I had that moment when I finished Heinlein's Friday, thinking it incoherent, and acting as some sort of summation of Heinlein's 'philosophy' (to use the word losely). It was selfishness and arrogance made literal. I couldn't even enjoy The Moon is a Harsh Mistress any more.
I hope to god I never get to this place with Dickens...

I had that happen with the Anita Blake series; so painful. I miss those books! Once the "Sue" aspect took over, I couldn't even reread the old ones. I confess that I actually had a little bit of salvage when I read a bit of fan-fic that put the new badness in a different light (insanity); it was so well-written that it worked for me to end the series.

Oh, I know that feeling. Some books break the authors for me. It's not usually Sues, but little writer tics to make things more interesting. I've found that bingereading sets it off, too; I have to keep myself from reading too many Connie Willis stories a week or I stop being amazed.

I’ve never seen a better evocation of that terrible moment when you see too far into the emotional strategies of a work of fiction, and it falls dead for you. There’s no retrieving it. That moment of insight recolors all your previous readings, so that what was once fascinating is now just painful.

Piers Anthony.

No further comment.

I am inching this direction with Allan Cole and Chris Bunch's Sten books. I finished them yet again this month and they are starting to pall a little. Sten is probably a Gary Stu. Not your literary masterpieces, but they were rollicking good fun the first several times.

And Steve, I started my f/sf journey on Piers Anthony. I'll be eternally grateful because he brought me in, that long hot summer in North Carolina. But I haven't picked up a book by him in years, for the same reason.

"Oh look, Francis has gotten hit on the head again."

Thanks for the link! *blushes*

There are probably a few writers for me who've been retrieved--maybe Dostoyevsky--but not many.

When I was reading mass quantities of science fiction as a young teen, I was quite uncritical, but I remember not liking Flandry, who he worked for, or what they did. I love almost all of Poul's work, and I have huge respect for him, so this is interesting. I know he had his blind spots. Some of his very late works are brilliant SF cut through with excruciating (for me) slabs of libertarian polemic. But others are simply brilliant all the way through. Did he write Flandry as a hero without being aware of his flaws? Or is it that Poul knew his history, and that empires and imperial officers aren't always nice? I guess it's time to go back and reread some of those stories. And thanks for the recommendation of Knight.

Did Piers Anthony write anything after Macroscope and Cthon?

> Piers Anthony.
> No further comment.

While there used to be things I could enjoy about Xanth and Phase -- a certain playfulness, evocation of the 'the Game', etc. -- having read Pornotopia (Anthony's 'porn' 'novel'), I am now unable to read a word.

On Anita Blake: I read the books in reverse order (for some reason) and actually I found her earlier personality to be much more annoying. She seemed to think she was right about everything. I found more self-doubt in the later books and liked them better. But I also stopped reading them eventually, because . . . they really are trash.

On Heinlein: I don't really understand how some people can make a distinction between his "good" stuff and his "bad" stuff. Maybe it's a case of the bad polluting the good, but I think of him as an extremely talented writer (when it comes to the mechanics of language and plot advancement) whose ideas are almost indistinguishable from trash. To summarize: Jubal Harshaw.

Piers Anthony is an author I tried to like much longer than I actually did. I loved the early Xanth books in sixth grade and read later ones every year until I noticed how much less I liked them. And still I read them because his first books were good, and he was one of the authors I liked all the time.
I just stopped caring after a while, and since I forced liking it for so long, I don't know when it was.

TomB, I regret never having had the courage to ask.

The author for whom it happened for me was Anne McCaffrey. I greatly enjoyed the first Pern books, but then I found that certain things were repeating themselves, for instance disagreement was always an indication of purest evil (which frankly scared me). Now I find I am unable to pick up even the early ones, as I see the same things there.

I just got the latest Anita Blake novel from the library, and when I got 200 pages in I realized -- there's been one chapter about the vampire hunter stuff, and 190+ pages of weird soft-core porn.

I put the book down and instantly felt better. I went back to one of the early books and found it to be just as enjoyable as I remembered, so I'm not burned out on her writing or the character -- I just don't like where she has gone as a writer. I'm clearly in the minority as she keeps selling better and better, but I'm done reading the new ones.

'I don't really understand how some people can make a distinction between [Heinlein] "good" stuff and his "bad" stuff.'

After reading the bad, late-career stuff, I pretty much wrote the guy off. Then I found a pile of his juveniles, and read "Waldo."

Here's the distinction in my mind. Early on, I think Heinlein understood the meaning of humility, sadness, and wonder.

In "Waldo," a doctor muses that the titular character's condition might be due to environmental problems (broadcast power) and Waldo gets his strength back with the help of a Amish folk magician.

In _Time for the Stars_, an STL ship spends decades out yonder. After the crew is decimated by ocean creatures they don't quite understand the expedition comes to a melancholy end when they are rescued by a new FTL ship.

Somewhere along the line, what the cranky old know-it-all character said became more important than what you could learn from the universe.

Where Heinlein jumped the shark for me was I Will Fear No Evil -- the ending was just a complete cheat. I only finished Job (a pale re-working of Glory Road) after that.

But this talk of "the good Heinlein" and "the bad Heinlein" is fascinating in how it parallels how people talk about Kipling. More grist for the mill on the idea that their careers and writing are deeply related. Now a look at what was considered "good" and "bad" in each might provide insight into how SF criticism parallels mimetic literary criticism....

Jim said:

"I just got the latest Anita Blake novel from the library, and when I got 200 pages in I realized -- there's been one chapter about the vampire hunter stuff, and 190+ pages of weird soft-core porn.

I put the book down and instantly felt better. I went back to one of the early books and found it to be just as enjoyable as I remembered, so I'm not burned out on her writing or the character -- I just don't like where she has gone as a writer. I'm clearly in the minority as she keeps selling better and better, but I'm done reading the new ones."

I too am one of the Anita Blake fans who's jumped ship because of the direction the storyline has gone. I cheerfully admit that the series is total potato-chip fiction, but every so often Ms. Hamilton used to make me smile with neat concepts and imagery; I really liked her Oldest Vampire On the Planet, old enough that he wasn't even Homo Sapiens, and the imagery of a vampire immolating himself in daylight as an act of self-sacrifice and redemption, surrounded by a cloud of his totem butterflies.

The last one I read was Narcissus in Chains and I haven't touched another one since.

Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed so meaningful when I was thirteen. Alas...

Tom Whitmore said: But this talk of "the good Heinlein" and "the bad Heinlein" is fascinating in how it parallels how people talk about Kipling.

I am now equally fascinated. What is considered good vs. bad Kipling?

On Heinlein's early work: I don't remember the name of the collection that includes his time-travel stories, but I think they were all fairly early, and I do remember liking them a lot. They were more melancholy than most of his other stuff - sometimes they were even permitted to have unhappy endings. Is there something about time travel that is inherently pessimistic?

