fantasy novels.

are there any other trends in recent fantasy i could have pointed out to me? or is it all hawk-headed rapists?

Friends, more into the scene than I am, often extol the virtues of George R. R. Martin as the best old-style fantasy novelist.

Harrison's nasty fantasy was preceded by Moorcock's, whose was preceded by Fritz Leiber's, mostly his Lankmar stories.

I like Dragonlance, but I'm sorta hokey. Especially the Legends trilogy that deals with Raistlin's tragedy. But I haven't read any of those books since I was a kid; maybe if I tried reading them now, I wouldn't get very far.

The high/low interface has been going on a long time. One of the memes in Don Quixote is his inability to distinguish fantasy and reality because of all the chivalric romances (kights, dragons, quests) he reads. Some of the greatest works of English literature are fantasies: Spenser's Fairy Queene, Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream and The Tempest, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and (though he didn't mean it to be) Milton's Paradise Lost. The TSRish RPG fantasies don't compare, obviously, but there's more to their literary heritage than Tolkien.

i dunno how i forgot about moorcock frankly. i was unsure how well it fit in but i did just remember how elric ends up, so i suppose it's possible. i don't remember the lankhmar stories having much of the same to them, but i never read that many - there is the thing with the american pulp 'weird fiction' sorta thing that i don't know many things about, this thing.

(i just ordered the two books you recommended on the mieville thread off've the library, by the way) (will probably burble about them on here, eventually)

I haven't even read any of Samuel Delaney's fantasy series out of post-adolescent anti-fantasy bias. I think I should get over that, though?

Tom, that old weird fantasy stuff can be pretty nasty, yeah. Clark Ashton Smith loved writing about necromancers and such.

I hope I didn't overhype those two books. Let me know.

I recently "inherited" some Stephen R. Donaldson stuff. Assuming I ever have an urge to read it, is it any good? The guy who left it to me bragged that he had to buy the most comprehensive dictionary available to look up all of the obscure words Donaldson uses. Sounds a bit pedantic to me.

I just picked this up because it's part of Gollancz's classic fantasy series (presumably a sister collection to their excellent sci-fi classics series). Have I wasted my money, I wonder?

If it's China Mieville you're talking about, Bloke also rates that stuff very highly indeed.

I read the Thomas Covenant books when I was 13 or 14. I thought the first three were wonderful, but the second three were a bit disappointing. I can't remember why, now. I don't recall any truly difficult words, but I do remember that he used the word "mien" a lot, which became a little wearing after a while.

I remember loving Raymond E. Feist as well. Again, I don't even remember why.

Anyway, I've read enough of the Mieville thread to see that the books you were recommending were not his, but something else. But I didn't read the rest of the thread because I intend to read Perdido Street Station and don't want to know anything about it before I do.

i also remember liking thomas covenant a whole lot when i was fourteen. i had an RE teacher who thought they were the best thing ever written. i mean an actual grownup. i never did finish the second lot. was anyone sad enough for the final chronicle thing that came out the other uh year?

Deconstructionist philosophy to the extent they deal with the dawn of history, the birth of codified language, when signifiers were freshly coined, and so as yet not "suffering" from slippage with the signified. Also, they stpries are quite meta-, the narratives self-deconstructing at times, if I'm remembering correctly.

J.D., are Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and The Little Prince children's or adult fantasy? What about Rushdie's fantasies, Grimus and Haroun & The Sea of Stories?

i should look up the neveryon books. (isn't there a science fiction one of his meant to be "about" deconstruction too?)

what about 'midnight's children', which is about superheroes?

This could apply to almost all of his fiction, but probably most to The Einstein Intersection, Babel-17 and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.

The Neveryona series is really good, even for people like me who've never studied deconstructionism and barely know what semiotics is.

stars in my pocket... is like pure wish-fulfillment for the academic-left - as well as being a beautiful love story, and great literary fiction. but i don't think it makes strong statements about literature / reading the way dhalgren does, or at least it's not the point of the book.

dhalgren is about an amensiac named "the kid" who travels to an american city called bellona. bellona has been afflicted by a terrible, unnamed disaster. it is mostly deserted, but has become a gathering-place for misfits. something has ruined the flow of time and space in bellona - streets and buildings change location unexpectedly, roads lead different places on different days, people experience time differently. you may leave overnight, when you get back, a week may have passed for your friends.

several identities are proposed for "the kid", none of which are confirmed. "the kid" eventually becomes de facto leader of the street gangs and nomadic hippie tribes of bellona. this is because he writes a book of amazing poetry. though later, we find out he may not have written the book after all - he may have found the notebook. or was he the owner of the notebooks, before his amnesia? as events speed up towards the climax of the book - which may or may not be the original disaster that "deconstructed" bellona - "the kid" exchanges identity several times, before finally dissolving into ... what?

ok, the novel's not as heavy-handed as you might think from reading my synopsis - except when it is, like the scene in which the kid puts on a sci-fi shapeshifting suit, looks in a mirror, and sees - i kid you not - SAMUEL R DELANY. OMG WTF !!!

no really, though, i found it absorbing and compelling over the length of it's approx 2,000,000 pages. sometimes i was like "this is the best scifi novel ever" and sometimes i was like "this is the worst scifi novel ever". i am really glad i read it, though.

rec'd to everybody!

