On Fri, 4 Oct 2013 17:24:50 -0700 (PDT), Ahasuerus
<
ahas...@email.com> wrote in
<
news:010e388a-a612-45d6...@googlegroups.com>
[...]
> But consider the larger picture: Julie's boyfriend has
> been kidnapped and is about to be sacrificed by the
> Nameless Horrors and their minions. What does she do?
> Why, she jumps into the sack with the protagonist, of
> course! And what does she do immediately after they
> rescue Grant, but before he has a chance to recover? She
> breaks up with him! Nice, isn't it? I know some rabbits
> who could teach her a thing or two about self-control.
It seems to me that you’re looking at it very much from
Grant’s point of view and not much at all from Julie’s. I’m
not holding her actions up as a model for anyone else to
follow, but they certainly don’t press any of my buttons.
>> I wasn’t terribly fond of Grant to begin with, but even
>> that’s largely beside the point: in context that little
>> episode really is more farcical than anything else.
> Perhaps I am losing what little sense of humor I possessed
> back in the day... Hm, maybe I should try to read
> something explicitly funny and see if it still works for
> me. I do have a bookshelf full of Wodehouses which I am
> yet to read -- if you read one Wodehouse a year like I
> did at one point, it will take you a loooong time to get
> to the end... Better yet, I could ask for "funny SF"
> recommendations here! :)
It’s not sf, but some passages in Edmund Crispin’s last
Gervase Fen novel, _The Glimpses of the Moon_, had me
literally rolling on the floor the first time I read it. As
I recall, there’s a fair bit of humor in the earlier ones as
well. WP mentions a lovely bit from a chase sequence in
_The Moving Toyshop_:
‘Let’s go left,’ Cadogan suggested. ‘After all, Gollancz
is publishing this book.’
J.B. Priestley’s short novel _Low Notes on a High Level: A
Frolic_, also non-sf, is a delightful little farce somewhat
reminiscent in flavor of Thorne Smith, who of course wrote
some very funny fantasy.
I don’t know quite how to classify John Erskine, _The
Private Life of Helen of Troy_; it’s not precisely fantasy,
but it’s not really anything else, either, and in its own
dry, quiet way it’s very funny. It’s available at Gutenberg
Australia, too:
<
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600381h.html>
Which, thanks to its erudition, reminds me that _Jurgen_ is
pretty funny.
I can enjoy light, comic sf, but I prefer it in small doses.
_Expecting Someone Taller_ (Holt), _Pyramid Scheme_ and
_Pyramid Power_ (Flint & Freer), _Summon the Keeper_ (Huff)
all had their moments, as did John Morressy’s Kedrigern
series. Pratchett doesn’t do much for me: my reaction is
more ‘yes, I see what you’re about’ than ‘yes, that’s
funny’, and the books end up not quite working either as
humor or as stories. But Gini Koch’s Aliens series is a
hoot.
[...]
Brian