On I Will Fear No Evil - the ending is kind of lame, but maybe he had used up all his inventiveness on the sex-change stuff. That is one crazy book. When I hear people say "Number of the Beast was when Heinlein lost it," or when they start mentioning brain surgery, I think of IWFNE and laugh.

Laura: I stole the phrase from Elliot Gilbert's book The Good Kipling: Studies in the Short Story. According to him, people who only like "the good Kipling" are upset about his supposed racism and paternalism, and Gilbert argues that this is based on quotes taken out of context (e.g. the phrase "The White Man's Burden", from a poem that is very ambivalent about the kind of paternalism Kipling was said to espouse). Much of Kipling's later work is not as good as the earlier in a different way from this -- more similar to Heinlein's problems in later books.

Mr. Bill, Dickens was starting to go that way in Edwin Drood. One day, his publisher came to call, read over the author's shoulder for a minute or two, then realized with horror what he was going to have to do.

I read the first three ER Burroughs Martian Warlord books and they were fun. I think the fourth one started to get repetative and I realized their were 8 or 9 more books in the series. Then I tried to read one of his Venus books and was put off by the preface, of all things, which lingered on Burrough's fondness for the Eugenics movement. I can handle a little wishfulfilment on the part of the author, so long as it's got a sense of energy and lack of shame but Eugenics is just creepy.

TomB: the Flandry books started as "original novels" in the old Ace double-novel days; they were very obviously science fictional pastiches of the James Bond novels, which were becoming wildly popular during the early 1960's.

Even as a not-very-critical teenager, the early Flandry stuff struck me as pretty minor work, but Anderson was a prolific writer of fairly serious stuff. I don't think he wrote them simply for easy money, in other words; I think he wanted to amuse his readers with something light and frivolous, and Ace gave him the opportunity.

Time passed, the Flandry series mounted up, Anderson and all the rest of us aged, the USA itself aged and took on tarnish, our foreign adventures were not all successful, our domestic leaders were not without flaw.

The times were sobering, I'm trying to suggest, and Anderson was shaped by them. And when the time came to generate some backstory and weld together a rather patchy series of tales, Anderson became more serious, Flandry became more serious, the governing metaphor switched from Cold War enthusiasm to Fall of the Roman Empire stoicism. I'm fairly certain this was deliberate; I will not guess at a motive.

My 2 cents.

I think I read about 7 of the ER Burroughs Martian books altogether, and not necessarily in order.

A few months back my wife got us new book shelves. So everything came out of the old shelves and then into the new ones. When I came upon my old paperbacks from my teens I did an experiment of reading the first few paragraphs to see if they retained any power. Edgar Rice Burroughs - got old real fast. Kenneth Robeson - the formula was so transparent. Robert E. Howard - I had to stop myself and get back to work after finding I was on the third chapter and still going strong.

Robert E. Howard + Conan the Cimmerian... need I say more?

Maybe some latitude for Worms of the Earth... nah. I stand by my first sentence ;-)

I had the same feeling reading The Fencing Master. However I did enjoy The Seville Communion a great deal.

Granted nearly everyone has commented on how truly bad The Da Vinci Code is, but the protagonist really is one of the worst cases of onanistic fantasy I've seen on paper in awhile.

I too had the same thing happen with Piers Anthony's work that so many other people describe--I tried re-reading one of his Incarnations of Immortality books recently, just to make sure that I wasn't accidentally cribbing the story line for one of my own stories, and not only was I reassured, but I came away with the memory of the books somewhat tarnished. I can still read 'em because I have that particular gift or curse that lets me read almost anything, but man: so much sexist crapola that I didn't remember from the first time. Meh. One big meh.

While we're on the subject, can I even dare whisper the words, "Star Wars"? We saw it with friends that we were visiting with in Santa Monica, and we all spent some time trying to resuscitate our suspension of disbelief, but it was nigh impossible once we'd started laughing. I got into another argument with a friend, who was trying to say that if I bought X and Y and Z, that I should have no problem with Q. My point was that you get a certain type of "gimme" and you get just the one, and then you should be otherwise consistent with characters and whatever weird logic rules your universe. You can't expect me to do the hard work of justifying EVERYTHING. If you set up a character--we'll call her P--and she happens to be a person who has been immersed in politics since a very early age, and is comfy handling blasters, you don't turn her into a wilting flower in the third movie.

(SPOILERISH:

George Lucas is responsible for the most unbelievable movie pregnancy EVER. The gestational milestones--bump to twins in a few weeks. The post-partum from hell. And the worst prenatal and aftercare in the galaxy. What--we can have respirating droids, mechanical arms, starships, but a Senator for the Republic can't get decent birth control or gynecological services? What was Teresa saying earlier in a different thread about access to birth control making women more bold with their career choices?)

Piscusfische --

I took the lack of pre-natal care to be indicative of the total teenager terror of getting caught, because the Republic can certainly identify the father genetically, and then mayhem occurs.

'Good Kipling'; I think it was Orwell, indeed I am certain it was Orwell, who tied himself in such knots about Kipling that he wound up with the phrase 'good bad poet' as the best description.

The short stories, including many of the late short stories -- "The Army of a Dream", "My Perfect Sunday", the several and various post-Great War loss of children stories -- are just, well, they are why he got a literature Nobel, and I'd say he deserved it.

You have to be a complete and utter turnip to read Kipling's stuff as treating anything (expect possibly the value of doing your job well) as an unambivalent good or an unambivalent evil.

Mike S -- the Flandry stories started in 1951, two years before the first Ace double. A few were expanded for doubles much later. The main early canonical books were published by Chilton in the mid-60s, and were collections. It's possible they were influenced by Fleming, but it's not related to the popularity of Fleming in the 60s.

Mike Shupp wrote my two cents before I could. It's been a long time since I dipped into Flandry, but I seem to recall even the early ones had a certain awareness of the moral ambiguity of Flandry's position. It was much like the better bits of Bond (rather few and far between), that very British sense of toiling manfully in a doomed cause, a tone which is of course even stronger in Le Carre and goes off at a ninety-degree angle in Greene.

Not that Anderson was exactly British. Hrmph.

And I'm quite sure that he knew his history.

Did he write Flandry as a hero without being aware of his flaws?
I suggest the answer is no.

Bearing in mind the influence of Heinlein on the fashion for connected future history with background material for the fans and the influence of Foundation on optimism Anderson's first future history efforts were optimistic in terms of eventual outcome after passing through dark ages e.g. U.N. Man 1953 in The Psychotechnic League - clone your Prince and you're home free.

It's said that like some others there was a disillusionment with faith in the planned state - see especially some of the stand alone shorts I'd suggest Sam Hall 1953 or The Pugilist - I think Dr. Pournelle reprinted a couple in 2020 but I may not remember correctly.

Or is it that Poul knew his history, and that empires and imperial officers aren't always nice? Yes of course see the story Marius 1957 from the somewhat loosely connected series mentioned above in which the good guys do know what they are doing because Hari Seldon crossed universes but are also aware of the costs.

time to go back and reread some of those stories

Sure why not.

