The Snootiness of Gene Wolfe

wthyde · 02 Mar 2004, 17:42 · from rec.arts.sf.written.2004.mbox

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From: wthyde at godzilla.acpub.duke.edu
Subject: Re: The Snootiness of Gene Wolfe
Date: 02 Mar 2004 12:42:23 -0500
Message-ID: <yv7zeksbno1s.fsf at godzilla.acpub.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
References: <Xns949D9FE6F929Difyouwanttoemailvisi at 199.45.49.11> <c21d3ba0.0402290659.37671483 at posting.google.com> <+tv*P4jeq at news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> <394d822b.0402291845.58775386 at posting.google.com> <pQg*U8leq at news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> <pBG0c.19521$vm6.9205 at newssvr31.news.prodigy.com> <404405d0$0$28274$cc9e4d1f at news.dial.pipex.com>

David Kennedy <dave at dkennedy.org> writes:

> Richard Horton <rrhorton at prodigy.net> wrote:
> > [Cecelia] Holland [h]as also written one unambiguous SF novel: _Floating Worlds_,
> > from 1975 or so, set in a future in which the Solar System is pretty
> > much fully colonized, and Earth is something of a backwater.  An Earth
> > woman gets involved in the rather gothic politics of some heavy planet
> > folks.  I liked it a lot, thought it read very much like Historical
> > Fiction.  It was nominated for a Nebula but Holland withdrew the
> > nomination in favor of the paperback edition, with then did not get
> > nominated.
> 
> It's still in print as I bought the bright yellow Gollancz edition
> just over a year ago.  I bounced off it hard. I gave it another
> month or so, then had another go before deciding that while
> many people like this novel, I'm not one of them.

        To me (way back in 1977) it seemed like an inferior
        rewrite of her novel "Until the sun falls", about the
        mongol empire (which I liked a great deal).

        I don't insist on radically hard SF, or, at all, on
        realistic battle descriptions (whatever that means),
        but I thought that with respect to the former
        she had no concept of Newton's laws, and as
        to the latter that Mongol battle plans couldn't
        work in just the same way on a three dimensional
        battlefield.

        I've always meant to give it another try, as I really
        like her historical novels.  I may have been expecting
        too much from FW, which was highly touted when it
        was published.



William Hyde
EOS Department
Duke University

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