The GMG SF/Fantasy/Horror Club

[MN Dave]

John Shirley's BLEAK HISTORY

http://grimrictus.blogspot.com/

[DavidW]

John Shirley's BLEAK HISTORY

http://grimrictus.blogspot.com/

This is totally me--

Often, those who want a scary adventure tale or a mystery with fantastic elements are disappointed to find flimsy soap operas involving stereotyped creatures of the night with too much graphic sex and not enough heart and guts.

  Horror section is practically romance now + light fantasy elements.  The housewives have taken over the section.

[MN Dave]

Thanks for checking it out, dude.

[Bogey]

    Maybe indirectly. The direct inspiration was the series of Topps trading cards that came out in the early '60s.

   
   

     

Which were pricey even 20 years ago due to their banishment.  Cool stuff!

[drogulus]

Cool stuff!

     Burton had the robot and the burning cattle but he left out the plague of giant insects.

   
   

[Josquin des Prez]

I try to come back to SF/Fantasy every now and then, but those writers are generally too abysmal for me to maintain interest for long. One exception has been Jack Vance, who's prosody is actually pretty damn good, relatively speaking. Some of his stories are also quite original. I can't believe he isn't as well know as some of the most popular hacks.

[MN Dave]

Gene Wolfe, dude. Thomas Ligotti.

[Fëanor]

I try to come back to SF/Fantasy every now and then, but those writers are generally too abysmal for me to maintain interest for long. One exception has been Jack Vance, who's prosody is actually pretty damn good, relatively speaking. Some of his stories are also quite original. I can't believe he isn't as well know as some of the most popular hacks.

My problem is that most of my Sci-fi reading was done 30+ years ago so I'm a bit out of touch with more recent works and authors.

I've read at least a couple by Jack Vance and liked them, e.g. The Dying Earth.  Somewhat similar in tenor, I've enjoyed some works of Roger Zelazny, e.g. The Lord of Light.

Brian Aldiss comes to mind: I've enjoyed The Light Dark Years, an oldie from 1964, and the more recent (1982-85) Helliconia Trilogy.

Also more recent, I totally agree with MN Dave about Gene Wolf, especially the New Sun series -- my favorite sci-fil of all time.

An unfortunate writing trend of many authors in recent decades has been to excessive length.  Don't people believe in editting anymore?  One of the first books with the problem from my personal recollection was Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.  Presently I'm struggling through Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (on the recommendation of MN Dave and DavidW) -- this book is 324 pages (in my edition) and it could do  with 100+ fewer pages.

The other tendious trend has been endless sequels.  The first to mind is mind is Robert Howards' Arrakis series; I enjoyed Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune.  After that it became a bore.   The Arrakis story was take up by others after the author's death with various "prequels" not nearly as well written as Herbert's own work.  Shot me now!

Another example is Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama series, the first book was a great work, the rest not so much -- futhermore they each tended to the excessive length problem.

Yet another example of too, too many words, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy.  I gave up about 1/2 way through Red Mars -- too many words, too few thoughts.  [ Low thought/word ratio   ]

[Fëanor]

Well, I've struggles through Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.  This was on the recommendation of my son, MN Dave, and DavidW, not to mention its Hugo and Nebula Awards.

My earlier comment at about this book at 60% of the way through was that it is boring.  Unfortunately the last 40% did not redeem the book in my esteem.  The "surprise" but unstartling denouement did not make for hundreds of pages of repetitious boredom.

Respectfully to the above, well-meaning individuals and the respective award committees I submit the following criticisms of Ender's Game:

• Not dissimilarly from many sci-fi novels of recent decades, it is far too long for the ideas presented.  It would be much less insufferable for being editted down by a hundred pages or so.
• The writing style is primitivist naive -- the writer doesn't have a brilliant way with words that would otherwise have relieved the tedium of having a very excessive number of them.
• The sci-fi ideas themselves, at least for 2009, are pretty déjà vu.
• The notion of an invincible, 11 year-old super genius might appeal to juvenile Play Station enthusiasts but is a puerile fantasy and offensive intself. (It brings to mind Star Wars Episode I wherein a 8 year-old Anakin Skywalker and and 12 year-old Princess Whats-her-name shatter the scant plausibility of the plot in aid of flogging action figures to young children.)

My next read, on MN Dave's recommendation, is Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerebus.  My expectation here is much higher.

[MN Dave]

Enjoy! (I hope.)

[DavidW]

• Not dissimilarly from many sci-fi novels of recent decades, it is far too long for the ideas presented.  It would be much less insufferable for being editted down by a hundred pages or so.

Well it's a novel, not an essay.  If you want ideas pretending to be stories, turn to Asimov, Clark, Egan etc  In fact how you are critiquing this work is inappropriate for a novel.  The novel is an expansive tapestry that's not meant to be a lean presentation.  It's about as insightful as criticizing an opera for having too many notes.

• The writing style is primitivist naive -- the writer doesn't have a brilliant way with words that would otherwise have relieved the tedium of having a very excessive number of them.

Agreed.

• The sci-fi ideas themselves, at least for 2009, are pretty déjà vu.

I can see your point, I think I might have tossed it aside had I read it now and not when I was a youngling.  But then again I liked The Forever War, and I read that less than a year ago, and it feels cliche simply since it's been ripped off so much.

