agent of buffoonery

[makyo]

Over the past few months, johnaldis and I have been cataloguing the Warwick SF&F Society library. The library (which consisted of about 1500 books last time anyone counted) has a fairly diverse collection of books, ranging from modern classics of the genre, right through to utter drivel. Some of the latter is "of its time" - tat by today's standards, but

Comments

[blue_condition]

It is a monumentally crap novel. I have it.

The only thing I can say is it's far, far, FAR better than The Solarians.

However Big Norm then wrote The Men In The Jungle which is utterly and totally fabbo.

[makyo]

It is a monumentally crap novel. I have it.
In a fit of curiosity, I've borrowed the society's copy, but haven't got around to reading it yet - Tom Holt's Barking and Jon Courtenay Grimwood's 9 Tail Fox seemed more likely prospects :)

[blue_condition]

I'd sooner read Connie Willis than re-read Agent of Chaos. And I'd sooner have my balls slowly hacked off with a blunt instrument than read her idea-free soap-opera witterings.

[makyo]

I'm pretty sure you don't have to do any of those things if you don't want to.

[nmg]

Oh come on, at least her shorts are pretty good; Fire Watch is a good collection.

[blue_condition]

The title story was an icky piece of soap opera/chicklit; then she went and virtually repeated it with Doomsday Book. Then I read Remake... ick.

I think I've done all that is humanly possible on that front. Her work just doesn't connect with me - mind you neither do a lot of recent US SF writers... the current/recent generation of sf/fantasy writers whose works appeal to me most these days seem to all be British - Priest, Mieville, Banks, Hamilton, Macleod, Stross, Swainston...

Back in the 80s I tended to feel that the sf I liked best mostly from the US - I was big on Le Guin, Ellison, Silverberg, Dick, Pohl, Leiber... Now I think the interesting stuff is mostly coming from this side of the Atlantic. The US seems a bit too bogged down in 'mundane sf', extruded fantasy product, mil-sf and people taking their inspiration from the ponderous Kim Stanley Robinson.

[nmg]

Agreed, Doomsday Book is a bit turgid, and is effectively a rerun of Fire Watch (which I maintain is better than you're giving it credit for). To Say Nothing of the Dog has some nice scenes, but the overall is bloated. Willis can do screwball comedy well. Blued Moon is nicely paced, for example, and the screwball sections of Dog are almost good enough for me to forgive the remainder.

Regarding KSR, his chief crime is that he's willing to reuse previous work past the point of decency. Icehenge is a good book exploring the nature of historiography, myth and revolution, but it doesn't help that he recycled much of it into the Mars trilogy. Similarly, Antarctica retreads bits of the Mars trilogy (I'm not overly keen on the Science in the Capitol books).

He does have a good eye for counterfactuals; the Mars trilogy counterfactual in The Martians is perhaps the best example I've seen of someone writing a what-if against their own created world, and The Years of Rice and Salt is well-done (although the Bardo sections are a little heavy-

[pndc]

Is it worth mentioning that Eye of Argon is finally out in dead tree? I'm mildly tempted to acquire a copy, just so I can lend it out to people I don't like much.

[makyo]

Normally I give bad SF and fantasy (especially fan-fiction, of which most, but not quite all, is absolute dross) a wide berth. But Eye of Argon is something of a legend, so I might pop a copy in my Amazon shopping basket sometime.