OT: Books

[s001gmu#nova,wright.edu]

On Mon, 22 Dec 1997, Jon A. Lambert wrote:

> On 12 Dec 97 at 16:38, s001gmu#nova,wright.edu wrote:
> > On Fri, 12 Dec 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> > 
> > > Frank Herbert's Dune.  See Tolkien.
> > 
> > Loved the books, but it's difficult to extract too many ideas from a 
> > Sci-Fi book for a Fantasy theme.
> >
> 
> Actually, I've always thought of "Dune" as from the fantasy genre as well
> as the Star Wars sagas.  Both have that epic (questy?) feel so common to
> heroic fantasy.  And "Dune" is positively medieval, both socially and 
> politically.  

Well, there's medieval and there's fantasy.  Modern western society tends
to blur the line betwixt a lot.  I'm not saying it's impossible to extract
ideas from the books for a fantasy mud, just that it's difficult.

The more I think about it, the less I like to call Dune SF... there was a
thread a while back that discussed 'hard-core' SF, as fiction founded in
science as we know it today, vs 'science-fantasy', or technology w/o any
real explination, bordering on magic.  Dune definately falls into the
later, no?
 
> > Freidman has another good book, 'The Madness Season,' which has a very 
> > interesting take on the whole issue of Vampires, etc.  The ideas in the 
> > book don't directly translate to the way things work (tm) in our system, 
> > but her willingness to break from the mold got me thinking about 
> > alternatives that lead to our current system.
>  
> I liked Ann Rice's "Interview with a Vampire" series.  I think she strongly 
> broke from the mold.  I think that it's hard to remember since she now _is_ 
> the mold.  I'm convinced the WOD environment would have evolved quite 
> differently had it not been for Rice's books. 

That's what I liked about 'The Madness Season', it broke from the mold
Rice created.  :)  I have very little exposure to the WoD stuff, and from
what I've seen, I don't think I'd much care for Rice's work, if the two
are hard to seperate.  *shrug*  I quickly get bored when something becomes
very popular... it gets done to death far too quickly. :)

-Greg