(1) If today is The Martian’s birthday remember that…
…in nine days Marty McFly arrives from the past …
(2) Can you pass HowStuffWorks’ “Real Tech or Star Trek?” quiz?
Confession: I bombed.
(3) Jeffro Johnson has completed his Appendix N survey. Keep reading and he’ll explain what that means —
So it’s all up now.
With this piece on Tolkien going up, I’ve done forty-three posts on Appendix N now. I read every book Gygax mentioned by name, at least the first book of each series, and I picked out one representative work for each of the entries that consisted of an author’s name alone. I also wrote about two thousand words on each book.
(4) A bit more from 2013 on how journalists exploited Gravatar to identify online commenters.
“Crypto weakness in Web comment system exposes hate-mongering politicians”
Investigative journalists have exploited a cryptographic weakness in a third-party website commenting service to expose politicians and other Swedish public figures who left highly offensive remarks on right-wing blogs, according to published reports.
People have been warning of the privacy risk posed by Gravatar, short for Globally Recognized Avatar, since at least 2009. That’s when a blogger showed he was able to crack the cryptographic hashes the behind-the-scenes service uses to uniquely identify its users. The Gravatar hashes, which are typically embedded in any comment left on millions of sites that use the avatar service, are generated by passing a user’s e-mail address through the MD5 cryptographic function. By running guessed e-mail addresses through the same algorithm and waiting for output that matches those found in comments, it’s possible to identify the authors, many of whom believe they are posting anonymously.
“Disqus scrambles after leak fuels Swedish tabloid expose”
Disqus is updating its widely-used comments platform after a Swedish tabloid exposed politicians and other public figures for allegedly making highly offensive comments on right-wing websites.
The Swedish daily Expressen, working with an investigative journalism group, said it uncovered the identity of hundreds of people who left offensive comments at four right-wing websites through their email addresses. It then confronted the authors of the comments, many of whom freely admitted to writing them.
(5) “Dinner and a Movie with Vincent Price featuring Victoria Price” is in Toronto on November 18 and 19. The event at the Gladstone Hotel features a four course meal created by Gladstone Chef Katie Lloyd and inspired by the late actor’s 1965 cookbook, A Treasury of Great Recipes. Tickets are available.
And for nostalgia’s sake, here is a video of Vincent Price guesting on a cooking show with Wolfgang Puck.
(6) Jerry Pournelle reports that the new There Will Be War collection, volume 10, is filling faster than expected:
There are still a few fiction slots open, and we are looking for serious previously published non-fiction on future war; previous publication in a military journal preferred but not a requirement.
Oddly, some of the aspiring contributors don’t seem to understand what the collection is about. Publisher Vox Day warned —
PLEASE STOP SUBMITTING straight SF, urban fantasy, SF romance, and anything that is not clearly MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION. A submission will be rejected out of hand as soon as it becomes apparent that it is not mil-SF. We’ve received a startling number of submissions that are not even remotely relevant to one of the most famous anthology series in science fiction.
(7) Mascots meet under the Hugo at Octocon.
https://twitter.com/Frazerdennison/status/653200065645907968
https://twitter.com/Teddysteves/status/652580716081999872
(8) Ah, Sweet Marketing!
https://twitter.com/APiusManNovel/status/653544755507372032
(9) Nathan Barnhart’s review of Ancillary Mercy for Speculative Herald is touted as its “first 10 star rating”:
Along the way we get a few surprises. Most noticeable for me is the humor that is present more than at any other point of the series. Breq herself gives us some lighter moments; including padding a report with results of radish growing competitions. But most of the humor comes from the translator to the mysterious Presger (an alien group that once treated humans as their own ant farm but is now confined by a treaty). Zeiat, while acting as a translator between two races provides the humor by some humorous cultural misunderstandings. In lesser hands Zeiat could have been nothing more than a cheap form of comic relief but here she serves a very real purpose within the story. Beneath the humor of the misunderstandings is the constant reminder that even a culture as expansive as the Radch are at risk. The Presger are held in check only by a treaty they signed; a treaty the Radch still doesn’t completely understand the implications of.
