I haven't re-read the essay recently--so I don't remember if he talks about it here or not--but I always appreciated the fact that Moorcock (perversely?) continuously champions Mervyn Peake over Tolkien.
I don't know that I agree (Tolkien's been kind of hard-wired into me since the second grade), but I do love me some Gormenghast.
She wrote the second book first, with no ideas beyond wanting to write a story with a huge snowstorm in it iirc, and ended up with a subtle high fantasy story that just happens to be about a ten year old. Then her publishers said "Looks like a kids series to us, make it so," so she went back and wrote OSUS stone as a kid's book.
Just for the record, Over Sea, Under Stone was first published in 1965.
The other four "Dark is Rising" books were published in 1973 through 1977.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ah yes, I had you pegged as a staid, ultraconservative counter-revolutionary gobbo all along. You see... Everything in the world is based on the idea that the Kings of Old were the ultimate form of government. First the goblins try making new machines and stuff, but they sound bad, so the people kick them out and they have to live in the caves of the Misty Mountains. Then the cowardly mayor of Lake Town wants to change things and introduce some kind of market economy, but is chased away by Bard, who is almost a King of Old. Then Saruman tries to introduce the concept of progress, only to be squashed by the agents of the Kings of Old, first Gandalf and then the ents. Then Sauron tries to change things, and again, Gandalf, and a bona-fide King of Old, slaps him silly. Finally, Saruman tries again to introduce the wonders of the worker commune in the Shire, which is smashed by the ultraconservative hobbits returning from partying with the previously mentioned King of Old.
Of course you liked that.
She wrote the second book first, with no ideas beyond wanting to write a story with a huge snowstorm in it iirc, and ended up with a subtle high fantasy story that just happens to be about a ten year old. Then her publishers said "Looks like a kids series to us, make it so," so she went back and wrote OSUS stone as a kid's book.Just for the record, Over Sea, Under Stone was first published in 1965.
The other four "Dark is Rising" books were published in 1973 through 1977.Which sort of derails the argument about the publishers forcing it to be a kid's series. Which didn't really make much sense anyway, since the later books weren't as childish in tone as OSUS, though not always as much subtle high fantasy as The Dark is Rising
Perhaps she just became a better writer between the first two. Perhaps she intentionally shifted tone based on the viewpoint characters for the book (or scene?) in question.
What I'd mis-remembered is that OSUS was written as a one-off, and TDiR was the first one she wrote with plans for a series.
But Jeff, what argument? I said iirc, and Aaron corrected me, so I went and found an interview where she talked about how the books were written. If that's your idea of an argument, you must have a terrible time discussing anything. :P
Winnie the Pooh was a great children's character. The problem is that A A Milne (the author) was a total and complete jerk.
He really went after P G Wodehouse during WW2. Wodehouse took revenge in his short story "Rodney Has A Relapse" which has made re-reading Milne an impossibility for me.
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Thanks for the Epic Pooh link, Kirth - I'll give that a read later this evening. I could have Googled it, but either I was trying to revive the dying art of asking actual human beings questions when you want to know something, or I was too bloody lazy ;)
Interesting rundown of the Milne vs. Wodehouse feud here. I can use a search engine!
JB Morton's Winnie the Pooh parodies are pretty good too, if you can find 'em....
Interesting rundown of the Milne vs. Wodehouse feud here.
Thanks, Limey -- interesting reading, and it decidedly bolsters my previous liking for Wodehouse's wit and humor. Too bad about Milne being such a berk.
Thanks for the Epic Pooh link, Kirth -
What am I, chopped liver?!?
I've never read Wodehouse.
:(
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A certain critic — for such men, I regret to say, do exist — made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names'. He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elijah; but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.
I don't care what you guys say, Winnie-the-Pooh is f%%*ing awesome.
And I know LoTR is reactionary nonsense, Madame Sissyl. And so is The Illiad and Don Quixote and It's a Wonderful Life. What of it?
Interesting rundown of the Milne vs. Wodehouse feud here.Thanks, Limey -- interesting reading,
+1
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I don't care what you guys say, Winnie-the-Pooh is f+##ing awesome.
And I know LoTR is reactionary nonsense, Madame Sissyl. And so is The Illiad and Don Quixote and It's a Wonderful Life. What of it?
Nothing. :-)
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And, as a follow-up to the inter-author skein, a link to Orwell's essay defending Wodehouse.
