{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3945", "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": 3945, "subject": "Re Other Authors", "messages": 12, "voices": 12, "first": "2003-04-17T15:44:16+00:00", "last": "2003-04-20T04:37:40+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Allan Lloyd", "address": "allan-lloyd at lineone.net" }, "date": "2003-04-17T15:44:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm finding the discussion of Wolfe-like authors fascinating, mainly because most of the writers mentioned seem to me to be so vastly different from Wolfe. The whole thing reminds me of a beginners guide to science fiction that was published some years ago. It was arranged on the basis of \"if you like ... then you will also like ...\" and as an example, the follow-up to Wolfe would have been something like \" you will also like Poul Anderson, Terry Pratchett and Samuel Delany because they all write fantasy.\"\n\nOf the writers mentioned so far, I can think of few who are further from Gene Wolfe's view of the world than Alasdair Gray, brilliant though he is; and this made me consider my other favorites, and question why I like them.\n\nJohn Fowles, Robertson Davies, Brian Aldiss, Michael Moorcock (in serious non-Elric mode), M. John Harrison and ,of course, John Crowley and Jonathan Carroll don't have that much in common, but none of them are Catholic ex-engineers, and all have very different preoccupations from Wolfe.\n\nI've just finished Mike Harrison's \"Light\", which is a return to science fiction after a couple of excellent novels with only a slight fantasy content (\"Course of the Heart\" and \"Signs of Life\") and the Viriconium books, and it is my contender for best book of the year already. Harrison's characters are deeply flawed, in this book, as in most of his works, yet he makes me care for them in a way that Wolfe rarely does. \n\nHas anyone out there read John Fowles' \"A Maggot\"? It is my favorite of his books, and probably the most Wolfeian, with a convincing 17th Century setting, differing viewpoints from various not-very-reliable characters, and a climax which could be an alien abduction, a time warp, a vision of heaven, or a spiritual hallucination, all told in a perfect recreation of that period.\n\nAldiss makes a very interesting comparison with Wolfe, being of a similar age, and having done military service. Although I don't like all of his work, it is always challenging, and he varies his style to fit the content of his stories with consumate skill. His world-view is aetheistic, and I would love to see some-one with more talent than me do a comparison of his Helliconia books with the Books of the New Sun.\n\nRobertson Davies is a God. His later books even have angels in them. He looked like an intellectual Santa Claus. Why did he die before he could complete that last trilogy?\n\nAnd Mike Moorcock. Just read \"King of the City\" or \"Mother London\" to learn all there is to know about London since the war. Or \"The Dancers at the End Of Time\" stories for light-hearted fantasy. His Colonel Pyat sequence, due to be completed this year, is the story of this century as told by a mendacious, cowardly, self-glorifying Russian, cheating his way through the Russian revolution, the silent movie era, the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, ending up as a second-hand clothes dealer in London. And \"Gloriana\" is an alternate version of Elizabethan England.\n\nAll of these writers produce intelligent complex fictions but if there is a difference between them and Wolfe, I would say that they all write books which are character driven, whereas Wolfe's books possibly use the characters to promote or act out his ideas. This could be why I have lost some of my admiration for Wolfe's recent work, and I would agree with Alga about his more recent short stories, some of which seem lacking in content and obscure for the sake of obscurity. I still have enormous admiration for the man, but sometimes it makes more sense if you just say what you mean.\n\n Allan" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "John Barach", "address": "jbarach at telus.net" }, "date": "2003-04-17T16:47:44+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Allan writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The whole thing reminds me of a beginners guide to\nscience fiction that was published some years ago. It\nwas arranged on the basis of \"if you like ... then you will\nalso like ...\" and as an example, the follow-up to Wolfe\nwould have been something like \" you will also like Poul\nAnderson, Terry Pratchett and Samuel Delany because\nthey all write fantasy.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The book you're thinking of may be Baird Searles, et al., _A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction_ (Avon, 1979). They have a short entry on Wolfe. There's a short paragraph on Fifth Head, and sentences on Operation Ares, Devil in a Forest, and Peace.\n\nTheir conclusion: \"Wolfe's books truly defy description: both plot and prose weave complexities and subtleties into magical and often more than elusive tales. Gene Wolfe is clearly a writer for the careful and patient reader.\"\n\nTheir recommendation: \"Those who admire Wolfe's work might try that of Ian Watson or Jack Vance.