Treasured Out-of-Print SciFi/Fantasy

[Umbran]

I really enjoyed that series. What else has GAE written? Anything as good?

I've only read a couple of the other things he's done. I've read, The Zork Chronicles, which is hilarious if you played the Zork computer games. Also he worked with Jack Chalker and Mike Resnick on a round-robin novel called The Red Tape War, which is one of the more unique books I've ever seen. One author writes a chapter, then sends the manuscript to the next author, who writes the next chapter with the intent of writing the next author into a corner. Fun stuff.

Effinger has something like nine Hugo or Nebula awards or nominations to his credit, so I expect many of his things are good.

You can probably guess at which ones those are depending on when they were written.

Not really. I think the author and popularity have more to do with it than age. I've got scads of Larry Niven and Heinlein and Asimov on my shelves dating back to the 60s, but I know are still available. But the Effinger from 1992 is out of print.

 

[Fast Learner]

Effinger's been dead for a couple of years, and struggled for several years before that. It's likely that he hasn't had an agent pushing for reprints, or something.

And Cthulhu's Librarian, dunno what ENWorld skin you're using, but in the default one your black text is unreadable (has to be selected).

 

[Mystery Man]

Lastly, Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy is great fantasy. The author does a great job of weaving an interesting story around a version of magic that's very different from D&D's techno-magic.

I've read that, it was interesting. I vaguely remember an attempt at a sequel that was really bad.

 

[Umbran]

And Cthulhu's Librarian, dunno what ENWorld skin you're using, but in the default one your black text is unreadable (has to be selected).

That's called "spoiler" text. The idea is to have text that matches the background so that folks must highlight it in order to read it. This prevents accidental reading of information that might spoil or ruin someone's experience with the work of fiction.

 

[Fast Learner]

I'm familiar with spoiler text. That's not what CL used, he used the color black, with the color tag, not the spoiler tag. There was no reason to spoil that, ergo he's probably using a different skin where black text is readable. Dig?

 

[Turanil]

Imaro by Charles R. Saunders.

A must-read for all Nyambe setting fans.

 

[Umbran]

Dig?

Considering that he used normal text color for the rest, I remain skeptical. I suppose only he and his barber know for sure.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

That's called "spoiler" text. The idea is to have text that matches the background so that folks must highlight it in order to read it. This prevents accidental reading of information that might spoil or ruin someone's experience with the work of fiction.

Huh, that's weird. i didn't use spoiler text, or color text. My reply box is acting a little funny, maybe that's what is causing it. I use the PHB ENWorld skin, but that shouldn't cause any color changes to the text.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Considering that he used normal text color for the rest, I remain skeptical. I suppose only he and his barber know for sure.

I think I know what the problem is. i cut and pasted the text from another website, and the text must have been black there using color tags. But for some reason, I can't see color tags when I go in to edit the text...

Ah, fixed it. Sorry about the color text. For some reason, the WYSIWYG text editor was trned on, and I didn't see the tags. Turned it off, and there they were. Don't know how that got turned on, because I never use that editor.

 

[Storm Raven]

You may recall a brief reference to a shadowy "Bureau 13" on an episode of Babylon 5 (shades of Section 31 in Star Trek, a bit close if you ask me), but this was never followed up.

Yep a bit close. And an example of DS9 imitating B5 (badly).