Return of the Book Thread

[Abalieno]

To those who love or hate Bakker this makes a must-read:

http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-r-scott-bakker-interview-part-1.html

[NowhereMan]

It seems I'm the exception as I've managed to actually get through The Prince of Nothing trilogy. The Darkness was definitely one I slogged through but I tackled it on a weekend and I think just going straight through it made things easier to deal with since I wasn't having to go, "Wait who was that again?" I've also got a talent for just going with names or factions and getting a feel for who's important rather than needing to remind myself who people are every time the names appear (If I don't recognise the name at all then they're probably not too important) that means great swathes of references to random crap that doesn't really matter washes over me a bit. Really though nothing much happens in the first book, Bakker spends 600 pages introducing the characters and setting up the events of the rest of the trilogy. He could have thrown in some actual action or events in the first book or at least had it been more than people talking at one another then sitting around thinking about what they had said to other people.

As for the other books his jumping from character's storyline to other characters gets annoying at times simply because whenever you start to get into the book you suddenly get dumped off for another 50-70 pages of people walking around talking about their power and position and the frailty of human character. I mean I enjoyed that stuff to an extent but most of the characters don't really experience any growth or change () and every time you're dumped into their heads aside from the occasional actual plot moment you know what they're going to be doing and thinking about. Considering I actually enjoyed some of the Kelhuss and Achamian's bits it gets even annoying to be forced to read through loads of uneventful drek. The biggest problem I've got with the world building he's done is that I just don't see any really satisfactory answers being given to the questions raised (just what is the No-God? The answer is either going to be a non-answer, "Beyond the ken of mortal men" or something ridiculously trite like the embodiment of human isolation).

Rereading this it seems pretty negative but I enjoyed the books, serious flaws aside. Going with the flow on the world-building stuff is a must though, if you tend to want to know exactly who's being talked about or a character quoting some made up poet is the kind of thing to jar your reading then you will hate these books. They do get somewhat repetitive, partly because certain characters have a pretty one track mind and he has a tendency to have different characters obsessing about the same things at the the same time. The amount he jumped about between characters would have been helped with switching up the writing style a bit more too, or at least it would have diminished some of the repetitiveness. I'd love to say that if you don't enjoy the first book after a while then forget it but, well, the first one is easily the dullest simply because nothing whatsoever really happens aside from introduction and set up. I enjoyed these enough to be willing to give the Aspect-Emperor a go, in part because I'm in the mood for high fantasy at the moment and in part because I don't have any other books tempting me.

[Sky]

Started reading Drew Karpyshyn's Bane trilogy yesterday. Trying very hard not to get my TOR fanboy on.

[Khaldun]

I did enjoy the first three books, actually. The third one the least, as I think that's where the series gets ponderous.

The interview is interesting. I like much of what Bakker has to say but I think he's in danger of constructing a personal mythology, a Mary Sue epistemology. The SF writer Peter Watts is somewhat similar: he writes complex, interesting SF that is also a strategy for winning some complex scientific and epistemological arguments he has with 'establishment' intellectuals. This is a risky habit as it can lead to work which in which imagination and storytelling get suborned to smashing critics that you've rendered mute or caricatured in your own texts. If you're committed, as he claims, to using literature as communication, you have to treasure critical or negative responses (as he says he does) but you also have to be really careful about setting yourself up as the lone rebel who dares to write literature as it should be written in defiance of the critics and more timid or domesticated writers. That's what can lead to pretention and bloat, to treating every creative impulse as good simply because you think it and the sheep you scorn do not.

There's a weird way in which he almost mirrors Kellhus in that interview, imagining his readers as lesser beings to be manipulated alternatively by praise, by sensitive regard and by scorn, and his critics as obstacles to be smashed by his authorial will and by holy war.

[ghost]

Anyone ever read Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney? 

I'm trying it again.  This is a fucked up book. 

[Khaldun]

Anyone ever read Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney? 

I'm trying it again.  This is a fucked up book. 

I think it's pretty great. Might be too much for you.

[ghost]

Anyone ever read Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney? 

I'm trying it again.  This is a fucked up book. 

I think it's pretty great. Might be too much for you.

[Paelos]

That's what she said. 

