujold's recent fantasies, _Curse of
> Chalion_, _Paladin of Souls_ and _Hallowed Hunt_ are very worth
> reading.
Strong agreement. (And again, we have here history - they're set
in a fantasticated right-around-1500 Spain and, third book only,
Germany.)
> Michelle Sagara's _Cast in Shadow_, the start of a new series from
> Michelle Sagara West, who might as well be a new writer under the
> Sagara name because her original quartet as Sagara was back in the
> 80s.
Do these notably differ from the phone books she publishes as West?
> Jo Walton's stuff.
Strong agreement.
I'm mildly surprised Charles Stross hasn't come up except in Konrad
Gaertner's list. He writes mostly science fiction, and I haven't
read all of that, but has now had two books appear in an apparent
trilogy called "The Merchant Princes": <The Family Trade> and
<The Hidden Family>. These are well worthwhile. Essentially, they
deal with a woman of our world who finds out that a) she can travel
between worlds and b) this is an inherited trait from a family she's
never known, which is not a very nice bunch of people.
Leah Cutter has written three books which sort of seem vaguely
analogous to later Volsky, except much much shorter. They tend
to focus on a specific Earth-historical place and time, much less
fantasticated than in say Kay or Bujold, and on what room there is
for women to act freely in that place and time. <Paper Mage> shows
a woman in Tang or Song China, as the imprisonment of women there
is well under way, becoming a mage; <The Jaguar and the Wolf>
more complexly shows a princess in the Maya realm using shipwrecked
Norsemen to avoid being sacrificed, and being used by them for the
same goal. The odd one out is <The Caves of Buda>, which as best I
remember doesn't really pay that much attention to gender issues
but simply depicts a young couple dealing with her grandfather's
demonic WWII legacy. I've repeatedly demurred on buying these books,
so I don't want to praise them too highly, but they were certainly
worth reading once each.
Michelle Welch, to stick with paperback originals a moment more,
has written a trilogy set in a depressingly Earth-like set of
kingdoms, roughly early modern; the specific aspect relevant is
that government is in the hands of something sort of Inquisition-
or Calvin-like. I've read the first two and peeked at the third;
this is about as far as you can get, in secondary worlds with maps,
from Eddings. Mildly recommended (to calibrate, I do own all three
of these but have not hurried to actually read #3).
Um. Some relatively recent *hardcover* trilogists I've looked at.
No strong recommendations. You might conceivably end up liking
Sarah Ash, but given that Elaine Thompson and I both did not, I'd
guess the odds aren't good. She's the only one of these three
who's really working with history, in this case an early modern
Russia where *snarl* it turns out to be an Evil idea to try to
avert serfdom. Moving *on*, I liked Elizabeth Haydon's first three,
sorta, guiltily, but I'm not at all sure you would; their overhead
is extremely high, in terms of how much secondary-world lingo you
have to pick up, as well as how much Mary Sue you have to tolerate,
and while they aren't simple quest fantasies, they are basically in
the saving-the-world mould. (Actually, this is true of all three of
these writers...) Also, Haydon has kept on writing in this setting,
which I haven't taken as any kind of good sign. Cecilia Dart-Thornton
is probably the most substantial of these writers, but opinions on her
vary *wildly*; you may wish to Google for a sampling. Suffice that
my continued interest in what she does is not widely shared; and
even I tend to need repeated attempts before I can finish her books.
This seems like awfully slim pickings. So OK, off I go to check
my book catalogue, and all I see there to add is Susanna Clarke
(<Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell>, which I didn't finish),
Jacqueline Carey (not *that* new, but worth a look), and Isobel
Glass (a "new" pseudonym for Lisa Goldstein, not writing at her best).
Sigh. Well, I'll be at the library later today and see what I find
on those shelves.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> "She suited my mood, Sarah Mondleigh
did - it was like having a kitten in the room, like a vote for unreason."
<Glass Mountain>, Cynthia Voigt
Charlie Stross
as <j...@sfbooks.com> declared:
> I'm mildly surprised Charles Stross hasn't come up except in Konrad
> Gaertner's list. He writes mostly science fiction, and I haven't
> read all of that, but has now had two books appear in an apparent
> trilogy called "The Merchant Princes": <The Family Trade> and
><The Hidden Family>.
Ahem. (1) Book #3, "The Clan Corporate", came out in hardcover last
month. And (2) I just handed in #4 and should be starting on #5 in
another couple of months. Nope, it's not a trilogy ....
-- Charlie
ewo...@aol.com
Well, I hope it's also not an open-ended series ala Jordan, Goodkind,
etc. Or if it is open-ended in terms of worldbuilding, I at least hope
that each volume has an ending and not a cliffhanger or loose ends.
These are just thoughts, since I haven't yet read volume 1 and I am
very leery of starting a series that may not have an ending. What are
your thoughts, Charlie?
Elaine Thompson
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>In article <gksu7215ch582ae8c...@4ax.com>,
>Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 01 Jun 2006 11:02:53 GMT, "Niko" <jus...@neo.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> >So, I'm curious: In the last few years have their been any particularly
>> >noteworthy new authors that seem worth catching from the ground up?
>
snip
>Then my tastes and yours march closely together. (I don't like all
>of Volsky's books but like some a lot; vaguely similar as regards Keyes;
>and haven't read Brenchley, so this is probably a sign that I should.)
>So what can I find that Elaine Thompson hasn't already? First, though...
>
>> hmm... well, I also like McKillip, Kay, Wells, and Keyes, and once
>> liked Volsky,
>
>"once" ?
I liked several of her early books, then she produced a couple I
didn't even finish, and I think she stopped writing for a while?
Anyway there seemed to be a time, shortly after the 'boring' books
when I didn't see anything new by her for a long time, so she fell
off my radar of authors to at least check out.
It's harder to keep track of such writers with only big box stores -
they don't put all the new genre stuff out with the new books, you
have to trawl the shelves. When we had a reasonably local sf/f store,
all the new books were always out displayed as new so I couldn't miss
any authors. Trawling the shelves of the big box places was
challenging with a small child, too. (mom, I'm bored. Mom, I want to
go to the kids section....)
Which reminds me, in the kids section is where you'll find Garth Nix,
and his Sabriel, Lireal and Abhorsen are very good. And Franny
Billingsly's _The Folk Keeper_ and _Well-Wished_ which aren't quite
like anything else I've read.
*** the back of my mind, for some reason, is saying they're similar
to the Joyce Ballou Gregorians. I have no idea why, but when I do
reread the Gregorians, maybe I'll figure it out. Toughmindedness,
maybe.
*** end tangent.
And Nicky's (N.M. Browne's) books, like _Basilisk_, _Hunted_, and the
_Warriors_ duo. I picked up the first (Hunted) 'cause she's
interesting on sf.composition, but kept on because they were good,
involving stories. And different from book to book. Got to encourage
authors who *don't* do the Eddings/Anthony thing of rewriting the same
book over and over.
snip
>>
>> <mumble> Kritzer's _Fires of the Faithful_ and _Turning the Storm_, a
>> duology were quite good. published as pb originals. I haven't read
>> her later work yet.
>
>Also quite good. Arguably marginally less painful. (These are the
>books <Freedom's Gate> and <Freedom's Apprentice>, to be followed
>soon now by <Freedom's Sisters>.)
Makes note to pick them up soon.
>
>[snip Berg, who has been annoying me for some time by seeming to
>be an author I should look at, but with *such* long books all in
>trilogies... OK, so now I have more concrete reason to look.]
They're not perfect -, more in the comfort book line - and I tend to
skip some even on first reading, but I do enjoy them.
snip
>> Michelle Sagara's _Cast in Shadow_, the start of a new series from
>> Michelle Sagara West, who might as well be a new writer under the
>> Sagara name because her original quartet as Sagara was back in the
>> 80s.
>
>Do these notably differ from the phone books she publishes as West?
Yes. Well, there's only one so far, and it was different enough for
my husband to like - he'd given up on the West books several years
ago. _Cast in Shadow_ moved, he said.
I still like the West's even though I wish they were shorter, there
isn't much I can identify that could - in the end - be taken out or
redone more briefly or something. Unlike many other books, that I
wish were shorter.
>
>I'm mildly surprised Charles Stross hasn't come up except in Konrad
>Gaertner's list.
I haven't read him yet, except his Usenet postings. We have his
books, my husband likes them, which may be a pointer that the OP will,
but we don't always agree on books, so I wasn't going to suggest them
yet.
snip
>
>Leah Cutter has written three books which sort of seem vaguely
>analogous to later Volsky, except much much shorter. They tend
>to focus on a specific Earth-historical place and time, much less
>fantasticated than in say Kay or Bujold, and on what room there is
>for women to act freely in that place and time. <Paper Mage> shows
>a woman in Tang or Song China, as the imprisonment of women there
>is well under way, becoming a mage;
I liked it while reading but didn't find it a keeper. Something was
missing. The main character wasn't engaging enough, I think.
><The Jaguar and the Wolf>
>more complexly shows a princess in the Maya realm using shipwrecked
>Norsemen to avoid being sacrificed, and being used by them for the
>same goal.
hmm... I hadn't picked that up yet, maybe I will.
>The odd one out is <The Caves of Buda>, which as best I
>remember doesn't really pay that much attention to gender issues
>but simply depicts a young couple dealing with her grandfather's
>demonic WWII legacy. I've repeatedly demurred on buying these books,
>so I don't want to praise them too highly, but they were certainly
>worth reading once each.
>
Yeah, that's about the size of it. I did read CAVES, and again, it
didn't have what I want to make it a keeper.
snip
>avert serfdom. Moving *on*, I liked Elizabeth Haydon's first three,
>sorta, guiltily, but I'm not at all sure you would; their overhead
>is extremely high, in terms of how much secondary-world lingo you
>have to pick up, as well as how much Mary Sue you have to tolerate,
I crashed on the Mary Sue in book 1. She was also, IIRC, not terribly
observant or bright or something, while being advertised as
intelligent. OTOH, I kept turning pages (skimming) to find out what
happened. But at the end I wondered why I'd bothered.
