Dana's recent posts

Recent public posts (showing 1-20 of 22).

CS Friedman's Feast of Souls features a distinction between two systems of magic: witches (mostly women) who must use their own life force to fuel their magic, and magisters (invariably men, before this book) who use the life forces of others and can be pretty much immortal. The interesting thing to me about the magister power is that they form anonymous bonds with the person they are draining for power until said person dies, and then they have to find another "consort." They pretty much never know who it is they're drawing from. Interesting ethical issues.

BunWat wrote: "Well we do have some idea, although I agree, not a definitive one. "

I think part of the reason I found our idea of what the language would have sounded like frustrating is that it involved sounds that I had previously encountered in my German and Spanish courses, which I had, up until then, kept in strictly separate language camps. Now I had to try to mix two systems I'd spent so much time trying to keep apart! I never managed to pronounce every word in a whole sentence the "right" way.

Whoops, I go out of town for 4 days, and people continue an interesting conversation without me!

@Terence, yes, John McWhorter did write about that. I read his book that had that bit in it at about the same time I started teaching ESL undergrads, in a weird moment of synchronicity. Also, Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" contains another reference to the phrase "making love" and how rapidly its connotations have shifted, so I was primed to notice it as well.

@BunWat, I agree, reading Anglo Saxon/Old English is definitely like another language entirely. Studying it made me feel glad we got rid of most of the case system. It was fun, though. I will say that the teacher's attempts to correct our pronunciation reminded me of Doomsday Book and the main character's discovery that her training in "authentic speech of the time period" was anything but. (Not that I pointed this out to the professor.)

I actually noticed this phenomenon over the weekend. I turned on the TV and "The Man Who Came to Dinner" was on the classic movie channel. One of the characters began telling a story about "smoking a cigar with one hand while making love to a beautiful woman with the other." Given that he was talking about doing this in a restaurant, that statement was rather shocking to someone in 2009. Except then I remembered that in the 1940s, the phrase "making love" had much more chaste connotations than it does today. And that's only within 60 years!

On the Shakespeare issue, back when I was teaching ESL I remember being quite surprised at what a sophisticated understanding of the plays my Korean students all seemed to have. Then I realized that they'd all read them in translation, and they were actually probably more advantaged in their reading experience of those works than their native-English-speaking peers.

Zen wrote: "I wonder if reader disappointment if his books is magnified by the fact the Pernese life was on the upswing and now, for some reason, we are being dragged back to all the feudalism of the first books?"

Good question, Zen. I haven't read any of the Todd McCaffrey books, because as much as I love Pern, I did eventually get to a point with the series where I was satisfied with the number of stories I'd heard from that world and was content to just re-read the old ones rather than keep going with new ones that were starting to seem a bit played out. But now, out of scientific curiosity, I feel like I should! I'll look forward to seeing what other Pern fans think about this.

We touched on this in the GLBT thread for this book, but this book (really, the whole series) was never intended as YA. YA didn't exist as a designation when McCaffrey wrote the book.

Even today, as far as I've been able to tell, if any of the Pern books have been reshelved as YA, it's usually the Harper Hall trilogy, not the main series.

That said, I never recall being creeped out by Lessa and F'lar's relationship. (And I did read this for the first time back when I was "YA.") Part of the point of this beginning of the series is that the world has somehow become a rather messed up feudal patriarchy, and we get to see it work its way out over time. I never got the impression that their relationship was meant to be some high example of perfect love in this society or anything.

The very first SF/F I remember reading and identifying as being in the genre is Dragonsong, because it was on the Battle of the Books reading list for my middle school English class. Looking back on it, though, I think I may have read A Wrinkle in Time before that. In any case, this would put my estimate at the 10-12 range as well. (Oh! And there was a book about a fairy who gave a woman a small patch of blue hair, and she could pull them out and make wishes when I was in elementary school. That counts, right?)

Anyway, once my aunt and uncle realized I was enjoying Anne McCaffrey & co., they started giving me the firsts in several foundation series, and I have been soundly hooked ever since. This was, of course, further aided by growing up in a family that watched Star Trek and Babylon 5 with great dedication. I have another pair of aunt and uncle who refer to their angel-shaped Christmas ornaments as Vorlons.

I reread this book not that long ago, so I'm not technically doing it again right now, but I do remember that my main impression upon rereading this was surprise at how much darker this book seemed compared to rest of the series. This is probably because I started with the Harper Hall trilogy back in middle school and then read all the others I could get my hands on, so I had all the books "colored" in my mind together. I do love Pern, especially as one of my first introductions to a major fantasy world.

No, this wasn't a YA book when it was written, and it isn't considered one now. YA as a "genre" didn't really exist until 15-20 years ago, but even today, the only ones in the Pern series usually classified as YA are the Dragonsong/Dragonsinger/Dragondrums trilogy. (One of my friends is a YA/children's librarian.)

