Bobby’s Comments (group member since Mar 15, 2013)

Bobby’s comments from the Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy group.

G33z3r wrote: "Here are my initial thoughts (to be revised quite probably):

Literary SF/F Characters

Gandalf (Lord of the Rings)
Frodo (Lord of the Rings)
Harry Potter
Hermione Granger (Harry Potter)
Ged (A Wiz..."

I just noticed something, G33z3r. You have Tyrion Lannister as a media character. Personally, no way. I have actually only seen the first season of GoT. Nothing against the TV show, just haven't seen the other seasons yet. The books got on my nerves after a while but I never got tired of Tyrion. I definitely think he's a literary character first and one of the great ones.

Robert,

Merlin, Morgan LeFay and King Arthur,

For a contest like this, do you have to pick a particular incarnation? Like you say Dracula, you're talking about Dracula, Kivrin, you're talking about Doomsday Book and so on and so forth. This might actually be a question for G33z3r, but if this is a book contest of sorts, do you have to pick like, T.H. White or Marion Zimmer Bradley, as for instances?

Rosemary wrote: "Literary characters:

Paul Atreides (Dune)
Charles Wallace (Wrinkle in Time)
Lessa (Dragonflight)
Tyrion Lannister (G of T)
Juan Rico (Starship Troopers)"


Tyrion Lannister. I'm actually not a big GOT guy at all, but Tyrion is something else again. He's my #1, regardless.

Mary wrote: "Yeah, that's a good difference. Of course, it would lead to endless arguments about whether something breaks the rules or shows that the rules are different (and darker) than they seem."

Hopefully, no rules.

First of all, as has been noted many times above I think, the two overlap and overlap constantly and like, so what? That's awesome. For me, the bottom line with horror is that it's supposed to scare you.

One important difference between horror and fantasy is that with horror, the supernatural seems to be the outlier in our known natural world, the ghost/monster/demon what have you, defies the known laws of physics. A book is fantasy when that warping of the natural world is more of the norm. Say, magic is cool in The Lord of the Rings but it's not unexpected. You've got entire races of beings that defy the laws of nature as we know them. Whereas in The Amityville Horror when there are an usual number of flies in a given window or there's the ghost(?) of a pig with red eyes it's cause for an underwear change.

No, I didn't but I get it. I actually think The Hobbit is the best of the books because it's the clearest storytelling.

The Underground Railroad, Between Riverside and Crazy, Stiletto and finishing (yuck) Skitter.

Andrea wrote: "Apparently the only thing I clearly remember from my original reading as a kid was the concept of the tesseract and that diagram of the ant on one of the Mrs W skirt :)

And just like the Narnia bo..."

Man! When I read it as an adult, all the Christianity like, jaw-on-the-floor shocked me! I was like, "What the f%$*! But I grew up Catholic so all of that would have been simply par for the course. I'm curious: was I the only one who thought L'Engle made up the word tesseract?

G33z3r wrote: "This was published too late to be part of my childhood, and somehow escaped my notice until a couple of years ago when the number of people in this group who mentioned it made me curious enough to ..."

This actually surprises me. I think it's an extraordinary book. I've read it twice as an adult and I think it holds up.

Jim wrote: "I've heard SF was born with Frankenstein too, but I recently listened to Micromegas a 1752 novella by Voltaire which reads like early SF to me. Beings from Sirius & ..."

I would still give the nod to Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus because of societal impact. There's a reason why everyone thinks of this book and not of the one you're talking about (which, by the way, how was it?). To be the birth of something, something has to come after it, you would think.

Sandman Slim, Full Dark, No Stars, NOS4A2 and I started but was pretty underwhelmed by The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, which is very unusual for me. My favorite Stephen King books are usually his collectionsof short stories but so far, none of these has really grabbed me. Strange. Ah! Not true! "The Dune" I really dug. Hoping for more like that.

Erin wrote: "Interesting discussion! :)

Several people have brought up that perhaps women may not write men as well and vice versa. I suspect that if this is sometimes the case, that it results from one of the..."

Do you have a link to the blog?

Erin wrote: "they think readers are less likely to pick up a book written by a woman?"

BOOM. Or rather, that's the general excuse anyway, same as in every field. When you read about why female actors get paid less than their male counterparts in film, that is always the rationale. Then somebody slips up, someone or some work of art slips through that shakes up all the conventional wisdom, and the paradigm is altered. But old habits die hard, especially when there's a piece of the pie at stake.

Allison wrote: "I think it's so much deeper than just "do people prefer authors in their own gender," because marketing really works on people. So we have a cycle of one gender being encouraged to write speculativ..."

Good stuff, Allison.

OF COURSE there are more male writers than female writers. There were decades and decades and decades when it was damn near impossible for a woman to get published in the genre at all. It's just habit. And kind of like with black people, if one woman got published, that was it, quota filled, enough of that. I don't have stats and numbers in front of me but I would guess that even though it's much more equitable now, we've still got a long way to go. And there are still people who are made sick by the progress that has been made. That's what that whole silly "sad puppy" movement or whatever the hell was about. "Too many" women writers, "too many" writers of color winning awards. Women have made tremendous gains and there are many, many more than there used to be but your perception, Erin, is dead on. Like Richard, I like to think I don't care one way or the other. I just like good books. But I do go out of my way to find female authors because frankly, the sensibility shift is fantastic. And lo and behold, I find I have room for it all.

Just in case, here are some you might not be hip to that I like:

N.K. Jemisin, Nalo Hopkinson,

I'm actually pretty curious about this. I hear so much about this author. But I picked up a book of hers at a book store and man, between the title, cover and blurb on the back, it looked like the most banal, everyday, boring science fiction I had ever seen. What makes her so good?

Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, The Fifth Season and (believe it or not) A Clash of Kings.

V.W. wrote: "I doubt anyone will agree, but my picks are :

The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111003/

Dune No single film could have captured the ..."

You're right! I don't agree! That movie made me go "Aaaaarrgghh!!!"

I'M WITH YOU. I still haven't read Lois McMaster Bujold because every time I pick up a book of hers the blurbs sound so boring to me, so paint-by-the-numbers, space opera spec fic. Now, I'm still interested because I keep hearing how great she is but man, it always seems that something else looks more interesting.

Also, Island of Lost Souls from 1932 is another adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau starring Charles Laughton, who is great.

I've never read them. But my friend who loves them says they're her guilty pleasure because of the sex.