>and while they aren't simple quest fantasies, they are basically in
>the saving-the-world mould. (Actually, this is true of all three of
>these writers...) Also, Haydon has kept on writing in this setting,
>which I haven't taken as any kind of good sign. Cecilia Dart-Thornton
>is probably the most substantial of these writers, but opinions on her
>vary *wildly*; you may wish to Google for a sampling. Suffice that
>my continued interest in what she does is not widely shared; and
>even I tend to need repeated attempts before I can finish her books.
They're worth a look.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Mike Schilling
"Charlie Stross" <cha...@antipope.org> wrote in message
news:eyjgg.292568$xt.1...@fe3.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
The increasingly misnamed Merchant Princes trilogy.
kevin...@yahoo.com
I like his books and I don't much care where he's going at any
particular time. MacLeod's Fall Revolution series didn't strike me as
following any pre-conceived plan on how many or even which order, but
they were great books non-the-less.
McCabe
Konrad Gaertner
>
> On Fri, 02 Jun 2006 00:42:59 GMT, in rec.arts.sf.written, Konrad Gaertner
> wrote:
> [SNIP]
> >
> >2005:
> >Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime series (spinoff from Thursday Next)
> >Charlaine Harris' _Grave Sight_
> >Robin Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy
> >Justine Larbalestier's Magic Madness series
> >C.E. Murphy's _Urban Shaman_
> >Laura Resnick's Manhattan Magic series
> >Brandon Sanderson's _Elantris_
> >(all urban fantasy except the last)
>
> Why do you call Soldier Son urban fantasy?
You're right, it's not (though it borders on being historical); I
made that comment before noticing I was missing Hobb in that year.
Charlie Stross
> Well, I hope it's also not an open-ended series ala Jordan, Goodkind,
> etc. Or if it is open-ended in terms of worldbuilding, I at least hope
> that each volume has an ending and not a cliffhanger or loose ends.
> These are just thoughts, since I haven't yet read volume 1 and I am
> very leery of starting a series that may not have an ending. What are
> your thoughts, Charlie?
Volumes 1 and 2 were originally written as one book, have a well-defined
ending, and are best read nose-to-tail. Luckily for you, they're both
out in paperback. Volume 3 was going to be the first third of the
sequel, then Tor told me they were chopping the first book in two and
planing to run the series in short-arse volumes, so yes, it ends on a
cliff-hanger (but slightly better planned than the end of #1 was). I'm
under contract for six books (I just handed in #4), and unless things
run away from me, I have every intention of concluding story line #2
very clearly in book 6; any subsequent books in the world will focus on
different characters. So in summary: read 1 and 2 now, then depending on
temperament wait a while and binge-read 3-6.
-- Charlie
Charlie Stross
> The increasingly misnamed Merchant Princes trilogy.
Where did the whole trilogy thing come from, anyway? I don't do
trilogies! Mutter, grumble.
-- Charlie
Mike Schilling
No offense intended. I consider being compared to Douglas Adams a
compliment.
Niko
"Joe Bernstein" wrote:
> if you like riffs on Earth history, which the combination
> of Kay, Volsky, and at least some Keyes suggests, then these should be
> worth your attention on that basis too.
regard on some of the recs. It definitely helps. :)
> [snip Berg, who has been annoying me for some time by seeming to
> be an author I should look at, but with *such* long books all in
> trilogies... OK, so now I have more concrete reason to look.]
For what it's worth, _Transformation_ could easily be read as a standalone.
It wraps things up nicely, and has a good strong finish, so you wouldn't be
left hanging if you opted not to continue.
> [...]their overhead
> is extremely high, in terms of how much secondary-world lingo you
> have to pick up, as well as how much Mary Sue you have to tolerate
*shudder* Definitely a turn-off. Mary Sue-ism is part of what made me
drift away from trying out authors I wasn't familiar with. Had a bad run
of books that were either horrible Mary Sues or just plain forgettable, and
it seemed like the publishers were putting out nothing but drivel.
(Incidentally, I consider _Ill-Made Mute_ to be one of the former category.
I was dealing with the unusual style, but the Mary Sue-ness got to me in a
big way.
I recently tried to give her another go with "Lady of the Sorrows", and it
was
one of the rare times I actually quit a book halfway through with absolutely
no
sense of guilt.)
Thanks for the recs! Can't wait to get out to the bookstore and start
stocking
up. :)
Jen
Peter Huebner
says...
> Which reminds me, in the kids section is where you'll find Garth Nix,
> and his Sabriel, Lireal and Abhorsen are very good.
>
And they hardly belong in the kids' section. Pretty dark, and way over the
heads of most under 15s, I'd say.
-Peter
--
=========================================
firstname dot lastname at gmail fullstop com
Peter Huebner
> >
> >"once" ?
>
> I liked several of her early books, then she produced a couple I
> didn't even finish, and I think she stopped writing for a while?
> Anyway there seemed to be a time, shortly after the 'boring' books
> when I didn't see anything new by her for a long time, so she fell
> off my radar of authors to at least check out.
>
>
I only read one book by Volsky - Wolf of Winter if I remember the title
correctly. I disliked it so much I sold it on. Dark and unpleasant and I
really didn't give a shit for any of the characters; I felt the protagonist was
a good candidate for post-natal abortion.
Are Volsky's other books anything like that?
-P.
Robert A. Woodward
Peter Huebner <no....@this.address> wrote:
> In article <1lg382tqs7cpg1uar...@4ax.com>,
> Ela...@KEThompson.org
> says...
> > >> liked Volsky,
> > >
> > >"once" ?
> >
> > I liked several of her early books, then she produced a couple I
> > didn't even finish, and I think she stopped writing for a while?
> > Anyway there seemed to be a time, shortly after the 'boring' books
> > when I didn't see anything new by her for a long time, so she fell
> > off my radar of authors to at least check out.
> >
> >
>
> I only read one book by Volsky - Wolf of Winter if I remember
> the title correctly. I disliked it so much I sold it on. Dark
> and unpleasant and I really didn't give a shit for any of the
> characters; I felt the protagonist was a good candidate for
> post-natal abortion.
>
Which viewpoint character? The male one who started the book? Or
the female one at the end? (because I don't think SHE was a
candidate).
> Are Volsky's other books anything like that?
It is somewhat unusual in that the villain was the viewpoint
character for that much of the book.
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
Joe Bernstein
Peter Huebner <no....@this.address> wrote:
> In article <1lg382tqs7cpg1uar...@4ax.com>,
> Ela...@KEThompson.org
> says...
[quoting me, and Elaine Thompson quoted by me]
> > >> once liked Volsky,
> > >"once" ?
> > I liked several of her early books, then she produced a couple I
> > didn't even finish, and I think she stopped writing for a while?
Well, I think I own all her books, so lemme pick up the book catalogue
and see:
<The Curse of the Witch-Queen>, 1982
<The Sorcerer's Lady>, 1986
<The Luck of Relian Kru>, 1987
<The Sorcerer's Heir>, 1988
<The Sorcerer's Curse>, 1989
<Illusion>, 1992
<The Wolf of Winter>, 1993
<The Gates of Twilight>, 1996
<The White Tribunal>, 1997
<The Grand Ellipse>, 2000
So apparently multi-year gaps in her writing are not unusual, but I
suspect a six-year gap is, and so I suspect further that after <The
Grand Ellipse> she got dropped by her publisher. But I dunno.
Anyway. I've bothered because she has some sort of connection to
Milwaukee (my hometown) - I remember that when her first book came
out, Midori Snyder, with whom I worked at the time at a bookstore,
made a fuss about it for this reason. And because I've liked a
few of her books. So herewith a far-from-complete "Novels of
Paula Volsky":
Introductory
Volsky's career to date breaks into two pieces: five paperback
originals, not all that long, a trilogy plus two more or less
humorous books, but more in the Esther Friesner than the Craig Shaw
Gardner style; then five much longer books that started out as
hardcovers and that do the sort of thing Guy Gavriel Kay has become
known for, fantasticating history. However, if you look closely,
you find that all ten books actually are set in the same world; this
means, among other things, that Volsky arguably beat Kay to this
particular trick.
<The Curse of the Witch-Queen>
This is a goofy fantasy in which a ?princeling offends a witch-queen
and has to deal with a succession of complications resulting from
her curse and his efforts to life it.
<The Sorcerer's Lady>
I started but did not finish; it was much darker than Volsky's two
1980s singletons, but not as long as her 1990s ones, and I was
confused. Anyway, my impression is that it recounts the marriage,
not altogether willingly entered into on the woman's part, between
a sorcerer-ruler and said woman.
(While I haven't read the sequels, at least one is set Much Later
and does in fact star the titular heir. So this isn't a single
book in three parts.)
<The Luck of Relian Kru>
Goofy fantasy, again, as best I recall; I remember the titular luck
but not much else. (And NB I read it much later than 1987.)
<Illusion>
If you've read <The Princess Bride>, imagine that you've got the
S. Morgenstern version in your hands. This is Volsky's first
Long Serious Book with Hardcover Publication, and is much praised
for an allegedly brilliant fantastication of the French Revolution.
But when I got to the first clothes-packing chapter, I realised I
disliked the heroine way too much to watch her pack clothes, and
skipped to the ending, where she apparently changes her ways *five
lousy pages* from the final one. Ugh.
<The White Tribunal>
I *think* I attempted <Illusion> first. This one reached me as an
advance reading copy, so with some nervousness I tried it. Don't
remember much, but do remember liking it.
<The Grand Ellipse>
The least ponderous of the later books I've even looked at (<The
Gates of Twilight> has survived repeated "should I read this next?"
consideration still unread). We have a late-Victorian or perhaps
Edwardian setting, with Prussia/Germany already infected with
Nazism. The main characters are two men and a woman in their
?twenties, all of whom are competing in a "Grand Ellipse" race/
?scavenger hunt. One man and the woman (a proto-feminist, which
prompts these two to fight a lot) are British, the other man is
German and indeed a moderate Nazi, and Volsky renders all of them
interesting and sympathetic, which is something of a trick! Also,
of course, it's a tour of her world, and handy as the only book to
offer a map of same.
> > Anyway there seemed to be a time, shortly after the 'boring' books
> > when I didn't see anything new by her for a long time, so she fell
> > off my radar of authors to at least check out.
Well, either she's retired from sf (possibly unwillingly) or she's
writing pseudonymously, I dunno. Or maybe something worse has happened.
