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Post by EdoBosnar on Oct 19, 2020 7:47:53 GMT -5
Haven't read Good Omens, but yeah, how is Watership Down, about a group of rabbits with a language and culture (and one of whom has precognitive abilities) who go on a quest to find a safe home not a fantasy?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 19, 2020 14:14:34 GMT -5
 Something Rotten by Jasper FfordeHaving spent two years inside books working as the Bellman (leader of Jurisfiction) and taking care of her son Friday, Thursday Next has decided it's time to get back in to the real world and work to get her husband Landon Parke-Lane un-eradicated. She returns to a world that has changed immensely. Yorick Kaine (an escaped fictional page-runner) is Chancellor of England and is posed to become dictator with the help of the Goliath Corp. which is working to become a religion. Thursday brings Hamlet out of fiction with her at an inopportune time, as Kaine has scape-goated Danish people in his quest for power. Added to that, the Minotaur is still at large. And there is a prophecy that Swinford winning the Superhoops of croquet will stop Kaine and Goliath's rise to power. If it sounds like there's a lot going on...there is. And that's really the problem. There is simply too much going on and too many plot threads. There's easily enough here for at least two and probably three books. It feels as if Fforde was trying to finish up the series (and it would be a few years before Thursday Next returned), but there's just too much going on here. It's not bad. It's just terribly over-stuffed. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 19, 2020 20:26:20 GMT -5
I have absolutely no idea what “Good Omens” and “Watership Down” are of they aren’t fantasy. Funny Animal fiction is it's own genre, IMO. I guess Good Omens can be fantasy, but really I would just call it fiction. "Fantasy" has definite traits that I don't think are in either of those books. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 19, 2020 22:19:49 GMT -5
I have absolutely no idea what “Good Omens” and “Watership Down” are of they aren’t fantasy. Funny Animal fiction is it's own genre, IMO. I guess Good Omens can be fantasy, but really I would just call it fiction. "Fantasy" has definite traits that I don't think are in either of those books. Good Omens has witches, devils and angels. If that ain’t fantasy we live in a very different world. I really can’t see how talking animals aren’t fantasy. And the rabbits in Watership Down are absolutely not funny. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 19, 2020 22:27:11 GMT -5
Funny Animal fiction is it's own genre, IMO. I guess Good Omens can be fantasy, but really I would just call it fiction. "Fantasy" has definite traits that I don't think are in either of those books. Good Omens has witches, devils and angels. If that ain’t fantasy we live in a very different world. I really can’t see how talking animals aren’t fantasy. And the rabbits in Watership Down are absolutely not funny.  "He don't like me, do he?" |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2020 0:35:00 GMT -5
There's a video feature on BBC on Afrofuturism that examines Afrofuturism in light of the current events of 2020. It also features some of the art from the Black Kirby book I reviewed here earlier during the pandemic shutdown. Worth taking a look at on the BBC page I linked to if you have even a passing interest in Afrofuturism or curious about it and want a 6 minute primer. -M |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Oct 20, 2020 3:13:12 GMT -5
There's a video feature on BBC on Afrofuturism that examines Afrofuturism in light of the current events of 2020. It also features some of the art from the Black Kirby book I reviewed here earlier during the pandemic shutdown. Worth taking a look at on the BBC page I linked to if you have even a passing interest in Afrofuturism or curious about it and want a 6 minute primer. That's a good piece; thanks for the link. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Oct 20, 2020 4:37:24 GMT -5
Good Omens has witches, devils and angels. If that ain’t fantasy we live in a very different world. I really can’t see how talking animals aren’t fantasy. And the rabbits in Watership Down are absolutely not funny. "He don't like me, do he?" Not enough green rabbits in Watership Down. |
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Post by brutalis on Oct 20, 2020 20:30:30 GMT -5
"He don't like me, do he?" Not enough green rabbits in Watership Down. Some Asparagus, Broccoli, Spinach and over indulgence in liquor in their diet and da bunnies be plenty green real quick! |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 21, 2020 9:46:41 GMT -5
