science fiction

TRX
December 10, 2012
21:
> took me away to another place?

I started off with early Norton, Heinlein, some Asimov, the usual. I didn't care much for Moorcock, Silverberg, or Dick; "social" SF bored me. Still does, for that matter.

I'd read a few fantasy novels, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I found tedious. I didn't care for fantasy much, but due to the shortage of new material available, I'd try a fantasy story before, say, a detective story.

Then I came across "The Guns of Avalon" by Zelazny, and quickly found the other three. (the final one hadn't been written yet) de Camp did something similar decades before, but I hadn't encountered the Harold Shea books then; Zelazny's "realist fantasy" approach was new to me, and changed my attitude toward the genre.

A whole lot of people have riffed off Zelazny since then, so I guess I'm not the only one who was impressed...

TRX
December 11, 2012
67:
@54:
There are also books I adore because they managed to give me a "how the f**k did you do that you clever bastard" moment during reading.
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For me, that novel is Tim Powers' "The Anubis Gates." I read it straight through, flipped back to the beginning, and read it straight through again, going to work the next day rather short of sleep...

The story starts off as a fragmented mess, told from different viewpoints in the 20th and 19th centuries, then back in the 16th century. It kept bringing up new characters and subplots until I started losing track of what was going on. And then, slowly, he began fitting it all together, like stones fitting into a mosaic. By the time you get to the end, what looks like a random bunch of story snippets seems like an inevitable progression of events.

It may not sound like such a big deal, but I've read too many novels by Big Name Authors, edited by experienced editors, printed by Major Publishers, that left dangling bits all over the place. Including many more that ran along fine until they just... stopped, and left me examining the binding to see of the last pages had fallen out.

"Dinner at Deviant's Palace" is quite good, but the rest of Powers' novels haven't managed to hew to those standards.