I was twelve when I read those books. That was just old enough that, having read The Dark is Rising first, I found Over Sea, Under Stone too childish for my oh-so-developed taste. Remains unread to this day.
...
But yeah, Jess, I know exactly what you mean. Reading The Greenwitch, you see Will through Jenny's eyes, and it's very educational seeing the character from the outside after The Dark is Rising. By the end of it I was pretty sure that Will's (and Jenny's for that matter) magic power was maturity, never mind all that stuff about the endless battle between Light and Dark.
Man, I loved those books, and then they made the worst movie of all time out of The Dark is Rising. Fricken Hollywood does it again.
Oh, believe me, I feel your pain on the movie adaptation. I worked on a tie-in alternate reality game/marketing campaign for the movie, and I was so excited because the books were such a formative part of my childhood and movie and Ian McShane and yay!
We started work on it based on the books, not having read the script.
And yeah.
Nothing. :-)
I still can't get you out of my mind, Madame Sissyl. Please don't toy with me, it's too cruel...
Too cruel? Right.
Persian Fire by The Lion of Rajahstan
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Thanks for the Epic Pooh link, Kirth -What am I, chopped liver?!?
Possibly this is one of those koans I've heard of.
"What is the sound of chopped liver clapping?"
"If liver is chopped in the forest and no-one is there to hear it, is it still disgusting?"
No, O Hero of Maglubiyet Labour, you are not chopped liver. Forgot to mention that I bought Testament on the recommendation of yourself and Cde. Samnell - good stuff, worth $2 of anybody's money, and now I want a Quedeshot.
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Forgot to mention that I bought Testament on the recommendation of yourself and Cde. Samnell - good stuff, worth $2 of anybody's money, and now I want a Quedeshot.
Sacred prostitutes are on the list of things I want to parade past my sandbox players at some point. Alas, I sent them off into the wilds and so they ran into a lesbian couple that run an inn instead.
Maybe some kind of druidic fertility rite instead, complete with phallic and yonic fetishes everyone's fiddling with while a woman and a man participate in some kind of pain-sharing magic on the altar, screaming and howling and offering their holy agony and blood to renew the land.
...why did I think of that after I set the game in spring? Dammit. Perfect chance to use the old "you hear horrible screams in the woods" hook.
Interesting rundown of the Milne vs. Wodehouse feud here.
And, as a follow-up to the inter-author skein, a link to Orwell's essay defending Wodehouse.[/url]
I didn't know anything about none of that, thanks for the learning, cdes.!
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In other I. Claudius news, I finally find a hawt chick sexy enough for Rome and she turns out to be a manipulative, psycho biznitch. Poor Clau-clau-claudius... :(
In other I. Claudius news, I finally find a hawt chick sexy enough for Rome and she turns out to be a manipulative, psycho biznitch. Poor Clau-clau-claudius... :(
Wait, which one? Cause you just described every woman in the thing, aside from his mother. No, wait, she starves her daughter to death and then kills herself, that's as psycho as anyone else. Also, which of the hawt sexy chicks in Rome wasn't a manipulative, psycho biznitch?
Honestly, I thought I, Claudius had a hotter Livia Drusilla (Sian Phillips) than Rome (Alice Henley), but maybe that's just cause I love 'Sidi-ji so much. Old ladies with poison? That's sexy!
In other I. Claudius news, I finally find a hawt chick sexy enough for Rome and she turns out to be a manipulative, psycho biznitch. Poor Clau-clau-claudius... :(Wait, which one? Cause you just described every woman in the thing, aside from his mother. No, wait, she starves her daughter to death and then kills herself, that's as psycho as anyone else. Also, which of the hawt sexy chicks in Rome wasn't a manipulative, psycho biznitch?
Honestly, I thought I, Claudius had a hotter Livia Drusilla (Sian Phillips) than Rome (Alice Henley), but maybe that's just cause I love 'Sidi-ji so much. Old ladies with poison? That's sexy!
+1,000,000 for the Sidi-ji reference!!!!!
Honestly, I thought I, Claudius had a hotter Livia Drusilla (Sian Phillips) than Rome (Alice Henley)
No disrespect to Ms. Phillips, but I disagree.
Wait, which one? Cause you just described every woman in the thing,
I hate to be shallow, but, so far, only Messalina has made me, um, stand to attention.
Also, which of the hawt sexy chicks in Rome wasn't a manipulative, psycho biznitch?