\"\n\nVance I know. Anyone read Watson? This little guide says of him \n\n IAN WATSON is a writer of special knowledge in areas\n once quite foreign to s-f. Although van Vogt deals in\n linguistics, Watson *uses* it as *lingua franca*, and\n empathetic anthropology is his stock in trade. His\n novels are oddly structured; rather like classic rondos,\n they move in alternating episodes which only gradually\n relate to each other.... Intellectual, puzzling, and\n unsettling, Watson writes for readers who like challenge.\n\nAnd then if you like Watson, they suggest you try Michael Bishop ... and if you like Bishop, Naomi Middleton, Chad Oliver, and Richard Cowper, and so on....\n\nJohn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-17T17:33:46+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Allan Lloyd writes ... in part ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Michael Moorcock (in serious non-Elric mode)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And Mike Moorcock. Just read \"King of the City\" or \"Mother London\" to learn \nall there is to know about London since the war. Or \"The\nDancers at the End Of Time\" stories for light-hearted fantasy. His\nColonel Pyat sequence, due to be completed this year, is the story\nof this century as told by a mendacious, cowardly, self-glorifying\nRussian, cheating his way through the Russian revolution, the silent\nmovie era, the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, ending up as a\nsecond-hand clothes dealer in London. And \"Gloriana\" is an alternate\nversion of Elizabethan England." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now, I haven't read all these. (I suspect that even Moorcock hasn't\nread everything Moorcock has written.) But I think that some of the\nexamples you cite, and some other examples, combine to suggest that\n\"serious, non-Elric mode\" is kind of a misnomer.\n\nMoorcock has occasionally spoken as if he wrote two distinct sorts of\nnovels -- cheap adventure novels and \"comedies\" -- but in fact he\nwrites a spectrum of work that pretty much dismantles that opposition.\n\nThe Elric cycle is actually fairly far fromt he \"cheap\" end of the\nspectrum; that distinction would fall to the pseudonymous, pseudo-ERB\n\"Martian\" novels he wrote in, I think, the '60s. And in between that\nand Elric is all the other swords'n'sorcery stuff, the Corums and\nHawkmoons and all that, and a couple of cheapjack SF novels from the\nsame period, more or less.\n\nBut when you edge up from Elric you get to things like the Jerry\nCornelius books ... now, what is one to do with these? At one level\nthey seem to belong with the \"comedies,\" and are indeed explicitly\ntied to the Colonel Pyat stories in that Pyat originated in the\nCornelius books; at another, they are equally tied to the \"Eternal\nChampion\" swords'n'sorcery books; the Cornelus and Elric stories are\nfull of references to each other, and the first Cornelius novel is\nan explicit rewrite of an Elric story. And, of course, the \"Dancers\nat the End of Time\" encounter Elric, and their hero is an incarnation\nof Corum/Cornelius/the Champion.\n\nThere may be a few -- a very few as far as I can tell -- Moorcock\nnovels that manage to completely avoid being tied up into his\nmassively recursive bundle of literature and paraliterature, but I\ncan't think of any off hand. He's even tied Jesus Christ (\"Behold\nthe Man\") and E. Nesbitt's Bastable family (\"Warlord of the Air,\"\net seq.) into it all; one suspects that he is involved in the\nproduction of a mega-meta-text intended to include by implication\nall of literature, history, and reality.\n\nI'm not sure I would recommend Moorcock, or even his more\n\"literary\" work, generically to Wolfe. For one thing, even at his\nbest, Moorcock doesn't have a sense of language to compare with\nWolfe's. His style ranges from \"serviceable hack\" to \"serviceable\nlit'ry,\" always clean and appropriate, but never really gathers\nthe escape velocity to create a language of his own: something\nWolfe pretty much does all over again every time he starts a new\nmajor project.\n\n(By the way, this could be one of the problems with many of Wolfe's\nshort stories; the language simply doesn't have enough runway to\ntake off. Very few writers who depend on the power of a unique\n_langue_ to the extent Wolfe does are masters of the short story --\nthe only ones I can think of offhand are Cheever and Sturgeon. Of\ncource, neither of them reinvents his style for every story!\n\nStill, I disagree with those who seem to think Wolfe's a failure\nas a short story writer. Offhand I'd mention -- alphabetically --\n\"A Cabin on the Coast\"; \"The Cat\"; \"The Detective of Dreams\" [or\nis that a novelette? If so it's a short one]; \"How the Whip Came\nBack\"; \"La Befana\"; \"The Map\"; \"Suzanne Delage\"; \"The War Beneath\nthe Tree\"; \"Westwind\"; \"When I Was Ming the Merciless\"; and \"The\nWoman Who Loved the Centaur Pholus\" as, shall we say, not utter\nfailures... 8*) )\n\nThe other thing is that there is, for me, a kind of hollowness at\nthe heart even of Moorcock's finest work. I think it's a moral\nvacuity, a failure of his work to really engage the world in any\nhonest way. One thing I look for in fiction, and which Wolfe provides\nin abundance, is a sense that the problems it wrestles with are\nproblems relevant to the world that is the case, while the problems\nin Moorcock's fiction seem to be relevant only to Moorcock's\nimagined worlds -- a problem he shares with, for example, some of\nHeinlein's lesser work.