(10) Io9 posted a detailed infographic “Get To Know The Incredible Starships of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Trilogy” a couple of weeks ago, which is even more fun now that I have read the third book.
(11) Screen Rant presents “10 Movie Outtakes That Made It To The Big Screen.”
(12) And here is my Get Out Of Literary Jail Free card, sent by somebody who thinks I will need it, because of the way I phrase Frankenstein stories in the Scroll.
[Thanks to Will R., Brian Z., and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
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He was transformative for fantasy literature at that time.
No he wasn’t. His books were derivative Tolkien knock-offs. Being derivative means you aren’t transformative, almost by definition.
I’m currently reading Gannon’s second Caine novel, Fire with Fire, and it’s a good piece of space opera that asks interesting political questions, as well as exploring the effects of multiple first contacts in short succession.
It reminds me a lot of Thomas Harlan’s Sixth Sun novels, where humanity are latecomers to the interstellar stage – and have to puzzle things out from diplomacy and archaeology.
Numerous Puppies have shouted, “You should be sending Brad and Larry a thank-you note! Before the slates were published, they talked VD down from destroying the Hugos completely!”
Which is always an amusing defense, as the idea that VD could “destroy the Hugos completely” is ludicrous.
“You should thank Brad and Larry! They talked VD out of doing something he had absolutely no capability of doing!”
So . . . on to some books!
The Whispering Swarm by Michael Moorcock: I made it about a third of the way through this before giving up. This book had a fantastic premise: it’s the autobiography of a Michael Moorcock that almost (but never quite) was. Moorcock’s actual life (with some name changes) gets interwoven with a storyline about encounters with a magical Sanctuary situated in the middle of London. Which sounds awesome, and should have been awesome, but . . . the prose is just so dry. So, so dry. The Moorcock of this book was such a dude-bro that, as the story progressed, I kept wanting to punch him. And Moorcock’s experiences with famous people in the SF world, which I would have found very interesting, were frequently glossed over in favor of tedious stories about “famous” friends I’d never heard of. Rather than force myself to push through dry, dull prose to continue to read a story that could have been interesting but wasn’t, I put this down and have no intention of returning to it.
Lightless by C.A. Higgins: This was an interesting debut. I think the author has a lot of promise, but there were problems here. The prose was well done, the atmosphere was well-established, and there was some (some) good characterization. But . . . this book had some really, really massive (and distracting) plot holes. The worldbuilding was weaker than it could have been (though how much of that was due to the isolated nature of the setting I can’t say). And while one or two of the characters were well-done (at least, somewhat well-done), others were thinly-drawn. I think I’ll probably be willing pick up other books by Higgins in the future, because I think she does have talent. But I can’t recommend this particular book, because its structural problems were just too vast and varied.
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman: This was delightful. A love letter to book-lovers everywhere. Basically, a Library exists outside of time and space, and Librarians are sent throughout the multiverse to gather books from a variety of alternate Earths. It looks like this will be a series, and the sequel will definitely be an auto-buy for me. Tons of fun, and highly, highly recommended.
The Just City by Jo Walton: This was . . . not my cup of tea. “What if a group of people (and robots) from across time were gathered together to implement Plato’s ideas about a ‘Just City'” sounds interesting on its face, but I found the execution to be very flawed. The story and characterization were very much secondary to Philosophical Dialogues, and I kept nodding off. Characters acted implausibly just so that Walton could explore certain ideas, and the plot suffered as a result. If you really, really love Greek philosophy, and are willing to overlook the structural weaknesses here, you might enjoy this. I did not, and I have no desire whatsoever to continue on to The Philosopher Kings..
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho: I enjoyed this a lot. (I binged pretty heavily on Regency romances earlier in the year, so I was kind of Regency-d out by the time I hit this book, or I might recommend it a bit more forcefully.)
