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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3458924" data-attributes="member: 4937">Who?  M. John Harrison?  Who are we talking about here?  What has he written?  Why haven't I heard of anything this guy has done?Could it be because he's never had a memorable setting?  Could it be that maybe there is something missing from his highly esteemed prose?  Could it be that this guy is dismissive of 'world building' because he's just not very good at it?  Frankly, I wouldn't trust someone who's contribution to the arts seems to be solely deconstructive to be a good judge of the utility of construction, especially if he chooses to refer to it with such phrases as the 'great clomping foot of nerdiness'.  Objectiveness in this matter doesn't seem to be his strong point.I don't know.  I've never read a single work buy him, and never even heard of them.  I don't know enough about Mr. Harrison to have a well thought out opinion.  But I do know that I once ran through the Internet Speculative Fiction list to rate the works I'd read, and by the time I'd finished making my list I'd rated some 500 science fiction and fantasy novels - and none of them were by M. John Harrison and virtually non of which had 'Star Trek' or 'Star Wars' in the title or had a cover with a blouse ripper.  But maybe the fact I've never read Harrison is my fault.  Maybe I'm just an illiterate pleb.  Maybe he's the greatest thing since Tolkien crawled out of the trenches or Delany crawled out from under a rock, but the fact of the matter is that this guy might as well be nobody for all the impact he's making on readers.  Because, if he had any impact beyond the respect of his peers, I'd have heard of him and read him.In any event, I think he offers advice that is to say the least, highly suspect and of questionable value to even writers of speculative fiction much less game referees.  One obvious objection is that a lot of writers with more fame and recognition and dare I say literary acclaim than he seem to have done quite a bit of thinking and planning that looks awfully like world building.  Another obvious objection is that running a game is very different than writing a story.  Another obvious objection is that he doesn't really present an argument, so much as a trite 'just so' story backed with almost religious conviction and with the usual accompanying attack on the pyschology of anyone who thinks differently than he does - and then segues right into a political rant.  One wonders whether his peers appreciate being told that there normal process of producing a story is akin to a mental disease.  This is normally the sort of behavior that leads me to believe I'd be wasting my time reading anything that the writer read, but I'll avoid the temptation to reply to his ad hominems in kind. In short, echoing the earlier poster, "utter crap".UPDATE: Came across this post at random, and should note that I actually had read one of his books at the time of this post.  I had heard of, and did try to read his work, 'Light'.  Unfortunately, I found the book badly written and childishly 'darker-than-thou' and put it down as a bad cause with in 20-30 pages.  Then apparently promptly forgot about it, because I've twice since then checked the book out of the library on recommendation by an online review only to open it and get a few pages in and go, "Oh... it's that one."</blockquote>

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