Moorcock blasts Tolkien

[Storm Raven]

I disagree.

The novels you mentioned have indeed won Hugos and Nebulae, but those particular awards, while of great interest to those in the SF Fandom community, aren't widely known by your average Joe outside the SF Fandom community.

Neither was Cities in Flight, but that is what Blish is primarily remembered for now. Not the Star Trek episodes and novels he wrote.

If you take SF readers as a whole, you will have, for purposes of this argument:

- Casual SF readers, who likely haven't heard of him, because they read Orson Scott Card and Star Wars tie-ins.
- People who read enough to know who Brin is, who may or may not love him but will likely respect him for his work.
- People in the actual community who have met the man and know that he's an egotistical jerk of monumental proportions, thus poisoning the well.

I've been trapped in a hotel room with him as part of an apparently blessed group of Clarion folks who got to bask in the radiance of his sexist and condescending knowledge. The well has been poisoned. If I want cardboard characters to explain scientific principles to me, there are other authors I can turn to.

And thus, your opinion considering the nature of his work is rendered entirely irrelevant. Your personal animosity towards Brin, deserved or not, makes anything you might say about his work completely unreliable.

If he's remembered, it'll be as a footnote for people who like hard SF and run out of other stuff to read, or as an example of an unpleasant social situation of the times.

Authors who win multiple awards for their writing are rarely remembered as "footnotes".

 

[Elfdart]

Considering that baliwick is a term in current use in the U.S. legal community, anyone who has had any degree of contact with the U.S. court system should be comfortable using the word. Having a vocabulary that includes words currently in common use among significant professions in your country is not evidence of being a hack.

Since when is a movie review a legal brief? Using legalese in a movie review is the surest sign of the hack.

And do you have actual evidence of Brin lying? Or are you just going to rely on something Moorcock said about someone completely different than Brin?

Since you missed the link last time:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/

and this link to Brin's hatchetjob:

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/1999/06/15/brin_main/

By now it's grown clear that George Lucas has an agenda, one that he takes very seriously. After four "Star Wars" films, alarm bells should have gone off, even among those who don't look for morals in movies. When the chief feature distinguishing "good" from "evil" is how pretty the characters are, it's a clue that maybe the whole saga deserves a second look.

Just what bill of goods are we being sold, between the frames?

* Elites have an inherent right to arbitrary rule; common citizens needn't be consulted. They may only choose which elite to follow.

* "Good" elites should act on their subjective whims, without evidence, argument or accountability.

* Any amount of sin can be forgiven if you are important enough.

* True leaders are born. It's genetic. The right to rule is inherited.

* Justified human emotions can turn a good person evil.

That's just one shovelfull of lies from David Brin. The people in Star Wars who overthrow the Republic, claim the right to rule over the galaxy and so on are the villains. Now either David Brin is a complete imbecile who must also think the message in Schindler's List is "Nazis are Kewl!" or he's deliberately lying about the series.

Star Wars, and all of the following movies are fiction. They are fantasy fiction, and hence, close to being in the same genre as the fiction that Brin writes.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight -just as golf and football are both sports, so knocking Tiger Woods for his lack of touchdowns is a good comparison.

Translating preferences from one genre to another is not absurd in any way, shape, or form. To wit, I think the various Uplift books are far better fiction than any of the Star Wars movies.

So how many touchdowns do you think Tiger Woods will score this weekend?

Seriously, if "Translating preferences from one genre to another is not absurd in any way, shape, or form." then why was Brin's one attempt (thank goodness!) at a movie such a laughable flop that nearly ruined Kevin Costner's acting career? If writing movies and writing novels are similar enough that it's not apples and oranges (or football and golf), surely the great David Brin would have succeeded, right?

People are entitled to their opinions. If you think David Brin's works are the cat's meow, good for you. But I'm also entitled to my opinion: David Brin, like Michael Moorcock, is a pathetic, mendacious third-rater who smears his betters with B.S. as a cheap form of self-promotion. Brin is now hawking a book where he carries his Salieri-like obsession with Lucas to a new level of dishonesty. Funny, I don't remember Tolkien or Lucas having to attack fellow artists to get people to buy novels or movie tickets. But then they had talent.

The same applies to Michael Moorcock, who also tries to smear his betters with B.S.

 

[Vigilance]

The same applies to Michael Moorcock, who also tries to smear his betters with B.S.

Moorcock's betters?

Last I heard Moorcock and Tolkien were both very successful fantasy writers with a lot of commercial and critical praise behind them.

Seems like Moorcock's opinion is just as good as anyone else's. Yours, mine, his... he wrote an essay about a writer he dares not to like. You disagree. All cool.

No one is being "smeared". Last I heard, McCarthy and the HUAC have been shut down for some time now.

Could we tone down the hyperbole a notch here please?

 

[Darth Shoju]

Seriously, if "Translating preferences from one genre to another is not absurd in any way, shape, or form." then why was Brin's one attempt (thank goodness!) at a movie such a laughable flop that nearly ruined Kevin Costner's acting career? If writing movies and writing novels are similar enough that it's not apples and oranges (or football and golf), surely the great David Brin would have succeeded, right?

Now I have to say I really object to this.

Kevin Costner's career was pretty much over *before* the Post Man. I'd say sometime between rescuing Whitney Houston and making Mad Max on the ocean.

