{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3253", "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": 3253, "subject": "OT: further possible examples of story suites", "messages": 4, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-05-11T00:31:04+00:00", "last": "2002-05-15T17:45:51+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-05-11T00:31:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) OT: further possible examples of story suites", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Blattid reported:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Ursula K. Le Guin has (apparently) recently come up\nwith a useful term for books like _5HC_ and, another\nparticularly useful example, Kim Stanley Robinson's\n_Icehenge_ -- i.e., books that are more than story\ncollections or \"fixups,\" but not exactly novels --\nin an online inteview with somebody or other named\nNick Gevers, she refers to such book as \"story suites,\"\nwhich I htink is quite apt, but then when is UKLG\nother than apt?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sounds good. So would Steinbeck's CANNERY ROW and Jack Vance's THE DYING\nEARTH both be further examples of \"story suites\", or are they\nsomething-else-again?\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSIRIUS FICTION\nbooklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley\nLexicon Urthus out of print!\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-05-15T15:49:54+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) OT: further possible examples of story suites", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Regarding Le Guin's term \"stoy suite,\" Mantis asks:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Sounds good. So would Steinbeck's CANNERY ROW and Jack \nVance's THE DYING\nEARTH both be further examples of \"story suites\", or are they\nsomething-else-again?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Haven't read CANNERY ROW (actually I really only discovered\nSteinbeck last year, though I'd read & lvoed THE MOON IS DOWN \nin high school), but if I recall correctly TDE would be more \nof a fix-up in the classic sense -- similar to (say) van Vogt's\nVOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE or Asimov's original three \n\"Foundation\" books. That is, the stories were clearly written\nfor more or less independent publication and, while they build\non each other, don't totally alter each others' \"meaning\" the \nway the stories of 5HC and ICEHENGE do -- the \"story suite,\" as\nI am understanding the term, is more closely linked by meaning,\nnot just sequentiality, than the classic fix-up.\n\n--Dan'l" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-05-15T17:02:39+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) OT: further possible examples of story suites", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Blattid wrote:\nbut if I recall correctly TDE would be more\nof a fix-up in the classic sense -- similar to (say) van Vogt's\nVOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE or Asimov's original three\n\"Foundation\" books. That is, the stories were clearly written\nfor more or less independent publication and, while they build\non each other, don't totally alter each others' \"meaning\" the\nway the stories of 5HC and ICEHENGE do -- the \"story suite,\" as\nI am understanding the term, is more closely linked by meaning,\nnot just sequentiality, than the classic fix-up." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Okay, granted the greater degree of pieces altering each other's meaning.\nNeither one is likely to be a story suite . . . but the final word would\nhave to come from Le Guin. :)\n\nOTOH, while I'm not certain about the publication history of CANNERY ROW\n(did sections appear in magazines, etc.), my understanding of THE DYING\nEARTH is that it is 6 stories, and only one of them was published in\nmagazine form--that was the same year (1950) that the book came out, and as\nsuch amounts to a publicity release (just as \"The Tale of the Student and\nHis Son\" and \"The Armiger's Daughter,\" two tales from TBOTNS, appeared in\nmagazines). Or so it seems to me.\n\nSo fix-up \"in the classic sense of van Vogt,\" well hmmm. Divining Vance's\n(probable) intentions rather than the publishing record (making TDE a\n\"failed\" van Vogt fix-up?). Ah well, such quibbles! Look, blattid said\n\"more of a fix-up,\" not \"exactly a fix-up,\" so there's no quibble, even.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-05-15T17:45:51+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) OT: further possible examples of story suites", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Mantis argued with hisself, kinda ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Okay, granted the greater degree of pieces altering each \nother's meaning. Neither one is likely to be a story suite\n. . . but the final word would have to come from Le Guin. :)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Why? She coined a useful term; that doesn't make her the\nfinal authority on it. The word \"retcon\" (which I didn't,\nactually, coin but saved from vanishing) has totally escaped\nit's coiner's or my intended meaning, but it's a useful term\nof art anyway. And when you're dealing with a book like 5HC\nor ICEHENGE, none of the existing terms really _do_ work.