This is an excellent point, although IIRC, Octavia was a pretty good girl throughtout the show. Don Juan de Doodlebug, of course, doesn't mind if his girlfriend goes to orgies and smokes hyssop.
Just finished re-reading the Riftwar Saga by Feist. Last time I read it was in 87. Never read anything else from him, but always enjoyed that one.
So I finish re-reading, and thinking that is was better than I remembered, and looked at what was out there. Wow. So I am about 50 pages into Shadow of a Dark Queen. I'll be reading this stuff for awhile now.
I found they got less interesting as they went along, until I gave up. YMMV.
I did really like the Empire series he wrote with Janny Wurts though. Politics and manipulation in Tsurani.
I'll look forward to the later books then as our tastes seem diametrically opposed. :D
The reason I haven't picked up any Fiest in nearly thirty years was the bad taste left in my mouth from the Daughter of the Empire books. I didn't especially like the Tsurani stuff in the first series, and I tried reading it, and it was one of the very few books I honestly couldn't finish.
Read The Gold Bug and Other Tales of Mystery which wasn't very difficult at all since I had already read most of the tales in The Raven and Other Writings. But it was a pretty neat collection for kiddies with illustrations for $2 at the convenience store, and I couldn't resist it.
The Female Eunuch is not nearly as interesting as I had hoped, valiantly fighting, as it does, 1971-era misogynist tropes against women. I almost stopped reading on principle when I ran across the second section entitled "Soul".
But I did learn, emancipated ladies, that if you haven't tasted your own menstrual blood, you're faking it and, fellas, if they aren't helping you to figure out how to get them off, they need some women's lib.
She also points out that women considered sexually desirable by lower class males tend to be curvy and chubby. I wonder if this is middle-class feministspeak for I like big butts and I cannot lie...
Still making very little progress with [i]Fateful Lightning[i] but I've been doing a lot of side reading about the Cuban filibusters. The history reads almost eerily like someone's D&D campaign.
I've got to read a dedicated work on these guys. It's horrifying and funny at the same time.
Not in Cuba, but decent flick.
Not in Cuba, but decent flick.
Yeah, Walker is up after Cuba and, probably, Kansas-Nebraska.
More John Brown chat for Comrade Samnell
---
To hell with my learning-disabled comrades!
Finished up State and Rev, blah blah blah, yeah I get, Vlad, international proletarian socialist revolution is the only way forward, believe me, I get it. Also quickly pumped out How the Soviet Workers State Was Strangled which is a bunch of articles from the Galtic Worker from '91-'93. Dark days, comrades.
Don Juan de Doodlebug Interruption
In sexier news, I gave up on The Female Eunuch. Maybe this is one of those not being a teenage girl things again, but this is way more "how to grow up an emancipated woman" and I'm already an emancipated goblin, so, you know, right on sister [puts the book down].
Although I am still interested in teaching myself womens studies, I'm not sure a book about clitoral versus vaginal orgasm (turns out, at least for Ms. Greer, that orgasms are more satisfying when there is a penis for the vagina to undulate around, but I am sure it's a matter of personal taste), the banality of breeder married life, and a trawl for tropes against women in 1950s-60s romance novels and pop culture is what I'm looking for.
But she does seem pretty rad, and I'd totally do her.
Next up I am going to balance a collection of Marx's 1848 journalism (Class Struggles in France, 1848-50) and the, hopefully, thrilling climax to The Hunger Games series, Mockingjay.
Smash Panem Through Workers Revolution!
Reading: "Shell Programming for Solaris Systems Administrators". Sexy, I know...
The 13-year-old boy in me keeps thinking back to my old C programming textbook, from school.
It had a bunch of examples with a variable for a person's political party, represented in a character, named "party". I guess it could be set to 'D' for Democrat, 'R' for Republican, and so forth.
These examples also stored a person's sex in a char variable, set to 'M' or 'F'.
All these example programs declared the variables as: char sex, party;
Really.
Just finished Cold Days by Jim Butcher.
Just started Tinker by Wen Spencer.
More John Brown chat for Comrade Samnell
Benfey gives a pretty poor account of himself, especially about Kansas. I don't read Reynolds as trying to excuse the Pottawatomie massacre so much as correct the usual implication that Brown just went and did it out of nowhere, for no reason, as a kind of gratuitous act of violence. Brown always gets the spotlight because he went on to later fame, leaving the slave power horrors unstated and thus invisible.