[dd0029]

Just finished up Scalzi's newest Fuzzy Nation, a remake of H. Beam Piper's, Little Fuzzy which is available through Project Gutenberg. I liked it. It was entirely too pleased with itself and tried way to hard to be clever, but the whole thing worked. The original Piper story is better science fiction. There are more ideas and they are explored better. Scalzi's is a better book and is more interested in what the idea says about people. It's a very American story that only really came together for me at the very end with the short talk there summing the whole thing up. Its a very quick read.

[Johny Cee]

Amazon is doing a deal on Kindle books.... a pile from $.99 to $2.99.  I bought a few...  mostly histories, but there are a few by authors I've heard of but never wanted to shell out full price.


Bah.  Search under "kindle sunshine deals".

[ghost]

I'm listening to the Foundation trilogy on my way back and forth from work, and I'm still amazed at how much stuff George Lucas lifted from these books.  I wouldn't call it outright plagiarism, but it's close in some spots.  The way the Mule controls Pritcher is very reminiscent of the Emperor/Vader, and there are innumerable similar names strewn throughout.

[FatuousTwat]

It's pretty well documented that almost nothing in the Star Wars story itself was original.

[ghost]

Very little in any story is truly original, but if you haven't read the Foundation trilogy in a while do so with an eye for looking at Star Wars references.  It's rather shocking.  Frank Herbert always asserted that Lucas plagiarized Star Wars from Dune, but I've never felt that the stories were even remotely similar.  I've never heard that Foundation was the basis for Lucas's work, but the similarities are pretty solid. 

[Sky]

Fremen were clearly Tusken.

[Khaldun]

I'm listening to the Foundation trilogy on my way back and forth from work, and I'm still amazed at how much stuff George Lucas lifted from these books.  I wouldn't call it outright plagiarism, but it's close in some spots.  The way the Mule controls Pritcher is very reminiscent of the Emperor/Vader, and there are innumerable similar names strewn throughout.

I can't think of two "space operas" more distinct in mood, content and theme than Foundation and Star Wars. Star Wars is certainly a pastiche of all sorts of other stuff, but Foundation is one of the works that it is least like. Even the Mule is utterly unlike Palpatine. You'd probably come up with a better comparison if you did a randomized search of SF on Amazon.

[Johny Cee]

Very little in any story is truly original, but if you haven't read the Foundation trilogy in a while do so with an eye for looking at Star Wars references.  It's rather shocking.  Frank Herbert always asserted that Lucas plagiarized Star Wars from Dune, but I've never felt that the stories were even remotely similar.  I've never heard that Foundation was the basis for Lucas's work, but the similarities are pretty solid. 

I didn't see very many similarities.  At all.  The first movie is a rip of a Kurosawa movie, and the Jedi are really just an adaption of wuxia heros.  (And Kurosawa got his style by ripping off US Westerns, so... yeah.)

It's pretty well documented that almost nothing in the Star Wars story itself was original.

Nothing, anywhere is ever original.  Even if you don't directly copy a modern work, we share in common the same background and historical sources....   for instance:

- Both Star Wars and Dune (and Foundation) have old decaying empires, or decaying and corrupt republics that became empires!  Or fallen ancient empires leading to an age of conflict and barbarism!  Yes....  because of fucking Rome.

[Arrrgh]

Kurosawa was doing the ripping off?

1961 Kurosawa...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojimbo_%28film%29

1964 blatant rip off...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fistful_of_Dollars

[Engels]

Seriously, accusing Kurosawa of ripping off old westerns is like accusing Bach of ripping off Metallica.

[Johny Cee]

Kurosawa was doing the ripping off?

1961 Kurosawa...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojimbo_%28film%29

1964 blatant rip off...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fistful_of_Dollars

Yes.  

Kurosawa was inspired by the early Westerns, and Japanese film-makers started making "Easterns" set in a Japanese historical period.  Which then crossed back over the pond to Westerns.  Kurosawa himself was never shy about where his influences came from.  There were quite a few scholarly articles on this, though none that were easily googleable.

If you read the wikipedia page for Yojimbo, it points out that much of the plot for that movie was taken from noir novels by Dashiell Hammett, which were adapted into noir films earlier.


