The Reading Corner.

[Sigma]

Embassytown is amazing. It's set on a human settlement on the very edge of colonized space, where the colonists coexist with the natives, a race called the Arieke. Their native language can only be spoken by humans if they are specially engineered clones called Ambassadors, as the language requires two voices speaking simultaneously with one thought pattern. It's a really incredible study about the nature of language and how it shapes societies, and about the distinction between words, thoughts and the ideas that they represent.

[Buster's Uncle]

Now on to The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Hardly teh suck, but you know that anything I take over a week (a very annoying week with my internet connection constantly cutting in and out and driving me nuts) to read didn't exactly send me.

...

Catch a Falling Star by John Brunner.

[Buster's Uncle]

Catch a Falling Star by John Brunner.

Not that good - the first draft was written in 1958, and it shows.  Not terrible, but not great.

...

The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card.

[Doc Nebula]

Currently reading JONATHAN STRANGE & Mr NORRELL by Susanna Clarke.  Weird but delightful.

Prior to that, LORD VORPATRIL'S ALLIANCE by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Not one of the good Vorkosigan books, unfortunately.  Whenever Bujold does one of these "Let's rehabilitate Ivan" efforts, I can't  help but remember how he used to sexually harass Elena and Ellie (and various others) back in the early days of the series.  He was just generally loutish and dislikeable.  I guess people can change, but I don't buy it . To me he'll always be 'that idiot Ivan'. 

Prior to that, THE SERPENT SEA by Martha Wells, which was excellent, although not as good as the other pseudo Victorian stuff she won't write any more because it doesn't sell very well.  Which saddens me. 

Also, I'm kind of hitting my Kindle version of SALEM's LOT when I need a quick hit of early King.  I'm not a junkie or anything.  I can quit any time I want.  I just don't want to.

[Buster's Uncle]

I think King is a much better writer than you generally give him credit for being.  The very fact that all he writes about is the monster under the bed, and I've still read a fair bit of King, is testimony to that.  I have zero interest in the monster under the bed, let alone being afraid Danny Glick will slip in the window and bite me - but he writes about those things so WELL.

And I am still afraid of Danny Glick.

[Doc Nebula]

King is an AWESOME writer.  He's just a victim of his own success.  Any publisher in the world will happily publish ANYthing he writes now, and he's gotten really, really lazy. 

He won't allow himself to be edited, and he doesn't have to work any harder than he feels like, and I very much doubt he's written a second draft in twenty five years.

It's exactly the same thing that happened to Thomas Harris.  His first three books are great.  Once Hannibal Lecter became a cultural icon, though, he refused to allow any editorial changes to his books and just wrote whatever the hell he felt like... and all his books since SILENCE OF THE LAMBS have sucked HARD. 

But early King... up until IT, excluding CUJO, which just blew hard chunks... absolutely rocks. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Same thing with Heinlein, I'll venture.

[Sigma]

I think King is a much better writer than you generally give him credit for being.  The very fact that all he writes about is the monster under the bed, and I've still read a fair bit of King, is testimony to that.  I have zero interest in the monster under the bed, let alone being afraid Danny Glick will slip in the window and bite me - but he writes about those things so WELL.

And I am still afraid of Danny Glick.

Actually if you look at King's bibliography, Monster-Under-The-Bed horror books probably make up less than half of his stuff; it's just what he's known for. More recently I think he's been getting back into science-fiction after he left it early in his carrer after The Jaunt and The Long Walk. If you haven't you should really give 11-22-63 a shot, it's amazing.

EDIT: King can't really be faulted for Cujo since he was so stoned/drunk during that period that he doesn't even remember writing it.

[Doc Nebula]

King CAN be faulted for CUJO, as it sprang from his overwhelming ambition to be taken seriously as a literary writer, which is (a) stupid, pulp is better and (b) stupid, because he's not a good literary writer,  he's the best [intercourse gerund] pulp writer in history. 

As to 11-22-whatever, I read it and as soon as I discovered that it was set in the King Horrorverse instead of being about, you know, the actual historical Kennedy, I lost a lot of interest.   But, worse, King was proseletyzing the viewpoint that if Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, the present day would be a radioactive nightmare, and that's just... a forggin DOWNER, man. 

