George R. R. Martin -- A Giant, Shackled by Dwarfs, up on Fantastic Worlds

Apr 09, 2015 16:07



"George R. R. Martin --

A Giant, Shackled By Dwarfs"

© 2015

by

Jordan S. Bassior

Some people were surprised and others saddened when George R. R. Martin came out against the Sad Puppies 3 campaign to restore control of the Hugos to the fans, and expressed (some) support for the Scalzi cabal which is currently trying to control the nominations and ( Read more... )

fandom

Leave a comment

banner April 10 2015, 00:49:01 UTC
because he's a leftist and he perceives sad puppies as being rightist. What else does he need?
At least he admits that voting cabals have been around as long as he's been involved (and he did admit it, if you read his stuff).

And as Larry more or less said, 'where were you when the SJW's were doing all of their attacks? Why do you only step forward now?' Yup, Martin can only be bothered when his side is losing, up until then, he didn't give a damn about civility.

I'm tried of all the whining by the Worldcon committee and the usual suspects, they HIJACKED the Hugos for their own political purposes, and now they have the gall to complain when another group comes along and does the same? At least SP has been open and fair about it, instead of working in the shadows and lying.

Reply

jordan179 April 10 2015, 01:19:40 UTC
Here's the thing, though -- George R. R. Martin, unlike Scalzi and the Haydens and the hack who wrote "If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love," is a really great writer. The tragedy is that he's sucking up to his inferiors.

Reply

banner April 10 2015, 02:37:01 UTC
I wouldn't really know, I've read like one of his books and a couple of his short stories. Obviously NONE of what he wrote ever grabbed me enough to make me want to read more of him.
Then again the nineties turned into a black hole for SF with much of what was written and published just being absolute drek (remember I commented on it MANY times on my LJ back then and into much of the 00's).

I mean I really just got tired of books that really didn't want people like me buying or reading them. Maybe his weren't in that mold, but I used to read a couple books a week in the 80's and early 90's and had the income to buy whatever I wanted. That I never picked up any of his makes me wonder if I read the intro's thought they weren't for me and set them back down.

Reply

jordan179 April 10 2015, 07:53:13 UTC
Tuf Voyaging. Nightflyers. Dying of the Light. He wrote some epic science fiction tales. I think that A Song of Ice and Fire is his equivalent of McCaffrey's Pern series, in all ways -- namely, that it's actually science fantasy.

Reply

robby April 10 2015, 03:39:19 UTC
Martin is a decent writer, writing fake history and stories that never end, with main characters that abruptly die, and nothing is ever resolved. I read better stuff every week.

Reply

wombat_socho April 10 2015, 03:59:05 UTC
His novels back in the 1980s, such as After The Festival and Fevre Dream were very good. I stopped reading his stuff when he got into the Wild Cards series and didn't pick him up again until Game of Thrones started on HBO. I have a limited tolerance for crapsack worlds though, and if I'm going to read books set in one of those, there's always Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novels, which are at least morbidly funny.

Reply

robby April 10 2015, 04:04:55 UTC
Right now, I'm reading some of the Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell. Well written, and based on real history.

Reply

selenite April 10 2015, 04:26:22 UTC
I still think Tuf Voyaging is his best. Great biological hard SF.

Reply

jordan179 April 10 2015, 07:11:10 UTC
It's occurred to me that Haviland Tuf may have seeded the planet on which A Song of Ice and Fire takes place. There are clues that it is a colony world which was terraformed out from under the natives -- the Others. And George R. R. Martin's mainstream space opera universe includes rather powerful psychic abilities, which a pre-scientific civilization would classify as "supernatural" or "magical" or even (given a psi of sufficient power) "divine." Remember, Tuf's in the same world in which Nightflyers takes place.

Reply

banner April 10 2015, 04:40:50 UTC
I often wondered why Zelazny only wrote ONE story for wildcards. And of course HIS character was appropriated by almost everyone else for their stories.
Makes me suspect the Roger did not get along with George.

Reply

marycatelli April 15 2015, 01:23:31 UTC
Sometimes you find you don't work as well in constraints. I doubt I could write in a shared world. I seldom manage to write two stories in the same world of my own invention.

(My stories are like oysters; they need their own shell.)

Reply

wombat_socho April 10 2015, 03:56:47 UTC
One has to give the Sasquan committee credit for at least attempting to be honest brokers in this whole mess, despite what must be tremendous social pressure from the CHORFs to bend the rules so as to frustrate the Sad Puppies.

I am also amused that Teresa Neilsen Hayden shot her own cause in the foot (and possibly blew the whole damn leg off) by shrieking that Sad Puppies was just another attempt at WrongFun by #GamerGate...whose members came over to see what the shrieking was about and decided to have fun sticking it to the SJWs on a new front. :)

Reply

jordan179 April 10 2015, 07:54:27 UTC
Yeah, that was dumb. She forgot that gamers are often science fiction and fantasy fans. She also got exactly the new blood into hardcore sf fandom she asked for ... one should be careful of for what one wishes!

Reply


Leave a comment

Up