TS: sci-fi vs. fantasy!

The Phoenix and the Mirror remains for many his high point w/r/t longer fiction, a reimagining of the character of Virgil Magus, a medieval vision of the Latin poet as a sorceror, in an alternate Roman Empire. But I might also recommend another one of his 'play with history' scenarios, cowritten with Davis, Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty.

http://www.avramdavidson.org/

...and for one of his prime efforts as a critic and essayist (Elvis T. turned me onto this in particular), his take on Lovecraft:

http://www.avramdavidson.org/ephemera.htm#HPL

"...Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Heaven knows, had a talent for writing which was of no mean proportion; only what he did with this talent was a shame and a caution and an eldritch horror. if he had only gotten the Hell down out of his auntie's attic and obtained a job with the Federal Writers Project of the WPA, he could have turned out guidebooks that would be classics and joys to read, forever. Only he stayed up there, muffled up to the tip of his long, gaunt New England chin against the cold which lay more in his heart than in his thermometer, living on 19 cents worth of beans a day, rewriting (for pennies) the crappy MSS of writers whose complete illiteracy would have been a boon to all mankind; and producing ghastly, grisly, ghoulish and horrifying works of his own as well--of man-eating Things which foraged in graveyards, of human/beastie crosses which grew beastier and beastlier as they grew older, of gibbering shoggoths, and Elder Beings which smelt real bad and were always trying to break through Thresholds and Take Over--rugose, squamous, amorphous nasties, abetted by thin, gaunt New England eccentrics who dwelt in attics and who eventually Never Seen Or Heard From Again. Serve them damn well right, I say.
In short, Howard was a twitch, boys and girls, and that's all there is to it."

Since you've said you've not read Davidson, do what I've been saying and read the Treasury. I have that and I have my Lovecraft volumes and I'd rather not part with either.

Curious G, yes. I grew up on Niven and John Varley, pretty hard SF chaps who nevertheless leant towards fantasy at times. The Fourth Profession is the one where the bartender dude takes an alien pill that gives him mad mystic-prophet skeelz, yes? Always a laugh, is Larry. However, I think my favourite Niven bits are the Beowulf thingummy stories where he's gallivanting around the universe getting pummelled by neutron stars and the like.

To answer the actual question: both, although my tolerance for crap SF is slightly higher than that for rubbish fantasy, the pseudoscientific language and hilarious sexual fetishes of the former outweighing the terrible 'here be dragons' maps and fluffy mysticism of the latter heavily for amusement value.

(OK, I'm kidding really)

I read a P.C.Hodgell book once, I liked the cover. IIRC it was pretty good.

Gene Wolfe's 4 books, referred to above, are excellent, really, some of my favourite books ever.

I'm getting back into reading on public transport of late, what's good & new/recent? I'm a bit out of touch (actually very out of touch) - I read Neal Stephenson's "Quicksilver" last week, which was very good I thought, but not very SF/fantasy at all.

But I already like the Comsat Angels! *flees*

I wouldn't even go that far. They were much different writers on many levels -- thematic, stylistic, in how they used humor. But you'll have to see for yourself.

(slocki did you finish yr script?)

Check the end of my big list of authors, m'friend. :-)

The Einstein Intersection: SF or fantasy?

xpost

Children's fantasy beats children's sci-fi.

Fantasy RPGs beat sci-fi RPGs.

Post-children's sci-fi beats post-children's fantasy by a LONG way.

I am pwned! I thought there were two 'E's in Delany.

Tom raises an interesting point about age shifts. (If you want real pain, Heinlein's kid-oriented SF...on second thought, don't.)

(Actually kinda glad to see Heinlein NOT mentioned so far, I think.)