Tom Whitmore -- God, how I hate it when a beautiful theory is ruined by ugly facts!

Anna:
I too am one of the Anita Blake fans who's jumped ship because of the direction the storyline has gone.

So's my wife. (Who, coincidentally, is also named Anna -- I just checked your Web page to make sure you're not her.) >8->

She was a huge fan of the early novels. She was still enjoying them as far as Obsidian Butterfly, I think. Then she got sick of the way-too-pumped-up superpowers and the way-too-irrelevant sex, and started reading Charlaine Harris instead. Those appear to be a lower-key, somewhat wryer version of what the Anita Blake series used to be.

(Oh, and you do not want to get either of us started on Hamilton's faerie novels. Argh.)

Heh. Should I ever become famous, if I start writing Sues/Stus or rehashing my old plotlines over and over, I give advance permission for someone to slap me. Then, while I'm too stunned to do anything, tell me I'm recycling myself.

I, too, used to be a Laurell K. fan. While I have nothing against porn--I've written a fair piece of erotica in my time--I object to Mary Sue PWPs. There's no plot, no real character development, and only the occasional shiny new image to make me go, "Ooh." If Laurell could recapture the old action and notions of self-restraint and blend them with the new, self-doubting Anita (maybe without the hordes of man-slaves and the uber-elite powaz), I'd take her up again in a minute. (A good, solid plot wouldn't hurt, mind.) But if I want bog-standard sex and guys in old-fashioned clothing, I'll read one of my mentor's old Regency romance novels for free.

*doesn't get why people need to write Sues and Stus, when flawed, fragile, real characters are so much more fun to work with*

Piscusfiche:
.

.

.

.

A spoilin' we will go...

.

.

.

George Lucas is responsible for the most unbelievable movie pregnancy EVER.

You forgot about the twins who were clearly two months old and must have weighed fourteen pounds each. (Says the current proud father of a fourteen-pound two-month-old.) >8-> If she really gave birth to those two, it's no wonder she was too exhausted to go on!

The pregnancy was one of the minor things that annoyed me about the movie, only because it would have been so easy to get right. $115 million dollar budget, Yoda alone costs millions to render, and they can't achieve realistic human baby effects. Pshaw.

(The major thing that annoyed me about the movie was that the Jedi were assholes, who in many ways got what was coming to them. But that's another rant, and way too off-topic here.)

"You forgot about the twins who were clearly two months old and must have weighed fourteen pounds each."

Poor little nippers. Half that weight is midichlorians.

Steve E., it sounds as if your wife and I have more in common besides our name! :) Obsidian Butterfly was the last Anita Blake I actively enjoyed--partly because I liked Edward as a character and partly because it was a relief to get a vacation from all the Jean-Claude-vs.-Richard relationship angst.

As for the Merry Gentry books, heh. A good friend of mine once remarked that she didn't need to read Ms. Hamilton's fantasies about sex with long-haired elf boys, she had plenty of those on her own. ;) That sums up my opinion about that series quite nicely.

I too read Charlaine Harris and have indeed noted the similarity to the Anita Blakes in tone, only without the gratuitous gore and sex. Which is making Ms. Harris' books a lot more enjoyable to me these days.

Steve Eley - not to mention, most of them were utterly incompetent.

This thread is a great source of "Dear lord, it's not just me!" moments. Ah Piers Anthony and Laurel K Hamilton.

I too was much enamored with Piers Anthony, I believe I must have read more than 50 of his books in a two or three year period in high school. Then, while starting on my umpteenth series I realized that the man only had seven characters and four plots, and that I had been reading an exercise in literary combinatorix.

Then there's Anita Blake. Being a big fan of Japanese girls comics, I was very pleased to find a good Harem novel series in the US, with a main character who was much cooler and more capable than the average protagonist in manga series. But I feel that not only does Anita become an extreme Sue, she blows the whole harem formula.

The harem formula is dead simple. Girl meets a bunch of guys, each attractive in their own, distinct way. Girl falls for one (or two in some cases), but still cares deeply about the rest of them, all of whom are still deeply and hopelessly in love with her. While she remains their friend and relies on them for support, their relationships are purely platonic. This allows all the gooey fangirls to "pick" their favorite neglected guy and pine for him in a pleasantly detached fashion.

Anita did that really well at first. I picked up my Asher and sailed along on a pleasant, gooey current. But then LKH screwed it up by having Anita sleep with him now, and Nathaniel, and Jason, and all of the pleasant platonic support guys. Nooooooo!

There are a lot of other deviations from the shojo manga harem forumla, but this was the one that ruined the series for me. Before that, I could ignore all the powerz, and the lack of real cooperation and partnership with her friends, and the very obvious stabs against some real life exes.

I'd have to say that Obsidian Butterfly was the last one I really enjoyed myself. She teased us there with an implication that Anita might be back on the path to self-control.

About a year ago, I read a book by an author whose work I've enjoyed and admired over the years. I was about half-way through before I realized that this book, unlike her former work, was a mess. The main character was a Mary-Sue (thanks to Making Light I knew what to call it); other characters were completely flat, there only to confound or interact with the main character; the plot is confusing, crammed into the book, much of it relegated to exposition that was ungainly and intrusive; and there were several egregious continuity errors, even some spelling errors that could easily be found with a spellcheck.

An example of discontinuity: during a conversation between two characters, one calls the other by the name of a completely different character, some of the time. In another case, there was a race of critters whose name is spelled one way in parts of the book and another way in other parts. This is a good writer, I could see the bones of the book, it just hadn't been fleshed out enough, or maybe there were bones that needed to be eliminated. The characters needed thought. I felt like a was reading a first draft of something that should have been two or three books instead of one.

I haven't included the name of the author or book because I'm curious not so much about this book specifically but rather about the processes of book publishing that might contribute to the publishing a book with these problems.

How does this sort of thing happen-- a bad book by a good writer? Could it be the author loosing her ability? Running into an unmovable deadline? Is there ever an instance when an editor would say, well this still has major problems but we'll publish it anyway? All of the above? Does an editor ever say to an established writer, no, this can't be published this way? Can someone help me understand how this might work?

About 25 years ago I inherited a long run of mid-60s Campbell edited Analogs from a friend of my dad's, whose wife wanted rid of them (even a couple of Astoundings) They had lots of great short stories by Christopher Anvil and Piers Anthony, which I really enjoyed (along with Harrison and Heinlein and lots of others).
Anvil is a bit Gary Stu-ish (at least, the Interstellar Patrol spaceships are), but the characters have to work out how to use their superior tech well. Baen has recently republished some of Anvil's, but is the early Anthony available anywhere?

Imagine my disappointment when I looked in the library for Anthony and found Xanth instead...

Not to mention the anguish when I came home from college in the 2nd year and found my mum had 'tided up' and thrown them all out.

One can argue that Campbell was the most important magazine editor the field has had -- book editor is harder to judge.

