Geek Confessional Thread 2024

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I know this is going to cost me my Goth Card, but:

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles is overrated. Interview is a good read, but every novel after it is less interesting than the one before. I barely made it through Memnoch, and it was so dismal I couldn't be bothered to even try Armand.

I actually threw Memnoch across the room. So very dumb.

 

[Scribe]

I know this is going to cost me my Goth Card, but:

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles is overrated. Interview is a good read, but every novel after it is less interesting than the one before. I barely made it through Memnoch, and it was so dismal I couldn't be bothered to even try Armand.

I'm quite sure I didnt make it through the series, but as I am weak in this area, I hold no long term angst towards the quality of the work.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I know this is going to cost me my Goth Card, but:

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles is overrated. Interview is a good read, but every novel after it is less interesting than the one before. I barely made it through Memnoch, and it was so dismal I couldn't be bothered to even try Armand.

I am not a goth, but am a horror fan and I agree. I thought Interview with the Vampire was stellar. After that it got less interesting (I did like some of her other works though like The Mummy).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Starship Troopers isn't nearly as clever as fans of the movie want it to be.

(And Heinlein, for all of his flashes of brilliance, climbed fully up his own butt in the 1960s and never came out.)

I disagree on both counts. I thought the movie and book were both great, and quite clever. What the movie did that I appreciated was it really got you to care about the main characters, despite its political message. It feels very much like a duopoly with Robocop in many respects (a kind of blue collar satire). The book is also a riveting read, with some interesting ideas underpinning it (not ideas I particularly agree with, but the story is well crafted and the ideas are expressed in a compelling way).

 

[overgeeked]

I know this is going to cost me my Goth Card, but:

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles is overrated. Interview is a good read, but every novel after it is less interesting than the one before. I barely made it through Memnoch, and it was so dismal I couldn't be bothered to even try Armand.

I had the same issue with those novels as I had with Lord of the Rings. Overlong and utterly boring descriptions of everything. I think I made it to the second, maybe third book, before I gave up. I remember hitting a 5-page description of a painting and literally dropping the book on the floor, standing up, and walking away.

 

[Mannahnin]

(And Heinlein, for all of his flashes of brilliance, climbed fully up his own butt in the 1960s and never came out.)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is from 1966. Friday is from 1982 and while it has a couple of spots of ick, is mostly a great story about what it means to be human and a near-future not-quite cyberpunk society. I would opine that he was partly up his butt the whole time, but it gradually got worse particularly starting in the 70s.

 

[Mannahnin]

I know this is going to cost me my Goth Card, but:

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles is overrated. Interview is a good read, but every novel after it is less interesting than the one before. I barely made it through Memnoch, and it was so dismal I couldn't be bothered to even try Armand.

I think the original trilogy holds up pretty well. I read Lestat first and when I went back and read Interview the drop in quality was noticeable. I think her prose definitely got better between those two. Tale of the Body Thief was pretty atrocious and I dropped out in the middle of Memnoch though someone was just telling me that Body Thief was the low point and Memnoch was actually good. I'm hesitant about trying it again, though it's been a bunch of years.

Maybe this is more appropriate thread fodder: I think the Interview with a Vampire TV show is a notable improvement on the book in many ways.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I know this is going to cost me my Goth Card, but:

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles is overrated. Interview is a good read, but every novel after it is less interesting than the one before. I barely made it through Memnoch, and it was so dismal I couldn't be bothered to even try Armand.

As far as I'm concerned, Interview and Lestat were good, Queen of the Damned was where it started to wobble, and everything else was downhill from there.

It doesn't have vampires, but I loved Cry to Heaven.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Starship Troopers isn't nearly as clever as fans of the movie want it to be.