Crooked by Austin Grossman: How do you take a premise like “President Nixon’s secret lifelong battle against Lovecraftian horrors” and screw it up? Seriously, how? I was so disappointed in this book. I couldn’t make it past Part 1, because I felt like I was reading an amateur’s first draft. Don’t waste your time on this.
Darkness on His Bones by Barbara Hambly: Book 6 in her James Asher series (started by the classic “Those Who Hunt The Night”), a series that any vampire-loving (but Twilight-hating) reader should definitely grab. I enjoyed this installment, but not as much as earlier books in the series. (I liked it better than Book 5, but that may just be because I read Books 1-5 one after another, and I thought Book 5 suffered in comparison to Books 1-4). This felt like a transition book, moving us from the ‘gathering storm’ atmosphere of the earlier books to the outbreak of WWI. Not my favorite installment, but still very competent; I’m very excited to see where we go from here. (Don’t start with this book if you haven’t read the others. Definitely start withThose Who Hunt the Night.)
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley: I loved this. Loved, loved, loved. Beautifully written, with an intriguing premise, fascinating and fully-fleshed-out characters, and a relatively fast-moving plot.
Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: I liked this a lot, but I can’t say I adored it. The characters were very well done, and I found the plot engrossing. The treatment of magic is of the “wild and unpredictable” variety (rather than the Brandon Sanderson-esque “magic systems” variety), which I appreciated a lot. Overall, it entertained me, but didn’t blow me away.
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay: I picked this up after seeing Laird Barron recommend it on his blog. It’s definitely horror, though how much supernatural activity is actually present is something to debate. Definitely pick it up if you like psychological horror and an unreliable narrative.
@ JJ: “I do believe that there are Sad Puppy supporters who believe that they are not affiliated with Rabid Puppies”
Indeed. A number of them have expressed anger to me and about me for using the phrase “the Puppies,” because the phrase does not acknowledge the Sads and the Rabids as separate and distinct factions.
I remain unconvinced.
@JJ
I do believe that there are Sad Puppy supporters who believe that they are not affiliated with Rabid Puppies
You would be right; there were quite specific calls on MGC from some commenters to keep RP out of SP4 by e.g. preventing them using the logo. Pretty futile IMO, and blind to how their campaign will inevitably be targeted by RP2, but at least the sentiment exists.
@catrinket
You’ll find the round in this thread somewhere: https://file770.com/?p=25384#comment-354051
BTW, C.A. Higgins, author of Lightless, is, like me, a second generation writer. Her mom, Lisa Verge Higgins, is a friend of mine, and a well-known novelist. (In fact, we first met when Lisa was about 6 months pregnant with C.A. Higgins.) I’ve never met the daughter, though I visit with her mom at conferences (and saw her last week at Ninc).
@SBT: “RE: Brooks. He was transformative for fantasy literature at that time.”
In what way? What, specifically, did he transform about 1970s fantasy literature?
Don’t get me wrong; I like the man and have bought and enjoyed some of his work – but it was the “Magic Kingdom for Sale” series that came later, and I liked it for not being the Same Old Thing.
@Emma
I’ve only read Sorcerer to the Crown of those and yes it was delightful. I’ve got The Invisible Library, The Just City, and The Watchmaker racked up, so it was good to hear praise for (most) of them. I’m getting the impression from various comments that The Just City is a bit marmite-y, but the premise is interesting enough that I want to give it a chance.
@ Mark: t
Time will tell (and within months), but I have supposed that SP4 leaders will have a friendly relationship with RP2, since my impression from their blogs has been that there is amity and admiration between MGC and VD.
I think it’s difficult to overstate the impact Brooks had on fantasy publishing. If you look at fantasy of the mid-1970s, it’s reasonably all over the place – Xanth, Pern, Hed, and so forth and so on. Brooks’ huge success with a very strongly channeled Tolkien-pastiche approach, coupled with the fresh boom in Tolkien sales around the first publication of the Silmarillion, made it clear that you could make a bundle doing it Just This Way. And a lot of folks did, and made bundles of their own at it. He and Gygax ended up delivering a one-two punch to fantasy diversity for a good while (and neither intended it, so nearly as I can tell).