S.E. said:

"*doesn't get why people need to write Sues and Stus, when flawed, fragile, real characters are so much more fun to work with*"

I can think of a couple of reasons, mostly based on my experience with text-based online roleplay games.

#1, inserting oneself into the role of the protagonist is a very easy way for someone to develop that protagonist in their heads. If the character is essentially you, you don't have to work very hard to figure out what he or she will do in any given situation.

#2, which is related to #1, a roleplayer (or writer) may be trying to indulge in a form of self-therapy by putting the character into an unconquerable situation that plagues him or her in real life. By having the character conquer the situation, they get a form of escape from dealing with it--or in the better cases, might figure out a way to deal with it in reality as well as in their story.

It takes skill and practice for a roleplayer or writer to do more than this with a story. Not everyone starts off with the talent to do so without working at it... and while it's a skill that can be learned, certainly, not everybody manages to pick it up. Also, as I think is getting demonstrated well in this discussion at large, veteran writers can fall into the trap of self-insertion just as well as neophytes can. :)

I'm one of the folks who doesn't mind the porn part of LKH's Anita Blake books. I can even handle the Mary Sueism. What got to me was the total lack of editing, on both the big and small levels.

I've been disgusted enough with a few books to throw them across the room. LKH's last Anita book got thrown across the room and then stomped on.

I'm with Aconite. Much of what's horribly horribly wrong with Hamilton has to do with editing. And yes, I think the Anita books stopped being interesting after Obsidian Butterfly. Here's a comment I wrote about Incubus Dreams at Amazon shortly after it came out. I'm still getting nasty e-mails about my "attack."
----
This was an extremely difficult book to read. It might be a good book, but it's too annoying to read and enjoy in its raw state; the clumsy editing is enough to violate the tacit trust a reader needs to have in an author. There's an editing error on almost every single page, and that's a problem with the publisher, not the writer.

Now, I've noticed that Hamilton's books are poorly copy edited in general. I expect things like "alright" for "all right," and "midmorning" for "mid morning," but in this book we have, more than once, diety for deity, ardeur spelled in a number of interesting ways, Damian as Domain, and Damain, sauve for suave, put for but (a dyslexic marker, which makes me wonder), libility for liability, particliar for particular, hoptial for hospital, retch and wretch are confused (and, like discreet and discrete, not for the first time in one of Hamilton's books), and a cornucopia of continuity errors, and contradictions of facts presented in previous books. The grammar is, well, let's just say I'm used to reading the work of under prepared freshmen, and even they aren't this bad. Even the grammar and style checker in Microsoft Word will catch its/it's and you're/your, and would of/would have errors. Was there an editor involved? I'm talking about comma splices, and not just in dialogue, commas sprinkled as if they were a seasoning, apostrophes in plurals, and not in possessives, sentence fragments, and Hamilton's long-term problems with irregular verbs, especially lay and lie. We'll skip the creative use of French and German. Incubus Dreams desperately needs a decent line editor--Hamilton's developed a number of repetitive nervous twitches in her writing, including repeating descriptions verbatim (not only from previous books, but repeating them in this book) like frequently repeating that only new vampires flash fang. Limit this kind of reference to once per book--that way, you clue in new readers, but you don't annoy them. I'd guess that at least 25% of this book could, and should, have been cut. A good editor could have really made something interesting out of Incubus Dreams. Right now, it's a mess.

If I hadn't seen this kind of sloppy editing and writing in previous books, I'd blame overly rapid typesetting and a rush to market, but this is just too awful to find any excuse for it, even that one. And I can't even hope that the errors will be corrected in the paperback, based on previous books.
----
I confess to being deeply curious about why the normal editorial process doesn't seem to have happened.

I always thought Heinlein jumped the shark with "Starship Troopers," frankly ... although I loved "Stranger," which came out after it. I still consider Heinlein one of my favorite authors -- nobody, but nobody, could write snappy dialogue the way he could, not even Preston Sturges -- but I can only read the books written before "Starship Troopers" now, except maybe "Job".

Suggestions Poul Anderson drew from history and a whiff of history repeats - perhaps as farce only for those who don't expect to see it through?

This from: "The Price of Buying Time", by Sandra Miesel

Thus it was with the Terran Empire as it had been with the Roman nearly 3,000 years before. .... His son Josip, however, was every bit as degenerate as Marcus Aurelius' son Commodus and his impact on the Empire every bit as disastrous. The disorders that followed Josip's death tossed up Hans Molitor who was an exact counterpart to Septimus Severus, similarly provided with two incompetent sons, and likewise destined to die on an unruly frontier. After another round of civil wars, Flandry became the key advisor to a sound, Aurelian-like Emperor.

The Terran Empire was completing its Principate phase and beginning its Interregnum in Flandry's day. After his death, it became a Dominate, a static, repressive state with all the harshness of Diocletian's Rome. All the negative tendencies of the previous era persisted unchecked. Not even a resort to divine kingship could save the Empire. The Fall, so slow, so long expected, was complete by the middle of the fourth millennium. Technic civilization was extinct. The Long Night had arrived. Emphasis added.

IIRC Sandra Miesel (and Poul Anderson) has some observations on Kipling also worth looking up.

Seems to me Flandry remarked something to effect of "women the other aliens" as an ensign and built from there (who did woman as physiological alien in the house? and I suppose like Tiptree would have tipped the author's own experience?)

I'd like to defend Poul Anderson from the suspicions that he didn't know what he was doing with Flandry. First, he knew his History. I mean he REALLY knew his history, the way Turtledove knows Byzantium.

Second, please recall that he supported U.S. troops in Vietnam, along with Heinlein and many others, in that awkward period where the whole world remembers two full-page ads in the New York Times, one pro-War, one antiwar, both paid for by signatory Science Fiction authors. I'd have advised them in advance that their efforts would cancel out, and to save those dollars earned with ink and blood. In any case, Poul Anderson told me, with amazement, that both he and RAH were attacked over this. "They called me a fascist!" he said, eyebrows raised. Then asked me to e-mail him again about a pseudo-Joycean robot poem of his, as his email has crashed.

Willing suspension of disbelief has gone and come back again for me with several authors. To begin with, I was once annoyed at the character of Odysseus, who didn't seem eager enough to get back to his kingdom and wife. But then, in 3rd Grade, I realized that, although I didn't believe that Neptune was dicking him around, he did, and the audience of the day knew that he did. Whether they were suspending their disbelief or not, deponent sayeth not.

Now that I think of it, the fictional character that phased in and out of W. S. of D was Superman. Hey, how can he push that star? Stars are gas, or plasma. Hey, how can he carry that building by the cornerstone. Wouldn't it crumble under the compression from its own weight concentrated on that small area of his hands? Then I started coming up with SF explanations for everything he was doing, until I was doing more writing than the writer. That was my set of training wheels; now I ride that bicycle more easily.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who can't go back to Heinlein. It started for me with "Time Enough For Love," when I realized I was reading a Jubal Harshaw story with another character's named attached. Then I gave up for years. Unfortunately the book I decided to return with was "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls," where all the Gary Stus of Heinlein's career all get together for... god knows what reason. At least most of them die at the end.

