(tor dot com) Five Authors We Wish Had Written More

[James Nicoll]

Five Authors We Wish Had Written More

What it says on the tin.

https://www.tor.com/2023/03/20/five-authors-we-wish-had-written-more/
--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, March 20, 2023 at 8:13:58 AM UTC-6, James Nicoll wrote:

> https://www.tor.com/2023/03/20/five-authors-we-wish-had-written-more/

I think I saw another mention of Allison Tellure, likely in one of your columns,
not so long ago. Hopefully, this mystery will eventually be cleared up to the extent
consistent with her privacy.

John Savard

[William Hyde]

On Monday, March 20, 2023 at 10:13:58 AM UTC-4, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five Authors We Wish Had Written More
>
> What it says on the tin.

I sometimes speculate on what I would do if some time traveling group gave
me the right to extend the life of one, and only one, artist from the past to
seventy years. Normally I think Mozart, though I would like to give
Schubert another chance to finish that symphony. And even though
Beethoven made it to a relatively old 57, the late quartets and the
ninth show that he had much left to give.

Of course you could decide on someone who had died after showing
early promise, such as Shostakovitch's student, Solomon Fleishmann,
who left us one opera, "Rothschild's Violin", before going to the trenches
around Leningrad and not coming back.

It's a slightly depressing speculation, but I am drawn to it.

What would we decide if our choice was from the pool of SF authors?
I suspect that if you asked that question in 1950 the answer would be
Weinbaum, in 1970 Kornbluth. What would we say now?


William Hyde

[Titus G]

On 21/03/23 03:13, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five Authors We Wish Had Written More
>
> What it says on the tin.
>
> https://www.tor.com/2023/03/20/five-authors-we-wish-had-written-more/

"A Canticle for Leibowitz" (not Liebowitz!), is one of my all time
favourites and I rated "The Darfsteller" a solid 4 stars of 5.
I have had a copy of "St Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman" for decades
but for an inexplicable reason, perhaps I fear disappointment or a
corruption of my enjoyment of 'Canticle', I have not opened it.
I would be interested to hear comments from those who have read it.

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, March 20, 2023 at 6:14:14 PM UTC-6, Titus G wrote:

> I have had a copy of "St Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman" for decades
> but for an inexplicable reason, perhaps I fear disappointment or a
> corruption of my enjoyment of 'Canticle', I have not opened it.
> I would be interested to hear comments from those who have read it.

I had not heard of the book before you mentioned it.

From its title, I assumed that St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman was to
A Canticle for Liebowitz as Bored of the Rings is to Lord of the Rings. And
maybe it was X-rated as well.

However, a Google search told me I was wrong. The Wikipedia article about
this work notes that it was written based on extensive notes left by Walter
M. Miller before he died. A review quoted in that Wikipedia article refers to
it as "a fantastic novel, suffering only in comparison to Walter M. Miller's
earlier work".

I'm not sure if that is a recommendation, however: in isolation, it is good,
and well worth reading, *but it's not as good as Canticle*, which doesn't
quite eliminate the risk you're noting.

John Savard

[Bice]

I read St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman in 2018 while I was
going through all the Hugo winners. I really liked A Canticle for
Leibowitz, so when I ran across Horse Woman in a used book store a
couple months later, I grabbed it.

I didn't like the sequel nearly as much as the original book. There
were some interesting bits, and sections where the wry humor of
Canticle came through, but in general I thought it was a bit overlong,
convoluted and tedious. Somewhere around the middle of the book I
considered just giving up on it, but I plugged on to the end and
actually enjoyed the last hundred pages or so.

There are a LOT of characters - so much so that the author(s) even got
them confused. At one point the story refers to "Nauwhat and Sorley"
as if those are two different people, but it's actually one character
named Sorley Nauwhat.

If you didn't already have a copy, I wouldn't recommend going out of
your way to find it. But since you do, there's one easy way to find
out if you'd like it or not.

-- Bob

[Tony Nance]

It's fine, but it's also not very memorable[1]. Both here and more broadly,
the general reaction way back when was "eh, okay". Miller had worked
on it forever and eventually asked his editor to find someone to finish it.
Terry Bisson agreed to do it, but he is not usually considered a co-author.
Bisson mentioned somewhere[2] that it was mostly finished when he
received it, and his goal was to explicitly follow Miller's outline,
instructions, and style for the last 100 pages or so.

Folks here (including me) saw it less as a sequel and more of
a side story after/in parallel with the 2nd segment of Canticle.
I doubt it would affect your memories of Canticle in any direction.

If you do read it, let us know what your impressions were.
Tony
[1] Says the guy who doesn't remember many details from when he
read it (shortly after it came out)
[2] I saw it in an online interview that someone here linked to;
it may have been at sci-fi.com circa 1996.

