Replies

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

@bookstodon By “fictional” songs, I mean songs that exist in the universe of the novel, and not outside it (unless set to music as a fan or adaptation practice), like The Road Goes Ever On” in The Hobbit

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago

@bookstodon @negative12dollarbill @Kay I don’t see how a song about a real shipwreck by a real singer qualifies - am I missing something?

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago

@bookstodon @Studio_Gal It’s not just the usual “gratia plena..” etc?

NickEast, 10 months ago to bookstadon

I'm usually chaotic neutral in alignment charts, but this time I'm chaotic evil all the way 😈

@bookstodon @reading @bookbubble @bookstadon @books

#Book #Books
#AlignmentChart #ChaoticEvil #Bookmark
#Bookworm #Bookwyrm #Bookstodon #BookLove #BoostingIsSharing

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago

@reading @NickEast @bookstadon @bookstodon @books @bookbubble
Chaotic good, neutral evil, chaotic evil.

Consistency is no hobgoblin of mine

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago

@lunalein @bookstodon I can’t stand most fantasy aimed at the generation below mine, the people in their 30s and 20s. Ditto historical novels.
All the protagonists have the opinions of young US very online people, all the antagonists are some form of oppressor. There’s no texture to world or characters.
And it’s always hung on a very thin love story where the young woman just needs to gain self-confidence and accept she is lovable.

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago

@andreaslindholm @lunalein @bookstodon I know those well! They always had Soviets in Space, or some clear analogy thereof.

I suspect the reason you’ve not come across the books I’m talking about is they are heavily marketed at women.

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago

@lunalein @andreaslindholm @bookstodon

And the whole point of science fiction, surely, is to try to think beyond that. While the era and culture of origin always show (and in U.S. books, where they’re easy for me to discern, often the politics too), there are science fiction books that make a heroic effort to imagine beyond their origins.

More of that, please!

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago

@stephenwhq @bookstodon

I didn’t say it was universally true, but it’s mostly true of a largesection of the market, aimed at young women.

I also didn’t say the answer was to write as people did 80+ years ago, thoughI think the books that have survived in print that long might have more to them than the flavour of the time, and that there was less cultural homogeneity before the mass media consolidation of the 21st Century.

And I admit to liking Gen X writers best.

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago

@bookstodon @andreaslindholm @lunalein I still find the Vernor Vinge books now marketed as Zones Of Thought mind-blowing. They are not a series and don’t have to be read in order, but A Fire Upon the Deep is the first. Octavia Butler, Ursula LeGuin, and CJ Cherryh, in their different ways, all really tried hard to think past their own cultures.

(I’ve just told someone else I like my generation’s writers best, but these are all from the one above me)

CommonMugwort, 10 months ago

@bookstodon @sentient_water Having recently re-read Earthsea, which I loved as a child for the islands and the magic, I’ve decided the true subject of the series is death.
Have you read her Annals of the Western Shore? I only discovered them recently and love them. The subject there, I think, is liberty.