Funny Animal fiction is it's own genre, IMO. I guess Good Omens can be fantasy, but really I would just call it fiction. "Fantasy" has definite traits that I don't think are in either of those books. Good Omens has witches, devils and angels. If that ain’t fantasy we live in a very different world. I really can’t see how talking animals aren’t fantasy. And the rabbits in Watership Down are absolutely not funny. I guess these days you could call Good Omens 'Urban Fantasy'... I think in my head when someone says 'fantasy'.. I'm thinking Dungeons and Dragons... Good Omens doesn't fit that, and Watership Down certainly doesn't. Some things in my head are just 'fiction', and not really anything else. 'Watership Down' falls in my head as, I guess just 'anthropomorpic fiction'? I'd file it with Animal Farm and Usagi (which I would call historical fiction, btw), not Lord of the Rings. Would you call Looney Tunes fantasy? Same idea (if a different tone). In a broad sense, aren't 'Fiction' and 'Fantasy' synonyms? That's why I see it the way I do. Classifications are always tricky, and I guess I the ones in my head are a bit different than the standard, perhaps. I find it really interesting what people call things... I follow a goodreads book that reads award winning books in sci fi, and there was a big discussion when we read Belwether (which was mentioned here too) about if that was sci fi or not.. some people said 'of course', but to me, there was nothing in it that couldn't happen in real life, so it's just fiction. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Oct 21, 2020 12:58:41 GMT -5
Nyumbani TalesCharles R. Saunders, 2017  This is a collection of stories originally published in various magazines or anthology books from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s. As per the title, all are set in Saunders' alternate past Africa called Nyumbani (the Swahili word for home). Four of them feature characters that appear in his Imaro books, including a brief 'prequel' tale in which Imaro's mother is the main character. Most of the stories are also adaptations or retellings of folk tales from various parts of Africa, although the ones I liked best are the stories that just have elements of African folklore, etc. but are entirely his own. I'm really glad these stories were collected, as they are otherwise hard to find in their various original publications.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2020 13:19:17 GMT -5
Nyumbani TalesCharles R. Saunders, 2017 This is a collection of stories originally published in various magazines or anthology books from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s. As per the title, all are set in Saunders' alternate past Africa called Nyumbani (the Swahili word for home). Four of them feature characters that appear in his Imaro books, including a brief 'prequel' tale in which Imaro's mother is the main character. Most of the stories are also adaptations or retellings of folk tales from various parts of Africa, although the ones I liked best are the stories that just have elements of African folklore, etc. but are entirely his own. I'm really glad these stories were collected, as they are otherwise hard to find in their various original publications. The title reminds me of a d20 based D&D like rpg based on African folklore that was put out circa 2005 (somewhere in the '03-06 area) called Nyambe  probably both deriving from the same Swahili word. I never had the game, just saw it on the shelves, but I wonder if Saunders' stories were an inspiration for the creators. -M |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 21, 2020 19:20:00 GMT -5
Mission to the Stars by AE Vogt  It's too bad this was written in the early age of sci fi..before epic series were a thing, because this could totally be the first part of an epic series. Vogt imagines a galaxy completely conquered by humans, with insanely scaled ships, but not all powerful... they apparently need weather stations to chart 'space storms' that seem pretty deadly. Science-wise, that seems to be taking the navy-in-space analogy way too far but it sets a picture. He's also got transporters, but ones that change the person ever so slightly, which creates a new races. In the hands of a modern writer, this could lead to all sorts of examinations of race relations and prejudice.. Vogt certainly scratches the surface of those issues, but the next step in the story would be were that would really come into play. Perhaps most uniquely.. the main character of the book is a woman, and captain of the ship. Sure, she ends up having a prince/knight errant in the end, but she's far from the usual damsel in distress, with stories written in the 40s! Most interesting. The science here is kinda silly, I'll grant, but as a cultural piece, and as the seed of a story, it's fantastic. Even the fact that it's not actually a novel, but a few short stories strung together, doesn't diminish that... I'll have to find the other two that are out there that didn't make it into this story.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 24, 2020 12:05:14 GMT -5