But I'm intrigued by the characterisation of <The Grand Ellipse>
as 'boring'. Unless the gap you refer to is the one between
<The Wolf of Winter> and <The Gates of Twilight>, or that between
<The White Tribunal> and <The Grand Ellipse>...
> I only read one book by Volsky - Wolf of Winter if I remember the title
> correctly. I disliked it so much I sold it on. Dark and unpleasant and I
> really didn't give a shit for any of the characters; I felt the
> protagonist was a good candidate for post-natal abortion.
>
> Are Volsky's other books anything like that?
I don't remember <Illusion> as dark and unpleasant, but then I
didn't *get* that far; what I remember is that we see mainly from
the POV of a young woman of the nobility, who is a moral imbecile
but, as I said, finally Saw The Light with five pages to go. I
*think* we get enough of this in the narrative voice that we can't
simply paint her as a portrait of a Woman Too Dumb to Learn, so
we're stuck with the book as a portrait of clumsy character
development. (A roughly similar character follows an arc both
more credible and more readable in Gillian Bradshaw's <Cleopatra's
Heir>.)
It doesn't strike me as at all implausible that <Illusion> and
<The Wolf in Winter> are the books in which she was learning on
the job how to write Long and Serious.
But I don't remember any of the others as being like that. For
whatever that's worth.
Joe Bernstein
Niko <jus...@neo.rr.com> wrote:
> "Joe Bernstein" wrote:
[Elizabeth Haydon, first trilogy]
> > [...]their overhead
> > is extremely high, in terms of how much secondary-world lingo you
> > have to pick up, as well as how much Mary Sue you have to tolerate
> *shudder* Definitely a turn-off. Mary Sue-ism is part of what made me
> drift away from trying out authors I wasn't familiar with. Had a bad run
> of books that were either horrible Mary Sues or just plain forgettable,
> and it seemed like the publishers were putting out nothing but drivel.
Ouch. I suspect I may have more tolerance for this than do most people
who talk about it, because I'm having trouble thinking of multiple
Mary Sue books. Haydon, and S. L. Viehl's <Stardoc>, are my main
exposures to the concept.
(Haydon continues it, btw. Her fourth book begins with aforementioned
Mary Sue starring in Gracious Noble Correcting Rude Underling on
Treatment of Common People. See, I found the fantasy invention /
metaphysics / different races, all that stuff, interesting in the
first trilogy; I once had an ambition to be a fantasy RPG designer,
and that kind of thing does get my attention. So I stuck with it
to the moderately gorge-rising end. But one thing you Just Can't Do
is maintain my interest by having a complex structure, and then
*tack things onto it*. So when my gorge rose further, right at
the start of book 4, that was my cue to put the book down and back
away slowly... Basically, I can imagine reading another Haydon book
under the following possible circumstances:
1) She publishes a stand-alone book with a male protagonist set
on our Earth. Preferably with blurbs from, say, Caitlin
Kiernan or someone like that. OR
2) Multiple people I trust tell me that she's actually learned
to write better.
Experience has shown that endless series do not normally result in
this sort of thing, but Katherine Kerr's Deverry is sort of close
to meeting condition 2, so who knows. I found Viehl much less
rewarding to start with, so have not looked into whether *her*
endless series ever improves.)
[Cecilia Dart-Thornton, whom I'd also mentioned with doubts]
> (Incidentally, I consider _Ill-Made Mute_ to be one of the former
> category. I was dealing with the unusual style, but the Mary Sue-ness
> got to me in a big way. I recently tried to give her another go with
> "Lady of the Sorrows", and it was one of the rare times I actually quit
> a book halfway through with absolutely no sense of guilt.)
Well, OK, so you're in the majority on Dart-Thornton. Though I'm
not used to hearing "Mary Sue" as the label people give when they're
upset at the switcheroo on the protagonist's looks.
The things I like in the "Bitterbynde" trilogy are, in increasing
order of importance:
1) The style. (In principle. I'm still not sure I've actually read
every single page of <The Ill-Made Mute>, though.)
2) The world, sorta; the way Dart-Thornton's gaze isn't restricted to
elites, as is so often the case, and she seems to actually have
non-cliched things to say about the people she looks at.
3) A feat of fictional construction I've posted about before and
see no point in boring you with here, since you're unlikely to
be motivated thereby to actually read the third book. Anyway,
though, this goes back to what I said about how I can read for
fantasy structure. Dart-Thornton does some stuff that for a reader
like me is *really striking*, and since I've never seen *anyone*
else do anything like it on this scale, I'm inclined to presume that
it's not at all easy. So it impresses me.
That said, let's also note that I wasn't able to make it all the
way through her *newer* series's book 1 either. Given my experience
with the Bitterbynde books, I'll try again, but I still have no
basis on which to start urging skeptics to reconsider her.
> Thanks for the recs! Can't wait to get out to the bookstore and start
> stocking up. :)
Well, I noted that I'd look at the library's New Books shelves, but
when I did, I only found one other author to mention, and that with
misgivings. John C. Wright has written a two-book pair, titles I
think <The Last Guardian of Everness> and <The Mists of Everness>.
I posted a rave review here of the former, some time back, but I've
been warned that the second book does something I've seen Wright do
before - replace Cool Ideas with Message - and so I've hesitated to
mar my memory of the first book's brilliance by reading the second.
That said, the main reason I raved about the first book is, yes,
*another* example of remarkable fictional construction, subcategory
fantasy. So you should at least look at my review and think about
whether the stuff I praise matters to you, before you go off and
buy either book.
Another note. If you haven't already gone to the store. Someone
upthread suggested Alastair Reynolds to you. Now, I recently
tried to read Reynolds's first book, <Revelation Space>, and man,
rarely have I *ever* had such a severe case of the Eight Deadly
Words. ("I don't care what happens to these people." Dorothy
Heydt.) Specifically, I got the sense that Reynolds and his
characters are *all* cynical and jaded, and the characters, at
least, remarkably indifferent to the value of human life. Basically,
I found myself wanting to get rid of *my* copies of his books,
which is a really unusual reaction for me. So I'm a bit perplexed
at this as a recommendation to someone with the list of likes you gave.
If the recommender would explain why he or she suggested Reynolds
to you, maybe that'd be a good idea.
As to my own recommendations, I did mention Jacqueline Carey, yes?
She's written in two series thus far. Now that you've confirmed
that fantasticated history does interest you, I'm on somewhat
firmer ground suggesting the "Kushiel" books to you; these are
built on a really loopy fantastication of history. They also do
a fair amount of the sort of larger-than-life characters thing
that, e.g., Guy Gavriel Kay does, but not in that kind of depth.
The main catch, however, is that the protagonist of the first three
(a fourth is either due soon or just out) is a masochist who spends
much of her time as a courtesan; in fact, the foregrounded
fantastication is that she's a Magical Masochist who represents
the punishing angel (Kushiel) on Earth. So, well, you have to be
willing to read a fair bit of sex from a masochist's POV. (Also,
if you think Dart-Thornton does Mary Sue, I wouldn't be shocked
if you saw these books the same way.) Anyway, Carey has *also*
written two books that much more blatantly satirise fantasy at
a structural level, <Banewreaker> and <Godslayer>. In the first,
she outright attacks Tolkien's <Silmarillion> and <Lord of the Rings>
on a bunch of fronts; I haven't nerved myself up to re-read it and
read the second yet, but for practical purposes these are a single book,
unlike the more episodic "Kushiel" series. Anyway, though, these
are dark and serious (for all they're satirical) books, far less
consoling than most of the authors you mentioned, and if you
aren't interested in seeing Tolkien attacked, then they're not
the best place to begin reading Carey.
Joe Bernstein
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 13:12:22 +0000 (UTC), Joe Bernstein
> <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> >In article <gksu7215ch582ae8c...@4ax.com>,
> >Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
[Paula Volsky's books appeared at longish intervals]
> It's harder to keep track of such writers with only big box stores -
> they don't put all the new genre stuff out with the new books, you
> have to trawl the shelves. When we had a reasonably local sf/f store,
> all the new books were always out displayed as new so I couldn't miss
> any authors.
Huh. Surely you're not referring to Stars, so which now-closed
specialty store do you mean?
> Which reminds me, in the kids section is where you'll find Garth Nix,
> and his Sabriel, Lireal and Abhorsen are very good. And Franny
> Billingsly's _The Folk Keeper_ and _Well-Wished_ which aren't quite
> like anything else I've read.
>
> *** the back of my mind, for some reason, is saying they're similar
> to the Joyce Ballou Gregorians. I have no idea why, but when I do
> reread the Gregorians, maybe I'll figure it out. Toughmindedness,
> maybe.
>
> *** end tangent.
Huh. I've repeatedly bounced in efforts to read lots of Nix,
but know I've finished <Sabriel>, anyway. And toughmindedness
is certainly a good label for why I find only limited doses of
his stuff tolerable. (Gregorian, for one, sugarcoats it more,
usually.)
(By the way, OP, Gregorian is an excellent example of an author
we'd be suggesting to you if you hadn't specified "new".)
> >> Michelle Sagara's _Cast in Shadow_, the start of a new series from
> >> Michelle Sagara West, who might as well be a new writer under the
> >> Sagara name because her original quartet as Sagara was back in the
> >> 80s.
> >Do these notably differ from the phone books she publishes as West?
> Yes. Well, there's only one so far, and it was different enough for
> my husband to like - he'd given up on the West books several years
> ago. _Cast in Shadow_ moved, he said.
Well, this is promising.
> I still like the West's even though I wish they were shorter, there
> isn't much I can identify that could - in the end - be taken out or
> redone more briefly or something. Unlike many other books, that I
> wish were shorter.
Ah.
I know I've told my tales of Sagara / West here before, but don't
remember whether you were one of the respondents. Anyway, I wished
the "Hunter's" books were shorter; so obviously had the same
attitude more strongly toward the subsequent ones.* My impression
just from *looking* at them is that they can't be shorter for the
same reason <War and Peace> can't be - if you're going to have 1000
characters, you need 1000 pages to put them on, more or less - but
since I have no basis for expecting anything remotely comparable to
<War and Peace> from West, I'm in no hurry to deal with those books.
* - OK, the relevant bit of that story is that I've only actually
*read*, under the West name, the first "Hunter's" book.