Plus, the whole time travel gimmick is just King at his laziest.  "I WANT it to work like this.  I NEED it to work like this.  So it works like this.  Nyaaaah nyaaaaah." 

But I reread everything King wrote before IT, with the exception of CUJO, pretty regularly.

[Sigma]

King CAN be faulted for CUJO, as it sprang from his overwhelming ambition to be taken seriously as a literary writer, which is (a) stupid, pulp is better and (b) stupid, because he's not a good literary writer,  he's the best [intercourse gerund]pulp writer in history. 

As to 11-22-whatever, I read it and as soon as I discovered that it was set in the King Horrorverse instead of being about, you know, the actual historical Kennedy, I lost a lot of interest.   But, worse, King was proseletyzing the viewpoint that if Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, the present day would be a radioactive nightmare, and that's just... a forggin DOWNER, man. 

Plus, the whole time travel gimmick is just King at his laziest.  "I WANT it to work like this.  I NEED it to work like this.  So it works like this.  Nyaaaah nyaaaaah." 

But I reread everything King wrote before IT, with the exception of CUJO, pretty regularly.

That's not what 11-22-63 is about at all though.

(click to show/hide)

The universe that King set up is one where time travel is possible, but changing events comes at a cost, either personal or global. He doesn't say that if Kennedy hadn't died that things would have gone down the toilet even worse than they already have, he's saying that you should try to  accept the past rather than ruin you life obsessing over it and trying to change it.

In the universe that King created for the book, changing the past disrupts the future in destructive ways, and it's always meant to be negative, as a way to keep people from doing it. Given that it occurs in the same universe as IT, it's not too farfetched to think that there's some kind of outside intelligence controlling it, but it all serves the underlying moral of the story, which is to find peace with your personal history instead of fighting against it.

Did you read Under the Dome? I have incredibly conflicting feelings about that book.

[Doc Nebula]

I read UNDER THE DOME.  Have it on my Kindle.  I have no conflicting feelings about it.  King's narrative style is always wonderfully compelling while immersed in it, but when I got to the end, I just didn't give a flying flark about any single character in it. 

King used to be all about characterization, which was why I loved his books.  Now he just comes up with a funky plot device and throws some cardboard characters into it. 

[Sigma]

I read UNDER THE DOME.  Have it on my Kindle.  I have no conflicting feelings about it.  King's narrative style is always wonderfully compelling while immersed in it, but when I got to the end, I just didn't give a flying flark about any single character in it. 

King used to be all about characterization, which was why I loved his books.  Now he just comes up with a funky plot device and throws some cardboard characters into it.

To me, Under the Dome felt like King was trying to do what he did perfectly in IT, and almost made it, except that he sort of failed to give any of his characters any real charisma, so by the end, like you, I found it hard to care about the people in it. The only one I was particularly invested in was Big Jim, and that's mainly because I hated him more than any character I've ever encountered in any novel.

[Buster's Uncle]

You could come up with a mighty long list of creative people who turned out to be ruined by success, who did all their best work in the dynamic tension of having people around who could still say no to them.  In addition to the print writers already mentioned, I'd add Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas as obvious examples, and there's a lot in comic books, too.

King used to do the most wonderful characterization...

[Doc Nebula]

See, but I hated IT.  IT was the first King I ever read where he just said "frack it, I'm doing a huge book here, I don't have TIME to come up with three dimensional characters, I'm just going to stick in this cardboard and people will buy it anyway".

Also... the mother jugging TURTLE?  Frack you, Steve.

Also, we beat the big clown thing by having sex?  Well, that's stupid, but when it's 12 year olds having a gangbang in the sewers, that's not just stupid, it's offensive. 

[Sigma]

I think King can still write characters. Big Jim in Under the Dome literally raised my blood pressure every time he was on the page. I haven't hated a character so much since Judge Holden from Blood Meridian.

EDIT:

Also, we beat the big clown thing by having sex?  Well, that's stupid, but when it's 12 year olds having a gangbang in the sewers, that's not just stupid, it's offensive.

I won't defend that scene because it's weird and creepy, but that's not what it was actually about. They'd already beaten IT by then, but were lost in the sewer because they had lost their empathic connection. The point of it was to connect them again long enough to escape.

It's still really weird though.