Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (MSoT:) is, IMHO, the finest set of fantasy novels ever written. A friend of mine who's a hardcore Tolkien buff (has the themed chess set) has even admitted that as a piece of literature, MSoT even blows Lord of the Rings out of the water.
The gist of MSoT is, what happens after "they lived happily ever after"? The novel starts with the death via old age of Prester John, the land's beloved king who, in legend, slayed a dragon and built his throne from its bones. The king's sons start a struggle for the throne, but the real story follows a scullery boy named Simon as he flees the castle and "dark forces" (oooh) that are pulling the strings.
It's all pretty basic Joseph Campbell stuff, except that there is no blind "here's the archetypal hero, here's the archetypal bad guy" stuff. The characters of MSoT (and there are a LOT of them) are all very deep and complex; Tad Williams is clearly aware that from each character's perspective, the story being told is their own.
In fact, this storytelling tendency even gets Williams into a little trouble. The first volume of the "trilogy" is enormous. The second (and fastest-paced of the set) isn't quite as large; the third is twice the size of the first. In paperback, the third is simply sold as two gigantic paperbacks. There's an amazing amount of story stuffed into this simple premise.
There have been rumors of Tad Williams doing another set of novels in the MSoT "universe," and I know of one additional short story set as a prelude to MSoT. Shadowmarch might be this additional set of novels -- "Qul-na-Qar" sounds like a city right out of MSoT, and the Twilight People are probably the Sithi. Maybe.
A couple other things: I haven't been able to get into the sci-fi epic he's spent most of the 90's working on. Sorry. VR fiction just doesn't do much for me after Snow Crash. But I really want to give it another chance.
also: Serial fiction rules. For six months I was absolutely GLUED to Barnes & Noble waiting for the chapters of Green Mile to come out. It is so great to have something to look forward to so much every month. Remember when X-Files was at its height and you couldn't wait to see each new episode? It's like that, but literary. This is gonna be FUN.
Tad Williams is well known for going "over-budget" on his novels. Typically, they're HUGE, and each set of books he's written has taken close to 10 years to finish. You'd need an 8meg (or more) flash chip just to hold one of the volumes.
In fact, I think that Tad Williams is the only "fantasy" novelist to out-Tolkien Tolkien himself. His novels have amazing complexity, some of the deepest and best-realized characters imaginable, and Williams has even gone through the effort of writing several original languages to flesh-out his worlds.
After the first chapter of Stephen King's The Green Mile came out, the next six months of my life were CONSUMED by wondering what would happen next. It's like being addicted to a really great television series, but even better! Serial fiction is the tops.
I was disappointed to see that Bruno wasn't mentioned in the article either. It's like Love & Rockets compared to the X-Men and Superman -- there's nothing else like it, and mainstream newspapers could really use it. In the entire history of comics, has any other strip had the title character decide she was fed up, chain a cinderblock to her ankle, and jump off a bridge? Not that we all don't wish Sally Forth would...
Thomas Disch is also the man who is getting scr3wed by Disney, who is making more Toaster sequels and not paying him for rights to the character. And have you actually read Toaster? If you're thinking that a Disney movie might somehow be an accurate reflection of the story it was based on, go rent Aladdin.
re: Poe was responsible for the idea of the novel as an intellectual creation rather than an emotional one.
Um, yeah right. Poe spent a lot of time masquerading as an intellectual for respectability, but I think he was more of a Picasso-type absinthe muddled genius. But that's just me (not that I'm dissing Poe, I'm a huge fan).
w/r/t "most of sci-fi as abyssmal," isn't that the point of the last chapter?
although I actually prefer his "horror" novels (the supernatural Minnesota books) over his science fiction novels. His sci-fi always seemed a little drab to me, but when his books are ground in a contemporary setting, everything seems much more live and extraordinary.
This is a link to a very comprehensive Disch site, and here is one to Amnesia, an Infocom-style text adventure that he wrote back in the mid-'80s (and cites in Dreams).
Just as an aside, the last two digits of prices are frequently codes for the items status w/in the company inventory. $x.88 usually means it's a closeout item and being discontinued.