Similarly, I have saved the Hugo Awards by asking my cat Hector not to destroy them. If it would win me brownie points, I’d be happy to go next door and ask my neighbor not to destroy them, either.
Again, for all we know, Gygax had in mind only those who produced a conlang as part of their stories, or authors who only had yellow eyes. But in trying to whittle the field to 6, I think by the time the Dungeon Master’s Guide was published in 1979, It’s a reasonable question to ask whether there were any fantasy authors doing big things around that time that could be on the mind of a fantasy hobbyist, say 1977 to 1978?
I wonder who if any existed.
Silly but True
I agree that Brooks was transformative. He established the assumptions that a work of fantasy should be set in an Mediaeval-ish world, that it should be about a group of people going on a quest, that it it should be part of a series of infinite length, and so on. There had been works before him with these qualities, of course (except perhaps the ‘infinite length’ one), but there wasn’t the assumption that that’s what ‘fantasy’ meant. Nowadays you get claims made in all seriousness like ‘of course, fantasy is about the struggle between good and evil’, and ‘all works of fantasy must include a map’, and so on (when in fact there are plenty of outstanding, and popular, works of fantasy of which these things aren’t true); Brooks is largely responsible for this.
Like a cat would not do something just because you asked them not to. More likely Hector got distracted by some other awards or perhaps a nice afternoon nap.
He established the assumptions that a work of fantasy should be set in an Mediaeval-ish world, that it should be about a group of people going on a quest, that it it should be part of a series of infinite length, and so on.
Or, you know, you could credit Tolkien. Brooks came late to the game. I’d be hard-pressed to think of more than one or two fantasies that didn’t adhere to the “Mediaeval-ish world” trope in the 1960s and 1970s. The group thing was pretty common too.
Silly But True: Backing up to the early to mid ’70s…
The Dark is Rising series, starting with Over Sea, Under Stone, in 1965.
The Earthsea books. (A Wizard of Earthsea came out in 1968.)
The Pern series, starting with Dragonflight in 1968.
The Amber series; Nine Princes in Amber, 1970.
Grendel, by John Gardner, 1971.
The Riverworld series, starting with To Your Scattered Bodies Go in 1971.
Jack Of Shadows, 1971.
Watership Down, 1972.
A Wind In The Door, 1972, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, 1973.
Poul Anderson’s translation of Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, 1973.
The Princess Bride, 1973.
Birthgrave, by Tanith Lee, 1975.
The Riddle-Master of Hed, 1976.
Interview With The Vampire, 1976.
And that’s without getting into Jack Vance. 🙂
@Laura Resnick
What I’ve seen is an antipathy to VD among a subset of their supporters, balanced out by another set of “I might not agree with everything he says but…” types, plus an element of genuine foot-in-both-camps supporters.
The party line among the SP4 leaders seems to be “not my circus, not my monkey” which is pretty much what they tried during SP3 but with the vague advantage of a fresh start. I am also unconvinced.
Well, in Gygax’ … hmmm … not sure if “defense” is the right word for it … D&D proper predated Shannara. And on at least one occasion (an article in Dragon Magazine), he specifically said that he personally wasn’t a huge fan of JRRT himself, and mostly added the Tolkienesque races to try to capitalize on the popularity of same.
Which to a degree makes sense, both if you look at the rest of Appendix N, and if you look at what the game was really structured for — it was much more aimed at allowing the players to create sort of Howard/Burroughs/Leiber sword & sorcery let’s-kill-them-and-take-their-stuff types of scenarios.
I think the big innovation Gygax lifted from Tolkien was the party structure — two fighters, a wizard, a thief and a cleric — which allowed you to bring greater numbers of people into the sword & sorcery scenarios that had more traditionally been about a single hero or maybe a single hero and a sidekick.