(same w/ stars in my pocket... and triton, though i didn't like or "get" nova, and ballad of beta-2 and his early shorts (collected in aye, gomorrah aren't all that distinctive - w/ lots of them you feel they could easily have been written by a sexually liberated, hipped heinlein or van vogt or even cordwainer smith or somebody ... but w/ triton and stars and dhalgren he really works the academic/theory angle hard, it really shines if you dig that stuff)

MORE SPOILERS

The aspects of Dhalgren that gave me the worst karates (that's a good thing) were the circular structure and the fact that the novel had happened before to the female sculptor he meets on the way in, and was going to happen again to whoever it was he met on the way out. The unbreakable cycle is kinda heartbreaking to me.

I would describe Dhalgren more as a fantasy novel than SF, personally.

i think the one i meant was 'stars in my pocket'. i had been putting off dhalgren until after i read finnegans wake i.e. more or less never. (i've only read delany's easy books and the autobio and some of the criticism) (i feel moderately shamed over this)

has anyone read a princess of roumania, by paul park?

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/07/21/a-princess-of-roumania/#comments

"I’ve a theory, which I suspect is hardly original to me, that the magic in really good children’s fantasy draws its resonance from a child’s perception of what it must be like to be grown up. When you’re a child or a pre-adolescent, the adult world seems an attractive and terrifying place. Adults have power, but are driven by forces and desires that a child can only dimly understand; wild magic. Thus, for example, when Susan rides with the daughters of the moon and the Wild Hunt in Alan Garner’s The Moon of Gomrath, she’s glimpsing for a moment what it will be like to be a woman. In contrast, the magic in mediocre children’s fantasy is all too often domesticated, rationalized, and stripped of its real force."

right on.

has anyone else read Mick Farren's DNA Cowboys? it deserves some pimping

Did Delany say this? I missed it if he did.

Wait, I don't remember this at all, was I asleep during this part?

the hint is the bitten nails and the beard.

...maybe he saw William Dhalgren!

And I don't think he even had the beard yet back then?

Consider:

http://www-as.phy.ohiou.edu/FORUM/s98/images/delany1.jpg

i guess it says more about my reading of the book / mental image of delany that i just assumed it was meant to be him in that scene ...

i'm still gonna seek out those mole books.

Sean Russell swans’ war series is excellent. River-centric high fantasy. I think he may have stopped writing but these deserved to be a big hit.

If you want an early 80s gem with the usual trappings elves wizards etc, but taking inspiration from wind and the willows and dickens rather than Tolkien, The Elfin Ship by James P Blaylock. There’s two sequels that aren’t quite as good (he quickly moved on to writing several masterpieces of Southern California magic realism through the 80s and early 90s but is today pigeonholed as the “godfather of steampunk” based on the admittedly wonderful Homunculus and its sequels)

I’ve been too depressed to list for several months now but somehow this thread has coaxed words out of me

*post, not list

nice to see you here!

like the olden tymes of yore.

Hi Scott <3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncton_Wood

imagine tryin to convince someone how much these books will wreck you

they out of print? trying to find new copies don't see any...

Following ilx discussion of Alan Garner a while back, I just now finished reading The Owl Service for the second time in the past week, which never happens---second time was much quicker, though mainly because the whole thing was still lodged, incl. what I couldn't quite remember or forget, to near-quote one character on another, sympathetically and not: that's just how it is these days, in the book and out, to some extent---but mainly, I knew and kinda knew, with a squint sometimes, what had happened, was happening still, is happening still, anywhere and anytime I open the book, the real and modern and fantasy and ancient, recurring and mixing---I found that I did understand it/take it in (incl. class and English and Welsh and gender and generational and generative and other identity markers, clashes, proximities) a bit better for having read it the first time, also recognizing again and moreso the questions that will never be answered: my struggles somewhat mirroring/aping those of the characters, although they have it worse, or most of them do.
Enjoyed the author's afterword as well (btw, he mentions the TV adaptation, filmed in the valley of his inspiration---any of you watched it?), reminding me of enjoying Lethem's afterword to We Have Always Lived In The Castle, another rec if you want to take it as fantasy, personal mythology.