Piers Anthony was an excellent call. I can't believe I read 16 of those Xanth novels, and even moved on to the Incarnations of Immortality series before I finally stopped.

to those I would like to add 2 more:

1. Robert Anton Wilson
2. Tom Robbins

oh, and thank you for telling me the name of this phenomenon. I never knew how to describe the thing I've always hated most about writers I used to like.

Re: "Did Piers Anthony write anything after Macroscope and Cthon?"

Given that the character named "Brad" in _Macroscope_ was first turned into a drooling idiot by alien TV programs, then turned into a giant starfish by a failed attempt at medical intervention, and then died horribly, I have never read anything else by Piers Anthony.

Should I have?

Am I perhaps oversensitive?

"Am I perhaps oversensitive?"

Anthony has written some frothy, genuinely entertaining junk. Sci-Fi romances, in the non-bodice-ripper sense of the word. Some of these I don't feel like I wasted precious life moments having read. (It's been twenty years, so pardon me if I don't provide titles.)

But for every bit of jolly comfort food SF & F he's written, he's written shelves full of awful, self-derivative, sometimes smarmy/creepy stuff. That is what I've come to judge him by.

In General, With Notable Exceptions:

The first book in any Piers Anthony series is well worth reading. There are new ideas, pretty good storytelling, and a bunch of engaging writing.

The series degenerate into formula with nothing new at different rates.

Standalone novels are much more of a lottery as to whether they're worth the trouble or not.

Hey, if you think it's horrible to see through a favorite author's work and ruin it for yourself, stop and imagine what it's like when a reader's comment suddenly lets you see what's shallow and repetitive and overdone in your own published work.

Sometimes it takes me years to forget it and write unselfconsciously again.

Star Wars. Sigh.

I saw part of a show recently calledWhen Star Wars Ruled the Earth, and it made me so sad. I can remember what it was like: how excited we all were, how innocent and young and unjaded we all were. I can remember going to see the first of the movies 28 years ago this weekend. And I remember the intense discussions which went on for hours in the con suite afterwards. What I wouldn't give for that excitement again. It was the movie that changed everything and because it changed everything I can't have that feeling again. If you see what I mean. Sigh.

It was long ago and in another country. Besides, the wench is dead.

MKK

When I was in fifth grade, I started reading L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth "dekalogy" ( a foul, ignorant, self-flattering attempt at a neologism if there ever was one). I finished the tenth book in the series at the end of sixth grade.

I was too young to cop to the real essence of the series (that it was Scientology's coo-coo-for-Cocoa-Puffs crusade against psychiatry, with laser guns and sex), and thought I was reading a serious, intricate, series about interplanetary intrigue. Until I got to the eighth volume or so, at which point the game was up, even for me. I finished the series out of a desultory sense of duty.

See, L. Ron died partway through the composition of this particular Crap Everest, and his literary re-animators dealt with this by the clever expedient of having the ghostwriter(s) dump the previous seven-odd books worth of plot. A whole new fucking story breaks out about 80% of the way through the ten books; the guy who narrated the entire series up to that point gets thrown in prison. Very subtle.

(fuzzy with sleep-dep, but I have a few thoughts)

Seems to me that the big influence on Anderson, very clear and from the first (The Broken Sword), was Norse mythology. Anderson was not, finally, optimistic in the way of Heinlein. Flandry ends embittered and (IIRC; it's been years) corrupted, and the Empire falls into the Long Night; it is the Twilight of the Gods, after which renewal--but long after.

It's odd how macrohistorical themes are woven into that generation's work: Anderson and the Long Night, and later Rome; Asimov and Rome; Blish and Spengler; Heinlein with his faint precursor of the Singularity--he feared the loss of humanity--not the last writer to do so.

On a completely other tack, it occurs to me that my reaction to most popular song has become that collapse into seeing too far. I find most popular music beautifully crafted--the technical skill of modern production is extraordinary--and empty, empty, empty.

About Star Wars: You know, a lot of that excitement isn't anything about the movie or the world, it's just being young. I was nine in 1977--absolutely, positively the perfect age to be when Star Wars burst forth upon the world. But there were a lot of things that stank about being nine, so I don't think I'd go back.

Re: Laurell K. Hamilton and the mutation of Anita Blake, there is a dandy fan website, which pretends to be Anita Blake's blog, and is regularly hacked and hijacked by Jason, Jean-Claude and others making sarky comments. http://www.livejournal.com/users/blakesblog/
(or if you want to begin at the beginning)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/blakesblog/2005/01/08/
though one of my favourite posts is the Ardeur Feeding Schedule: http://www.livejournal.com/users/blakesblog/2005/02/20/

I should try re-reading some of the Leslie Charteris Simon Templar series. Does it count as a Gary Stu if the character is up-front described as swashbuckling and handsome and cleverer than everyone else?

Okay, I confess. I was a Merseian sympathizer from the beginning.

My reply to Randolph vanished into the aether....

BROKEN SWORD is not Anderson's earliest by any means, as at least one of the Flandry stories predates it (in publication, 1951 vs 1954). Yes, the Norse myths are a major influence on him, but I expect that Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL was much more influential on the Flandry stories.

I fear I'm going to turn into the local history (of SF) curmudgeon.

I was 24 when STAR WARS opened (none of this revisionist "Episode 4" crap for me!), taking time off from drilling holes in the ceiling to open The Other Change of Hobbit two days later, seeing the second show for a paying audience at a benefit for Pacific Film Archive. You didn't have to be 9 to be blown away. It changed the way we thought about filmed SF.

Anent Kipling: There is, of course, Orwell's judgement (about his verse) that he was a good bad poet. I've got a lot of time for Orwell, so maybe he was right. Maybe Kipling was a good bad writer of fiction, too. I would defer to the judgement of others on this. But I'll say this: anyone who can write about hanging a man for a murder that he undeniably committed; can put the narrative into the mouths of two hardened soldiers of the Queen in the year about 1885, and can use that to evoke crepuscular horror about the hanging, that writer is no fascist, no blind patriot, no Colonel Blimp.

I loved Kipling when I found him; I love him still. There. I've said it now and I don't care.

Anna said:

I can think of a couple of reasons, mostly based on my experience with text-based online roleplay games.