> >Leah Cutter has written three books which sort of seem vaguely
> >analogous to later Volsky, except much much shorter. They tend
> >to focus on a specific Earth-historical place and time, much less
> >fantasticated than in say Kay or Bujold, and on what room there is
> >for women to act freely in that place and time. <Paper Mage> shows
> >a woman in Tang or Song China, as the imprisonment of women there
> >is well under way, becoming a mage;
>
> I liked it while reading but didn't find it a keeper. Something was
> missing. The main character wasn't engaging enough, I think.
No, not for me either.
(And ditto for <The Jaguar and the Wolf>.)
> >The odd one out is <The Caves of Buda>, which as best I
> >remember doesn't really pay that much attention to gender issues
> >but simply depicts a young couple dealing with her grandfather's
> >demonic WWII legacy. I've repeatedly demurred on buying these books,
> >so I don't want to praise them too highly, but they were certainly
> >worth reading once each.
> Yeah, that's about the size of it. I did read CAVES, and again, it
> didn't have what I want to make it a keeper.
Yeah. Though it's the closest to What I Want in Fantasy, of the three.
But to some extent this is Me Being Stupid, and one reason I post
about them is that I hope some of the smarter people who read this
group will notice and at some point realise that Cutter, despite
the paperback-original format, plots more like Ian McLeod or
Robert Charles Wilson than like, well, most fantasy writers, even
good ones. Imagine Martha Wells, say, not worrying about sales,
and more interested in diverse settings.
(And why, exactly, *is* Cutter not worried about sales, anyhow?
Her books are already easy to find used, so how come is it that
she's still getting published? Mind, I'm not complaining - I'd
*much* rather her than Yet Another Series of Which the Public
Library Will Buy Only Volumes Three Through Eight, as a reason
for trees to die; but still, it's perplexing.)
Elaine Thompson
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>In article <1lg382tqs7cpg1uar...@4ax.com>,
>Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 13:12:22 +0000 (UTC), Joe Bernstein
>> <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>
>> >In article <gksu7215ch582ae8c...@4ax.com>,
>> >Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>
>[Paula Volsky's books appeared at longish intervals]
>> It's harder to keep track of such writers with only big box stores -
>> they don't put all the new genre stuff out with the new books, you
>> have to trawl the shelves. When we had a reasonably local sf/f store,
>> all the new books were always out displayed as new so I couldn't miss
>> any authors.
>
>Huh. Surely you're not referring to Stars, so which now-closed
>specialty store do you mean?
Future Fantasy in Palo Alto, CA.
>
>> Which reminds me, in the kids section is where you'll find Garth Nix,
>> and his Sabriel, Lireal and Abhorsen are very good. And Franny
>> Billingsly's _The Folk Keeper_ and _Well-Wished_ which aren't quite
>> like anything else I've read.
>>
>> *** the back of my mind, for some reason, is saying they're similar
>> to the Joyce Ballou Gregorians. I have no idea why, but when I do
>> reread the Gregorians, maybe I'll figure it out. Toughmindedness,
>> maybe.
>>
>> *** end tangent.
>
>Huh. I've repeatedly bounced in efforts to read lots of Nix,
>but know I've finished <Sabriel>, anyway. And toughmindedness
>is certainly a good label for why I find only limited doses of
>his stuff tolerable. (Gregorian, for one, sugarcoats it more,
>usually.)
It was actually the Billingsleys the back of my mind was linking with
JB Gregorian's work. FWIW.
>
>(By the way, OP, Gregorian is an excellent example of an author
>we'd be suggesting to you if you hadn't specified "new".)
As you've pulled out the OP's interest in historicized fantasy maybe
Delia Sherman's _Porcelain Dove_ would be worth looking at, if a copy
was available. It's not new. And it struck me as cold and
distancing, but a fantasy dealing with the French Revolution may hit
the spot.
>
>
>Yeah. Though it's the closest to What I Want in Fantasy, of the three.
>But to some extent this is Me Being Stupid, and one reason I post
>about them is that I hope some of the smarter people who read this
>group will notice and at some point realise that Cutter, despite
>the paperback-original format, plots more like Ian McLeod or
>Robert Charles Wilson than like, well, most fantasy writers, even
>good ones. Imagine Martha Wells, say, not worrying about sales,
>and more interested in diverse settings.
>
>(And why, exactly, *is* Cutter not worried about sales, anyhow?
>Her books are already easy to find used, so how come is it that
>she's still getting published?
She has an editor who recognizes her uniqueness? Now if she could
just improve the characters a bit. I'll still loook at her books,
because I do appreciate someone whose doing something different.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Elaine Thompson
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>Illusion>
>If you've read <The Princess Bride>, imagine that you've got the
>S. Morgenstern version in your hands. This is Volsky's first
>Long Serious Book with Hardcover Publication, and is much praised
>for an allegedly brilliant fantastication of the French Revolution.
>But when I got to the first clothes-packing chapter, I realised I
>disliked the heroine way too much to watch her pack clothes, and
>skipped to the ending, where she apparently changes her ways *five
>lousy pages* from the final one. Ugh.
I think that was the one that made me stop reading Volsky.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Gene Ward Smith
Niko wrote:
> *shudder* Definitely a turn-off. Mary Sue-ism is part of what made me
> drift away from trying out authors I wasn't familiar with. Had a bad run
> of books that were either horrible Mary Sues or just plain forgettable, and
> it seemed like the publishers were putting out nothing but drivel.
"Mary Sue" strikes me as another vague and subjective category, but
maybe not. What do people think are the worse excesses of Mary Sueism
in literature?
David Johnston
<genewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
A Star Trek novel named "Death's Angel" where the MS was this
Federation supercop who had absolute carte blanche to be judge, jury
and executioner. The law was whatever she said it was. But of course
she was incorruptible and would NEVER abuse her power, right? What I
noticed about her, is how much better the book would have been had she
not been there at all and the investigation had been carried out by
series regulars, Sarek (who was one of the threatened ambassadors), or
perhaps by a new character put in to be chief of security. Even the
fact that Kirk and Spock were prime suspects would have worked better
if the person having that those suspicions was a subordinate instead
of someone who could investigate them without a care.
Dorothy J Heydt
I dunno, but here's a fun one:
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/ggmain.cgi?date=20051212
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Mike Schilling
"Gene Ward Smith" <genewa...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1149542788....@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
To me, the obvious one is Lazarus Long. Immortal, all-wise, and
irresistable to women young, old, and cybernetic.
Danny Sichel
> maybe not. What do people think are the worst excesses of Mary Sueism
> in literature?
"Worst" as in most blatant, or as in most poorly-executed?
How would you qualify the appearance of a dog named "Ruff" in Matt
Ruff's _Fool on the Hill_, for instance? Or the SF author who roamed the
Riverworld, named Peter Jairus Frigate?
--
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Postmodernism R'lyeh wgah'hagl fhtagn" - Ross TenEyck
David Johnston
Lazarus may qualify as an MS, (indeed I think he's sometimes little
more than a delivery mechanism for the author's Lectures On The Way
Things Should Be), but I don't don't think he qualifies as one of the
worst. Indeed he probably fits on the other end of the scale.
David Dyer-Bennet
> On 5 Jun 2006 14:26:28 -0700, "Gene Ward Smith"
> <genewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >Niko wrote:
> >
> >> *shudder* Definitely a turn-off. Mary Sue-ism is part of what made me
> >> drift away from trying out authors I wasn't familiar with. Had a bad run
> >> of books that were either horrible Mary Sues or just plain forgettable, and
> >> it seemed like the publishers were putting out nothing but drivel.
> >
> >"Mary Sue" strikes me as another vague and subjective category, but
> >maybe not. What do people think are the worse excesses of Mary Sueism
> >in literature?
>
> A Star Trek novel named "Death's Angel" where the MS was this
> Federation supercop who had absolute carte blanche to be judge, jury
> and executioner. The law was whatever she said it was. But of course
> she was incorruptible and would NEVER abuse her power, right?
Since she was a woman, and hence couldn't have a lens (well, at least
as a 1st-stage Lensman), I'd be unwilling to trust her that far,
definitely.
> What I noticed about her, is how much better the book would have
> been had she not been there at all and the investigation had been
> carried out by series regulars, Sarek (who was one of the threatened
> ambassadors), or perhaps by a new character put in to be chief of
> security. Even the fact that Kirk and Spock were prime suspects
> would have worked better if the person having that those suspicions
> was a subordinate instead of someone who could investigate them
> without a care.
Sounds reasonable.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
Mike Schilling
"Danny Sichel" <dsi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:Fx1hg.622$Wy.6...@news20.bellglobal.com...
>
> How would you qualify the appearance of a dog named "Ruff" in Matt Ruff's
> _Fool on the Hill_, for instance? Or the SF author who roamed the
> Riverworld, named Peter Jairus Frigate?
Frigate wasn't a heroic character. Kickaha (Paul Janus Finnegan) is far
more Mary Sue.
Gene Ward Smith
Danny Sichel wrote:
> Gene Ward Smith wrote:
> > "Mary Sue" strikes me as another vague and subjective category, but
> > maybe not. What do people think are the worst excesses of Mary Sueism
> > in literature?
>
> "Worst" as in most blatant, or as in most poorly-executed?
>
> How would you qualify the appearance of a dog named "Ruff" in Matt
> Ruff's _Fool on the Hill_, for instance? Or the SF author who roamed the
> Riverworld, named Peter Jairus Frigate?
I would characterize them as two excellent examples of what I mean when
I complain that "Marysue" is vague.
Gene Ward Smith
Mike Schilling wrote:
> Frigate wasn't a heroic character. Kickaha (Paul Janus Finnegan) is far
> more Mary Sue.
Is "Marysue" based on a reader's judgment that a character is an
idealized version of the author--who, in effect, the author wants to
be?
I'm not clear on any of this. Doc Smith has a character who seems to
represent himself in Triplanetary, but Kim Kinneson is his ideal hero.
Which is more Marysue?
Dorothy J Heydt
David Johnston <rgo...@block.net> wrote:
>On 5 Jun 2006 14:26:28 -0700, "Gene Ward Smith"
><genewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>Niko wrote:
>>
>>> *shudder* Definitely a turn-off. Mary Sue-ism is part of what made me
>>> drift away from trying out authors I wasn't familiar with. Had a bad run
>>> of books that were either horrible Mary Sues or just plain forgettable, and
>>> it seemed like the publishers were putting out nothing but drivel.
