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Fantasy Literature

Naughty_Felid

Naughty_Felid

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Mar 11, 2008
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Mentioned Poul Anderson on another thread and realised we have an SF thread but not a fantasy one.

So writers who's you favs?


David Gemmell - Loved David Gemmell although his books later bacame quite repetitive. Loved Druss, Waylander and The Rigante books.

Mike Moorcock - Eternal Champion, books written in a night on a bottle scotch. Loved them, who is your favorite Eternal Champion incarnation?

Steven Erikson - Amazing first two books, the battle scene between the Malazan empire and Anomander Drake was the best I've read. DeadHouse Gates what a novel. The series fell apart bigtime over the last three books. I've said before a man desperate for a strong editor.

Robert E Howard - Quite a strange bloke who believed he channeled the spirit of a long dead warrior who became Conan. OK some dodgy beliefs, but you can smell and see the colours of those viberant cities. Best city? By Shem's balls the never named,(by Howard) Zamorian city of thieves.

Joe Abercrombie - With Gemmell died I was distraught, but I had Joe to turn to. The frist law books are fantastic. Really paints great characters. The second series not so.

Robert Holdstock - A guy completely different from anyone else. Mythago Wood enchanting.


There are others, but it's over to you.
 
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Naughty_Felid said:
Mike Moorcock - Eternal Champion, books written in a night on a bottle scotch. Loved them, who is your favorite Eternal Champion incarnation?
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Moorcock is 'awesome'. I wish I could write that fast.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Yeah, I wouldn't say he's the easiest of reads, but I still read them every few years. I've enjoyed his latter works too. Who's your favorite Champ Myth?
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I've probably read more Elric than Moorcock's other characters. I confess I haven't read much of his stuff in the last 20 years.

Edit: Michael Kane - the Mars series - just remembered. I liked that character.
 
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The ones that stand out in my experience / memory include:

- Mervyn Peake
- Fritz Leiber
- Clark Ashton Smith
- Stephen Donaldson
- James Branch Cabell
- Orson Scott Card
 
Fritz Leiber! Yep, that was another one! Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The ones that stand out in my experience / memory include:

- Mervyn Peake
- Fritz Leiber
- Clark Ashton Smith
- Stephen Donaldson
- James Branch Cabell
- Orson Scott Card
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Good call on Peake although not an easy read.

I often think it's a shame that Clark Ashton Smith doesn't get the same recognition as Lovercraft. The Colossus of Ylourgne is brilliant and all those werewolf haunted woods in France. What was the one with the stone mason and the satyr?

colossusofy.jpg


Donaldson was great also, but the original Covenant series haven't aged well.



So you guys don't read much fantasy thse days?
 
TH White

Robert E Howard

Michael Moorcock, especially Elric.

Fritz Leiber, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Poul Anderson, his fantasy stuff is great, real Elves! Three Hearts and Three Lions is a parallel world fantasy, obviously inspired Robert A. Heinlein's Glory Road.

Robert A. Heinlein, mostly SF but some great fantasy: Glory Road, The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag, Job: A comedy Of Justice.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Good call on Peake although not an easy read.
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Agreed ... When I originally read the _Gormenghast_ trilogy circa 45 years ago I was one of about a dozen acquaintances who'd attempted the slog, but the only one who finished. It would be almost a decade before I ran into another fantasy reader who'd actually made it to the end. The first couple of hundred pages in the first volume are such slow and turgid going that I think most folks give up then and there. The obviously fragmented and flawed third volume has some of the most intensely surrealistic bits I've ever seen in a work of fiction.

Naughty_Felid said:
I often think it's a shame that Clark Ashton Smith doesn't get the same recognition as Lovercraft. The Colossus of Ylourgne is brilliant and all those werewolf haunted woods in France. What was the one with the stone mason and the satyr?
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Agreed again ... I don't remember the title of the one about the stone mason and the satyr.