Just like how people picture the antebellum South as this idyllic place instead of a brutal police state where the chief means of social control was mob violence and the only real limit on it being that if someone made it across the county line you were supposed to let them go.
On that, the frequency witch which I find Southern politicians of respectable position in mainstream parties doing maniac things like dueling over imagined or real slights and waiving guns in the faces of opponents is just insane. Joanne Freeman is working on a book about violence in the Congress (pulling out a gun with intent to use during a Senate debate happened more often than one would like) which I'm eager to read. Faster, historian! Write, write!
Sacred prostitutes are on the list of things I want to parade past my sandbox players at some point. Alas, I sent them off into the wilds and so they ran into a lesbian couple that run an inn instead.
Maybe some kind of druidic fertility rite instead, complete with phallic and yonic fetishes everyone's fiddling with while a woman and a man participate in some kind of pain-sharing magic on the altar, screaming and howling and offering their holy agony and blood to renew the land.
...why did I think of that after I set the game in spring? Dammit. Perfect chance to use the old "you hear horrible screams in the woods" hook.
I see a play-by-post campaign with Samnell as YHWH, Limey as the Roman centurion Biggus Dickus, Lord Dice as a sacred prostitute, and little ol' moi as a nationalist goblin zealot named Doodlebug Maccabee.
Pretty, pretty please?
I see a play-by-post campaign with Samnell as YHWH, Limey as the Roman centurion Biggus Dickus, Lord Dice as a sacred prostitute, and little ol' moi as a nationalist goblin zealot named Doodlebug Maccabee.
Pretty, pretty please?
Don't know if you're serious or not, but a campaign set in the Roman era would be great anyway, and if it was just an opportunity for general immaturity and pissing about, well, that would be the cherry on top of the stuffed dormouse-flavoured cupcake.
Green Ronin do a sourcebook similar to Testament called 'Eternal Rome', by the looks of things. I'd be prepared henceforth to honour no gods but Samnell (and buy the PDF) in order to make this happen.
Oh yeah - books! I've finished Hereward the Wake, which I enjoyed a lot (he was reconciled to William the Conqueror at the end, Turned To Drink, had his wife run off to a nunnery and then got murdered by a mob of his enemies, so a very satisfying conclusion), and now I'm going to start on the Dragonlance Chronicles (again), which I think falls under the heading of comfort reading.
I see a play-by-post campaign with Samnell as YHWH, Limey as the Roman centurion Biggus Dickus, Lord Dice as a sacred prostitute, and little ol' moi as a nationalist goblin zealot named Doodlebug Maccabee.Pretty, pretty please?
I wrote two different responses to this where I briefly RPed Yahweh, but neither one would have survived long. But you should know that they included foreskin humor.
Finished Accelerando. It was pretty neat. I'm not sure I can say I understood everything that was going on in it, but I understood enough to be impressed. I also hope I die before the Singularity. Thanks for the recommendation, Comrade Curtin!
Glad you enjoyed it. If you want to continue with more Strossian post-Singularity weirdness, I suggest Glasshouse.
As for me, I find my reading has taken a sharp nosedive since I have been working early hours. I have several books in progress:
Cyberpunk, an anthology of some of my old favorites from that genre, and a few I missed back in the day.
Moscow but Dreaming by Ekaterina Sedia, a fantastical-magical realistic series of short stories set in Russia's capital.
Digital rapture, an anthology of Singularity stories. (Unlike you, Independent Citizen Doodlebug, I hope I get to a downloadable status before shuffling off this mortal coil)
Free by Chris Anderson, which discusses the new paradigm of giving product away to actually increase your business.
The Mad Scientist's guide to World Domination because who doesn't like an anthology of stories about mad scientists?
The Long Summer by Brian Fagan. I was impressed by his book the Little Ice age so I am perusing this one.
Redcoats and Rebels by Christopher Hibbert. Telling the Revolutionary War from a British perspective.
I did manage to finish Cthulhu's Reign recently, and found it fascinating, if a bit depressing.
Don't know if you're serious or not, but a campaign set in the Roman era would be great anyway, and if it was just an opportunity for general immaturity and pissing about, well, that would be the cherry on top of the stuffed dormouse-flavoured cupcake.
I am completely serious, but I also am putting the onus of doing the actual work on the one true Lord, Samnhovah, so, alas my seriousness may not amount to much.