TV version seemed underwhelming to me, they didn't capture the atmosphere of the book very well and the casting was odd.

There's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elidor#Television_adaptation
And this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Shift_(novel)#Television_adaptation_and_popular_culture

neither of which I've seen. Elidor quite infamous in the UK for scaring the shit out of any kids that did see it though, in true British style.

Plus these, although The Moon of Gomrath doesn't seem to have been adapted at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weirdstone_of_Brisingamen#Adaptations

is the owl service the one that takes a lot from the Mabinogion? that keeps cropping up here and there to the point where i feel i should read it.

(yes - The Owl Service interprets a story from the Welsh Mabinogion, namely, portions of the story of "Math Son of Mathonwy.")

strangely, published in the US as "Maths son of Mathsonwy"

Blurb for this edition:

In his earlier novels, The Weirdstone of Brisingstone, The Moon of Gomroth and Elidor, Garner used the sucesssful formula of the spilling of the twilight world of ancient legend into the present day. Here he uses the formula again, with an added depth, and even more compulsive terror-haunted beauty.

i pulled the trigger on the first three mole books. etsy was the only place i could find a good deal for the first three books! someone should really reissue them.

enjoy

they are pretty dense, iirc, you wont blitz through them too quickly

What other Garner should I read? All of it?

Yes, there's only nine novels (ten if you include The Stone Book Quartet which is four interlinked stories) and none of them are long. Plus what I've read of the short fiction is equally good. Haven't read anything from the 'Other Books' section from the link below, I'm guessing they're mostly for younger readers? Plus Where Shall We Run To? is a memoir.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner#Works

Thanks! Am I ready for Red Shift---?

Emma Donoghue recalls reading Red Shift as a teenager: "It looked like other Garners I had read: a children's fantasy. But Red Shift, with its passionately bickering adolescent lovers and vertiginous plunges through the wormhole of time, shook me to my core every time I read it, and still does... Garner makes the past numinous, terrifyingly real: anything but passed."[42]

Finished Red Shift six months ago and still have it on my desk because I'm convinced I'm going to solve the cipher.

i pulled the trigger on the first three mole books. etsy was the only place i could find a good deal for the first three books! someone should really reissue them.

― scott seward, Saturday, 5 October 2024 23:03 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

enjoy

they are pretty dense, iirc, you wont blitz through them too quickly

― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Saturday, 5 October 2024 23:12 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

can scott do a mole book reax thread where he shares his trauma and everyone who read them earlier relives their own trauma

Stroke it Mole

you guys are scaring me!

looking forward though.

W-what are the---mole books---?

one who must ask has not yet achieved stoneness

(duncton books, William horwood)

kirstein (the steerswoman) (trilogy, I think?)

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Wednesday, September 18, 2024 5:57 PM (three weeks ago)

It's planned as 7 books and she has written 4. There hasn't been a new book in two decades and her next book is not in that series.

i dont want to come across as harsh but that should be prison time tbh

I was discussing the other day that this sort of thing isn't uncommon at all. There's tons of writers who've had an ending for their series in their heads for decades but demanding day jobs, right issues, depression, illness, other book series and many other things get in the way. If anyone should be punished it should be editors who keep asking for trilogies, quartets or more and don't allow the writer to complete them if the early books sell poorly.

otm

i said what i said

That's a lot of dead people in jail.

I think it comes with the territory, if series epics are what you like to write then there's a very high probability that you won't finish them all, or even one of them.

It seems like there's quite a lot of writers who do series that consist of standalones and their fans don't know how many further books were intended. I just found out that Gormenghast was planned as at least 5 books.

can scott do a mole book reax thread where he shares his trauma and everyone who read them earlier relives their own trauma

― Tim F, Tuesday, 8 October 2024 02:15 (four weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

genuinely seeking an update scott

i love those books fiercely but jesus christ they tore me to bits

haha, sorry, didn't see this. i'm reading those daniel woodrell books first and then it will be mole winter. i'm just in a groove with the woodrell stuff. inspiring to me. but i'll get in a mole hole before you know it!

you need not sound so enthusiastic we are only waiting for your devastation

i am still a little frightened...

yes. correct approach.

is The Black Company a fun read at all? I see mookieproof described it as “military porn” upthread and I think I could be down for some of that in a dark fantasy setting.

Someone here liked it. I read a bit of the first book and thought it was okay, but maybe it wasn’t quite my thing.

I tried it, having heard people rave about it, but it's a bit try-hard. Not terrible writing, but frequently unpleasant and with deus ex machina magic stuff that can do whatever the plot demands at the time. Didn't bother past the end of book 1.

ie it was mostly the opposite of fun

i would send someone to joe abercrombie instead, easier read if nothing else

ty all