\n\nBTW, I like \"mosaic\" too, but think it more appropriate for\nsomething made of more, smaller parts -- in fact, TDE might\nwork here, but (as I said) I don't recall it well enough." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "... [M]y understanding of THE DYING EARTH is that it is 6\nstories, and only one of them was published in magazine\nform--that was the same year (1950) that the book came out,\nand as such amounts to a publicity release (just as \"The\nTale of the Student and His Son\" and \"The Armiger's\nDaughter,\" two tales from TBOTNS, appeared in magazines). \nOr so it seems to me." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And you could well be right -- it could well be that Vance\nconceived TDE as a suite of interconnected stories (are they?)\nand not just a series of stories. I read it once, twenty-plus \nyears ago; I admit to being sort of blind in one eye where \nVance is concerned. I deeply admire his style, and would \ncheerfully kill to be able to speak like one of his characters \n-- _nobody_ speaks with that kind of spontaneous elegance! -- \nbut most of his stories qua stories just go in one eye and out\nthe other for me. Only thing that has really stuck is the \"Demon\nPrinces\" sequence." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "So fix-up \"in the classic sense of van Vogt,\" well hmmm. \nDivining Vance's (probable) intentions rather than the\npublishing record (making TDE a \"failed\" van Vogt fix-up?).\nAh well, such quibbles! Look, blattid said \"more of a\nfix-up,\" not \"exactly a fix-up,\" so there's no quibble, even." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, yeah. This is more of a matter of degree than a binary\n\"it is\"/\"it isn't.\" It can be a floor wax _and_ a dessert \ntopping, for all of me, and a big part of the idea behind \n\"story suite\" or \"mosaic\" would posdef be dat ole debbil\nauctorial intentionality ... you can draw a sort of spectrum.\nMost any \"novel\" built from parts can be slotted on here \nsomewhere... Putting in a few examples to create the sense of\nthis...\n\no Far left, or \"fixup,\" end of the spectrum -- example would\n be something like \"Space Beagle.\" Stories clearly written \n as individual parts, shoved together to make a novel with\n no particular continuity or whole plot.\n\no Somewhere to the right of this we can slot \"Foundation\" and\n the rest of the original trilogy, where the stories are linked \n a bit more thematically (as Delany observes, each story's \n resolution provides the problem for the next). There's more\n of a shape to it, but the stories are still very much \n independent; the experience of someone coming across one of\n them in an anthology or an old magazine won't be _that_ radically\n different from that of someone reading it in the omnibus.\n\no Near the middle, a smidge to the left side, we might find \n Delany's \"Tales of Neveryon\" and its sequels. The stories are\n not _quite_ independent; indeed, they follow the pattern SRD\n diagnosed in the \"Foundation\" stories, but thematically rather\n than in terms of plot. (The re-placement of the first tale in\n the final volume is, in this sense, either problematic or\n a claim that it's been rewritten by the very existence of the\n rest of the stories.)\n\no Still near the middle, but a little to the right side, I'd put\n something like Mike Resnick's \"Birthright,\" whose story-bits \n are clearly composed as a whole to create an overall effect, \n but don't really interact beyond that level. This would be the\n ideal example of a \"mosaic,\" I think.\n\no Somewhere to the right of the middle I'll place Le Guin's own\n \"Tales of Earthsea.\" The stories can be read independently, but\n together form more than (as first appears) an historical overview\n of Le Guin's imagined world; they are a consistent and balanced\n set of variations on certain themes that play through the whole\n Earthsea series, and more specifically in the \"second trilogy\"\n of which \"Tales\" is the centerpiece. Those who read its final\n story, \"Dragonfly,\" in Silverberg's _Legends_ antho, may recall\n that it was surprisingly thudding in that context; in the context\n of Le Guin's collection, it opens up and loses a lot of the\n thuddingness.\n\no And, at the far right end, of course, my exempla would be 5HC\n and \"Icehenge.\"\n\nThe point here is not to create pigeonholes or whatever, but to \nwork out a useful term, going forward, for critical discussion of\nthese not-quite-novels.\n\nBlatt blatt,\n\n--Dan'l" } ] } ] }