Honestly, the two major sources of inspiritation:
1. Ripping off an earlier work, or synthesizing two separate works.
2. Adapting your life experiences into a work, so ripping off real life.

Reading a book by Ebert on Scorsese (on sale at Amazon for a little bit of nothing!) where Ebert points out how much of Scorsese growing up in a working-class Italian neighborhood ended up in his films.  The whole beginning voice-over of Young Henry talking about the mobsters at the cab stand?  Scorsese grew up in an apartment across the street from a mob social club.

Hell, in Goodfellas, between adapting a biography of Henry Hill and the fact that Scorsese employed a huge amount of mobsters as extras and pumped for information, the plot wrote itself.

[Johny Cee]

Seriously, accusing Kurosawa of ripping off old westerns is like accusing Bach of ripping off Metallica.

 

http://www.suite101.com/content/akira-kurosawa-japans-john-ford-a80616


I'm not accusing him of being a hack.  I'm saying that he made movies that were heavily influenced by a couple of American films/movements.  Which were influenced by X, which was derivative of Y, which etc.  I mean, there's a reason why it was so easy to adapt his movies back to US period films.


In general, the real innovator is some crazy person who made a film/book/whatever that no one bought and critics hated, died penniless in a slum, and was vindicated 50 years later.   (See Lovecraft.  Though technically he was heavily influenced by William Hope Hodgson [Nightland, House on the Borderland] and Robert Chamber's The King in Yellow.  Which advanced things from Poe's work. Which....)

Edit:

Just google "Kurosawa on John Ford" for a million links.

[bhodi]

speaking of ripoff, I also finished little fuzzy, both the remake and the orig. I like Scalzi's version better, but they were both good (in somewhat different ways). I think listening to them back to back was educational on what could be dropped, ignored, or mangled in order to focus on different aspects of a story while keeping the ideas behind it functionally the same. Some of the renaming of items, especially with regards to technology, was instructive.

[Engels]

Well, there's John Ford and then there's 'old westerns'. I can certainly believe that he took inspiration from Ford. I thought you meant just the generic 40s westerns, which by and large were gagorrific.

[ghost]

I'm not saying that Lucas lifted his story from Foundation, I'm saying he lifted some ideas from the Foundation series.  Clearly he lifted parts of the movies, including story line, from other sources as well.  

Similarities:

1.  Grand, flowing space opera that utilizes a galactic setting, not a universe.  This is different in nature than Dune.
2.  Central city (Trantor) that is a "city planet", exactly like coruscant.
3.  Mystical form of control (emotion control) versus "The Force".
4.  Han Pritcher, one of the primary players in Foundation is very similar in name to Han Solo.
5.  Korel, a prime planet in Foundation is very similar to Correlia, a prime planet in Star Wars.
6.  The Mule, while in many ways unlike Palpatine, controls Pritcher in a way very similar to how the Emperor controls his minions.  Remember that Vader couldn't break out of the Emperor's grasp in a large part due to emotion control- "use your hate".  The jedi can sense feelings and use that against others.
7.  The frequency of the use of hyperspace and parsecs, which you see in other books but not to the level you see in Foundation, and travel is largely similar.  
8.  Central empire that is corrupt and decaying that falls to an evil and largely omnipotent central figure (Mule vs. Emperor).  
9.  Lawless "outer rim" rife with Kingdoms and Principalites of all sorts.
9.  Bail Channis, a central figure in Foundation, has a similar name to Bail Organa.


There are other similarities, but this is just a smattering of the more obvious.  To my eye this is obviously a series that Lucas has read closely and has taken more than a few things from.  Asimov also has the Robot series from which some of the Star Wars world has drawn upon.  One could say that the prohibition on "machine minds" in Dune could have been a player, but the Robot series of Asimov predated that idea and was probably the origin.  

Have you actually read the Foundation books lately, Khaldun, or are you just pontificating from fuzzy memory?

[Chimpy]

I think you are reading Foundation through the lens of StarWars and trying to fit them together. And if you are reading them in chronological order instead of published order, the earliest books in the chronology were published after the original 3 StarWars movies were released.