It’s interesting to think what impact D&D might’ve had if it hadn’t grafted on the Tolkien races.
Honestly, asking about the influence of Brooks is like asking about the influence of McDonalds. I’ve doesn’t need to be a fan of Extruded Fantasy Product to see how it’s shaped the genre.
As far as D&D goes, there’s a weird feedback cycle between D&D, video games, and novels, that’s Bern going on for 30+ years. I’ve seen people arguing for the “proper” type of fantasy game (setting, character types, magic etc.), based on novel references that were clearly based on D&D. It’s a little frustrating. Hell, even Game of Swords had more than a little EFP in it.
The genuinely transformative fantasy writers were always going to have derivative imitators. The most popular derivative Tolkien imitator happens to be Terry Brooks. If it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else, and someone indistinguishable from a literary viewpoint, because that’s what derivative imitation means….
Honestly, asking about the influence of Brooks is like asking about the influence of McDonalds.
But the influence of Brooks was not the question. The question was what authors were considered to be of similar stature to Tolkien in the 1970s. I don’t think anyone regarded Brooks as anything other than a pale imitation of Tolkien in the 1970s.
It seems to me that this is missing the point: what Jeffro wrote was:
Surely this refers to the reputation of these authors in the seventies, regardless of when they were actually writing. So Leiber could have been in the list even if his best work had been done some time previously (as, of course, was Tolkien’s). And those of us who were around at the time will remember the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, which republished people like Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison and William Morris, all of them much more likely to be regarded as JRRT’s equals than Terry Brooks.
Jim Hines and Chuck Wendig are offering to revive Hine’s cover poses project to benefit Read for Pixels. One of the possible poses is from McCaffrey’s Crystal Singer.
I am chuckling so much right now.
Andrew M on October 13, 2015 at 3:55 pm said:
I don’t agree that Brooks was transformative. At least not with his Shanarra books.
In Neal Stevenson’s Anatham, the character Arsibalt says:
And that’s how I think of Tolkien. He was so influential that almost no one, for the rest of that century and part of this one, has been able to write fantasy in English that is not in dialogue with Lord of the Rings. You can refute him, amend him, extend him or, as in Brooks’s case, derive your fiction directly from him, but you can’t get away from his influence.
Jon
It’s a bummer, but Ancilliary Mercy is worth the wait!
Mark on October 13, 2015 at 4:26 pm said:
Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow. Even upside down Tej wouldn’t be as painful as that pose. Whoever votes for that one ought to donate EXTRA just for Hines’s Chiropractor bill.
@ Aaron: Oh noes! I am gullible!
@ Meredith: Hi! I am not particularly frustrated. I am not emotionally invested in winning someone over on the internet, rather I caved to my impulse to post while filtering through the week’s posts by Mike G. He often has good stuff, especially on movies and such. FWIW, despite Butcher finishing below No Award this year and despite the fact that May calls BS on him (neither of which matter to me, Mr. John Q. Citizen Book Consumer) I still get his stuff. I just finished the recently released Aeronaut’s Windlass, which I heartily recommend.
@ Mark: May has his triggers. He jumps on stuff very rapidly. In this case, he said that the university shut down the fraternity – which is incorrect. Had he listed the things that I did, I doubt that he would be getting anymore of the benefit of the doubt in this thread (than he is). Does his ‘jerk’ factor mean that when he is saying something accurate that he is still ‘wrong’, because ‘James May’? The tenor of the responses upthread suggest ‘yes’.
Anyhow – I don’t check back very often so I can’t participate reliably in a volley of comments. If anyone wants a conversation without an audience, my eml is my handle here + @gmail.com.
Ultragotha: I disagree with “He was so influential that almost no one, for the rest of that century and part of this one, has been able to write fantasy in English that is not in dialogue with Lord of the Rings.” I don’t think that a bunch of writers of the ’60s and ’70s are particularly in dialogue with LOTR – Vance, Lee, Cooper, McKillip, Zelazny, others. Brooks matters in that his success helped lay it down that what you’d be building on or reacting to is Tolkien’s legacy (filtered through simplifications and reductions), rather than his among a bunch of others.
