tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331135384154117296.post9002480163431532358..comments2024-01-30T20:01:01.316+00:00Comments on Science Fiction & Fantasy: The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century, edited by Greenberg and Turtledove (Part 1)Anthony G Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00798830903236765181noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331135384154117296.post-44768561327327262572015-08-04T07:30:37.660+01:002015-08-04T07:30:37.660+01:00Thanks for the reply.Thanks for the reply.Robert Eggletonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04261487849716733229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331135384154117296.post-6813024069343766262015-08-04T07:26:08.009+01:002015-08-04T07:26:08.009+01:00I don't, Robert - I have over 100 new books an...I don't, Robert - I have over 100 new books and several times as many old ones waiting for me to read them. These days, I only read new books if they are by authors I know and like, or ones which particularly interest me and have been getting rave reviews.<br />Anthony G Williamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00798830903236765181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331135384154117296.post-27778641651696510972015-08-04T01:51:13.694+01:002015-08-04T01:51:13.694+01:00Hi Anthony,
Do you consider book review requests?...Hi Anthony,<br /><br />Do you consider book review requests?Robert Eggletonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04261487849716733229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331135384154117296.post-7928453312132156802015-07-07T08:18:15.991+01:002015-07-07T08:18:15.991+01:00Having read and fondly remembered a few of the ori...Having read and fondly remembered a few of the original Amber stories long ago, I bought all ten of the stories in one (rather large) volume much later. I agree entirely: the first five are brilliant, the second five are space-fillers.<br />Anthony G Williamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00798830903236765181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331135384154117296.post-71669772972566125482015-07-06T15:44:43.082+01:002015-07-06T15:44:43.082+01:00I picked "The Guns of Avalon" off the li...I picked "The Guns of Avalon" off the library shelf when I was 13 or 14. There was no indication on the cover that it was part of a series, and it worked well enough standalone that I wasn't that put off by the abrupt beginning and end. It was some time later before I found the other books, and then I had to wait for the last one to come out. In retrospect it probably wasn't twenty thousand years, but when you're a teenager time tends to drag...<br /><br />Nowadays Amber would be all inside one thick cover. I've seen two-volume sets of reprints from some time ago.<br /><br />Tolkein was a game-changer for fantasy, but I bet more writers have riffed off Zelazny than Tolkein. And many of them had probably never even read any of the original stories.<br /><br />It's hard to make people understand how *different* Amber was from earlier fantasy stuff; the memes are set so solid people just look at it and go, "So? What's new and original about this, or that, or the other?" <br /><br />Alas, Zelazny followed it with the "second cycle", or however it's described on reprint covers. There was plenty of room in the Amber universe for "missing stories", but absolutely no need to extend it into a second, different series. The Merlin books don't even make coherent sense. And, as such things happen, far more people seem to be familiar with the Merlin books than the Corwin ones.<br /><br />There were some really good bits in the Merlin stories... but not enough to overcome the lack of plotting and the indifferent characterization. And it just drags on and on, with bits of the real series showing up here and there and vanishing for no particular reason. Heck, now that I think about it, the Merlin books have most of the "tells" of ghost-written books, though I'm pretty sure Zelazny wrote them himself. On the other hand, about that time his name was slathered on a bunch of crap as "co-author" pr "created by" ('Alien Speedway', anyone?) so who knows...dlwhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06912456339359889684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331135384154117296.post-91660611085483079592015-07-05T04:51:49.820+01:002015-07-05T04:51:49.820+01:00I agree that alternate-universe SF is a minority i...I agree that alternate-universe SF is a minority interest, although it did to some extent take over from conventional time-travel stories since it neatly avoids all of the "kill your grandfather" paradoxes.<br /><br />Alternative-universe fantasy is much more popular, even if it might not always be labelled as such. Zelazny's "Princes of Amber" series, for example.<br />Anthony G Williamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00798830903236765181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6331135384154117296.post-49822009591958952442015-07-04T13:46:02.571+01:002015-07-04T13:46:02.571+01:00None of those stories sound particularly attractiv...None of those stories sound particularly attractive in your review. And the Niven one is in at least three of the collections on my shelf, all of which I've read more than once, and I remember nothing whatsoever about it.<br /><br />Alternate-universe SF is probably the smallest subset of the SF genre. I read Andre Norton's "Crossroads of Time" and Keith Laumer's "Worlds of the Imperium" when I was very young and loved them, but similar pickings were few and far between after that. Sure, there are more now... more a factor of 40+ years of more being written, not that's there's a higher proportion of it. Unless you lump "urban fantasy" in there...dlwhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06912456339359889684noreply@blogger.com