 

[Mark Hope]

Elfdart, are you capable of putting forward your opinions without peppering them with sneering personal attacks every other sentence? Any points that you might have (and you might have something valuable to add) are quite eclipsed by your shameful rude behaviour. You belittle yourself. Very poor.

 

[dcas]

I didn't think Bill Ferny was described as "swarthy", I thought his unnamed Southron companion was.

Aragorn describes him [Bill Ferny, that is] as a "swarthy sneering fellow." His Southerner friend is described as "sallow" (that is, pale yellow).

 

[Rackhir]

Seriously, if "Translating preferences from one genre to another is not absurd in any way, shape, or form." then why was Brin's one attempt (thank goodness!) at a movie such a laughable flop that nearly ruined Kevin Costner's acting career? If writing movies and writing novels are similar enough that it's not apples and oranges (or football and golf), surely the great David Brin would have succeeded, right?

If you think that David Brin had any influence or power how the movie version of "The Postman" turned out then you don't know very much about Hollywood and how it works. There's an old joke about how the blond actress was so stupid she was sleeping with the writer. Writers having essentially no power or pull in the system. Someone who's book is being adapted is a few cuts below even a writer in Lala-land. If Steven King, one of the most powerful and influential writers in the US has trouble getting a decent adaptation of his stories made, then why would you think that a SF writer of no great fame would have any more pull?

 

[Mark Hope]

Oh.

My mistake, and my apologies, Mark Hope. It seems I let anger override reason.

And it seems I recalled the wrong search method. Heh, nice one. Now I'm not sure what I did, or how I ended up reading those charming diatribes of Moorcock's.

I think I'll bow out at this stage, before making (more of?) a fool of myself. Besides, what the hell is this commie heathen doing defending(?) some dead, allegedly conservative, Anglican dude?

Craziness. And yeah, I've had my fill.

No worries, mate All part of the fun at the fair!

 

[Elfdart]

Moorcock's betters?

Last I heard Moorcock and Tolkien were both very successful fantasy writers with a lot of commercial and critical praise behind them.

Seems like Moorcock's opinion is just as good as anyone else's. Yours, mine, his... he wrote an essay about a writer he dares not to like. You disagree. All cool.

No one is being "smeared". Last I heard, McCarthy and the HUAC have been shut down for some time now.

Could we tone down the hyperbole a notch here please?

The hyperbole is all on Moorcock's part, not mine. If you take his attacks on Tolkien, Lewis and Milne linked to earlier, then look at this letter to Salon,

http://archive.salon.com/ent/letters/2002/04/18/lucas/print.html

where he gives an attaboy to an ignorant, dishonest attack on another artist who is more successful than he is -and tells a real whopper of a lie about Leigh Brackett and Irvin Kershner and you can see that my take of Michael Moorcock is well-founded. Namely, he resents those who have done better so much that he will lie about a dead woman to smear one of them.

Now I have to say I really object to this.

Kevin Costner's career was pretty much over *before* the Post Man. I'd say sometime between rescuing Whitney Houston and making Mad Max on the ocean.

Unfortunately, both of those movies did reasonably well IIRC. I didn't like either one (though the parody of The Bodyguard with Florence Henderson was a classic)
so maybe Costner's career deserved to founder. Thanks in part to David Brin, it did!

Elfdart, are you capable of putting forward your opinions without peppering them with sneering personal attacks every other sentence? Any points that you might have (and you might have something valuable to add) are quite eclipsed by your shameful rude behaviour. You belittle yourself. Very poor.

Want some cheese to go with your whine, too?

If you think that David Brin had any influence or power how the movie version of "The Postman" turned out then you don't know very much about Hollywood and how it works. There's an old joke about how the blond actress was so stupid she was sleeping with the writer. Writers having essentially no power or pull in the system. Someone who's book is being adapted is a few cuts below even a writer in Lala-land. If Steven King, one of the most powerful and influential writers in the US has trouble getting a decent adaptation of his stories made, then why would you think that a SF writer of no great fame would have any more pull?

I was responding to someone who claimed that writing a novel was comparable to making a movie. Both are art forms, but the similarities end there. So your argument is with him, not me.

 

[Mark Hope]

The hyperbole is all on Moorcock's part, not mine. If you take his attacks on Tolkien, Lewis and Milne linked to earlier, then look at this letter to Salon,

http://archive.salon.com/ent/letters/2002/04/18/lucas/print.html

where he gives an attaboy to an ignorant, dishonest attack on another artist who is more successful than he is -and tells a real whopper of a lie about Leigh Brackett and Irvin Kershner and you can see that my take of Michael Moorcock is well-founded. Namely, he resents those who have done better so much that he will lie about a dead woman to smear one of them.

Reading comprehension clearly isn't your strong point, is it? Moorcock says that Brackett's account of working on Star Wars matches Hart's (an account which makes no connection between Brackett and Kershner), and then notes his own experience of working with Kershner. At no point is any direct link between Brackett and Kershner mentioned by either Hart or Moorcock. Feel free to back your position up with an actual quote. Or just admit that the only liar in this picture is you. Your call.

Want some cheese to go with your whine, too?

Want some shine to go with your wit? Or are spoonerisms beyond your staggeringly limited communication skills?