That's as much an endorsement of flipping a coin (6-sided die, if you believe in third candidates) as I've ever heard. I think I'll vote for Pat Buchanan.
I'm currently working on turning my PIII with an Elsa GeForce2 card into a digital VCR. Unforunately, Elsa hasn't shipped the damned VIVO unit yet... but there are plenty of cheap video capture cards. The Voodoo3 can be had for $100 now.
You've got a company exec who says, "An increasing number of young people don't buy albums, so we are not only losing that immediate revenue. They are growing up with a notion that music is free and ought to be free." Who says that it shouldn't be free? Who appointed this exec God? Or, who appointed "tradition" as fact? The idea that sound is a commodity is a rather strange development that arose due to the limitations of technology and some clever businessmen.
Out here in Utah, we like to say that "the Democrats are Republicans and god only knows what the Republicans are." This is a clear example of what a hypocrite Hatch is.
Not necessarily. It would be wireless, and Apple has no impetus to sell the receiver to outside OEMs. Although the rumor is that the cordless version is so lousy that they're dumping that and shipping the new test models with cords...
I'd like to know how you can justify your work as art. Just randomly throwing paint at the canvas, what are you trying to say, that taste is arbitrary? that what we call art is just so much existential smatterings in the cosmos? Do you think you're deep or something?
Oh, wait, I thought that said JACKSON Pollock. Never mind.
OK, so I want some wireless ethernet, but I don't have an Apple... the 3Com and Cisco wireless cards look pretty good, and not completely unreasonable at $250 each (see this article), but the "wireless hubs" cost over $1000 each!!! Does anyone know for sure if one of those swank Apple $300 Base Stations will work with a Cisco or 3Com wireless card?
Agreed. I've been screwed left and right on three different sites by domain "brokers." Don't these people feel guilty for not actually working for a living?
TI says this, huh? The same guys who haven't sold a successful personal computer since the TI99-4A? Yeah, I'm sure these guys know what they're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
where did i get the o in MSoT from??? ah well
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The gist of MSoT is, what happens after "they lived happily ever after"? The novel starts with the death via old age of Prester John, the land's beloved king who, in legend, slayed a dragon and built his throne from its bones. The king's sons start a struggle for the throne, but the real story follows a scullery boy named Simon as he flees the castle and "dark forces" (oooh) that are pulling the strings.
It's all pretty basic Joseph Campbell stuff, except that there is no blind "here's the archetypal hero, here's the archetypal bad guy" stuff. The characters of MSoT (and there are a LOT of them) are all very deep and complex; Tad Williams is clearly aware that from each character's perspective, the story being told is their own.
In fact, this storytelling tendency even gets Williams into a little trouble. The first volume of the "trilogy" is enormous. The second (and fastest-paced of the set) isn't quite as large; the third is twice the size of the first. In paperback, the third is simply sold as two gigantic paperbacks. There's an amazing amount of story stuffed into this simple premise.
There have been rumors of Tad Williams doing another set of novels in the MSoT "universe," and I know of one additional short story set as a prelude to MSoT. Shadowmarch might be this additional set of novels -- "Qul-na-Qar" sounds like a city right out of MSoT, and the Twilight People are probably the Sithi. Maybe.
A couple other things: I haven't been able to get into the sci-fi epic he's spent most of the 90's working on. Sorry. VR fiction just doesn't do much for me after Snow Crash. But I really want to give it another chance.
also: Serial fiction rules. For six months I was absolutely GLUED to Barnes & Noble waiting for the chapters of Green Mile to come out. It is so great to have something to look forward to so much every month. Remember when X-Files was at its height and you couldn't wait to see each new episode? It's like that, but literary. This is gonna be FUN.
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Tad Williams is well known for going "over-budget" on his novels. Typically, they're HUGE, and each set of books he's written has taken close to 10 years to finish. You'd need an 8meg (or more) flash chip just to hold one of the volumes.
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In fact, I think that Tad Williams is the only "fantasy" novelist to out-Tolkien Tolkien himself. His novels have amazing complexity, some of the deepest and best-realized characters imaginable, and Williams has even gone through the effort of writing several original languages to flesh-out his worlds.