• The notion of an invincible, 11 year-old super genius might appeal to juvenile Play Station enthusiasts but is a puerile fantasy and offensive intself. (It brings to mind Star Wars Episode I wherein a 8 year-old Anakin Skywalker and and 12 year-old Princess Whats-her-name shatter the scant plausibility of the plot in aid of flogging action figures to young children.)

I read it when I was a kid, so I can see your point.  However, the comparison to Ep I doesn't work because Ender's Game is in essence of coming of age story, and Ep I is not.  Ender's Game wasn't written to sell toys (unlike Ep I), and it might seem like a clever analogy to you, but it flat out doesn't work.

[Fëanor]

...
I read it {Ender's Game} when I was a kid, so I can see your point.  However, the comparison to Ep I doesn't work because Ender's Game is in essence of coming of age story, and Ep I is not.  Ender's Game wasn't written to sell toys (unlike Ep I), and it might seem like a clever analogy to you, but it flat out doesn't work.

I conceed your point here, although Episode 1 did come to mind for me.

[DavidW]

Hey this is for you dude.

Dear Peter Wiggin: This letter is to inform you that you have received enough upvotes on your reddit comments to become president of the world.  Please be at the UN tomorrow at 8:00 sharp.

[Fëanor]

Hey this is for you dude.

...from Title:
Dear Peter Wiggin: This letter is to inform you that you have received enough upvotes on your reddit comments to become president of the world.  Please be at the UN tomorrow at 8:00 sharp.

Cool.  And of course, very consonant with the novel.

[DavidW]

Cool.  And of course, very consonant with the novel.

Yeah well maybe criticism isn't that far off, now that I think about it...

It does seem kind of absurd!

[Bogey]

Earlier this year:

Dracula (1931)



Obviously the role that defined Bela Lugosi, of which he only played the role of Dracula one more time in Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).  (I believe he played a vampire at least a couple(?) more times.) Though I enjoyed Stoker's novel much more, I believe this is must see monster stuff.  I noticed while viewing that the character of Dracula never shows his fangs.  In fact, I do not recall him ever being filmed actually biting a neck, but rather just heading that way.  Such was 1931 where the power of suggestion took care of a "show everything" type filming that recent monster films are notorious for.  Lastly, if you do not care for the type of acting that these older monster films provided, at least watch it for the sets.  Truly incredible.  As a bit of trivia: He was buried in the cape he wore in this film.

Today:

Drácula (1931 Spanish)



It was not Lugosi, but it's too bad that the director, George Melford, did not do both of them.  This had better shots and just developed more fully with its extra half hour of filming.

Next up, Dracula's Daughter.


UNIVERSAL DRACULA RUN:
Dracula (1931)
Drácula (193I Spanish)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
Son of Dracula (1943)
House of Frankenstein (1944)
House of Dracula (1945)
Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

[Hollywood]

Universal Studios 1931 Dracula is to this day one of my favorite films. I have always been a horror film fan (especially about Dracula and vampires in general) and for me Lugosi is my favorite Count. He was handsome and he had the perfect accent for the part. It was as if he was destined to play Dracula. Way back in the early 1970s at Universal Studios Ampitheater they had a horror film festival where they showed all of their classic Universal horror films from the 1930s and 1940s. We attended the night when they were showing Dracula and Frankenstein. This was an evening I would never forget, watching my favorite film at the studio where it was originally filmed.

Shortly after this event I became a member of the Count Dracula Society where I was able to meet actors who were in other Dracula or vampire/horror films like Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, William Marshall, Darrin McGavin, Elsa Lanchester and Fay Wray. I even met Bela Lugosi Jr. who was very nice and understanding when I asked him for an autograph. At that time he told me that no one had ever asked him for an autograph so he was a bit taken by surprise when I approached him for one. I then had to tell him how I was a huge fan of his father and his films. I also had to tell him that my grandfather had met his father a few times back in the 1950s and how he enjoyed being able to speak Hungarian with him about life back in the old country.

So needless to say the 1931 Dracula is a very special favorite of mine and I will never grow tired of watching it (I have seen it about 50 times). As you can see from my profile signature below, this is my favorite Count Dracula line from this film. It's also one of my all time movie lines ever.

There are far worse things awaiting man than death.

[Bogey]

Ah, what a great evening that must of been.  What year was it specifically, if you recall?  I have always been a huge Dwight Frye fan, especially as his role of Fritz in Frankenstein, but he also nails it as Renfield!

[Joe Barron]

I'm very out of touch with recent works and authors if the sci-fi genre. I'm still working y way through Clarke. Have finished Songs of sdistant Earth and just picked up Rendezvous with Rama.

Over the weekend I read Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars, which I tried to read as a boy but couldn't finish. It might have been too old for me then. In any event, it made me absolutely sick. What starts out as a charming portriat of a young girl in space end as a sadomasochistic pseudo-James Bond fantasy --- a disconcerrting combination of futuristic technology and retarded social attitudes. I was spitting out the curdled-milk taste all afternoon.

[DavidW]

Shocking!  Usually Heinlein jumps to his sexual perversions by page 2!   Actually I'm kind of not joking.