Naughty_Felid said:
Donaldson was great also, but the original Covenant series haven't aged well.
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I included Donaldson because I always appreciated the fresh / original things he came up with. I was already pretty bored with, and burned out on, sword-and-sorcery style fantasy when I started the Covenant series. It was something of a surprise how engaging it turned out to be.

My main gripe with Donaldson is that he can't seem to convey anything in less than a hundred pages. Once he inaugurates a series it turns into a long slow expository campaign.

Naughty_Felid said:
So you guys don't read much fantasy thse days?
Click to expand...

I frankly don't ... Too many too-similar narratives caused me to lose interest about 20 years ago.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Agreed ... When I originally read the _Gormenghast_ trilogy circa 45 years ago I was one of about a dozen acquaintances who'd attempted the slog, but the only one who finished. It would be almost a decade before I ran into another fantasy reader who'd actually made it to the end. The first couple of hundred pages in the first volume are such slow and turgid going that I think most folks give up then and there. The obviously fragmented and flawed third volume has some of the most intensely surrealistic bits I've ever seen in a work of fiction.



Agreed again ... I don't remember the title of the one about the stone mason and the satyr.



I included Donaldson because I always appreciated the fresh / original things he came up with. I was already pretty bored with, and burned out on, sword-and-sorcery style fantasy when I started the Covenant series. It was something of a surprise how engaging it turned out to be.

My main gripe with Donaldson is that he can't seem to convey anything in less than a hundred pages. Once he inaugurates a series it turns into a long slow expository campaign.



I frankly don't ... Too many too-similar narratives caused me to lose interest about 20 years ago.
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I recommend Joe Abercrombie, he is a freelance editor as well and you can tell as his writing is pretty tight. He is considered dark fantasy, he is ultra realistic but very funny too. Basically I had the idea of gritty fantasy, but never got around to trying to write it. It broke my heart when Abercrombie wrote it better than anyone could have done.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Agreed ... When I originally read the _Gormenghast_ trilogy circa 45 years ago I was one of about a dozen acquaintances who'd attempted the slog, but the only one who finished. It would be almost a decade before I ran into another fantasy reader who'd actually made it to the end. The first couple of hundred pages in the first volume are such slow and turgid going that I think most folks give up then and there. The obviously fragmented and flawed third volume has some of the most intensely surrealistic bits I've ever seen in a work of fiction.
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Read the first two many years ago, it took me three attempts to read the first one, was fine once I managed to get 70-80 pages in. I read Boy in Darkness which is a children's novella, set in Titus's childhood - he's never named but it's clearly him, I'd never never even heard of it when I discovered it in a library. Stylistically different, and necessarily so, to the adult books but unnerving nonetheless. Have been half heartedly thinking about reading the third for a long time, there's also a fourth written by his widow using notes he left behind.
 
We read Titus Groan in English class at school. This seems somewhat remarkable with hindsight, but then the teacher was an aristocrat of erratic habits. I think we were reading the play The Long and the Short and the Tall and Twelfth Night soon after. I still have the urge to cry, "How now, Malvolio?" on greeting an old friend...

Anyway, as to Peake, I distinctly remember it being the first time I'd read the word 'vagaries'.

“Lowering himself suddenly to his knees he placed his right eye at the keyhole, and controlling the oscillation of his head and the vagaries of his left eye, he was able by dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed eye, an eye which was not his, being not only of a different colour to his own iron marble but being, which is more convincing, on the other side of the door. This third eye which was going through the same performance as the one belonging to Rottcodd. Here apparently on this stifling summer afternoon was the eye of Mr. Flay at the outer keyhole of the Hall of the Bright Carvings, and presumably the rest of Mr. Flay was joined on behind it.”​
​
I thought this was a jolly fancy bit of writing--like dark Wodehouse. Wodehouse, incidentally, being the second greatest writer of modern English behind only Conrad. I will take on all comers in defence of that judgment.

