On a related note

[james_davis_nicoll]

What should go on a Top Ten "In retrospect, what the hell were we thinking" list of once-popular SF?

Comments

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy would have to be quite high up, around the 3 or 4 mark easily, just on the strength of the Gypsy character who is also a prostitute with herbal powers that allow her to treat giant psychic cancer tumours.

Actually, will people look back on the 1000+ page doorstop novels in general with horror?

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I was thankfully spared any interest in Hamilton by running into Mindstar Rising as the first of his work that I looked at. Before I attempted to read that novel, I didn't know that scary British neocon nutbars existed - now I do.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Let me say a word in Pete's defense: he was writing that series circa 1989-94, and he was trying to extrapolate British politics 30 years into the future with global warming -- from the dog days of the Thatcher era. He's not, AIUI, anything like as right-wing as the spin on that series would have you believe (if you believe that an author's politics are transparently deductible from their fiction -- a belief I'd characterise as naive, given that the process of writing fiction is basically the art of telling amusing lies for money).

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

a belief I'd characterise as naive

A good way to show case this is that OSC's fiction is often less heavily soaked in his politics than say Pournelle's tends to be, despite OSC being genuinely crazier and more regressive (if such a thing is possible) than Pournelle.

Now an author's deep psychological issues tend to be a bit harder for them to control...

And please don't tell me he lives anywhere near Glasgow.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, Card still prefers a republic to a monarchy. Pournelle, it's harder to say.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That's quite useful to know. That novel seemed so egregiously right-wing in basic ideas that I (incorrectly) assumed some of the author's bias was showing through. Night's Dawn (or the part of it that I read, before that premise got too ludicrous more me to continue) seemed a little dodgy from that perspective, but nothing like Mindstar Rising. OTOH, the whole ghost of Al Capone thing was just too silly...