It isn't very clever, but nothing Verhoeven did was clever, that's part of his whole deal! Robocop isn't clever either, but it is pretty biting. His satirical movies are extremely obvious and straightforward, yet still a large proportion of the audience misses some or all of the joke/commentary, and takes it literally. Starship Troopers was particularly effective for that - for all the revisionist "Oh I always knew it was satire!" stuff, it's very clear a lot of people at the time did not know that (even one of my friends who went to it with me when it was in cinemas came out and was asking "That's meant to be satire, right?" because he wasn't sure - he also felt that, even if it was, it was perhaps too close to the real thing because some people would just buy into it - I think he was proven right on that), and still some people coming to it now, even having been told it's satire, often misidentify the satirical elements, or assume parts that are "obviously" satire/commentary are being played straight. I think part of the latter issue is because fewer and fewer people below about 40 ever saw any kind of "basically propaganda" 1940s/1950s war movies, let alone actual propaganda movies from WW2 itself, so have no reference point for some of this stuff.

The book is just a mess on every possible level, which is solely remembered because olds want to try and argue it's not "fascist"* and because it has the first real power armour in it. It barely has a plot, has terrible pacing, non-existent characterisation, awful and excessive exposition, and the writing doesn't even flow well! Worse, it tries really hard to present this deeply macho (bordering directly on masochistic), really clueless "philosophy", which is completely incoherent and contradictory, and the justifications and excuses for it are so full of holes that Heinlein much later wrote a massive retcon to it (in a book about his books) which just directly contradicts what is in the book further.

* = This is always very funny because such arguments only serve to illustrate the horror and inconsistency of the setting.

As far as I'm concerned, Interview and Lestat were good, Queen of the Damned was where it started to wobble, and everything else was downhill from there.

It doesn't have vampires, but I loved Cry to Heaven.

Would definitely concur, but Interview and Lestat will always be important to me because having read and appreciated them was a great way to get smart, arty/nerdy girls talking to you in 1994! I think it even helped with my wife who I met in 2003!

Also the sheer level of influence of Vampire Chronicles concepts on vampire lore in books, RPGs, and films over the following decades absolutely cannot be overstated, and often involved concepts from the later, less-good books as well as Interview and Lestat.

 

[payn]

It isn't very clever, but nothing Verhoeven did was clever, that's part of his whole deal! Robocop isn't clever either, but it is pretty biting. His satirical movies are extremely obvious and straightforward, yet still a large proportion of the audience misses some or all of the joke/commentary, and takes it literally. Starship Troopers was particularly effective for that - for all the revisionist "Oh I always knew it was satire!" stuff, it's very clear a lot of people at the time did not know that (even one of my friends who went to it with me when it was in cinemas came out and was asking "That's meant to be satire, right?" because he wasn't sure - he also felt that, even if it was, it was perhaps too close to the real thing because some people would just buy into it - I think he was proven right on that), and still some people coming to it now, even having been told it's satire, often misidentify the satirical elements, or assume parts that are "obviously" satire/commentary are being played straight. I think part of the latter issue is because fewer and fewer people below about 40 ever saw any kind of "basically propaganda" 1940s/1950s war movies, let alone actual propaganda movies from WW2 itself, so have no reference point for some of this stuff.

I gotta disagree. If folks are not sure if an action flick is supposed to be satire or not, is a pretty clever execution.Especially, if folks dont get/care about the commentary and love the movie anyways.

The book is just a mess on every possible level, which is solely remembered because olds want to try and argue it's not "fascist"* a because it has the first real power armour in it. It barely has a plot, has terrible pacing, non-existent characterisation, awful and excessive exposition, and the writing doesn't even flow well! Worse, it tries really hard to present this deeply macho (bordering directly on masochistic), really clueless "philosophy", which is completely incoherent and contradictory, and the justifications and excuses for it are so full of holes that Heinlein much later wrote a massive retcon to it (in a book about his books) which just directly contradicts what is in the book further.

* = This is always very funny because such arguments only serve to illustrate the horror and inconsistency of the setting.

Yeap, the book is pretty awful, which is why Verhoeven wanted to satire it. I have no idea why the inclusion of power armor would preclude it from being fascist?