>>
>>"Mary Sue" strikes me as another vague and subjective category, but
>>maybe not. What do people think are the worse excesses of Mary Sueism
>>in literature?
>
>A Star Trek novel named "Death's Angel" where the MS was this
>Federation supercop who had absolute carte blanche to be judge, jury
Oh, if we're talking Star Trek, one of the most bodacious Mary
Sue stories in that realm was the TOS episode "The Empath" by
Joyce Muskat.
David Dyer-Bennet
Who seems to you to represent EES in Triplanetary? The guy with the
Entwistle eplosives job, probably? If so, I see why, not surprised.
But wanted to check it was actually that one.
Gene Ward Smith
David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
> Who seems to you to represent EES in Triplanetary? The guy with the
> Entwistle eplosives job, probably? If so, I see why, not surprised.
> But wanted to check it was actually that one.
Yeah, he struck me as being in some sense a representative for Doc, and
I've heard the section is to some extent based on his life experience.
Is that Mary Sueism? Is Kim Kinneson?
David Johnston
<genewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Mike Schilling wrote:
>
>> Frigate wasn't a heroic character. Kickaha (Paul Janus Finnegan) is far
>> more Mary Sue.
>
>Is "Marysue" based on a reader's judgment that a character is an
>idealized version of the author--who, in effect, the author wants to
>be?
That's a start. The Mary Sue must also be the center of attention,
casting all other characters in the shade of her magnificence. She
attracts admiration from other characters even when what she has done
does not seem to the reader to be admirable or she has actually done
very little as yet. Her opponents should generally be no match for
her, although some Mary Sue's climax their stories with a massive act
of self-sacrifice that saves the day so that everyone can think about
how much poorer they are now that Mary Sue is no longer in their
lives.
Niko
"Joe Bernstein" <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> Well, OK, so you're in the majority on Dart-Thornton. Though I'm
> not used to hearing "Mary Sue" as the label people give when they're
> upset at the switcheroo on the protagonist's looks.
It wasn't the switcheroo that bugged me - I was kinda on board with the
whole looks/name-change. What got to me was the author's tendency to write
as if every character who didn't fall in love with the protagonist within
three pages obviously had to be petty, cruel, or just plain eeeeeevil. In
_Lady of the Sorrows_ (since that's fresher in my mind) we have our poor,
kindly heroine persecuted amidst a sea of petty nobles, with only a few
truly decent human beings around to notice what a wonderful, amazing girl
she is. Add to that a fairly obvious build-up revealling that she's not
just any long-lost royal, but one who also has ties to some major faerie
magic (I assume). Then cap it off with the fact that her one-true-crush
just *happens* to be a king-in-disguise who has fallen passionately in love
with her based only on her personality and purity of spirit, and... that's
the point where I bailed. :)
Jen
Dorothy J Heydt
Here is a site with a great deal of fanfic involving the stalking
down, flushing out, and TERMINATING WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE
assorted Mary Sues, mostly in Lord of the Rings fanfic. I
recommend it.
http://www.misssandman.com/PPC/story.html
Gene Ward Smith
David Johnston wrote:
> That's a start. The Mary Sue must also be the center of attention,
> casting all other characters in the shade of her magnificence. She
> attracts admiration from other characters even when what she has done
> does not seem to the reader to be admirable or she has actually done
> very little as yet. Her opponents should generally be no match for
> her, although some Mary Sue's climax their stories with a massive act
> of self-sacrifice that saves the day so that everyone can think about
> how much poorer they are now that Mary Sue is no longer in their
> lives.
Now I'm getting that "Mary Sue = protagonist" bad feeling. This seems
way too broad; is, for instance, Paksenarrion a Mary Sue?
Niko
> So apparently multi-year gaps in her writing are not unusual, but I
> suspect a six-year gap is, and so I suspect further that after <The
> Grand Ellipse> she got dropped by her publisher. But I dunno.
I asked about this around here fairly recently and someone had heard
that she'd had an illness in the family that cut into her writing time, but
that she
was working on getting back into the game.
> <Illusion>
> If you've read <The Princess Bride>, imagine that you've got the
> S. Morgenstern version in your hands. This is Volsky's first
> Long Serious Book with Hardcover Publication, and is much praised
> for an allegedly brilliant fantastication of the French Revolution.
> But when I got to the first clothes-packing chapter, I realised I
> disliked the heroine way too much to watch her pack clothes, and
> skipped to the ending, where she apparently changes her ways *five
> lousy pages* from the final one. Ugh.
I started this book about five times before I was able to get into it, and
I think the thing that kept me going at first was that I had just finished a
class on the French Revolution, so I had all the players fresh in my head
and had a grand old time tying everything back to my classwork. :) Once
things got rolling and the heroine's fortunes took a plunge, though, I was
much
more vested in the characters and reading for the story, not the historical
elements.
It's been a while, but I don't recall the last-minute change of heart
you describe. There were several emotional turning points for her that have
always stuck with me for how heart-breaking they were, and I'm fairly
sure they were closer to the middle than the end...
Jen, again.
David Johnston
<genewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
Nah. Paksnarrion was way too much of an unpopular wimp to be a Mary
Sue.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> That's a start. The Mary Sue must also be the center of attention,
> casting all other characters in the shade of her magnificence. She
> attracts admiration from other characters even when what she has done
> does not seem to the reader to be admirable or she has actually done
> very little as yet. Her opponents should generally be no match for
> her, although some Mary Sue's climax their stories with a massive act
> of self-sacrifice that saves the day so that everyone can think about
> how much poorer they are now that Mary Sue is no longer in their
> lives.
I agree with this completely. I'll even say that it's not
necesssary for the MS to have anything in common with the author.
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - - - email: gae...@aol.com
http://kgbooklog.livejournal.com/
"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
-- James Nicoll
Mark Atwood
>
> Oh, if we're talking Star Trek, one of the most bodacious Mary
> Sue stories in that realm was the TOS episode "The Empath" by
> Joyce Muskat.
Wow. That suddenly explains so much about that episode!
--
Mark Atwood When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@mark.atwood.name you've done anything at all.
http://mark.atwood.name/ http://fallenpegasus.livejournal.com/
Mark Atwood
>
> Lazarus may qualify as an MS, (indeed I think he's sometimes little
> more than a delivery mechanism for the author's Lectures On The Way
> Things Should Be)
I would be more convienced if the Lectures were consistant, but they
are not.
David Johnston
wrote:
>David Johnston <rgo...@block.net> writes:
>>
>> Lazarus may qualify as an MS, (indeed I think he's sometimes little
>> more than a delivery mechanism for the author's Lectures On The Way
>> Things Should Be)
>
>I would be more convienced if the Lectures were consistant, but they
>are not.
Why should Heinlein be more required to be consistent from day to day
than his creation?
Wayne Throop
: I would be more convienced if the Lectures were consistant, but they are not.
He is not large, nor permitted to contain multitudes?
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Dorothy J Heydt
Mark Atwood <m...@mark.atwood.name> wrote:
>djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
>>
>> Oh, if we're talking Star Trek, one of the most bodacious Mary
>> Sue stories in that realm was the TOS episode "The Empath" by
>> Joyce Muskat.
>
>Wow. That suddenly explains so much about that episode!
Ayup. I knew Joyce, by the way (we were at university together,
and met again later in Star Trek fandom). You *are* aware that
neither Spock (as for most of us) nor Kirk (as for a weird few)
was her favorite, but McCoy? ...
David Tate
Typically, as I understand it, Mary Sue doesn't want to *be* the hero,
she wants to (a) save him, and (b) boff him. While instilling puppy
dog loyalty in him. IIRC, the notion is most closely associated with
fanfic, where the author-surrogate can interact with other people's
established characters for whom the author has A Thing.
In original fiction, to get a Mary Sue you would have to have an
author-surrogate character reflect the author's own infatuation with
another of his/her characters. Dorothy L. Sayers was famously accused
of creating Harriet Vane as a Mary Sue, though they didn't have the
terminology back then, and Lois Bujold inherits that accusation with
regard to Ekaterin Vorsoisson.
Personally, I don't care whether a character is a Mary Sue or not, if
the book is as well written as _Gaudy Night_ or _Komarr_.
David Tate
Mike Schilling
"Mark Atwood" <m...@mark.atwood.name> wrote in message
news:m27j3vi...@amsu.fallenpegasus.com...
> David Johnston <rgo...@block.net> writes:
>>
>> Lazarus may qualify as an MS, (indeed I think he's sometimes little
>> more than a delivery mechanism for the author's Lectures On The Way
>> Things Should Be)
>
> I would be more convienced if the Lectures were consistant, but they
> are not.
It's true that RAH can contradict himself. But think how many of the
lectures are "A is obviously true. Anyone who disagrees is stupid,
softheaded, or a liar." Either they're things RAH agreed with at the time,
or he's a lot more playful than he gets credit for.
David Johnston
>Gene Ward Smith wrote:
>> Mike Schilling wrote:
>>
>> > Frigate wasn't a heroic character. Kickaha (Paul Janus Finnegan) is far
>> > more Mary Sue.
>>
>> Is "Marysue" based on a reader's judgment that a character is an
>> idealized version of the author--who, in effect, the author wants to
>> be?
>>
>> I'm not clear on any of this. Doc Smith has a character who seems to
>> represent himself in Triplanetary, but Kim Kinneson is his ideal hero.
>> Which is more Marysue?
>
>Typically, as I understand it, Mary Sue doesn't want to *be* the hero,
>she wants to (a) save him, and (b) boff him. While instilling puppy
>dog loyalty in him. IIRC, the notion is most closely associated with
>fanfic, where the author-surrogate can interact with other people's
>established characters for whom the author has A Thing.
Yeah, that sounds about right. One of the things I noticed about
Death's Angel is that the heroine is ultimately pretty ineffectual.
Howard Brazee
<genewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> *shudder* Definitely a turn-off. Mary Sue-ism is part of what made me
>> drift away from trying out authors I wasn't familiar with. Had a bad run
>> of books that were either horrible Mary Sues or just plain forgettable, and
>> it seemed like the publishers were putting out nothing but drivel.
>
>"Mary Sue" strikes me as another vague and subjective category, but
>maybe not. What do people think are the worse excesses of Mary Sueism
>in literature?
