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00:42
Hi.
Not this again! :)
--Hey, Cerbie... have you ever read Foundation?
01:01
@JosephWeissman Yup!
While Asimov is a bit of an annoying narcissist in a way, he's absolutely superb with plots, and his worlds are fascinating (though not as good as those of Vance).
Jack Vance, best SF and fantasy writer of all times, recently deceased.
A few weeks ago.
I'm sorry to hear that!
He was 90 or something. But still.
Iain M. Banks was taken recently, too...
01:03
Aww.
I'm afraid I have never read any of his work.
I've been trying to think of ways to memorialize him. Write about his stuff.
I've been rereading the Culture books. But also reading Lem, Dick, Asimov again too (what I would think of as his sources...)
Though in a way you could say it's almost more Asimov, Tolkein, Herbert; world-builders as you're saying. --I don't know. In a way I'm more fond of Lem and PKD than any of them... :)
I don't know Lem and PKD(?) either...
Stanislaw Lem, Phillip K. Dick :)
Lem's Solaris and PKD's A Scanner Darkly are good introductions, at least probably their best known works I would think
I think there's a new direct translation of Solaris...
01:08
What genre are they exactly?
In what language does/did Lem write?
Speculative fiction, science fiction.
Lem wrote mainly in Polish I think?
OK.
Vance is also a master world-builder.
Although he's a little bit more about societies on a smaller scale than the Foundation.
Or maybe not. It depends.
I highly recommend The Last Castle. It's fairly short, too.
Cool! Thanks :)
Okay, this looks awesome.
(--China Mieville seems worth bringing up here too, in terms of "Weird" speculative-fiction...)
01:21
Ah I have heard of her.
In the SF room, I think.
Him :)
He's a big bald man.
China Tom MiƩville (; born 6 September 1972) is an English fantasy fiction author, comic writer and academic. He is fond of describing his fiction as "weird fiction" (after early twentieth century pulp and horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft), and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird. He is active in left-wing politics as a member of the International Socialist Organization (US), and formerly of the Socialist Workers Party (UK). He has stood for Regent's Park and Kensington North for the Socialist Alliance in the 2001 General election; He published his ...
Haha, oh, dear.
> Miéville works to move fantasy away from J. R. R. Tolkien's influence, which he criticised as stultifying and reactionary.
I totally understand what he means, but I would rather say from the wrong kind of Tolkienesque influence.
The endless orcs and elves are stupid and silly in other books and games.
Almost a sign of bad writing.
Instead, they should take the deeper elements of Tolkien's work and use those.
02:17
Definitely agreed, I think...
Even when the bad guys aren't called orcs, they often still look like orcs.
And elves are really always direct rip-offs.
And yet the Silmarillion seems untouchable somehow... :)
Heh. Let me think...
What element from the Silmarillion would one expect in games or second-rate books?

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