\n\nI can perhaps best express what I'm talking about by giving a\nfairly extreme example: Moorcock has written at least two novels\nabout women whose problems are all solved when they get raped,\nincluding the highly-praised GLORIANA; OR, THE UNFULFIL'D QUEEN.\n\nWell: _caveat lector_. It hasn't bothered me enough to keep me\nfrom reading a few dozen of Moorcock's books, all up and down\nhis range; my point is only that I wouldn't consider Moorcock\na likely syntagmic candidate for the \"If you like Wolfe you may\nalso like X\" paradigm." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Malco", "address": "nastler at yahoo.dk" }, "date": "2003-04-17T19:54:15+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " --- Allan Lloyd skrev: > " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Of the writers mentioned so far, I can think of few\nwho are further from Gene Wolfe's view of the world\nthan Alasdair Gray, brilliant though he is" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That’s why I like ‘em. Considering one and then the\nother is like reading a good argument between two Urth\nlist heavy-weights.\n\nI’ve just been at amazon.co.uk\n\nPeople who bought BotNS also bought,\nViriconium by M John Harrison\nThe second book of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber\nThe longest journey by Empire (this is a computer\ngame)\nLittle, big by John Crowley (a hit for the list!)\nTime and the Gods by Lord Dunsay\nDungeon Siege by Microsoft (another game)\n\nPeople who bought Lanark also bought,\nLiterature, Politics and Culture in Post war Britain\nby Alan Sinfield\nThe house with the green shutters by George Douglas\nBrown\nLeicke and life by Fairport convention (this is a cd;\nmusic for hippies apparently)\nG by John Berger\nV by Tony Harrison\n(Two one letter book titles, isn’t that a bit odd?)\n\nDoes this tell us anything?\n\n\nYahoo! Mail (http://dk.mail.yahoo.com) - Gratis: 6 MB lagerplads, spamfilter og virusscan" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2003-04-18T03:30:02+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Allan Lloyd wrote:\nI'm finding the discussion of Wolfe-like authors fascinating, mainly\nbecause most of the writers mentioned seem to me to be so vastly\ndifferent from Wolfe." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Gene Wolfe is large. He contains multitudes.\n\nSeriously, the longer I'm on this list the more I realize how various and\ndifferent are the ways people enjoy his writing, some of which don't\noverlap much with what I enjoy in his work. So it's not at all\nsurprising that we would have a large list of authors each of whom shares\none or two of the long, varied list of virtues we see in Wolfe's work.\n\n\t-- Rostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2003-04-18T07:06:59+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, that was me bought that. Liege and Leaf\n\nFAIRPORT CONVENTION are a bunch of '70s Electric Folkies. Some overlap with\nThe Strawbs, but \"music for hippies\" doesn't cut it.\n\n hartshorn\n\n\n\n----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Malco\" \nPeople who bought Lanark also bought,\nLiterature, Politics and Culture in Post war Britain\nby Alan Sinfield\nThe house with the green shutters by George Douglas\nBrown\nLeicke and life by Fairport convention (this is a cd;\nmusic for hippies apparently)\nG by John Berger\nV by Tony Harrison" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "silk tree", "address": "albizia at feafaroth.org" }, "date": "2003-04-18T11:40:33+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thursday, April 17, 2003, at 10:30 PM, Michael Straight wrote:\nOn Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Allan Lloyd wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I'm finding the discussion of Wolfe-like authors fascinating, mainly\nbecause most of the writers mentioned seem to me to be so vastly\ndifferent from Wolfe." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gene Wolfe is large. He contains multitudes." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": ":) this is why I find it amusing that when someone says Gene Wolfe,\naside from the other thinker writers that seem obvious to me I think of\nTerry Pratchett. I was happy to see someone mention him, even if they\nthought the judgment a mistake. I think of Pterry because he's like\nWolfe with a different slant of light. Yet, he employs intricate world \nbuilding\nand has a definite moral stance in his works.\n\nmimosa" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2003-04-19T13:42:47+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 4/17/03 12:33 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at katbarx at hotmail.com wrote:\n\"How the Whip Came\nBack\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yuck; this may be my least favorite Wolfe story, with its combination of\nmisogyny and heavy-handed satire. I do like the bit about \"her Louis XIV\nsecretary, Sal,\" though." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "One thing I look for in fiction, and which Wolfe provides\nin abundance, is a sense that the problems it wrestles with are\nproblems relevant to the world that is the case, while the problems\nin Moorcock's fiction seem to be relevant only to Moorcock's\nimagined worlds -- a problem he shares with, for example, some of\nHeinlein's lesser work." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I've never been able to get into Moorcock, apart from \"Flux,\" but my impulse\nwould be to disagree with this. My impression is that Moorcock uses\ndeliberately unreal characters to comment on real problems.\n\nI've only read a little Ian Watson, and didn't like him, but there is a\nsuperficial similarity between him and Wolfe. They're both \"cerebral\" and\n\"literary\" authors, though my memory of Watson is that his stuff really is\nempty of emotion. Incidentally, I once read an article by Watson\ncriticizing SotT because the protagonist was a torturer; something about\nmaking it seem that torturers weren't really so bad, iirc (but don't quote\nme).\n\n--Adam " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Richard Horton", "address": "rrhorton at prodigy.net" }, "date": "2003-04-19T18:14:58+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, 18 Apr 2003 08:06:59 +0100, you wrote:\nNo, that was me bought that. Liege and Leaf\n\nFAIRPORT CONVENTION are a bunch of '70s Electric Folkies. Some overlap with\nThe Strawbs, but \"music for hippies\" doesn't cut it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And their guitarist was Richard Thompson, very possibly the finest\nguitarist (in the rock/pop idiom) of our time.\n\nDefinitely not \"music for hippies\". Fine stuff, actually." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard.horton at sff.net\nHome Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton\nAlso visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)\n\n-- " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jeff Meyers", "address": "jeffmeyers at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2003-04-19T23:30:38+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Unless I missed it, I've yet to see any reference to VanderMeer's _City \nof Saints and Madmen_ on anyone's list of Wolfe-like authors.\n\nHis latest is now out: _Veniss Underground_. I just ordered one.\n\nPatera Bunny" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Joshuafalchion", "address": "joshuafalchion at aol.com" }, "date": "2003-04-20T02:38:20+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Robertson Davies can't be dead! Take it back, take it back!\nOkay, okay, I guess he was getting on in years ... but what a loss! He's \njust about my favorite \"mainstream\" author. I've read the Deptford Trilogy \nfour or five times, and the other trilogies almost as many. When did he die, \nanyway? And was The Cunning Man his last published novel, or have I really \nbeen out of the loop?\nThanks for the bad news. But I won't shoot you ... just a few months in \nAllowin's Necklace is what I decree for this messenger, unless you, a good \nDavies fan, should please respond to my cries and answer my questions. \nThanks again,\n\nin sorrow\n\nJoshua" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Brett Grace", "address": "bgrace at mac.com" }, "date": "2003-04-20T04:37:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re Other Authors", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\tSorry, this particular post is bit tardy but the general conversation \nhas life. If you like this sort of thing, you might like this:\nhttp://www.pmbrowser.info/amazon.html\n\n\tIt lets you graphically browse similarities in the US market. You \nneed a Java-enabled browser. It's best to search by title rather than \nauthor because authors are fully connected to their titles, which leads \nto uninteresting clutter (in my opinion). Amazon Web Services was just \nlaunched for the UK so it should be possible for somebody to host or \nreimplement a UK version.\n\nBMG\n\nPS: Disclosure, I know about this because I am affiliated with Amazon." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thursday, April 17, 2003, at 12:54 PM, Malco wrote:\n --- Allan Lloyd skrev: >\nOf the writers mentioned so far, I can think of few\nwho are further from Gene Wolfe's view of the world\nthan Alasdair Gray, brilliant though he is\n\nThat’s why I like ‘em. Considering one and then the\nother is like reading a good argument between two Urth\nlist heavy-weights.\n\nI’ve just been at amazon.co.uk\n\nPeople who bought BotNS also bought,\nViriconium by M John Harrison\nThe second book of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber\nThe longest journey by Empire (this is a computer\ngame)\nLittle, big by John Crowley (a hit for the list!)\nTime and the Gods by Lord Dunsay\nDungeon Siege by Microsoft (another game)\n\nPeople who bought Lanark also bought,\nLiterature, Politics and Culture in Post war Britain\nby Alan Sinfield\nThe house with the green shutters by George Douglas\nBrown\nLeicke and life by Fairport convention (this is a cd;\nmusic for hippies apparently)\nG by John Berger\nV by Tony Harrison\n(Two one letter book titles, isn’t that a bit odd?)\n\nDoes this tell us anything?\n\n\nYahoo! Mail (http://dk.mail.yahoo.com) - Gratis: 6 MB lagerplads, \nspamfilter og virusscan\n\n-- " } ] } ] }