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>That's a start. The Mary Sue must also be the center of attention,
>casting all other characters in the shade of her magnificence.
Who is this named after? (Or is it like calling anybody named Bruce
gay?)
David Dyer-Bennet
What I've read definitely says Doc worked in an explosives plant
during WWII, so people are mostly assuming there's at least some
connection. Mostly 'Mary Sue' means blatant wish-fulfillment, and I
don't think it looks like that; he doesn't "fix everything", doesn't
revolutionize the industry, doesn't do any major heroics.
Kim, now, could be. ("Kinnison", by the way). To my eye he takes too
many setbacks, doesn't have it easy enough, and has to work too hard
to count.
Dorothy J Heydt
I seem to recall reading that there was a fanfic long long ago in
which the Mary Sue really was named Mary Sue Something, the
youngest yeoman on the Enterprise.... but I can't find the
reference.
BTW the masculine of Mary Sue is either Gary Stu or Barry Stu.
Gene Ward Smith
That's my point.
Howard Brazee
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>It's true that RAH can contradict himself. But think how many of the
>lectures are "A is obviously true. Anyone who disagrees is stupid,
>softheaded, or a liar." Either they're things RAH agreed with at the time,
>or he's a lot more playful than he gets credit for.
He came across that way to me in person as well.
Gene Ward Smith
David Tate wrote:
> Typically, as I understand it, Mary Sue doesn't want to *be* the hero,
> she wants to (a) save him, and (b) boff him. While instilling puppy
> dog loyalty in him.
Mary Sueism is a romance conceit? This gets more and more confusing.
Christopher J. Henrich
Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Well, he could be, given the seriousness with which he is taken. How
many of us remember, with mingled nostalgia and embarrassment, a time
in our lives when we derived from our SF reading much of what we
thought we knew of the world? Heinlein, and his Competent Adult
Characters, played very well to that mind-set.
As someone pointed ount on another thread, it is important to remember
that the Notebooks of Lazarus Long contain /wisecracks/ , not dogma.
--
Chris Henrich
http://www.mathinteract.com
God just doesn't fit inside a single religion.
David Dyer-Bennet
I first heard of it as a classification for a particular kind of bad
Star Trek fanfic, and boffing the regular-character-of-choice was
certainly part of it.
Mike Schilling
"Howard Brazee" <how...@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:6pp9825gir800f2h0...@4ax.com...
Which way? Playful or overbearingly didactic?
Dan Goodman
Mary Sue is the character who Kirk falls hopelessly in love with (as do
numerous others), whose mind Spock admires, who the Sphynx doesn't dare
ask a riddle of, who St. Patrick consults as a snake expert, who St.
Paul asks for help in interpreting the Book of Mormon, who unties the
Gordian Knot before Alexander can get his sword out....
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
http://community.livejournal.com/clutterers_anon/
Decluttering http://decluttering.blogspot.com
Predictions and Politics http://dsgood.blogspot.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Dorothy J Heydt
David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>"Gene Ward Smith" <genewa...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> David Tate wrote:
>>
>> > Typically, as I understand it, Mary Sue doesn't want to *be* the hero,
>> > she wants to (a) save him, and (b) boff him. While instilling puppy
>> > dog loyalty in him.
>>
>> Mary Sueism is a romance conceit? This gets more and more confusing.
>
>I first heard of it as a classification for a particular kind of bad
>Star Trek fanfic, and boffing the regular-character-of-choice was
>certainly part of it.
Or, alternatively, dying a horrible death in order to save him.
Wayne Throop
:: seems way too broad; is, for instance, Paksenarrion a Mary Sue?
Note that the wikipedia article defines its original use, explains
whence the name, gives the standard symptoms of the syndrome, laments its
overbroad use by young upstarts, lists various examples, and generally
provides a valuable background for this discussion. It finally settles
on the definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
As of 2006, Mary Sue in fanfiction is generally considered an
original character written by the author into the universe of
his/her choosing to upstage the canon characters, occupy the center
stage, and take over the story entirely to satisfy the author's ego.
Whether or not she exhibits all, none, or few of the "classical"
Mary Sue traits is irrelevant. She has still taken over the
established universe to the point that canonical characters are
brought beneath her in all regards.
which seems to be a reasonably coherent and not-overbroad category.
Even extending it to non-fanfic characters who totally outshine
everybody else in the story (yet often don't seem to be the protagonist)
doesn't seem horrid.
IMO.
With that in mind, and using the extended notion so as to make it
applicable to non-fanfic, I'd say Paksenarrion isn't, but quite
possibly Lazarus Long is (and possibly some of the other Heinlein
characters... possibly), and fairly surely Ekaterin is (the remaining
not-quite-sure-ness of this latter being that she doesn't really totally
outshine/upstage everybody else (but scenes she is in... watch out)).
One could argue that Cordelia is also a Mary Sue, especially in contexts
where she's not the protagonist.
Note that reading the author's mind to determine if the Sue is
a wish-fulfilment or author-surrogate or not, is grand fun, almost as
much fun as arguing over what constitutes "outshining" or "upstaging",
but not fundamental to the sydrome when looked at like this.
Mileage may vary on that point.
So. Since I mentioned "grand fun", is Gromit a Mary Sue, do you suppose?
Hm. Is Mandy (of "Grim Adventures of Billy and") a Mary Sue?
She's certainly unstoppable for very nebulous reasons...
Keith Morrison
fingers and typed:
>djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
>>
>> Oh, if we're talking Star Trek, one of the most bodacious Mary
>> Sue stories in that realm was the TOS episode "The Empath" by
>> Joyce Muskat.
>
>Wow. That suddenly explains so much about that episode!
That's...that's...my god...it's THE Mary Sue. Everyone falling for her,
everyone mourning her sacrifice to save the heroes, the courage that simply
awes everyone else, the mysterious powers and origin...
I never thought of it before.
--
Keith
Keith Morrison
fingers and typed:
>Here is a site with a great deal of fanfic involving the stalking
>down, flushing out, and TERMINATING WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE
>assorted Mary Sues, mostly in Lord of the Rings fanfic. I
>recommend it.
>
>http://www.misssandman.com/PPC/story.html
I like the physics experiment. "Will a Mary Sue and sharp pointy object
both thrown off the tower at Isengard impact the ground at the same time?"
--
Keith
Keith Morrison
and typed:
>In original fiction, to get a Mary Sue you would have to have an
>author-surrogate character reflect the author's own infatuation with
>another of his/her characters. Dorothy L. Sayers was famously accused
>of creating Harriet Vane as a Mary Sue, though they didn't have the
>terminology back then, and Lois Bujold inherits that accusation with
>regard to Ekaterin Vorsoisson.
>
>Personally, I don't care whether a character is a Mary Sue or not, if
>the book is as well written as _Gaudy Night_ or _Komarr_.
The main key to identifying Mary Sues is that they will cause established
characters to go completely off rails in characterization. Ekaterin
doesn't fall into that category because even though he fell for her, Miles
was still Miles.
A proper Mary Sue wouldn't have had Miles turn his formidable conniving to
winning her affection. He would have just skipped in and announced his
undying love in a scene so sickeningly sweet dentists would make a fortune
off the cavity filling.
--
Keith
Damien Neil
> "Mark Atwood" <m...@mark.atwood.name> wrote in message
> > are not.
>
> It's true that RAH can contradict himself. But think how many of the
> lectures are "A is obviously true. Anyone who disagrees is stupid,
> softheaded, or a liar." Either they're things RAH agreed with at the time,
> or he's a lot more playful than he gets credit for.
Consider _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ and _Starship Troopers_: Both
Professor de la Paz and Mr. Dubois are prone to giving lectures of that
variety, and yet one is an inveterate anarchist while the other is a
statist.
Heinlein was very good at writing characters with strong philosophical
views--good enough that most people seem utterly incapable of believing
that he actually wrote *characters* rather than just inserting himself
into his stories. And yet, his characters don't agree with each other.
The self-evident truth of one story contradicts that of another.
I think that attributing the opinions of Heinlein's characters to the
man himself is clearly not the null hypothesis: While he certainly put
words that he agreed with into the mouths of characters on occasion, the
mere fact that a character makes an assertion is not sufficient grounds
to assume the author agreed with it.
- Damien
Michael S. Schiffer
news:1149556892.9...@c74g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>...
> In original fiction, to get a Mary Sue you would have to have an
> author-surrogate character reflect the author's own infatuation
> with another of his/her characters. Dorothy L. Sayers was
> famously accused of creating Harriet Vane as a Mary Sue, though
> they didn't have the terminology back then, and Lois Bujold
> inherits that accusation with regard to Ekaterin Vorsoisson.
And, for that matter, Cordelia Naismith. While I'm not personally
terribly fond of Ekaterin, she's the product of a more mature
writer, somewhat cold and damaged by her experiences and in love
with a man with some fairly obvious physical drawbacks. Cordelia
likewise bounced off an unhappy relationship to find True Love
somewhat after first youth[1], but *her* True Love is "a dream of
power in form", she personally leads the mission to depose the
major threat against him (incidentally solving the romantic
problems of her servants^Wsubordinates along the way), and ends as
an eminence dispensing wisdom across a multiplanet empire and
beyond. Not without cost (though Miles as he was born was more
"the worst thing that could happen" to Aral than Cordelia), but the
price ultimately lay lighter on Cordelia's shoulders than
Ekaterin's objectively lesser troubles lie on hers.
[1] One notes a recurring theme, though each time 'round Bujold
makes it harder on the lady in question, I think.
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Gene Ward Smith
Damien Neil wrote:
> Consider _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ and _Starship Troopers_: Both
> Professor de la Paz and Mr. Dubois are prone to giving lectures of that
> variety, and yet one is an inveterate anarchist while the other is a
> statist.
De la Paz was much better; he didn't claim that he could prove his
political and ethical theories were right using mathematics. Of course,
his math wasn't good enough for him to get away with trying. I always
thought it was sad Heinlein had to kill him off to prevent him from
doing any damage.
Gene Ward Smith
Wayne Throop wrote:
> With that in mind, and using the extended notion so as to make it
> applicable to non-fanfic, I'd say Paksenarrion isn't, but quite
> possibly Lazarus Long is (and possibly some of the other Heinlein
> characters... possibly), and fairly surely Ekaterin is (the remaining
> not-quite-sure-ness of this latter being that she doesn't really totally
> outshine/upstage everybody else (but scenes she is in... watch out)).