I know what you mean by it being easier to write oneself. The problem, though, is... they're just not doing that. They're writing ideals--what they want to be, what they would do if they suddenly had super powers and few or no flaws. There are ways it can be done well. Hell, write a Villain!Sue. There's no absolute law that says a villain has to get her comeuppance, but it helps. (Though there has to be some resolution. If the villain wins, she has to claw her way to victory. No, "Oh, you're better than us. Here. *silver platter*")

At the moment, I'm working on an epic non-traditional fantasy trilogy. The POV character and I aren't really that much alike, at least as I am now. If anything, he's a male version of me as a snotty, sullen, everybody-hates-me teenager, zits and all. But, in the end, he's his own character. He's a lot more reactionary and potentially violent than I ever was, and he expresses himself through minor political machination, rather than writing and being weird. If anybody's the Sue, it's one of his fellow apprentices (a loud, raucous, slightly insane boy with a taste for weapons and whores), who's still different enough from me to be unrecognisable. To put it another way: you don't need to write yourself to get into a character's head, and minor similarities are more than enough to give a writer his or her foothold.

Really, if someone just starting out writes nothing but Sues and Stus, it's not a big deal. We've all done it. I spent years upon years doing it before I learned better. However, when someone has got five or six novels under his/her belt, the tendency should be gone. A true Sue is a sign of lazy writing. (On the other hand, a bona fide superman/superwoman is a genuine challenge, because the temptation to make him/her superior in all respects is enormous.) I've spent enough time in fanfic and RPGs to know that Sues really are a natural part of the learning process. I only really get annoyed when pros start writing like amateurs, because it means I've plunked down my hard-earned money to read the sort of thing I could have found on fanfiction.net for free.

/rant *sheepish grin*

Ah, Piers Anthony! What did it for me was an afterword in one of the interminable volumes of Bio of a Space Tyrant. He was writing about being in the hospital, and how his daughter was a candy striper, and he seemed to be dwelling on how hot she looked in her uniform. I don't remember how exactly he expressed it; probably something mild, but creepy. Anyway, it kind of clicked with me that his books were chock-full of rape, incest, and sex with adolescents, all of it presented as sexy and cool, and that he was choosing to present it that way. Haven't touched one of his books since, except to pick up his autobiography for a quick glance at the bookstore. I wish I hadn't - I managed to open right to the section where he talks about how many of his readers write to him that they've been raped, and then proceeds to provide a graphic description of what happened to one reader. At least he feels bad for these women, but his Tyrant character is always getting laid by being sympathetic to a rape victim, or being less willing than other guys to smack up a girl, etc. Or, you know, being a good brother.

Yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Ah, Piers Anthony! What did it for me was an afterword in one of the interminable volumes of Bio of a Space Tyrant. He was writing about being in the hospital, and how his daughter was a candy striper, and he seemed to be dwelling on how hot she looked in her uniform. I don't remember how exactly he expressed it; probably something mild, but creepy. Anyway, it kind of clicked with me that his books were chock-full of rape, incest, and sex with adolescents, all of it presented as sexy and cool, and that he was choosing to present it that way. Haven't touched one of his books since, except to pick up his autobiography for a quick glance at the bookstore. I wish I hadn't - I managed to open right to the section where he talks about how many of his readers write to him that they've been raped, and then proceeds to provide a graphic description of what happened to one reader. At least he feels bad for these women, but his Tyrant character is always getting laid by being sympathetic to a rape victim, or being less willing than other guys to smack a girl up, etc. Or, you know, being a good brother.

Yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

whoops, sorry for the double post. One for Electrolite, one for Making Light!

Lord, yes, Star Wars changed everything. I hadn't heard any of the advance buzz on it. I went because my friends were going, and I had no expectations whatsoever, because you didn't. Not if it was a science-fiction movie. Your baseline assumption was that it would be awful -- either lively-but-stupid or earnest-but-dull -- and you were grateful if any part of it was better than that.

The explosive blare of the Star Wars fanfare, and the introductory text (look, it's the expository lump!) were a revelation. I remember that I was laughing silently but uncontrollably, in what I later realized was sheer relief (this guy knows what he's doing!).

This was followed by more classic SF expository tricks: a nice-looking little planet turned out to be the moon of a huge planet that loomed up out of the bottom of the screen. A very creditable little spaceship was pursued by a frickin' huge ship that appeared in the upper corner of the screen and just kept getting bigger.

The apertures of our brains had now been stretched wide open for marvels and wonders to be dropped in. I can't remember any other movie-watching experience where I so consciously felt myself relax, settle back, and in effect say "Do with me what you will."

I'm trying to remember now what astonished us most. There was the sheer grubbiness of Lucas's universe: things looked used. There was the glorious complexity of creation: many planets, many peoples, many sentient species. The bar scene in Mos Eisley, da dayenu. The beautiful lyrical moment when Luke is watching the suns set, which exactly nailed one of core emotional responses to SF.

Then they left Tattooine, and after that it was all plot hugger-mugger, old tropes skiffied-up and beautifully executed, all of it at that falling-down-the-rabbit-hole pace.

I tell you, we were ravished. Amazed. The world was changed. I can still remember that, even after the disappointments of the first two backstory films.

The Narnia series. I loved them as a kid, but when I read the final book, I realized that the whole thing was written, not to tell me a story, but to convert me to Christianity. I had never felt so cheated in my entire life before, and still haven't forgiven Lewis.

Matt McIrvin said: About Star Wars: You know, a lot of that excitement isn't anything about the movie or the world, it's just being young. I was nine in 1977--absolutely, positively the perfect age to be when Star Wars burst forth upon the world. But there were a lot of things that stank about being nine, so I don't think I'd go back.

I wouldn't go back to childhood, either, but I was -1 when Star Wars came out. That means I was 20 when Ep1 came out, younger than half my friends were when Star Wars came out. Did it save me, or rather, did it save the movie for me? No. There are larger things wrong with that movie than the age of its viewers.

After reading a few authors who "broke" their work for me, I'm always grateful when a childhood favorite stands up to a reread 10-15 years later. Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy is still the trilogy I fell in love with when I was 8. Knowing more about various real-world revolutions -- and more about dialog, character development, etc. -- does not ruin these books for me. I had reread enough disappointments by the time I got to Westmark that I was almost frightened to open it, but Alexander did not let me down retroactively. Whew.

Scott Lynch: You may be the only person who knows about the last few books in the dekalogy without having been ordered to read them.

Interesting I Always was aware that Fladery,like say most of Zelazny's hero's, was not a man you'd want to meet in R/L.
Maybe STARSHIP TROOPER for me.

annetten wrote: "The Narnia series ...when I read the final book, I realized that the whole thing was written, not to tell me a story, but to convert me to Christianity."

Hunh. Funny, for me it was almost the exact opposite. "The Last Battle" was my introduction to religious plurality. The idea that goodness is shared among religions and not the sole province of just the one.

Granted, that may or may not be what CS Lewis was trying to say, but that's what I took from it.

Jude wrote: "Granted nearly everyone has commented on how truly bad The Da Vinci Code is, but the protagonist really is one of the worst cases of onanistic fantasy I've seen on paper in awhile."

Exactly.

I can't figure out why the movie version is attracting such a talented cast.

On Perez-Reverte: The Club Dumas is a lot of fun, a good literary mystery that makes you want to run out and read The Three Muskateers. I hesitate to even mention that the Nineth Gate is based on this book, because it's a weird movie. Polanski took one of the subplots and made it a mystical horror story. With Johnny Depp. So it's fun and wacky but not nearly as intricate as the book on which it was loosely based.

