{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1331",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1331,
    "subject": "McKillip question",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-01-16T23:41:33+00:00",
    "last": "1999-01-16T23:41:33+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0022-0096@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "al at interport.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-01-16T23:41:33+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) McKillip question",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Begging your pardons, but hoping the group might appreciate someting novel\nto focus on for a minute or two, I'd like to solicit your opinions, very\nmuch including lurkers' opinions, on something I'm scratching my head over\njust now. I've been asked for an essay on Patricia McKillip, which I was\npleased to accept, as I more or less \"discovered\" THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF\nELD 25 years ago and may have had something to do with its riding over works\nby established writers like Poul Anderson to win the very first World\nFantasy Award.\n\nThe review will focus on the Riddlemaster trilogy, coming out for the first\ntime in a omnibus edition this March.  But I have for the past few weeks\nbeen reading her books of the 1990s, the only ones still in print (i.e. that\nI could get) except for ELD (still magical) and the galley of the trilogy,\nwhich I haven't allowed myself to read yet. What I am puzzling over, quite\nseriously, is why a prize-winning, gifted (she really is, take my word for\nit) and fairly prolific writer 20-odd years down the line has not moved\nbeyond the standard tropes and situations of High Fantasy--princes, dragons,\nfirebirds, mages, spells, sentimental feudalism along the standard medieval\nCeltic line,  Any thoughts beyond \"that's what puts bread on the table,\"\n\"she's really just a YA writer\" and \"\"she's comfortable in that world\" will\nbe gratefully accepted. (Use my email address; I don't want to burden the\nlist--also, you don't need to have read McKillip; stray thoughts are\nwelcome.)\n\nTo take it just a tad further, think how far Le Guin, who started with these\nvery tropes in Earthsea, has gone. Think of Vance, who writes the same book\nover and over (like Iris Murdoch in the mainstream), but has made an\nenjoyable and recognizable style and world of his own, or Alice Hoffman who\nhas taken the conventions into the mainstream, or how Crowley has used them\nfor his own purposes, or how Swanwick has defined \"hard fantasy.\"\n\nThanks in advance,\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}