Based on your proposed defintion, Lazarus Long clearly is not a Mary
Sue. He *is* the main character. Ekaterin doesn't do enough in the
outshining department. I think the definition may be fine, but
obviously sticking with it will be a problem.
Robert A. Woodward
Joe Bernstein <j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
> In article <MPG.1eed0bd76...@news.individual.net>,
> Peter Huebner <no....@this.address> wrote:
>
> > In article <1lg382tqs7cpg1uar...@4ax.com>,
> > Ela...@KEThompson.org
> > says...
> [quoting me, and Elaine Thompson quoted by me]
>
<SNIP>
>
> Anyway. I've bothered because she has some sort of connection to
> Milwaukee (my hometown) - I remember that when her first book came
> out, Midori Snyder, with whom I worked at the time at a bookstore,
> made a fuss about it for this reason. And because I've liked a
> few of her books. So herewith a far-from-complete "Novels of
> Paula Volsky":
>
> Introductory
> Volsky's career to date breaks into two pieces: five paperback
> originals, not all that long, a trilogy plus two more or less
> humorous books, but more in the Esther Friesner than the Craig Shaw
> Gardner style; then five much longer books that started out as
> hardcovers and that do the sort of thing Guy Gavriel Kay has become
> known for, fantasticating history. However, if you look closely,
> you find that all ten books actually are set in the same world; this
> means, among other things, that Volsky arguably beat Kay to this
> particular trick.
>
But, a number of what appears to be completely independent magic
systems are used, which I find confusing.
> <The Curse of the Witch-Queen>
> This is a goofy fantasy in which a ?princeling offends a witch-queen
> and has to deal with a succession of complications resulting from
> her curse and his efforts to life it.
>
I think I remember this one better. A princeling offends a noble (a
Duke?) and finds himself with a size problem. The Duke agrees to
release him from the curse, if the princeling takes care of the
Duke's problem. The Duke is suffering from the Witch Queen's Curse.
BTW, while the countries involved are on the _Grand Ellipse_ map,
they are not visited.
> <The Sorcerer's Lady>
> I started but did not finish; it was much darker than Volsky's two
> 1980s singletons, but not as long as her 1990s ones, and I was
> confused. Anyway, my impression is that it recounts the marriage,
> not altogether willingly entered into on the woman's part, between
> a sorcerer-ruler and said woman.
The Sorcerer is not a ruler, but a noble (a very upper-crust one).
IIRC, he displayed Asperger's syndrome symptoms (which didn't help
his political troubles). The 2nd book is 15 years later. The 3rd
was several centuries after that. The city state involved is the
first stop in the great race in _The Grand Ellipse_.
>
> <The Luck of Relian Kru>
> Goofy fantasy, again, as best I recall; I remember the titular luck
> but not much else. (And NB I read it much later than 1987.)
>
I can't remember where this appears in the _tGE_ map.
> <Illusion>
> If you've read <The Princess Bride>, imagine that you've got the
> S. Morgenstern version in your hands. This is Volsky's first
> Long Serious Book with Hardcover Publication, and is much praised
> for an allegedly brilliant fantastication of the French Revolution.
> But when I got to the first clothes-packing chapter, I realised I
> disliked the heroine way too much to watch her pack clothes, and
> skipped to the ending, where she apparently changes her ways *five
> lousy pages* from the final one. Ugh.
>
I think this is unfair. She really didn't know what to do with her
life after Revolution (and perhaps even doubted that HE was even
interested in her).
> <The White Tribunal>
> I *think* I attempted <Illusion> first. This one reached me as an
> advance reading copy, so with some nervousness I tried it. Don't
> remember much, but do remember liking it.
>
Another stop in the race in the Grand Ellipse (last before the end).
> <The Grand Ellipse>
> The least ponderous of the later books I've even looked at (<The
> Gates of Twilight> has survived repeated "should I read this next?"
> consideration still unread). We have a late-Victorian or perhaps
> Edwardian setting, with Prussia/Germany already infected with
> Nazism. The main characters are two men and a woman in their
> ?twenties, all of whom are competing in a "Grand Ellipse" race/
> ?scavenger hunt. One man and the woman (a proto-feminist, which
> prompts these two to fight a lot) are British, the other man is
> German and indeed a moderate Nazi, and Volsky renders all of them
> interesting and sympathetic, which is something of a trick! Also,
> of course, it's a tour of her world, and handy as the only book to
> offer a map of same.
>
Our Heroine and her countryman are "FRENCH". This is the same
country that was the setting for _Illusion_. As for our honorable
"German", c. 1900 Germany had a lot of crazy ideas (the Nazis
actually didn't invent that much).
_The Gates of Twilight_ is India, but a French Raj instead (the
protagonist is from the same country that is the setting of
_Illusion_). It is also a stop in the great race in _tGE_, but not,
IIRC, the city where most of the action of _The Gates of Twilight_
takes place).
_The Wolf of Winter_ is set in a Russia; the villain is the
viewpoint character for most of the story. Both it and a
neighboring country are stops in the great race in _The Great
Ellipse_, but one is going out, and the other is coming back.
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
Dave Roy
<Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 13:12:22 +0000 (UTC), Joe Bernstein
><j...@sfbooks.com> wrote:
>>avert serfdom. Moving *on*, I liked Elizabeth Haydon's first three,
>>sorta, guiltily, but I'm not at all sure you would; their overhead
>>is extremely high, in terms of how much secondary-world lingo you
>>have to pick up, as well as how much Mary Sue you have to tolerate,
>
>I crashed on the Mary Sue in book 1. She was also, IIRC, not terribly
>observant or bright or something, while being advertised as
>intelligent. OTOH, I kept turning pages (skimming) to find out what
>happened. But at the end I wondered why I'd bothered.
I couldn't even do that. I struggled about half-way through the first
book, resisting the urge to put it down (it came recommended to me by
a friend), but I finally just gave up. I found the characters
annoying and the long trek through the caves (or wherever they were
before they finally popped up in wherever they ended up) just wore me
down.
Dave
Alexey Romanov
> Yeah verily, on 5 Jun 2006 18:21:33 -0700, David Tate did exercise fingers
> and typed:
>
>>In original fiction, to get a Mary Sue you would have to have an
>>author-surrogate character reflect the author's own infatuation with
>>another of his/her characters. Dorothy L. Sayers was famously accused
>>of creating Harriet Vane as a Mary Sue, though they didn't have the
>>terminology back then, and Lois Bujold inherits that accusation with
>>regard to Ekaterin Vorsoisson.
>>
>>Personally, I don't care whether a character is a Mary Sue or not, if
>>the book is as well written as _Gaudy Night_ or _Komarr_.
>
> The main key to identifying Mary Sues is that they will cause established
> characters to go completely off rails in characterization. Ekaterin
> doesn't fall into that category because even though he fell for her, Miles
> was still Miles.
Now that I think about it, he behaved pretty unlike himself in the lead-up
to dinner in _Civil Campaign_...
Howard Brazee
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>It's true that RAH can contradict himself. But think how many of the
>>>lectures are "A is obviously true. Anyone who disagrees is stupid,
>>>softheaded, or a liar." Either they're things RAH agreed with at the
>>>time,
>>>or he's a lot more playful than he gets credit for.
>>
>> He came across that way to me in person as well.
>
>Which way? Playful or overbearingly didactic?
Overbearingly didactic.
Wayne Throop
: Based on your proposed defintion, Lazarus Long clearly is not a Mary
: Sue. He *is* the main character.
How about in NotB or tCWWTW or tSBtS? Those are more what I had
in mind, as opposed to MC or TEfL. In his walk-ons there, everybody
seems to fawn over him for little apparent cause. Similar things are
true of Jubal in SiaSL, it seems to me.
: Ekaterin doesn't do enough in the outshining department.
Right. Though, per otherposters elsethread, a relevant dimension of
"outshining" is "how sappy/deferential the other characters get over them
for how little cause" (or something like that), which Ekaterin seems to me
to do quite well with.
: I think the definition may be fine, but obviously sticking with it
: will be a problem.
It would exonerate a lot of accused Mary Sues, or reduce the charges
against them, if applied consistently. Which seems a good thing.
Insofar as it's hard to apply consistently, it's a bad thing
(except insofar as the en-sue-ing dispute may be considered recreational).
Wayne Throop
:::: more playful than he gets credit for.
::: He came across that way to me in person as well.
:: Which way? Playful or overbearingly didactic?
: Overbearingly didactic.
The two don't seem mutually exclusive to me. I think I've known
at least some people who are overbearingly didactic, yet more playful
than they get credit for.
Mike Schilling
news:11496...@sheol.org...
>: "Gene Ward Smith" <genewa...@gmail.com>
> : Based on your proposed defintion, Lazarus Long clearly is not a Mary
> : Sue. He *is* the main character.
>
> How about in NotB or tCWWTW or tSBtS? Those are more what I had
> in mind, as opposed to MC or TEfL. In his walk-ons there, everybody
> seems to fawn over him for little apparent cause. Similar things are
> true of Jubal in SiaSL, it seems to me.
>
> : Ekaterin doesn't do enough in the outshining department.
>
> Right. Though, per otherposters elsethread, a relevant dimension of
> "outshining" is "how sappy/deferential the other characters get over them
> for how little cause" (or something like that), which Ekaterin seems to me
> to do quite well with.
You refer to the way everyone fawns over her esthetic sense in ACC, for no
obvious reason? I also had trouble with WSOD is Komarr, seeing this
repressed housewife turn into Commando Kelley.
Mike Schilling
> :::: more playful than he gets credit for.
>
> ::: He came across that way to me in person as well.
>
> :: Which way? Playful or overbearingly didactic?
>
> : Overbearingly didactic.
>
> The two don't seem mutually exclusive to me. I think I've known
> at least some people who are overbearingly didactic, yet more playful
> than they get credit for.
That is they're infinitesimally playful, but get no credit at all for it?
David Tate
> "Wayne Throop" <thr...@sheol.org> wrote in message
> news:11496...@sheol.org...
> > :: Which way? Playful or overbearingly didactic?
> > : Overbearingly didactic.
> >
> > The two don't seem mutually exclusive to me. I think I've known
> > at least some people who are overbearingly didactic, yet more playful
> > than they get credit for.