People arguing against Brooks’ “influence” because he was derivative of Tolkien are missing the point. Brooks was, as Bruce among others said, tremendously influential on the shape of fantasy publishing. His success showed that Tolkien could be commodified. At commodification, he was a pioneer. And the Del Reys particularly “incorporated the learnings,” as contemporary business jargon would put it.
There are entire genres of fantasy that predate Tolkien, that Tolkien did not write in, and that have continued merrily on with what they were doing without paying any attention to Tolkien.
His foundational and continuing influence on one particular genre of fantasy in Western writing probably cannot be overstated, but seriously, it’s a big field.
@Emma: Thanks for the novel notes. I’m still reading mostly short fiction but every now and then I feel like stories are flickering through my head too fast and need to immerse myself in something longer. I’ve got Watchmaker standing by for the next time I need a break; you make The Invisible Library sound really appealing too.
My short fiction find of the week has been Maria Dahvana Headley. She’s got an appealingly off-center dark imagination and a gift for words; I’d like to hear her read out loud. Five stories so far this year. My favorite was “The Cellar Dweller” (Hugo-worthy IMO); yes, the author dares to rhyme.
Or check out the opening of “And the Winners Will Be Swept Out to Sea”:
@ Emma The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman: This was delightful. A love letter to book-lovers everywhere. Basically, a Library exists outside of time and space, and Librarians are sent throughout the multiverse to gather books from a variety of alternate Earths. It looks like this will be a series, and the sequel will definitely be an auto-buy for me. Tons of fun, and highly, highly recommended.
I also found The Invisible Library to be delightful. I’ve always thought of libraries as magical places full of possibility and reading this felt like a lovely combination of book love and old time adventure.
In other book news (because reading the comments directed at Dr. Gannon and large parts of the rest of the world has rendered me unfit for talking about anything else), I cannot finish The Traitor Baru Cormorant. It’s beautifully written, the world is an interesting one and…no. I’ve stuck it out for half the book and maybe I’ll get back to it after a break, but for now I’m leaving it.
“Saltwater Railroad” by Andrea Hairston is quite good too. Again it provides the pleasure of a distinctive style; and a compelling story. In the 19th century a group of escaped slaves and other fugitives live on a rocky island, centered around Delia who sees spirits; is it a utopia or a trap? A young woman washed up on the rocks brings a crisis.
Saltwater Railroad is great! It’s a story that really merits multiple readings. For the RSR review I wrote, I even found what I think is the painting described in the story.
http://www.rocketstackrank.com/2015/09/saltwater-railroad-by-andrea-hairston.html
@Jim Henley: “People arguing against Brooks’ “influence” because he was derivative of Tolkien are missing the point. Brooks was, as Bruce among others said, tremendously influential on the shape of fantasy publishing.”
That does not make his work transformative, as was claimed.
Influential, sure. Transformative, uh-uh.
@Rev. Bob: You’re precisely wrong. He transformed genre publishing. After Brooks it was different.
Well, now that the “Shelter in Place- gun” incident at my work is over, let’s get back to Tolkien.
Tolkien has been highly important, but honestly, I’d say his work has been mostly influential over the last thirty or forty years at most. Back in the sixties and seventies, I’d say the major influence, based on the authors complaining about him, was Howard and Conan..Moorcock’s Elric series was a dialogue with Howard, but Tolkien; Likewise, “Thud and Blunder” was all about a flood of Conan pastiches, not Middle Earth.
I’m also not going to hazard a guess how long the Tolkien influence is going to dominate. Sure right now Tolkien, filtered through video games and anime, seems highly present…but let’s not forget how popular Bulwar-Litton was in the 19th century.
Finished “The Buried Life”.
Well, that made no sense at all.
Ah, well.