I have to agree with both of Random1s observations about This Alien Shore (SF) and Perdido Street Station (steam punk).

Amy wrote: "I'll second The Warlock in Spite of Himself. It's been many years since I've read it but I'd like to read it again. Plus, it does fit the theme."

Thanks, Amy! I was beginning to wonder if anybody else'd ever heard of it.

Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series would seem to be a prime example, in that it starts out sci-fi with the main character traveling in a spaceship to rediscover human-settled worlds that lost contact, but he then lands on a planet (as I recall) mostly settled by SCA enthusiasts, and it turned out that they had self-selected a population prime to develop mental powers that have now been termed magic in the feudal society that has grown there. The first one is:

The Warlock in Spite of Himself

Also, much as I love This Alien Shore, I've never really seen many fantasy elements in it. It always struck me as straight up sci-fi.

If people are interested in Robert Asprin, he has another series that is sci-fi (and definitely strikes me as spoof-y), the Phule series. The first book is:

Phule's Company, by Robert Asprin

I'd definitely vote for this one, even if I wasn't suggesting it.

No, her other works are not the same in the focus on almost exclusively female characters. She does tend to feature a lot of women, but she's also written several books with male leads. I just finished rereading In The Forests Of Serre, and that one features one very strong female characters, and 3-4 strong male, plus a strongly present but only superficially developed female witch (the superficiality is on purpose.)

Okay, I've finished reading it through for the second time, and I have to say that I think this time through was much better, largely because this time I was reading the story for what it was, not what I was expecting it to be. The time travel elements and the somewhat abrupt end of the story didn't seem as jarring this time. I am inspired to go read some of my other McKillip now, though, to confirm my previous impression that her other books were even better.

I'm going to end up double-posting about my final impressions, because I've read it before, and I want to compare my remembered final impressions from the first time with what I end up with when I finish my re-read.

The first time I read the book, I remember being hugely excited because it was 1) a new Patricia McKillip book, and 2) about books and translation, two of my favorite subjects. However, I felt a bit let down at the end, because this book ended up feeling less satisfyingly cohesive to me than most of her other works. Which isn't to say that I disliked it, just that it didn't live up to the extremely high expectations I had going into it.

JuliAnna, I recall really enjoying Ombria in Shadow, In The Forests Of Serre, and The Tower at Stony Wood, amongst others. Many of her books are stand alone, so you can pick them up in any order.

Rail away, JuliAnna, you said most of what I was thinking. I think that what that review mostly reveals is about the review writer, not the book. And it mostly reveals that the reviewer missed the forest of the story for the trees of their own overriding interest in feminism in literature. That review is kind of like a game of "One of these things is not like the other," with the sentences about the patriarchy and feminism sticking out as misplaced refugees from a school assignment.

Fudoki by Kij Johnson

or

The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson

First, I'll just say that I read pretty much all the speculative fiction subgenres with relish, but I honestly read a great deal more fantasy, so I'm moved to defend it the most in this discussion. (And I just read all the previous posts this morning, so this might go all over the place.)

Since people brought up LOTR earlier, and then the politics of warfare, I'll point out that Tolkien had quite a few points to make about the brutalities of war and its effects on the survivors. They were just probably more obvious in the immediate aftermath of WWI, when he was writing the books, than they are to us today. Perhaps SF takes on warfare are more resonant with some people because they can more clearly see how they apply to modern day warfare, but I'd argue that the social, personal, and political implications of war have been dealt with many, many times in fantasy settings.

For a couple other concrete examples of fantasy series/authors that touch on larger issues, here are some that popped to mind. While I'm sure that a lot of people are tempted to lump Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel novels in with erotica, I really do think they do an excellent job of exploring social attitudes toward sex and sexuality, and pondering the "what if" of how society could be if it were more accepting of love in a variety of forms.

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series could be seen as simply humorous entertainment, I suppose, but if you read them that way, you have to completely ignore all the elements of utterly brilliant satire and social commentary, and then you miss more than half the book.

I'll also say that I thought Melanie Rawn's Exiles series had a very interesting take on the "what if" exploration of a matriarchal society, but I don't really encourage anyone to start that series, because she's apparently abandoned it.

If one is looking for modern social commentary, great deal of urban fantasy has that, especially commentary on homelessness, drug use, and the disconnection of people from the world.

And as a last disconnected thought, it also occurred to me that maybe the reason so much SF seems to deal with blatant, gritty social commentary is because it has grown out of or is part of various "-punk" movements, which are pretty much defined as a rejection of or protest against a movement that came before.

I personally thought the collaborative Empire trilogy by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts was stronger than a lot of the original Riftwar series by Feist alone (heresy though I know that may be to some.)

Still thinking back to my early authors, Anne McCaffrey did a lot of fairly successful collaborations in the Brain & Brawn series that introduced me to some authors I might have overlooked otherwise.