My favourite 'fantasy' author is Tolkien and then Terry Pratchett, but he's really a Dickensian in fantasy clothing.
 
How old were you, when your class did TG? Was it a private school: aristocratic staff?

Do you mean Conrad purely in terms of prose? I'll see your Wodehouse and Conrad sir, and raise you a Nabakov.
 
Ogdred_Weary said:
How old were you, when your class did TG? Was it a private school: aristocratic staff?

Do you mean Conrad purely in terms of prose? I'll see your Wodehouse and Conrad sir, and raise you a Nabakov.
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Must have been 14 or 15, I think. 14 feels right because I didn't take an exam on it.

Not private, but one of the first-wave grammar schools.

In this case, he was a former naval commander who had married a titled aristocrat.

A lot of my teachers were not trained teachers. My amazing maths teacher was former RAF, my earlier and decidedly less amazing maths teacher was a priest, and my politics teacher was a barrister who had left the profession in murky circumstances!

Nabokov? Pah, only writing at genius level in his second language; English was Conrad's third.

In terms of what is enjoyable to read, Wodehouse beats the pants off them both.
 
You want literature to be "enjoyable"? Egad, what a novel idea.

Your school sounds like something of a gallery of eccentrics, I should like to see a farce or picaresque set there. Was it co-ed?
 
When I attempted to join the sixth form at an all girl school I was repeatedly refused and with increasingly immoderate language.

I fail to see what bearing the fact I was in my thirties had.
 
Incidentally, where is one to start with Moorcock (fantasy wise)?

Moons ago I read a very slim Elric novel with a very 70s cover (title forgotten) and it was utter dross, but then I recall being told it was far from the best on offer.
 
I've wondered the same thing. I've read Behold the Man and Mother London, both very good, I then read the first couple of stories in the Fantasy Masterworks Elric and they were crap.
 
Donaldson's 'Mordants Need' will stand a second reading.

But I prefer his 'Gap' series.

Does space opera count as fantasy ?

INT21
 
Yithian said:
Incidentally, where is one to start with Moorcock (fantasy wise)?

Moons ago I read a very slim Elric novel with a very 70s cover (title forgotten) and it was utter dross, but then I recall being told it was far from the best on offer.
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The Eternal Champion series its usually best to start with something like Elric of Melnibone or Corum and the Knight of Swords. The second set of Corum books are probably his best fantasy. His latter books are much weighter Gloriana is a good historic fantasy novel as are his Pyat novels, Byzantium Endures, Laughter in Carthage, etc. His early books are skinny and were written to fund other projects but they contain much of what modern fantasy takes for granted these days.

Many consider his Jerry Cornelius books as his best early to middle work. Mother London is also great but not a fantasy novel.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
The Eternal Champion series its usually best to start with something like Elric of Melnibone or Corum and the Knight of Swords. The second set of Corum books are probably his best fantasy. His latter books are much weighter Gloriana is a good historic fantasy novel as are his Pyat novels, Byzantium Endures, Laughter in Carthage, etc. His early books are skinny and were written to fund other projects but they contain much of what modern fantasy takes for granted these days.

Many consider his Jerry Cornelius books as his best early to middle work. Mother London is also great but not a fantasy novel.
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I preferred those skinny books.
 
My favourite would have to be The second Corum books, The Bull and the Spear, The Oak and the Ram and The Sword and the Stallion.
 
Can anyone remember the author and title of a sci-fi story that had the following as characters.


A bunch of dogs that had been modified to allow them to converse with humans and a robot butler who could talk to the dogs.
The dogs discover that ants are gradually taking over the land, and they get the robo butler to try and find out why the ants are doing it.

The butler comes to the conclusion that the ants are driven by some inner urge, and can't stop.

The butler asks his master how the humans dealt with ants. And is told that they poison them.

The butler realises that they are doomed. While the dogs can communicate, they are still dogs; and the dogs don't have chemistry.

I've been wanting to re-read this story. But can't recall the title.

INT21.
 
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