Aaron Bitman |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm finally reading a book which I first wanted - badly - to read over 30 years ago.
Back in the twentieth century, I was a big Doctor Who fan. To this day, I've never been crazier about any other TV show. And I wasn't content only to watch; for those times when I couldn't watch TV or video, I collected over 100 novelizations of the original Doctor Who television serials and read all of those that I got. I read the vast majority of them many, many times, in fact. Terrance Dicks wrote over a third of those that I got (and still have). I liked the way Dicks stayed faithful to the original stories, providing the closest thing I could get to watching the original without actually watching TV/video. It seemed to me like only occasionally would he deviate slightly from the original script (sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse).
And more than any of the other Doctor Who books, I wanted to collect novelizations of the missing stories. Many Doctor Who serials (that is, multi-episode stories, each one of which would typically have one corresponding novelization) from the 1960s were missing some of its episodes, the British Broadcasting Corporation having purged them. And my State's public TV station did not show any Doctor Who serial that was missing any episodes (with the exception of Invasion of the Dinosaurs). So the best way to find out about what happened in those stories was the novelizations. And there was just one missing story whose novelization I couldn't find at any of my local stores: The Abominable Snowmen. I tried asking and writing to people, looking for some way to order it by mail, but nothing worked out. It was especially frustrating as I read The Web of Fear multiple times; I generally avoid reading a sequel before the original.
Also, in VHS format, I got a hold of the surviving episodes of the serials I didn't see on TV. At least, I got all of those episodes I COULD get on VHS at the time. That included episode 2 of The Abominable Snowmen. But all I could get for the other 5 episodes was a brief, vague summary that didn't make for fun reading.
After about a decade, I grew tired of Doctor Who and stopped reading and watching it. About a decade after that, I grew un-tired enough to read a few of my old novelizations. By that time, I had started ordering old books through Amazon from third-party sellers. But whenever I looked for The Abominable Snowmen, I only found copies being offered for insanely high prices. I thought that maybe they were rare by that time, and I despaired of ever getting a copy.
Later, I started getting a craving to see - or read the novelization of - The Sunmakers, which was in the minority group of those Doctor Who novelizations (of the 1963-1989 series) that I had never gotten. But again, when I looked on Amazon, I found only prohibitively expensive copies.
But later still, I heard about ThriftBooks.com, from which, last year, I ordered The Sunmakers as novelized by Terrance Dicks. I figured: Great! Dicks always stays true to the original!
Well, maybe not. Granted, I haven't seen the TV serial in roughly 30 years, but as I read the book, I felt pretty sure that the dialogue had many differences between the TV serial and the book. I seem to remember more eloquent lines in the televised version. I still had fun reading it, especially because I had forgotten a lot of the plot points and action scenes. But I can't feel certain that the plot and action are exactly the same as in the original, since I know that the dialogue isn't.
This year, I finally got Dicks' novelization of The Abominable Snowmen from AbeBooks.com! Again, thank you Aberzombie for telling me about that site. I feel fortunate to get this opportunity to read it, after all these years. But while I read the part that adapts the second episode, I felt certain that the dialogue in the novel is different from the televised version, even more so than in The Sunmakers. And I also felt pretty sure that the action happened a little differently. Maybe Dicks was drawing from the original script. Maybe the director, or someone, changed the televised version to make it fit the show's limited budget. Maybe the differences in the book are a GOOD thing.
In any case, I'm glad of the chance to read it at all.
Bjørn Røyrvik |
Good on ya.
I too got most of my Who from the novelizations, and Dicks is the name I remember, along with Malcolm Hulke. Can't say I ever noticed much difference because I either read the stories or watched them, basically never getting both. When I did all I noticed was the novels being shorter so they cut out stuff. Actual changes are something I'll have to look for. Sounds like a good excuse to reread and watch some classic Who.
Fumarole |
I just started So You Want To Be A Gamemaster by Justin Alexander after it was recommended by Professor Dungeon Master. It's pretty good so far, and even though I have been a GM for more than thirty years, I am still finding some good tips in there. I would recommend it to any GM, but especially to new or aspiring GMs.