Rose Embolism – “Extruded fantasy product” made me snort diet Pepsi out my nose. But even younger me was wary of those books and never checked them out of the library; no methadone for me, only pure Tolkien crack.
Laura Resnick – Feel free to flee your dream and join mine. It has no VD, but I can make no promises regarding kidney beans. LurkerType and other filers are welcome in my dream, too, it’ll just make the the discussion more discursive.
Poor Dr. Gannon; toasted on all sides. I do agree with what I perceive to be his point, which is that one should know one’s own reasons for unlimbering the truly vicious verbiage. It won’t persuade the enemy or the onlooker, so you’re at scorched earth battle, it’s probably just venting, and is the satisfaction of venting worth the clean-up cost?
I am pleased that Chuck Gannon moved on to try his appeal for civility at a Puppy Blog. I specifically encouraged him to do so when he aired it at Whatever, since in my (no doubt biased) opinion, the Puppy Blogs have been far more lacking in civility than any opposition to them that I’ve seen.
I’m not going to a Puppy Blog tonight but maybe in the morning I’ll go see how that went for him. Perhaps now he has a better idea of who is uncivil and who is just understandably annoyed.
You’re precisely wrong. He transformed genre publishing. After Brooks it was different.
But that wasn’t what Jeffro claimed at all, which is what kicked off this conversation. He claimed that there were a “half dozen authors in the 1970s were were on par with Tolkien” in terms of talent. It doesn’t matter how much influence Brooks had, he was never considered to be anywhere close to being “on par with Tolkien”.
Well, and that’s a really good point. I never thought much of the *writing* itself (Alanon? Seriously?), but there is no doubt that the calculated *packaging* of the books kicked off years and years and years and *years* of pale LOTR imitators, some of which sold well.
@Aaron: I think the conversation moved on from what Jeffro claimed awhile ago. As conversations do.
Even 11 or 12-year-old me knew Brooks was a hack by Christmas dinner. My mother did better in later years (Patricia McKillip, Diane Duane).
I write to you from the far future of 2015 where, uh, well, never mind. Mike must have fixed it. (And probably announced it on another thread that I haven’t found yet.)
@Jim:
I’m with Aaron on this. Perhaps you had intended to “move on,” but I (like Aaron) am still talking about the claim that Brooks was a transformative writer, someone whose work was innovative.
Again, I’ll freely grant that his success had a big influence on the way publishers went about buying fantasy – giving EFP in long series a big boost in the market by demonstrating that there was an audience for it – but claiming he was a transformative author makes as much sense to me as does saying that Gutenberg deserves credit for the success of the penny dreadful. Sure, those authors wouldn’t have written what they did without that market existing, but they weren’t thinking, “man, that (Brooks/Gutenberg) guy had amazing ideas that inspired me to write” – and that’s what a transformative author does.
Tolkien inspired writers to create new things. Brooks inspired them not by his writing, but by his success with blatantly derivative work. If anything, Brooks inspired writers not to create new things, but to use a formula to crank out yet more copycat product. There’s really no comparison… and I say this as someone who likes Brooks’s books more than Tolkien’s.
@Greg: I see you read a couple of Headley’s stories (“And the Winners…” and “Solder and Seam”) and found them too opaque. I don’t entirely disagree, in the case of those two; but I was drawn through the confusing narrative, and inspired to try to figure it out, by the intoxicating language. The advantage of “The Cellar Dweller” is that it’s a more focused story, with a punch at the end.
Kyra: Finished “The Buried Life”. Well, that made no sense at all.
Oh no! I thought it did, and I quite enjoyed it.
What part did not make sense to you?
Actually, as far as the series thing goes … I wonder if Stephen R. Donaldson might’ve had more to do with that than Brooks. Sword was published in 1977, but was initially pretty much a standalone — by the end of the book, the One Ring had been — oh, wait. But Elfstones didn’t appear until 1982. Whereas Donaldson came right out of the gate with the first Thomas Covenant trilogy all in one go, and was starting Covenant II within a couple of years.