> That is they're infinitesimally playful, but get no credit at all for it?
It can be rather more than infinitesimal. Think William F. Buckley,
Jr., or (for an extreme example) Mark Twain.
David Tate
Mike Schilling
"David Tate" <dt...@ida.org> wrote in message
news:1149614974.7...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
I give both of them lots of credit for playfulness. James Joyce, perhaps?
Many people seem too intimidated by _Ulysses_ to appreciate how funny it is.
Wayne Throop
: That is they're infinitesimally playful, but get no credit at all for it?
That would imply Heinlein is infinitesimally playful, which doesn't
seem to be the case IMO. Some of his self-contradictions can be
attributed to his changing opinions, but IMO not enough of them
to make a "purely overbearingly didactic" interpretation work.
I don't have literary examples in mind (though Twin did occur to me,
given how his works are sometimes treated by some; and he at least
demonstrates that the two qualities aren't mutually exclusive, even
if he most often got credit for both). No, I had in mind people I
knew well enough personally to be *sure* they were in fact playful,
or sometimes-playful, and who got little or no credit for it. FWIW,
my father is an example.
Shadow Wolf
> On Mon, 05 Jun 2006 22:43:42 GMT, David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
> wrote:
>
>>That's a start. The Mary Sue must also be the center of attention,
>>casting all other characters in the shade of her magnificence.
>
> Who is this named after? (Or is it like calling anybody named Bruce
> gay?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
and, for an academic look at Mary Sues:
http://www.merrycoz.org/papers/MARYSUE.HTM
--
Shadow Wolf
shadowolf3400 at yahoo dot com
Stories at http://www.asstr.org/~Shadow_Wolf
AIF at http://www.geocities.com/shadowolf3400
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Howard Brazee
>
>It can be rather more than infinitesimal. Think William F. Buckley,
>Jr., or (for an extreme example) Mark Twain.
I've also met Buckley, and he seemed much more playful and less
overbearingly superior in person than Heinlein.
sigi...@yahoo.com
Mike Schilling wrote:
> You refer to the way everyone fawns over her esthetic sense in ACC, for no
> obvious reason?
I could buy this as "she always had a talent, which she didn't have the
chance to develop until late in life."
N.B., this may well be authorial projection. Bujold herself was a
thirtysomething housewife with kids when she submitted her first novel
-- blind -- to Jim Baen. A year or two later, she was the hot new
author that everyone was talking about; a year or two after that, she
was breaking into the awards list. So, she may well have drawn on that
experience.
But that's not the same as Mary Sue.
> I also had trouble with WSOD is Komarr, seeing this
> repressed housewife turn into Commando Kelley.
I agree, but you can't say Bujold didn't try to make it plausible. And
the key point -- that honor, an ethic of service, and/or suicidal
courage are hardwired into at least some Vor -- is pretty much an
established premise of the series. A
Also, it's not like her opponents were exactly competent, either.
I don't love _Komarr_. But I don't see Ekaterin as quite a Mary Sue.
A lot of pieces of Bujold herself grafted onto that chassis, yes. But
she doesn't wrench the other characters out of true.
Also, she spends the first half of the book being miserable, in a way
that seems very un-Sue-like to me. Painstakingly realistic depictions
of bad marriages are not the stuff of wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Final thought: it is possible to read the books with the assumption
that Ekaterin is wonderful. Interestingly, it is also possible to read
them with the assumption that she's not quite All That. Most of the
lavish praise of her comes from Miles, and Miles is not remotely
objective... he falls for her quickly and hard. We even know that
she's physically a type that's made him crazy in the past.
Try reading the last three books (_Komarr_, _A Civil Campaign_, and
_Diplomatic Immunity_) with the assumption that Ekaterin is a woman of
average intelligence; not particularly imaginative, and possessed of no
extraordinary characteristics other than a knack for gardening. Assume
further that Miles is totally crazy about her, and that everyone else
is to some extent playing along. Not that this is hard, because she's
nice enough... just not All That.
The interesting thing is, this works just fine. Even the Ekaterin POV
parts work OK. Ekaterin has an interesting inner life, but that's
because Bujold does a great job depicting it, not because Ekaterin
herself is necessarily special.
Mind, you can also read the books assuming that she's everything Miles
thinks she is. But it's not /necessary/ to think that.
Doug M.
Wayne Throop
: But I don't see Ekaterin as quite a Mary Sue.
For the True Blue Sue, you pretty much find them only in fanfic.
Because that's where you can clearly justify the assertion that the
other characters have been warped out of shape by the Sue, and the
fanish author is more often unskillful enough to make these effects
seem to come completely out of left field (or, out of the Blue).
So I suppose "not quite a Mary Sue" is right...
but she does have a noticeable portion of the Sue Nature, IMO.
As does Cordelia.
sigi...@yahoo.com
Trying to wrench this back to the original topic...
Gene Ward Smith wrote:
>What do people think are the worse excesses of Mary Sueism
> in literature?
I'm amazed nobody has mentioned Anita Blake. If she's not, she sure
reads like it.
Any character who is a writer in any book Stephen King wrote after _The
Stand_. N.B., the character of Harold in _The Stand_ remains one of my
favorite characters in pulp literature. (_The Stand_ is pulp, and
pretty good pulp too.) Unfortunately, King seemed to exorcise that
particular demon; he wrote his miserable adolescent self once,
perfectly, and never did it again.
Peter Frigate, no. Authorial stand-ins are not necessarily Mary Sues,
nor vice versa, though the two categories do overlap. Similarly,
Fafhrd may be very loosely based on Fritz Lieber, but that doesn't make
him a MS.
Ursula LeGuin has a couple of obnoxiously wonderful older female
characters. I'm thinking right now of the old ex-slave woman in _Four
Ways to Forgiveness_. Why does Abberlane fall in love with her? No
reason, she's just wonderful. Mary Sue.
Steve Stirling has a weakness for protagonists who are physically
perfect, and whose physical perfection is described in lush, almost
erotic detail. I don't think this is a Mary Sue, exactly, but it is
rather striking.
I note that the original question was, worst MS "in literature". If we
broaden it beyond SF and fantasy, there are a lot of truly dreadful MSs
out there. In comics, the most notorious is probably the character
Terry Long, from the New Teen Titans comics in the '80s and '90s. Long
was a thoroughly unimpressive (if not faintly sleazy), underemployed
history professor. But Wonder Girl inexplicably fell in love with him,
and all her friends liked him too. It's surely a coincidence that he
greatly resembled NTT writer Marv Wolfman...
The genre of academic novels is particularly rich in MSs; the noxiously
recurring theme of the older male who is inexplicably irresistable to
the hot nubile younger female recurs here with particular noxiousness.
Is there anyone else here who managed to finish _The Last Voyage of
Someone the Sailor_? Let's talk about something else.
Doug M.
Mike Schilling
<sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1149617195.2...@h76g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> Final thought: it is possible to read the books with the assumption
> that Ekaterin is wonderful. Interestingly, it is also possible to read
> them with the assumption that she's not quite All That. Most of the
> lavish praise of her comes from Miles, and Miles is not remotely
> objective... he falls for her quickly and hard. We even know that
> she's physically a type that's made him crazy in the past.
She's very attractive to men in general: Vennie, Ivan, her other Vor
suitors. A minor point, I concede. (By the Way, Komarr has one of the few
excellent Bujold covers. Unlike _A Civil Campagn_, which gets both Laisa
and Gregor wrong, Komarr shows Ekaterin as beautiful in exactly the right
way.)
>
> Try reading the last three books (_Komarr_, _A Civil Campaign_, and
> _Diplomatic Immunity_) with the assumption that Ekaterin is a woman of
> average intelligence; not particularly imaginative, and possessed of no
> extraordinary characteristics other than a knack for gardening.
And esthetics in general. Kareen has no reason to be flattering her about
that outside Miles's presence. OK, she's Kareen, and she likes Ekaterin,
and she's preternaturally talented at making people feel good about
themselves. Still, she's not going to acceopt second-best on a subject as
vital to her as the success of the vomit bugs.
> Assume
> further that Miles is totally crazy about her, and that everyone else
> is to some extent playing along. Not that this is hard, because she's
> nice enough... just not All That.
She's beautiful, in love with Miles, and entirely willing to put up with him
and perform the duties of a Vor and a future Countess. And presumably,
unlike Rowan Durona, she Fights Back, though I don't think we see any
examples of that. It's not like, beyond those requirements, Miles is
picky.
Michael Alan Chary
Hey, Mary Sue started in Trek. My most egregious example is Marshak and
Culbreath.
The worst Mary Sues, however, are in comics especially with Messers
Clarmonet and Byrne.
--
The All-New, All-Different Howling Curmudgeons!
http://www.whiterose.org/howlingcurmudgeons
Mike Schilling
Cordelia's more a wish-fulfillment chartacter IMHO, since from everything
I've seen Bujold say about her ex-husband, Aral is his polar opposite.
Wilson Heydt
David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>"Gene Ward Smith" <genewa...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>>
>> > Who seems to you to represent EES in Triplanetary? The guy with the
>> > Entwistle eplosives job, probably? If so, I see why, not surprised.
>> > But wanted to check it was actually that one.
>>
>> Yeah, he struck me as being in some sense a representative for Doc, and
>> I've heard the section is to some extent based on his life experience.
>> Is that Mary Sueism? Is Kim Kinneson?
>
>What I've read definitely says Doc worked in an explosives plant
>during WWII, so people are mostly assuming there's at least some
>connection. Mostly 'Mary Sue' means blatant wish-fulfillment, and I
>don't think it looks like that; he doesn't "fix everything", doesn't
>revolutionize the industry, doesn't do any major heroics.
Really, it's more of Smith's own experiences informing the situation
than the character being a Mary Sue. The same applies to the mining
sequences in First Lensman.
--
Hal Heydt
Albany, CA
My dime, my opinions.
Mike Schilling
<sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1149618303.5...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> The genre of academic novels is particularly rich in MSs; the noxiously
> recurring theme of the older male who is inexplicably irresistable to
> the hot nubile younger female recurs here with particular noxiousness.
> Is there anyone else here who managed to finish _The Last Voyage of
> Someone the Sailor_?
Never read it, but IIRC one of his earlier works (_Sabbatical_?) was
similarly memed.