SF and Fantasy wot I ave been reeding

[Famous Mortimer]

Wiki says it started as a "light novel," a subset of Japanese YA publishing, and with illustrations. It was then adapted first as a manga, then an American graphic novel, and finally the film. So I guess we're all right? ;-)

Agreed. My version has a pretty awfully drawn front cover, and if that was the quality of the pictures in the "original", then I'm glad I got the one without.

[Alberon]

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie. Sixth novel in his First Law series. Technically a standalone, but you'd be missing so much if you started with this book because, as normal, there is a mixture of old and new characters in this novel. Set to the west of The Union and north of the long crumbled Old Empire the story follows a woman's quest to find her younger sister and brother stolen from her farm.

As mentioned way up thread, this is Abercrombie's take on the Western. To be honest, I think I would have preferred it if he hadn't wrapped it in so many tropes of the genre. You have the wagon train heading west to a frontier town, a gold rush, this world's take on Native Americans (though in this they have paler skin than the colonising forces and are nicknamed Ghosts) and a classic Western standoff. Still, things do take a bit of a left turn with a cult in the mountains which is a bit like the bomb worshipping people out of the original Planet of the Apes films. Change is coming to the First Law world and we get to see the beginnings of an industrial revolution, which does make a nice difference from many series (I'm looking at you A Song of Fire and Ice) where the medieval world doesn't change for thousands of years.

It's as violent as ever, though I found some of it surprisingly affecting as the novel winds up to its finish and unplanned consequences lead almost to total disaster.

Basically though, if you've read the others you'll like this. If you haven't read the others why on earth are you planning to start with the sixth novel?

[MoreauVasz]

Looking at them I confess I wonder how, but lots of the old school science writers got around a lot. Reading about them a lot of them were married six times or had a reputation for womanising at conventions or sometimes unfortunately sexual harassment.

That whole sub-culture has historically been packed to the gunnels with paedos and sex pests. Way more than the statistical average. Asimov? Sex pest. Clarke? Pederast. Marion Zimmer Bradley? Child molester. Heinlein? Wrote multiple books imagining cultures in which you could fuck your daughter.

The entire sub-culture nearly imploded when people tried to prevent Zimmer Bradley's husband from attending conventions. At the time the dude was a convicted nonce and he'd do stuff like go to parties and climb into bed with people's kids while their parents looked on terrified of facing the social consequences of standing up to a child molester in their own homes.

[Glebe]

Roll your eyes if you must, but I read The Hobbit again and am now re-reading The Lord of the Rings. Love the descriptions of the hobbits rambling when they first set out from the Shire. Would love to see a TV series adaptation that includes stuff that Jackson had to skip over. Still very doubtful about getting Tom Bombadil to work convincingly, though.

[Pranet]

I re-read the Hobbit for the first time since I was a kid about this time last year and enjoyed the fuck out of it.

[Glebe]

I re-read the Hobbit for the first time since I was a kid about this time last year and enjoyed the fuck out of it.

It's rather dark in places for what is ostensibly a children's tale, actually. Mentions of torture and cruelty.

[Alberon]

IIRC the encounter with Gollum was rewritten after the original publication with the Lord of the Rings in mind to make it darker.

[mothman]

I read some article the other day about the increasing trend in films never just ending, but having mid- and end-credits scenes, epilogues to set up sequels etc. The article identified The Return Of The King as ground zero for the phenomenon, due to this perception the film goes on for a long time after the baddie is vanquished. Which I've always thought was quite ironic given there's all this stuff that was left off from the book - and that's even if you don't include the "what happened later" info in the appendices!

[chveik]

Which I've always thought was quite ironic given there's all this stuff that was left off from the book - and that's even if you don't include the "what happened later" info in the appendices!

it was a really bad idea to not include the part when the hobbits get back to the shire. much more important narratively than endless fight scenes

[mothman]

I do find myself wondering what the Scouring Of The Shire - and the Tom Bombadil scenes - would have looked like if filmed. What actor from circa 2000 could have played Tom B?

[Glebe]

IIRC the encounter with Gollum was rewritten after the original publication with the Lord of the Rings in mind to make it darker.

He definitely did revisions to later editions of the The Hobbit to bring it in line with Rings.

[Mr Trumpet]

I read some article the other day about the increasing trend in films never just ending, but having mid- and end-credits scenes, epilogues to set up sequels etc. The article identified The Return Of The King as ground zero for the phenomenon, due to this perception the film goes on for a long time after the baddie is vanquished. Which I've always thought was quite ironic given there's all this stuff that was left off from the book - and that's even if you don't include the "what happened later" info in the appendices!

