The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe

Joel Sieh · 05 Jun 2007, 14:34 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: joel.sieh at gmail.com (Joel Sieh)
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:34:35 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <ecbb2eb0706041734x2408ae6ek6e17011a784f2997 at mail.gmail.com>
References: <c60.1187b4ca.3395f2fb at aol.com>
	<ecbb2eb0706041734x2408ae6ek6e17011a784f2997 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f5d95ac0706050734o2ffb1a1at532d21833f8e8289 at mail.gmail.com>

On 6/4/07, aaron <aaronsingleton at gmail.com> wrote:

> Any other Vance fans subscribe to the list?
>

Learned about Vance a few years ago from this list, but just started Tales
of the Dying Earth.  It's fun so far.  It doesn't have the complexity of
Wolfe's writing, but the language and descriptions are just as rich and
flavorful, if not more so.  When I envision the world Vance describes, it is
super-saturated with color and ornamented with strange debris.  I like it.

One observation....  I've heard that Tolkien's work was a large inspiration
for the Dungeon and Dragons tabletop games.  Just after reading about 100
pages of Tales of the Dying Earth, I'd say that it looks like the D&D
creators took a LOT of inspiration for their magic systems from it, much
more than anything they would have gotten from Tolkien.  Gandalf's magic was
much more organic, subtle, and undefined than the mechanisms and
descriptions (including spell names) I've seen in the book I'm currently
reading.

--Joel
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