Have fun with Tanis and the boys!
But you should know that they included foreskin humor.
See, Samnell would be a natural at playing YHWH...
Glad you enjoyed it. If you want to continue with more Strossian post-Singularity weirdness, I suggest Glasshouse.
Digital rapture, an anthology of Singularity stories. (Unlike you, Independent Citizen Doodlebug, I hope I get to a downloadable status before shuffling off this mortal coil)
I would like, one day, to keep reading Stross (thank you as well, Citizen Woodford), but I don't know if I'll get around to it any time soon.
As for living forever, my problem with immortality is that it takes me massive amounts of intoxicants to keep myself interested in the finite time that I have on the planet, wtf would I do if I had to live forever.....
[Cues Tuck Everlasting]
Don't know if you're serious or not, but a campaign set in the Roman era would be great anyway, and if it was just an opportunity for general immaturity and pissing about, well, that would be the cherry on top of the stuffed dormouse-flavoured cupcake.
I am completely serious, but I also am putting the onus of doing the actual work on the one true Lord, Samnhovah, so, alas my seriousness may not amount to much.
Have fun with Tanis and the boys!
My plate's pretty full between the blog (I got recommended by an actual, published historian today!) and running the 5 PBEMs I do right now. Sorry.
Not that the Levant in Roman times isn't an interesting, adventure-friendly era.
Praise Insomnia, I finally iron-assed out Fateful Lightning. It was never bad, but every time I came to it I had to get used to the author's style again and I read it while also reading a lot of related things for spot research so the whole experience got very distracting. Some of that reading was another one-volume history of the Civil War and the contrast left me with some thoughts that I will probably blog about at some point.
The main thing is that Fateful Lightning declares itself "A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction." It's not a 50/50 split. The Reconstruction stuff fits into about two chapters at the end. Most attention remains on the war, taken through a strong helping of thematic and topical sections. They fit into a sort of narrative, but it's definitely not the new standard text of the era. Guelzo isn't even trying to replace James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. He's doing a different kind of history with different focuses. He does so in about half Battle Cry's page count.
The Samnell Recommendation? If you only want one book to read on the Civil War and you hate, hate, haaaaate long books then you should get over that second part and iron-ass your way through McPherson. He's really very readable and he integrates period quotes very well. But if you can see your way to reading two, read McPherson first and then read Guelzo.
Oy, two freakin' months! After this I think I need two short breather reads. Maybe three because I'm thinking about going back into William W. Freehling and his style is pretty demanding. (Good, but he makes you work for it.) Unless I get a little crazy and find a cheap copy of Allen Nevins' Ordeal of the Union, which was practically his life's work in eight volumes published from '47 to '71 and last reprinted, so far as I can tell, circa 1990. Every historian I've read writing on the time between the Mexican War and Sumter references him heavily and it would dovetail perfectly with the blog. But it's also out of print work (with what I've read is a terrible ebook version no one proofread) doubtless written in prose I will find tedious.
But happy thoughts! I'm crazy enough to be seriously considering that so I must be having fun. Also I've got two good fictions in me before I need to think about it again. :)
Oops, missed this one over the weekend.
Clears throat.
Sacred prostitute? What, you don't think I'm down to earth enough to play a common streetwalker? Though maybe one who has managed to claw her way up the social ladder slave ("I prefer handmaiden.") to Matron of the house, that sounds a bit more awesome.
You know what, never mind the pbp, I think I just met the newest resident of Manse Dice.
I've been reading David Sedaris' new book, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, and a french language comic book (graphic novel to all you snobs out there) called L'Imperatrice Rouge.
You'd like it, Doodlebug. It's set in the near future, in a world where the October Revolution failed and the Czars conquered Europe (or, as people of my station call it, Heaven). At least, I think that's what is about; my french is fairly terrible, so I'm reduced to exclaiming, "That character just introduced herself, and her names Adja!" or, "Someone just said something about a library!"
I'm not saying you can become fluent by reading (or whatever) foreign language comic books, but it broadens your mind. Look, whatever, the pictures are pretty.
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wtf would I do if I had to live forever.....
[Cues Tuck Everlasting]
I'll invite you over to my digitized virtual zombieland funpark and we can take potshots at rots while hardscrabbling it across the USA in our custom mini-gun equipped Hummer the Potemkin. Or perhaps we could call it the Tom Joad?
Hmm. Tough choice...