As for Star Wars: I ranted about that on my own blog over the weekend. All I have to say is it's over. The End.

Speaking of the Narnia books, is everyone else here disgusted with the revisionist history that is being promulgated claiming that Lewis wanted the books to be read in "internal chronological order" (that is, The Magician's Nephew first rather than sixth)? True, he said they could be read in that order, or any order one wanted. However, while he was alive nobody tried to put them in that order. And if one is not completely style-deaf, it's obvious that he learned a lot about writing for kids between TLTW&TW and MN, so much that the transition back to that way-too-cute starting style is enough to stop at least this reader dead in his tracks. Took me years to finish the series because of that.

Stupid marketing tricks. Outright lies in publishing. Grumble.

Tom Whitmore wrote:
The first book in any Piers Anthony series is well worth reading. There are new ideas, pretty good storytelling, and a bunch of engaging writing. The series degenerate into formula with nothing new at different rates.

This is an excellent observation, now that I think about it. The first book in the Incarnations of Immortality series, On a Pale Horse, was a terrific book. It was a fantasy book in a science fiction world, and I remember that threw me for a nice little loop. (Alas, the future setting never resurfaced in the series.) And I really dug Tarot, even if I was the only one anywhere who did.

I said "No further comment," but hell, everyone else is doing it, and I want to let this out. What broke Anthony for me wasn't a Xanth novel, but the final Incarnations book, And Eternity. There's a lot to be said against this book -- I found it sacrilegious and I'm an agnostic, for cryin' out loud -- but the "I cannot forgive this author" moment happened halfway through. There's a scene where these two young women, on their quest to figure out where God is and why He hasn't showed up for work in millennia, are traveling to the demesne of Nox, the Incarnation of Night. It's a difficult road and there's a lot of rock climbing.

Meanwhile Nox is screwing with them. She turns one of the girls into a man. And then, because she's now a man, she rapes her friend.

A page or two later and all is set right. She's female again, and her friend forgives her because, after all, that's just how men are. They both thank Nox for the educational experience.

I was sixteen. I was still trying to figure out for myself what being male was about, and this insult made me angry on a very deep instinctive level. It's the only book I have ever literally thrown across the room. I haven't read a Piers Anthony novel since then, and I have decided it would be weakly immoral to give the man any more of my money.

Jude said: "Granted nearly everyone has commented on how truly bad The Da Vinci Code is, but the protagonist really is one of the worst cases of onanistic fantasy I've seen on paper in awhile."

Word. The other thing so few people (in person or online) talk about is the book's sexism. The female character does a couple cool things to establish her as a code-breaker, and then stands around being the object of the hero's desires and the reader's stand-in for the alternate history lesson. Where am I? Oh yeah: The Tempest.

And this is supposed to be a book about the sacred feminine? Please.

My wife and son enoyed The Da Vinci Code. It left me cold during the first sentence, and I read no more. It is a blatant "telling, not showing" error that warned me of Gary Stu.

Clive Staples Lewis [1898-1963] intentionally made himself inseparable from Christianity. His conversion of J. R. R. Tolkien went sideways. But, though I am nominally Jewish, I loved his books, and still do.

Piers Anthony is capable, I think, of writing another book as bizarre and remarkable as Macroscope, but he suffers from the same disease (no, not his diabetes) as Star Trek or Star Wars novelists: the SF-Lite pays far more than the Science Fiction. Hey, he's a professional.

Yes, I was wowed at superficial levels by Star Wars, but immediately warned everyone that it would set back the field by 50 years, which it did. I still consider "2001: A Space Odyssey" to be the best Science Fiction film of all time, with several others slightly below, such as the original (not remake!) of Solaris. I had long dicussions about Star Wars, on the technical side, with John Whitney, Sr., who won a technical Oscar for the crawling title sequence, and who is considered the father of Computer Graphics in Hollywood. His son is responsible for "The Last Starfighter" which is separated at birth from "Ender's Game." I have a T-shirt of "Ender's Game" from Caltech's most recent Ditch Day. It's hero has similarities with other protagonists discussed in this subthread.

Jonathan Vos Post wrote:

Clive Staples Lewis [1898-1963] intentionally made himself inseparable from Christianity. His conversion of J. R. R. Tolkien went sideways.

You've got that a bit awry. Tolkien was a devout Catholic, in part because he believed his mother was martyred for her decision to become Catholic. Tolkien successfully converted the then agnostic Lewis, to the extent that Lewis returned to the Ulster protestantism of his Irish childhood and the Anglican church, though Tolkien of course would have preferred that Lewis become a Catholic.

Mr. Bill, I'll speak in defense of Heinlein's _Friday_. I don't know what you mean when you say it's a summation of Heinlein's philosophy or "selfishness and arrogance made literal".

To my mind it's about how any amount of competence won't do you much good in the face of prejudice, especially if it's internalized.

I can go into detail after I'm back from Balticon, but for now I'll just say that it was a very miniscule happy ending she got, and she's only toned down the self-denigration, not eliminated it.

Lisa Spangenberg:

I stand corredcted, having been rotated somewhere between 90 and 180 degrees by you, to the proper posture. As a result, God had a vision of me. And I died on the cross for Jesus. And I sat in the front row when Buddha lectured under the Bo Tree, and said: "Hey, is that gonna be on the final exam?"

Tom asked: "Speaking of the Narnia books, is everyone else here disgusted with the revisionist history that is being promulgated claiming that Lewis wanted the books to be read in "internal chronological order" (that is, The Magician's Nephew first rather than sixth)?"

Yep. Peter Schakel's book _Imagination and the arts in C.S. Lewis : journeying to Narnia and other worlds_ has a good section on why you should read them in the order written. One of the arguments that stuck with me is that the Lamppost, when first encountered if you read LWW first, is an anachronistic wonder preparing you for the otherworldliness of Narnia. If you read MW first and find out the origin of the Lamppost before you read LWW, what you get is recognition -- "oh, yeah, I know how that got there" -- which is an entirely different effect. Aslan too should be entirely new and wonderful when you read LWW, to get the full effect on the Pevensie children. And I think the Creation may be more effective if you read about the Deep Magic and Aslan's sacrifice first, though maybe that's just me. There's a tragedy and mystery to the Creation when you know Aslan has to be aware it must include the sacrifice later.

Well, at least they are filming the movies in the "correct" order-of-publication order!

I recently re-read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Even as a kid I knew it was a christian allegory, so I was very surprised upon reading it again to find a significant theological fudge. In the bible, Jesus is betrayed by a human and subsequently killed by humans. In Narnia, Aslan (avatar of Jesus) is betrayed by a human and subsequently killed by the White Witch (avatar of Satan). So Lewis lets humanity off the hook for that, which is a HUGE cheat, if you're trying to teach Christianity. Satan didn't kill Jesus; we did.