Meanwhile, though I think his ideas outstrip his narrative abilities at points (and in other cases overwhelm them), Orson Scott Card should be mentioned, and in fact he has a *great* piece up today via the LA Times regarding the death of Star Trek:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-card3may03,0,6007802.story

Worth a read. (He notes to being a fan of Whedon; I'd say anyone who talks about Whedon's abilities re: interpersonal conflict and communication needs to read Ender's Game if they haven't.)

xpost

It's hard [har har] to write without getting bogged down in technical details at the expense of the story. Here's a good example -- Ringworld by Niven is a great conceit well explained and illustrated, while some of the interspecies characterization is sharp but not perfectly developed. In Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks borrowed Ringworld wholesale and ditched extended explanation for a really good story (doubtless taking advantage of the fact that he didn't need to reinvent or reexplain the wheel, quite literally) -- and as for interaction and characterization, it's quite amazing what he came up with (the Culture novels have in ways all the intentionally parodic zest of Adams with just enough seriousness to make it work surprisingly well; also helps that Banks is essentially an action director working in prose).

To quote Arthur C. Clarke:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The SF I tend to prefer, to echo someone else upthread, tilts reality one or two degrees from the norm (or has fucking huge cosmic ideas explored by people whose characterisation is straight out of the modern day soaps) - more extensive worldbuilding in SF generally gives me as little emotional payback as fantasy worldbuilding and is harder work.

That said there's an atavistic part of me that much prefers SF from before it caved in on the idea of characterisation mattering. I got into it because I wanted an autistic escape from human interaction ta very much!

More generally though, you could look at something like Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which is SF, but whose core value could as easily have been recognised in a Fantasy setting. Whereas I don't think the same could be said of The Dispossessed (or, vice versa, transplanting the "core" of the Earthsea novels into a SF setting).

Oh, I don't think that's changed at all! How much modern SF reflects preoccupations of the now, after all? Or projections of same? The parameters have changed and will change, and the biases current will be all the more evident with distance as we look back.

Actually here's a question for both you and Tim -- are there notable sf/fantasy/imaginative writers from your neck of the woods? I'm sure there are obvious names I'm missing, but alas the only one coming to mind is Nevil Shute for On the Beach, though that's no bad thing per se.

- Isobelle Carmody
- Ian Irvine
- Sean Williams

Science fiction I don't know, but recently a fantastic short-story book was released, featuring dozens of Australian authors over the past 50 years.

http://www.moviehole.net/news/5547.html

Mr Film Fantastic, Robert Rodriguez, looks set to helm the next "Conan" sequel.

The Arnold Fans has discovered that John Milius, who has been trying to get a third "Conan" film off the ground for longer than gas has fuelled cars, has been given his walking papers - and that Rodriguez, currently spinning a lot of bank with "Sin City", is the Barbarian's new pop.

"John Milius had a 5 year contract to be on the WB lot, however, after WB gave Conan away to Rodriguez, they decided they did not need Milius and kicked him off the lot without renewing his contract", says the site.

Milius had been working on "King Conan" - which tells the story of the Barbarian and his son - for quite a while. It's believed he recently talked to wrestler Triple-H about filling Arnold Schwarzenneger's shoes, upon discovering Arnold's too busy playing Governor.

It's not known whether Rodriguez plans on using Milius' idea for "King Conan" or whether he's going to start afresh, and whether he's going to try and coax Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the role of Conan or take on Milius' idea of bringing in Triple-H.

We shall see.

What Happened To The Corbetts is about the possible effects of a bombing campaign on England, written I think in 1938. The materials science in No Highway is nonsense,* but not too bad for the time it was written; to be honest I'm not sure what its date is. Shute, incidentally, was an important aeronautical engineer in the 20s and 30s; he designed the first plane with a retractable undercarriage.

* the plot of No Highway revolves around fatigue failure in aircraft. There are several mistakes which now seem glaring, but reflect the fact that in Shute's day materials science was relatively poorly studied - and, furthermore, was not something that the majority of engineers knew very much about.

As an adjunct to the question: short story vs novel(la)? Too many stories end up as lame-ass one-liners ("and it turned out he was Hitler!"), but the best are jewels of rare price, whereas novels allow writers to develop more of what they're really about, for better or worse.

No finer twist exists.