Spider of Leng wrote:

Well, I finally read some of the John Carter novels after getting the first 5 in an omnibus edition for Christmas.  Much like Jack Vance, I'm glad I read them, but I doubt I'll read any more or even re-read these ones.  Plenty of action, I guess, but not much character development and the stories tended to be pretty repetitive.  Actually they remind me of Vin Diesel movies.  Buddy action pieces pretty much designed to go from chase scene to capture to chase scene to fight, then repeat, with a smattering of romance that reads like it was written by a teenager.  But hey, at least I can say I read them.

Oddly, I love these novels for the very reasons you state! I think you summed up the Planetary Romance genre pretty well. Lots of action, fighting, chasing, and such.  I appreciate the thriftiness of language that tells a tale of action, romance, violence, cruelty, and loyalty! I get from the tales just the right amount of "character development" to set my mind to the task of enjoying a couple hours of escape from the mundane. I would say that "Mars" has influence my gaming over the years and for the better I think!

Hopefully, once this current issue is past we can gather again with tomas for a one shot.

 

rhialto wrote:

mabon5127 wrote:

Hopefully, once this current issue is past we can gather again with tomas for a one shot.

I'm hopeful, too! Still have my half-blood Pict Runegraver ready to go...
 

Nice!

Spider of Leng wrote:

Well, I finally read some of the John Carter novels after getting the first 5 in an omnibus edition for Christmas.  Much like Jack Vance, I'm glad I read them, but I doubt I'll read any more or even re-read these ones.  Plenty of action, I guess, but not much character development and the stories tended to be pretty repetitive.  Actually they remind me of Vin Diesel movies.  Buddy action pieces pretty much designed to go from chase scene to capture to chase scene to fight, then repeat, with a smattering of romance that reads like it was written by a teenager.  But hey, at least I can say I read them.

It’s interesting how you likewise  bring up Vance in this breath. I read a half dozen tales in The Dying Earth before, really, having enough. I point to the general  amorality of all the characters as the cause for my ultimate dissatisfaction. The fantastic marvels in the worldbuilding just weren’t enough to keep me interested.

I initially thought I was going to give up on ERB, too, but, incomprehensibly, I keep reading him! Perhaps the awful plots and ridiculous coincidences are mitigated, for me, because the heroes *are* traditional heroes and the villains are villainous. I guess I’m old fashioned.

Similarly, I gave up on Zelazny’s highly regarded Amber novels because the characters were reprehensible and utterly politically motivated. But I’m going to try again. Recently I obtained I nice used copy of the omnibus Book of Amber.

Just so I don’t come across as an utter whiner, some writers I absolutely adore are REH, CAS, William Hope Hodgson, William Morris, Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe, and Steven Erikson.

I’m also a huge Inklings reader. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are my first loves, but I recognize that their outputs are secondary to the purposes of this community.

Last edited by Eirvit (1/19/2021 11:46 am)

“Vance & Burroughs just become repetitive for me and I don't get as pulled into the settings as I do by, say, Tolkien.  Even today, I love Tolkien though more recently I've been reading all the histories, Unfinished Tales and posthumous stuff as opposed to LOTR & The Hobbit.”

Me too! These days I’m more likely to be rereading The Silmarillion or continuing to work through the History than The Hobbit or LotR (though it all is fantastic). These days Tolkien gets blasted as “dry” or “boring” or “too descriptive,” and I’m of the mind that this is probably because he first should be regarded as Literature (such depths!), second as “fantasy entertainment.”

Yes, his imitators (or subversives) are lacking. As a kid, I felt alienated by Donaldson’s protagonist. I recently reread Lord Foul’s Bane and now understand why. Okay, we get it, you think it’s all a dream, but oh dear me it’s such a *persistent* dream. Don’t you think there should come a time (you plaintive whiner) when you should just give in and *enjoy* it (if not believe it, which you have every justification in doing)?

As far as D&D novels, I try, now and then, to keep reading the main Dragonlance line (as a kid, I completed Legends, of course, fell away from the Tales). I’m up through Dragons of Summer Flame (I’m trying to read, in order, everything that directly contains Weis’s fingerprints, so I recently started Kang’s Regiment). They’re still pretty all right. There’s vivacity and invention in the writing, but they’re still (apparently) directed at younger audiences.

I’ve become sort of academically interested in the gaming connection with Weis and Hickman’s work (though I also should read some Greyhawk novels sometime, and Feist) because of how crazy excellent Erikson (and, to a lesser degree, Esslemont) is and how those masterpieces grew out of gaming.

Hmmm, well I think Vance is definitely an acquired taste, and it's a very different taste from Tolkien (I also appreciated the recent books his son published, and have half a mind to re-read the Silmarillion). The two authors really seem to have opposite ethoi, and with Vance some of the pleasure is the command of language and sly humor.

tomas wrote:

mabon5127 wrote:

Hopefully, once this current issue is past we can gather again with tomas for a one shot. 

I'm looking forward to continuing the adventure. 
 

Great!  I would love to begin playtesting the second section in person.
 

Sadly; I'm not in Annapolis anymore but I'd be up for Skyping or Zooming in if you guys play again.  Incidentally, over the course of several adventures last summer and fall, our whole AS&SH party got killed.  So we've been playing other games the past few months. 

mabon5127 wrote:

Eirvit wrote:

rhialto wrote:

Hmmm, well I think Vance is definitely an acquired taste, and it's a very different taste from Tolkien (I also appreciated the recent books his son published, and have half a mind to re-read the Silmarillion). The two authors really seem to have opposite ethoi, and with Vance some of the pleasure is the command of language and sly humor.

I don’t disagree with this at all! I hope it’s understood that the Spider of Leng and I merely were describing our reading preferences, not gatekeeping or establishing any kind of “literary hierarchy.”

Everyone's opinion is most welcome!
 

Indeed!

tomas wrote:

One of the few good things to come out of last year is that I reconnected with my college buddies and we have been playing AD&D every Friday night via Zoom. It can get awkward with showing maps, but in general it works fairly well.

Yup, Roll 20 allowed our group to stay partially connected during the worst of the lockdown! 
 

Nothing unusual; we've been playing our Swords & Wizardry/Labyrinth Lord mashup or OSE with a bit of DCC added.  Also a couple sessions of DCC RAW just to see how it plays.  The S&W party is currently in the middle of Rappan Athuk.