Yeah having a long epilogue isn't the same as putting clips in the credits (which I assume is meant to get people watching them and stop streaming services from cutting to the next bloody thing 5 seconds after the curtain goes down).

[touchingcloth]

I read some article the other day about the increasing trend in films never just ending, but having mid- and end-credits scenes, epilogues to set up sequels etc. The article identified The Return Of The King as ground zero for the phenomenon, due to this perception the film goes on for a long time after the baddie is vanquished. Which I've always thought was quite ironic given there's all this stuff that was left off from the book - and that's even if you don't include the "what happened later" info in the appendices!

The extras on the DVD box set have a bit where - IIRC - Billy Boyd talks about Jack Nicholson leaving the premiere some time after Sauron gets vanquished and the credits roll, and when asked why he was leaving replied with "too many endings, man".

This is one of the areas where the films are most faithful to the books, as my overriding memory of reading RotK is that of the mission seemingly being finished before I was even halfway through the thickness of the book. I assumed I was mere pages from the end with the remainder being given over to appendices, but there was probably over a hundred pages of actual novel still to get through.

I'm not sure I'd agree that this was ground zero for the trend towards post-credit scenes, because it was really just craven devotion to the source material rather than trying to setup sequels, and probably even the prequels at that point weren't even conceived, and they definitely weren't greenlit.

Cutting the Scouring would have been as wise a decision as removing Bombadil, I think. Anyone who thinks that Bombadil was a scandalous omission from the film is an absolute mentalist with scant regard for their own free time; I'm annoyed enough I had to read through a hundred pages of that prancing ninny, so if I'd have to have sat through that in the cinema, then, well, let's just say I can see why that Dark Knight Rises viewer in Colorado got as angry as he did.

He'd have been played by Robbie Coltrane or Biggins.

[Norton Canes]

I do find myself wondering what the Scouring Of The Shire - and the Tom Bombadil scenes - would have looked like if filmed. What actor from circa 2000 could have played Tom B?

Robbie Coltrane? Toby Jones?

Cutting the potentially thrilling events of 'The Scouring of the Shire' in favour of endless mawkish scenes with Bilbo and Sam was one of the most mental decisions in film making ever. 

[surreal]

Cutting the Scouring would have been as wise a decision as removing Bombadil, I think. Anyone who thinks that Bombadil was a scandalous omission from the film is an absolute mentalist with scant regard for their own free time; I'm annoyed enough I had to read through a hundred pages of that prancing ninny

The bigger issue with Bombadil is that the ring has no effect on him at all, he's holding it and throwing it around - in the book the implication is that Tom, "Oldest and Fatherless", is probably more powerful than the entities they are fighting but in the movie it would have undermined the urgency.

Scouring might have been good as an alternate ending for the extended editions but there is no way you could have made the Theatrical version of RotK any longer, it would have gone way past that length to do it properly even if you removed the multiple endings - which may be long but I think people want to know what happened to the characters.

[Famous Mortimer]

I think the record holder for "plot finished before end of book" is L Ron Hubbard's "Mission Earth", where (as I recall) the main plot is done with halfway through book 9 of a 10 book series, and the rest of it is...probably some of his Scientologist bollocks? Mercifully, my memory has chosen not to hold any of that information in it.

[mothman]

Good God, you read Mission Earth? I'm disproportionately fond of Battlefield Earth, but even I drew the line at that.

The bigger issue with Bombadil is that the ring has no effect on him at all, he's holding it and throwing it around - in the book the implication is that Tom, "Oldest and Fatherless", is probably more powerful than the entities they are fighting but in the movie it would have undermined the urgency.

Scouring might have been good as an alternate ending for the extended editions but there is no way you could have made the Theatrical version of RotK any longer, it would have gone way past that length to do it properly even if you removed the multiple endings - which may be long but I think people want to know what happened to the characters.

Bombadil... yeah, didn't miss him. As I say, curious to see if the character and sequence could be made to work at all (it's so fucking annoying) and by whom - I had this mad thought: Mark Rylance. Might have been a shade too young at the time. But based on his subsequent work as the BFG...

Given what Jackson did with The Hobbit, I think we should count ourselves lucky we didn't get a fourth LotR. He'd have called it The Scouring Of The Shire, too. With added plot padding such as Sam having to contest the hand of Rosie with... um... Wormtongue maybe? Plus expect at least an hour of added Sackville-Baggins inheritance intrigue.

[Famous Mortimer]

Good God, you read Mission Earth? I'm disproportionately fond of Battlefield Earth, but even I drew the line at that.