Quark Blast |
So as to not dredge up a 14 year old thread on the subject I'll just state here:
By far most 'classic' SciFi series were published before my time and I hardly have enough time to read them all. So I took a little time and crawled the Internet to take a gander at a large number of "Best of all-time" lists various entities had published. Culling from those got me a short list of perhaps a hundred books/series.
Starting with the Sword of Truth (Terry Goodkind).... and I must say it was a rough start. How the ####! did this author make so many lists? His evil characters are deeply sadistic with motivations verging on the comically putrid. Even the "good guys" act alarmingly vindictive and seem perversely motivated. That, and every adult ("good guys" and bad), in every instance, come off as creepers when they have conversation with minors. Oh, and the character Samuel - how did he not get sued by the Tolkien estate for that patent ripoff of Gollum? Nope, I'm done with this series before finishing the first book.
On to the Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I've seen the TV series - all two abortive seasons - but I won't hold that against the book until I read it anyway.
Bjørn Røyrvik |
I have heard nothing but bad stuff about the Sword of Truth. I suspect much of its popularity was due partially due to people not being as critical of horrible behavior when it came out and mostly because there was not a lot of competition in the epic fantasy market.
"Battle of the Linguist Mages" was OK. Sparkly in the extreme, with a soundtrack that gave me a headache just reading about it. Minimal linguistics unless there was some very subtle stuff hidden among the blatantly obvious and often wrong stuff. A romance subplot that felt very rushed and unconvincing. It's strongest bit was the existential threats and fun idea of VRMMORPG skills being directly translatable to RL combat proficiency.
Not sure I would recommend it, despite Charlie Stross doing so.
Just barely started on A Voyage to Arcturus, which starts off pretty good.
Dragonchess Player |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Re: Sword of Truth by Goodkind
Tolkien isn't the only "ripoff" (although I'd probably use "obviously inspired by, with just enough changes to avoid lawsuits") in the series (similar to Terry Brooks' early Shannara novels): The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, etc.
You may also get annoyed with his "Richard Rahl always makes the 'right' choice, even if there is no way he would know about it" deus ex machina. I also got fed up with Goodkind's apparent S&M fetish blatantly appearing in the writing (seriously, handle it like Guy Gavriel Kay instead of throwing it in our faces).
Part of the popularity may have been the resurgence of the anti-hero and part may have been from the titillation factor from the sexual content.
Dragonchess Player |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |
My biggest issue with Objectivism, as commonly applied by many so-called libertarians, is that it basically reduces to Plato's Republic based on inherited wealth rather than nobility/royalty. The "reason" and "moral values" are often used as a smokescreen for The Golden Rule ("whoever holds the gold makes the rules").
Jonathan Morgantini Community and Social Media Specialist |
Quark Blast |
Good feedback on Goodkind. Thanks everyone!
You may also get annoyed with his "Richard Rahl always makes the 'right' choice, even if there is no way he would know about it" deus ex machina.
Well, I didn't finish the book but I could see that things regularly tricked Richard's way. Magic was weird too - very Vancian - and also seemed to work just the way the plot needed it to at the moment.
One other complaint I forgot to mention:
There were names like D'Hara, Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, Darken Rahl and Kahlan. Then there are names like Richard and Samuel and a female red dragon named.... wait for it.... Scarlet. So he either ripped off the former names from somewhere I'm unfamiliar with or he had good days and bad days when coming up with character names.
On the positive side:
Parkinson's cover art is, as my dad sometimes says when being annoying, mad dope. Maybe that sold a few copies of the books as well.
Dragonchess Player |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |
On the positive side:
Parkinson's cover art is, as my dad sometimes says when being annoying, mad dope. Maybe that sold a few copies of the books as well.
Keith Parkinson is a fabulous artist.
I suspect that the cover ("Minions of Splugorth") and interior art pages (like the "red borg") for the RIFTS rulebook was also a major selling point back in the day ("Wow... This looks interesting!").
Bjørn Røyrvik |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"A voyage to Arcturus" was a memorable book which has made me think about it quite a bit than any fantasy or SF story I have read for a number of years. It's a bit dated in some aspects, but still I heartily recommend it unless you dislike any form of allegorical story.
Cleansing the palate with the complete opposite type of story: some Conan stories. They areally are peak sword and sorcery.