I also can't stand the thing in The Horse and his Boy where Aslan claws the girl's back, to punish her for letting the servant girl be whipped. A pretty old-testament moment for Aslan there.

Mary Dell: I always thought Aslan did that to teach her compassion. I admit, it's been years since I read it.

TexAnne...it's been a while since I read that particular one, too, but I think you're right about the compassion thing. Still, Jesus mainly taught people by, like, talking to them, rather than injuring them.

Come to think of it, Aslan always seemed kind of mean and scary to me, for a Christ figure, anyway. Not that that's necessarily theologically invalid, but it's an unusual aspect of God to present to children.

S.E. said:

To put it another way: you don't need to write yourself to get into a character's head, and minor similarities are more than enough to give a writer his or her foothold.

Exactly. This is why I find myself with a bit of a sheepish grin at the whole Sue/Stu thing--just because I've found that both in my roleplaying experience and in my writing experience, a little piece of me gets into all the characters. The challenge for me has been to learn how to then let that character become his or her own person.

Really, if someone just starting out writes nothing but Sues and Stus, it's not a big deal. We've all done it. I spent years upon years doing it before I learned better. However, when someone has got five or six novels under his/her belt, the tendency should be gone.

Let me make a general note of that as a goal to shoot for by the time I write my fifth or sixth novel. ^_^

Mary: again, all this is what my preadolescent self got out of it, but I was very impressed by all the repetitions of "he isn't a tame lion!" And then there's "I will return not as a lamb but as a lion." Which is, of course, where Lewis got the idea.

Reshuffling the order of the Narnia books: just plain wrong.

I was a _Star Wars_ early adopter.

Early in 1977, I spotted the novelization in a local drug store. Purple cover with a looming Darth Vader head, crude painting of Skywalker, Wookie, droids underneath. "Soon to be a major motion picture!" on the back, with a plot summary that made even me, at 16, cringe. (I had already gotten a head-full of Niven and Heinlein and Olaf Stapledon for cripes sake.)

I put the book back on the rack.

Then, a few days later, I saw the theatrical trailer.

_Holy F**k&&g C#$p_.

It's hard to describe how utterly cool and slick it looked. It was very understated and unbombastic. As I recall, it just showed snippets of the film. That's all it needed to do.

I bought the novelization (an edition worth a pretty penny these days) ASAP and thought it was "eh!", and while recognizing the silly bits was utterly wowed by the film itself.

But as Teresa sez, it changed everything.

Like many here, I saw Star Wars at the impressionable age of seven; and, well, it made its impression. We lived in the boondocks then (or, well, what passes for boondocks, I suppose), and it was a good hour drive into "the city" to get to the nearest movie theater.

I don't remember how many times that summer my dad took me back to that theater to watch it again. A lot, for sure. It was a magic summer.

Many, many years later, when I was in graduate school struggling to complete my thesis, I had coffee with my mom. I expressed my amazement to her that she had researched and written her doctoral thesis while raising a toddler. "Well," she said. "Whenever I needed time to work, I'd have Dad take you to see Star Wars again."

Steve: I kinda lump the very large babies in with the implausible pregnancy situations.

Graydon: I certainly could justify Padme's stupor-inducing role in Episode III just the way you describe, but it's still inconsistent with her age, position, power, galaxial mores as shown in the other movies, and character as also shown in the other two movies. Nobody is going to force a Senator to reveal who the father is. (And if it's something we learn from one of the books, or cartoons, or whatever, I don't count that as knowledge. The movie should be operating from the position that we HAVEN'T tracked down all supplemental media.) In any case, it's requiring me to stretch my already thinly stretched suspension of disbelief a little further. And that's my point. After a while, one goes, I just can't believe this any more. After all, belief that takes THAT MUCH WORK is a sign of a poorly done job.

On Narnia: I had no idea until the chronological order gits arrived on the scene that people wanted to make rules about the way one reads any series. That said, I do prefer publishers order for artistic reasons. I think that the juxtaposition of the birth and death of Narnia is essential for book seven to make a full impact. Also--the Magician's Nephew doesn't make a very good first book. Without the preceding books, the creation of Narnia is merely a prologue.

BTW, I saw Star Wars seven or eight times in the year that it came out. I took it as mother's milk, because that's precisely what I was doing while my parents watched the movies. I was apparently a very quiet baby in the movie theatre as long as it was Star Wars.

Theresa exactly captures the way the original _Star Wars_ was for me. I was working at MIT then, and several of us had seen an ad for the movie before it opened. It looked like a decent bet so we hopped over to Boston's Charles theatre for the first opening day showing (or possibly the second, hmm).

The moment when the giant spaceship comes on-screen did it for me, and then the lived-in look of the future cemented it.

It's really hard today to capture how revolutionary it all was, since it has become the standard look of SF films. (Has anyone done the old _Things to Come_ antiseptic future successfully since?)

I was twelve years and one day old when I saw Star Wars. I know this, because my parents asked, "What do you want to do for your birthday?" And the trailer came on tv, for a film opening at the local cinema the day after my birthday, and I said, "It's not until after my birthday, but I want to see _that_."

It was not the first sf film I'd seen. Long, long ago, in the days before DVD, in the days before VCRs, one could rent an actual celluloid film, and an actual projector to run it on if necessary, and thus it was that I saw 2001 as a home movie, probably when I was about eight or nine, and I can remember that even at that age it had an impact on me. And then there were the endless Japanese monster movies on Saturday afternoons at the Scout Hall, which were enormous fun, and enjoying scaring myself with late night Friday showings of the old Hammer Horror films on tv, and the old Flash Gordon serials repeated on tv on Saturday morning, and on and on and on.

But Star Wars is one of the few from that time where I can still *feel*, can still play back in my mind, the sensawunda I felt, not just remember that I felt it at the time. I looked at that screen, and I knew that it was drawing on a lot of stuff I already loved, that none of this was particularly original. But it was put together brilliantly, by someone who loved those sources as much as I did, someone who had the special effects resources that took an enormous burden off the disbelief suspenders. I loved it, and I am so grateful that I first saw it at exactly the right age for me to get maximum pleasure out of it.

(And then Blake's 7 came along, and I discovered that what I really, really, *really* liked was dystopian sf, and screw the special effects as long as it had a good script and good actors. :-)

Okay, zen moment of internet cross-connect. Partway down this article, in the section on visual disconnects in the movies, is an analysis of later Woody Allen movies as painful exercises in Gary-Stu-ism (although they don't use that term). Not a new observation by any means, but this may explain what happens to once-fun authors who have fallen prey to the syndrome:

"Back when he had a sense of humor, he made that disconnect with attractive women a source of laughs (and intentional squirms). But by his later movies, his celebrity had fogged his brain. He just acted entitled."

(Thanks for putting the instructions for tags & bold & stuff below the text box! Trying them out for the first time here...)

Hm, didn't work for me. http://slate.msn.com/id/2119620/nav/ais/nav/ais/ is the article.