I was a teenager in the days before the internet, and the entire set was on sale at my favourite bookshop - as I now understand, part of Scientology's plan to bump them up bestseller lists was just to buy tons of the fucking things, and then flood stores with cheap copies.

There's all sorts of oddities in there, like how the alien protagonist can convert women from lesbianism and frigidity by raping them; how you can fit more powerful engines in roomy cars to make them go faster (he mentions this several times); and how, of course, psychiatry is the worst evil on Earth. What's quite surprising is that no-one really talks about it any more, or perhaps yer average mainstream media outlet fears the money / lawyers of the Church. I like this review, quoted from Wikipedia:

"... a paralyzingly slow-moving adventure enlivened by interludes of kinky sex, sendups of effeminate homosexuals and a disregard of conventional grammar so global as to suggest a satire on the possibility of communication through language"

.

Considering the sort of nonsense I used to read as a teen (I've read all the pre-millenium Erich von Daniken books, for instance) it's kind of a relief I turned into a reasonably well-adjusted adult.

[Glebe]

The extras on the DVD box set have a bit where - IIRC - Billy Boyd talks about Jack Nicholson leaving the premiere some time after Sauron gets vanquished and the credits roll, and when asked why he was leaving replied with "too many endings, man".

Think it was Elijah Wood actually, he talks about in on the RotK Extended Edition commentary IIRC. Apparently Nicholson asked Wood what was supposed to have become of Frodo and that, because he had left the cinema during the 'fade to black' bit on Mount Doom (which was shortened for the home release, apparently) and went to wait in the car for his family (who clearly didn't tell him the film didn't actually end there). Wood mentions Dustin Hoffman, I think, being present and being highly amused by the story.

[mothman]

I was a teenager in the days before the internet, and the entire set was on sale at my favourite bookshop - as I now understand, part of Scientology's plan to bump them up bestseller lists was just to buy tons of the fucking things, and then flood stores with cheap copies.

There's all sorts of oddities in there, like how the alien protagonist can convert women from lesbianism and frigidity by raping them; how you can fit more powerful engines in roomy cars to make them go faster (he mentions this several times); and how, of course, psychiatry is the worst evil on Earth. What's quite surprising is that no-one really talks about it any more, or perhaps yer average mainstream media outlet fears the money / lawyers of the Church.

I think I read the first one, and found it unreadable. Didn't go any further. I recall Newcastle City Library had the full set.

Considering the sort of nonsense I used to read as a teen (I've read all the pre-millenium Erich von Daniken books, for instance) it's kind of a relief I turned into a reasonably well-adjusted adult.

Me too. Well, the reading crap growing up anyway; the well-adjusted part, not so much.

[Glebe]

The bigger issue with Bombadil is that the ring has no effect on him at all, he's holding it and throwing it around - in the book the implication is that Tom, "Oldest and Fatherless", is probably more powerful than the entities they are fighting but in the movie it would have undermined the urgency.

Yeah at the Council of Elrond in the book, Gandalf says he'd just toss it away or loose it, the silly fucker.

[Catalogue Trousers]

IIRC the encounter with Gollum was rewritten after the original publication with the Lord of the Rings in mind to make it darker.

You remember (sort of) rightly. In the original draft, Smeagol/Gollum is an altogether more likeable monster. His oath of 'curse us and crush us' began as the rather lighter 'bless us and splash us', and he cedes defeat in the riddle contest rather graciously: he's planning on giving the Ring to Bilbo as a reward for winning, and, when he can't find it (because Bilbo's already nicked it), he helpfully offers the hobbit some nice, juicy fish and then shows him the way out of his lair...

[Jack Shaftoe]

I was a teenager in the days before the internet, and the entire set was on sale at my favourite bookshop - as I now understand, part of Scientology's plan to bump them up bestseller lists was just to buy tons of the fucking things, and then flood stores with cheap copies.

When I worked in a bookshop, we'd fairly regularly get people in ordering all those L Ron Hubbard books in a very bright-eyed enthusiastic manner. I fell for it once, then it was explained to me it was Scientologists, who'd never pick them up then hope the books found their way onto the shelves. After that I just nodded at them and did tippy tappy tap on the keyboard but never actually ordered them, so everybody was happy.

[Alberon]

Been reading two side by side.

In no particular order there's Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie. It's a short story collection set in his First Law world and mostly stories featuring characters before their main appearance in the novels. Nothing more to add beyond the usual if you like the other books you'll like this.

