Mallus said:
I didn't mean to imply you weren't familiar with British SF, I was hazarding a guess as to why you hadn't heard of him seeing as he was only recently published in the US.
Whether or not someone is published in the US should have small effect on the word of mouth, or awards like the Hugo, Nebula or World Fantasy awards which would spread the authors fame.
The British SF/F on my bookshelf are all US editions, well, except for books 2-6 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, 'cause I got hooked.
I have a few Silverburgs in British editions because of the difficulty in finding some of his works in the American edition.
I like Banks, too. After Light, my favorite recent SF novel is his Use of Weapons. They're both really strong works.
I'm very fond of banks, but less so of 'Use of Weapons'. I think it is one of those 'love it or hate it', works, because it seems like its either every fans favorite or every fans least favorite. I prefer 'Look to Windward'.
Of course not. Then again, neither do do I believe that the The Book of the New Sun should be the model for all fiction, despite my unabashed adoration of them.
Well, yes. If we all wrote exactly the same, what a boring world it would be.
Different books have different aims. Harrison's advice applies to certain modes of fiction.
Basically, his own.
"Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding." - M John Harrison
I'm not the one claiming universality.
In the same way that creating/evoking a setting a la Tolkien in Middle Earth isn't a universal for good fiction.
All I have to show is that creating/evoking a setting can produce good fiction, and then I've obtained a satisfactory proof.
No, his opinion goes against your opinion of what constitutes an enduring and beloved story. Do you want a laundry list of well-regarded works of fiction that don't prioritize setting, or a journalistic impulse towards place?
No need. All I need is a laundry list of well-regarded works of fiction that do. I don't need to prove that its possible to write a story without much attention to a setting. My personal opinion is that stories with interesting internally consistant settings are better than most of the post-modern junk that tries to dispense with it, but I don't need to prove my opinion superior - just that it is a defensible opinion. Case in point, a writer like Jonathan Letham is too me far more readable, interesting, saying something important, for works like 'Gun with Occasional Music', 'Motherless Brooklyn', and even 'As She Climbed Across the Table' than he is in a deconstructivist (and to me deeply disappointing) story like 'Amnesia Moon'. I'm just not sure that there is all that much interesting territory to explore in consciously created but empty anti-worlds of 'New Wave' sci-fi, and the more successful writers in that style seemed to me to be the ones that could most depart from it.
I'm reminded of a line from Tolkien where he talks about how stories about good times are quickly told, but stories about horrible times take a long time. Or didn't some one say that every pleasant time was basically the same, but unpleasantness had an infinite variaty? Well, it seems to me that every story about meaninglessness has the same thing to say, but stories about meaning have an infinite variaty.
In any event, I know which stories seem to attract the most admirers.
Can't we just agree that different fiction has different goals and employs different methods?
Don't ask me. Ask Mr. Harrison.
We agree completely here. But to be fair, applying Harrison's comments to RPG's was the OP's doing.
True. But, if I'm to take the position that this provides no insight into running an RPG, then I have to say something about it.
The fact that the don't apply to all fiction doesn't merit they don't have merit or merit discussion.
If I didn't think they merited discussion, I wouldn't be discussing it. Bad ideas are worthy of discussion just like good ones. But, the discussion I think that this bad idea merits is a rounding condemnation followed by a more useful discussion of the pitfalls to avoid in leaning to far one way or the other than what Mr. Harrison provides with his universal condemnation and 'the thing is evident in itself' non-argument. But, it's not like I think posting flame bait is in and of itself a bad thing. I don't think the OP was trying to be disruptive (he's not spamming threads, he's not interrupting threads).