Foundation was written as an episodic series of short stories (like the vast majority of Science Fiction in that era was) for Astounding, which is why the tone and feel of the first book is paced the way it is.

[ghost]

I'm actually probably more of a Foundation fan than a Star Wars fan.  And the original trilogy (which is what I'm currently reading) was published in some magazine in the 40s, I believe.  I suspect that Lucas took a lot of ideas from a lot of places.  It's not crazy to think that Asimov's Foundation was one of them.

[Khaldun]

Honestly, yes, it is crazy. Or at least ignorant. Look up "space opera" and you'll see that your chart of similiarities applies to works that precede Foundation and come after it equally well, in fact, far better. You're describing stuff that's generic to the sub-genre of space opera. It's like saying that somebody ripped someone off because they wrote a book that had aliens and spaceships in it and there were earlier books with aliens and space ships.

Tell you what, read E.E. Doc Smith's Lensman series, which precedes Foundation by a good margin and get back to us. You'll see some WAY more pertinent resemblances to Star Wars, and some much more probable direct borrowings or influences.

Saying that one work influenced another is not just a matter of spotting what you think are similarities in the text. That's like looking at two animals that sort of vaguely resemble each other and inferring that they have a direct genetic and evolutionary relationship. Sometimes they do, often they don't.

[Strazos]

So while getting ready for my big move in August or September, I've started to fill up my Amazon wishlist with various books; I figure if my internet access is going to blow, I might as well catch up on my reading for two years. I hardly know what else to add....


Anyone have any particular suggestions from looking at the above list? I hope to order at least 1 or 2 a month over roughly 2 years. Some of those are books I know I'll like (judging by previous work by the author), while others I've always wanted to (re)read or  have looked interesting (hence the Penguin Classics splurge).

[Rendakor]

If you're going to read the Inferno, you ought to just get the whole Divine Comedy.

[Strazos]

Oops, good catch.

[Chimpy]

Are you buying physical books or e-books? Most of those penguin classics should be available via the free e-books things because the works are public domain as the copyright expired (if there even was a copyright when they were written).

If you are reading ancient Greek stuff, you might want to pick up Aristotle's Poetics and Politics and also Aeschylus's The Oresteia.

[Strazos]

Nope, I'm a dummy and buying physical books. Also, the place I'm going has pretty bad net access, so I'm not even sure a Kindle or something would be possible.

Plus, for whatever reason I still prefer the physical medium, and having a bookshelf filled with books that I could lend someone.

[Ingmar]

For translated works (for example the Arabian Nights you have listed) make sure you check out reviews beforehand so you can be reasonably confident you're getting a readable translation. There can be a vast, vast difference in quality - for example the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf vs. basically any other one.

[proudft]

I got My Kindle last week (as opposed to the Family Kindle which I never got to use), and so went on a Amazon what-do-they-have-for-free splurge (still not sure why they have almost every Oz book but #2: The Land of Oz, might have to get that off of Gutenberg).  

Anyway, while randomly getting classical and/or free whatnot, I saw Moby Dick, and I've never read that (nor been assigned it in a class), and thought, eh, what the hell. Everyone says it is turgid, but it's free, and why not?

Why did no one tell me this book was hilarious?  I'm up to chapter 20 at the moment - they have just arrived at Pequod and it might bog down later for all I know - but roaming around town, meeting Queequeg, and the whaler's inn - that was an awesome set of chapters.    

I really like the narrator, too, he seems like an arrogant ass.  The last thing I read was The Name of the Wind, so I am primed for arrogant asses of narrators.

Not sure how much of Moby Dick's humor and assitude is on purpose, but I'm going to assume all of it.

[Khaldun]

I love Moby Dick, don't find it slow or turgid at all.

Among the many great lines that Ahab gets in: "Talk not to me of blasphemy, man: I'd smite the sun if it insulted me".

Basically it's a rousing naval adventure story that has a big dose of philosophical gravitas wrapped up inside.

[HaemishM]

Moby Dick is considered a classic because it's a goddamn classic. The reason people think of it as boring is because most people are low intellect mouthbreathing twats who wouldn't know quality literature if it hit them on the nose, especially if it was assigned reading. It is a fantastic read, and I wish I'd read it earlier in life than I did.