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After the first chapter of Stephen King's The Green Mile came out, the next six months of my life were CONSUMED by wondering what would happen next. It's like being addicted to a really great television series, but even better! Serial fiction is the tops.
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Old Toshiba P75 w/ 48mb RAM. Perfect for sitting on the counter, little e-mail, little news, etc.
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I was disappointed to see that Bruno wasn't mentioned in the article either. It's like Love & Rockets compared to the X-Men and Superman -- there's nothing else like it, and mainstream newspapers could really use it. In the entire history of comics, has any other strip had the title character decide she was fed up, chain a cinderblock to her ankle, and jump off a bridge? Not that we all don't wish Sally Forth would...
- - - - -
Thomas Disch is also the man who is getting scr3wed by Disney, who is making more Toaster sequels and not paying him for rights to the character. And have you actually read Toaster? If you're thinking that a Disney movie might somehow be an accurate reflection of the story it was based on, go rent Aladdin.
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Um, yeah right. Poe spent a lot of time masquerading as an intellectual for respectability, but I think he was more of a Picasso-type absinthe muddled genius. But that's just me (not that I'm dissing Poe, I'm a huge fan).
w/r/t "most of sci-fi as abyssmal," isn't that the point of the last chapter?
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although I actually prefer his "horror" novels (the supernatural Minnesota books) over his science fiction novels. His sci-fi always seemed a little drab to me, but when his books are ground in a contemporary setting, everything seems much more live and extraordinary.
This is a link to a very comprehensive Disch site, and here is one to Amnesia, an Infocom-style text adventure that he wrote back in the mid-'80s (and cites in Dreams).
- - - - -
Just as an aside, the last two digits of prices are frequently codes for the items status w/in the company inventory. $x.88 usually means it's a closeout item and being discontinued.
- - - - -
That's as much an endorsement of flipping a coin (6-sided die, if you believe in third candidates) as I've ever heard. I think I'll vote for Pat Buchanan.
- - - - -
I'm currently working on turning my PIII with an Elsa GeForce2 card into a digital VCR. Unforunately, Elsa hasn't shipped the damned VIVO unit yet... but there are plenty of cheap video capture cards. The Voodoo3 can be had for $100 now.
- - - - -
You've got a company exec who says, "An increasing number of young people don't buy albums, so we are not only losing that immediate revenue. They are growing up with a notion that music is free and ought to be free." Who says that it shouldn't be free? Who appointed this exec God? Or, who appointed "tradition" as fact? The idea that sound is a commodity is a rather strange development that arose due to the limitations of technology and some clever businessmen.
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after his contract with Warner Bros. records expired.
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Out here in Utah, we like to say that "the Democrats are Republicans and god only knows what the Republicans are." This is a clear example of what a hypocrite Hatch is.
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I always wonder about the poor bastards who own bitch.com, since that's where all of my spam e-mail goes... oh well.
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Not necessarily. It would be wireless, and Apple has no impetus to sell the receiver to outside OEMs. Although the rumor is that the cordless version is so lousy that they're dumping that and shipping the new test models with cords...
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Who needs a second mouse button when you can just hold down various keys on the keyboard with a mouseclick? (um... I'm being sarcastic, btw)
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I think it's quite clear from the hockey puck mouse that Apple does not give a flying rat's ass about your comfort or health.
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Oh, wait, I thought that said JACKSON Pollock. Never mind.
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OK, so I want some wireless ethernet, but I don't have an Apple... the 3Com and Cisco wireless cards look pretty good, and not completely unreasonable at $250 each (see this article), but the "wireless hubs" cost over $1000 each!!! Does anyone know for sure if one of those swank Apple $300 Base Stations will work with a Cisco or 3Com wireless card?
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Homeworld, baby. It's all about Homeworld, squads of ships and motion blur.
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Agreed. I've been screwed left and right on three different sites by domain "brokers." Don't these people feel guilty for not actually working for a living?
TI says this, huh? The same guys who haven't sold a successful personal computer since the TI99-4A? Yeah, I'm sure these guys know what they're talking about.