[Tony Nance]

On Monday, March 20, 2023 at 10:13:58 AM UTC-4, James Nicoll wrote:

> Five Authors We Wish Had Written More
>
> What it says on the tin.
>
> https://www.tor.com/2023/03/20/five-authors-we-wish-had-written-more/
>

Very interesting topic and article (and reader comments afterward).
I didn't see Roger Zelazny mentioned in the comments, and he'd be
high on my list. Iain Banks would also be high on my list (and he is
mentioned in the comments).

Tony

[Andrew McDowell]

Searching through the article and the comments I am not suprised to see C.M.Kornbluth mentioned - but what about Douglas Adams? (both of heart attacks - cutting back further on this scourge would really pay off)

[Titus G]

On 22/03/23 05:38, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Monday, March 20, 2023 at 6:14:14 PM UTC-6, Titus G wrote:
>
>> I have had a copy of "St Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman" for decades
>> but for an inexplicable reason, perhaps I fear disappointment or a
>> corruption of my enjoyment of 'Canticle', I have not opened it.
>> I would be interested to hear comments from those who have read it.
>

snip

> However, a Google search told me I was wrong.

Why am I not surprised?

The Wikipedia article about
> this work notes that it was written based on extensive notes left by Walter
> M. Miller before he died. A review quoted in that Wikipedia article refers to
> it as "a fantastic novel, suffering only in comparison to Walter M. Miller's
> earlier work".
>
> I'm not sure if that is a recommendation, however: in isolation, it is good,
> and well worth reading, *but it's not as good as Canticle*, which doesn't
> quite eliminate the risk you're noting.

Thank you for research.

[Titus G]

On 22/03/23 08:12, Bice wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Mar 2023 13:14:05 +1300, Titus G <no...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>> On 21/03/23 03:13, James Nicoll wrote:
>>> Five Authors We Wish Had Written More
>>>
>>> What it says on the tin.
>>>
>>> https://www.tor.com/2023/03/20/five-authors-we-wish-had-written-more/
>>
>> "A Canticle for Leibowitz" (not Liebowitz!), is one of my all time
>> favourites and I rated "The Darfsteller" a solid 4 stars of 5.
>> I have had a copy of "St Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman" for decades
>> but for an inexplicable reason, perhaps I fear disappointment or a
>> corruption of my enjoyment of 'Canticle', I have not opened it.
>> I would be interested to hear comments from those who have read it.
>
> I read St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman in 2018 while I was
> going through all the Hugo winners. I really liked A Canticle for
> Leibowitz, so when I ran across Horse Woman in a used book store a
> couple months later, I grabbed it.
>
> I didn't like the sequel nearly as much as the original book. There
> were some interesting bits, and sections where the wry humor of
> Canticle came through, but in general I thought it was a bit overlong,
> convoluted and tedious. Somewhere around the middle of the book I
> considered just giving up on it, but I plugged on to the end and
> actually enjoyed the last hundred pages or so.

Having read Tony Nance's post prior to this reply to you, I am even more
hesitant to read of the wild horse woman as he has written that these
last hundred pages were written by he of "They're Made Out of Meat"
fame, Bisson.

[Titus G]

There seems to be so much to read that I am becoming fussier and more
critical. I will leave the wild horse woman a while longer.

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, March 20, 2023 at 8:13:58 AM UTC-6, James Nicoll wrote:

> Five Authors We Wish Had Written More
>
> What it says on the tin.
>
> https://www.tor.com/2023/03/20/five-authors-we-wish-had-written-more/

Speaking of A Canticle for Liebowitz: since the setup is essential to the
plot, of course the convention is to suspend disbelief for at least one thing
for a science-fiction story.

But it can be noted that the scenario behind this book is extremely
improbable.

Why? A nuclear war could happen. People could blame science for it,
since without advanced science, nuclear bombs wouldn't exist. And this
made more sense when the book was written, when the atom bomb was
a very recent discovery.

But the problem is this: one would not expect that a nuclear war,
sufficiently limited to leave _some_ survivors in the United States, would
have resulted in the total destruction of every other country in the world,
particularly including countries far removed from the conflict.

One might expect Canada, Australia, and Western Europe to also have
been devastated by Soviet nuclear weapons. And one could also expect
that, due to cultural ties, the _reaction_ in the aftermath might have been
the same as that in the United States.

But what about, say, Brazil? Or Argentina? Or Chile?

So if what's left of the United States goes back to horse and buggy days
in reaction to those evil nuclear bombs... one presumes that the University
of Sao Paulo, say, would still preserve Newtonian physics, and the secrets
of the vacuum tube, and so on and so forth... and, if the radioactive territory
of North America were still of any value, its current occupants would likely
be recapitulating the history of the original inhabitants of that continent when
a Brazilian expeditionary force paid them a visit.

Discarding science and technology is suicidal. Unless there really is
nobody else around to disturb your self-indulgence.

John Savard