The other book was Jack Four by Neal Asher and I really need to learn my lesson about this author. This is the second bad book by him in a row. Rather than the endless battle sequence that made up the previous book (last one in a trilogy) this one follows a clone that had been sold to the Prador (incredibly violent alien crabs). The character is virtually on his own for the first third of the book and Asher isn't really able to make this interesting. Not that things improve later on.

I've said before the author is limited and I don't know if he's got worse as a writer or I've become used to a better quality of book or if it his simple reusing of the same concepts over and over again that's got old, but I just can't deal with this any more.

[Alberon]

Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds returns to the series the author started with his first novel twenty years ago - Revelation Space. Reynolds has written in that universe since, most recently in the abysmally titled 'A Prefect Dreyfus Emergency' series, but this is a return to the main sequence of novels.

It's written so you don't have to have read, or remembered in any detail, the previous books, but it does help in that there are recurring characters from the original trilogy. As the book opens, most of humanity has been wiped out by the Inhibitors (alien machines seeded throughout the galaxy designed to destroy sentient life). In a small colony hidden away and clinging to existence the main POV character is trying to blow up a newly arrived ship in the system which might give their position away to the Inhibitors. But it turns out to be part of an over-complicated plan by a woman seeking him out as part of a plan to defeat the alien machines.

The book is fine and enjoyable but there is an area where it rather falls down for me. The story is told in the first person by the man taken from his family on the colony. As the story progresses he quickly realises that he isn't who he thinks he is. Later on there's an even more complicated rejigging of who the narrator is, but Reynolds doesn't really sell this well. The despair at being taken from his family (and knowing that even one or two trips at near light speed (there's no FTL in this universe) takes him irrevocably away from them) quickly fades, along with the changes he goes through learning who he really is and also what happens later doesn't seem to affect the narrator in anyway. The narrator near the end seems exactly the same narrator who starts the book and the central character ends up seeming more than a little empty as a result.

A decent Reynolds book though, not his very best but far from his worst. It's hard to see where he can go with that universe now though as while

Spoiler alert

the Inhibitors are eventually defeated it only allows an even worse threat they were keeping in check to spread. That threat eventually destroys the entire galaxy and the human race has to flee, presumably forever.

[close]

[mothman]

Yes, re the spoiler section, I did wonder how they got from Absolution Gap to the future described in the epilogue and the short story Galactic North. And Inhibitor Phase only goes some way towards filling that in. I presume there'll be more, and more Dreyfus ones too..?

[Alberon]

There is a timeline at the back of the book. There's a

Spoiler alert

second golden age after the Inhibitors are defeated which lasts about 400 years before the next threat starts to grow. The Milky Way is not abandoned in total for another few tens of thousands of years, but humanity seems to be in a permanent retreat before and after that time.

[close]

[mothman]

Spoiler alert

Yeah, maybe I need to re-examine it all again, but the epilogue to Absolution Gap left me with the impression it was the greenfly that defeated the Inhibitors, which felt a bit weird given the rather mundane origins of the greenfly as established in Galactic North, and the power of the Inhibitor machines as already established and now reinforced in Inhibitor Phase.

[close]

[Alberon]

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia was recommended in the Guardian's SF and Fantasy book roundup so I thought I'd give it a go.

Set in a world where the existence of vampires went public in the 1970s this tells the story of a desperate one who flees to Mexico City which bans all of her kind from the city state. In this world there are many different kinds of vampire, basically all the different bloodsucker myths from around the world made real. While not truly immortal they are tougher and longer lived than humans, but are, of course, greatly outnumbered.

Atl is of the local Mexican variety and is pursued by a Necros (classic Dracula style vampire) as part of a gangland war over drugs, which is mostly vampire controlled. There she meets a young man struggling to survive scavenging rubbish to sell.

For all that it was praised by Lisa Tuttle in the Guardian I found it a little too slight. The growing friendship between the young man and the almost as young vampire is handled well, but there are fewer action scenes than you might think. What there is is handled with surprisingly little description. One fight has a few lines about her shooting her adversaries but it felt like the author was skipping over these bits almost as quickly as possible. It also missed a real chance to show it from the young man's point of view as his first exposure to that sort of violence. So a decent book, but a few missed opportunities. This was the author's second book that had been out of print for a few years until recently. I wouldn't mind if she revisited this world with the experience of a few more books under her belt.

[touchingcloth]

Having started on an Iain M Banks tip thanks to the thread here, I read Player of Games and quite enjoyed it, before going with The State of the Art and struggling.

I then switched for Atwood's ouvre and went for - and LOVED - Oryx and Crake, before starting The Year of the Flood and struggling.

Maybe I'll try the Star War novellas next.