 Savage Night by Jim ThompsonI've been slowly working my way through Thompson's oeuvre, some for a second or third time, some, like this one, for the first time. Carl Bigelow appears to be a nice young man who has come to the small college town to turn around his life at the local college. In reality he's Charlie "Little" Bigger a retired hit-man, who has been coerced by a mob-like leader, The Man, into killing a mob stoolie. Being a Thompson novel we have an unreliable narrator, not one, but two femmes fatale, and at least one supporting character who may or may not be what he seems to be. The story changes significantly if you go with the idea that Bigger is an unreliable narrator. And there's plenty of evidence to back that up. This is a diminutive guy, who wears lift shoes, has full plate upper and lower dentures, wears contact lenses for his poor eyesight and suffers from severe tuberculosis, yet is seemingly irresistible to women. There are also a couple of inexplicable incidents that happen during the lead-up the planned killing that don't make any real sense unless we aren't getting the entire story from Carl. This is definitely second-tier Thompson. Bigelow/Bigger just isn't that interesting. And the story tends to drag in a way that isn't even a good slow burn. The ending is...odd. I'm still trying to digest it. I did note that this one was originally published by Martin Goodman's Lion Books and not by Fawcett Gold Medal. I wonder if it was rejected by Fawcett and picked up by a lesser publisher. I wouldn't say that it's actively bad. But it's definitely not the place to start with Thompson. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 24, 2020 16:30:23 GMT -5
Star Wars: Thrawn by Timothy Zahn Quite a few years ago, I was going of on a trip, away from home by myself for the first time that wasn't with family. I knew I needed something to amuse me during down time, but I had no idea what it was going to be like.. just that this was pre-personal electronics (just my walkman). So I decided to bring a book... I had just started seriously looking for reading material of my out outside of school.. having polished off a bunch of fantasy novels (most were pretty bad, but at the time I thought they were great)... I saw Heir to the Empire on the shelf at the book store, and ended up getting it to take on the trip. I was THRILLED that the Star Wars saga was going beyond the movies (I was only vaguely aware of the comics at the time and didn't think they counted). While there were some interesting new good guys, and of course the main characters were there, Grand Admiral Thrawn was the one that really was the star... a mysterious alien who figured out battle strategy by studying art? What? I used my walkman as a reading light (it was a very small light, but it worked) so I could read after lights out and ended up finishing the book that trip, dying for more. So why has it taken me this long to read the new version? I really liked the EU, and I'm still not thrilled at Disney's dumping of it for a far less interesting continuation of the originals. Zahn's trilogy (or Vector Prime, for that matter) would have been perfectly great adaptations to movies... instead of what we got. Thrawn made it over to the new timeline, but now he suddenly is far earlier in the story.. would it work? Or even make sense? I was skeptical. I've found in many cases when authors got back to a property or series they succeeded with in the past, it doesn't work. Sometimes their heart isn't in it, and it's more a money grab than anything. Sometimes it's publishers dictating new material, when no good ideas are coming. Time and again for comic series an author returns to a team or character than knocked out of the park, only to be a huge disappointment. I think I thought this would be the same. I should have had more faith in Timothy Zahn, who's rarely written anything I haven't liked. The story of Thrawn's rise through the ranks to Grand Admiral could have easily fit in the EU, but also works here without any issue. While he's just a little bit TOO perfectly successful, it has the same vibe as he did in the old series, which the addition of a fun POV character that shares in our amazement of his strategies. My one gripe is if that wanted to tie him to Lothal, why the heck wasn't anything going on here with the Rebels cast? The addition of the back stoty of Governor Pryce seems like an unnecessary (perhaps corporated mandated?) add on, that seems awfully similar to Rae Sloane's story arc over in Claudia Gray's books. That would have been fine if there was a payoff, but there isnt. It's also really interesting that the epilogue feels like this could have been a stand alone book.. the end very clearly could lead into the 3rd season of Rebels, with Thrawn getting Eli out of harm's way... yet there are two more books? While I'm intrigued at seeing how they manage to have Thrawn and Vader work together, I almost feel like this book is enough? Well, I'm not going to wait 3 years to read it, that's for sure... Mr. Zahn has definitely earned some faith 
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