[maltaille]

That OOT thread seared my eyeballs. Despite reading at least one sci-fi or fantasy book a week, I must be fundamentally different in some way to most readers of the genre. I think Robert Jordan, David Eddings, Terry Brooks, and the like are justifiably the reason fantasy gets a bad rap. Their characters are cliches who would be lucky if they caught a glimpse of an emotional journey in the distance, their plots are clumsy, they have no idea how to use tone or rhythm, and their attempts to wring feeling from the rock of their prose are excruciating to watch. They are why no sci fi author could even get considered for a Pulitzer, despite at least one or two writing just as well as any winner ever has, why publishers are desperate to get their magical realist authors placed in the literary section, and why people are afraid to be seen reading anything with a spaceship on the cover on the bus. But then, I'm the sort of person who can use a phrase like "wring feeling from the rock of their prose" with a straight face.

On the other hand, the same people who appreciate this [censored] also appreciate things that I think are fantastically well done, like The Song of Ice and Fire, and The Black Company.

So, with the caveat that I'm apparently not the true audience for this sort of stuff, but also that I've been reading it for 25 years and have been through a hell of a lot of it, here's a few that I'm either compelled to mention, or haven't received the love they deserve:

Glen Cook, The Black Company: This is really good stuff, though I think it goes downhill towards the end of the series. Cook can write, his characters are believable, they change, they avoid cliches, and you can feel their pain. It's about a mercenary company in a fantasy world who slowly comes to realise that they're working for the bad guys, and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. Most of his other old stuff is great too, though I'm not as big a fan of his comic fantasy detective series with the metallic names, and I think his current stuff wouldn't be fit to put in an appendix of the original Black Company books.

George R R Martin, Song of Ice and Fire: This guy is weird. He goes along for 20 years writing very average fantasy, with all the normal problems that plague genre writers, and then he ups and writes what I think is the finest epic fantasy ever produced. Yup, it's better than Tolkien. It's deeper, yet more accessible. It has real characters - most of whom die, fair warning - it's sophisticated in its storytelling techniques (unreliable narrators, multiple points of view, multi-book subplots, conscious use of derivative symbolism, incredible attention to detail without letting it overwhelm the story), and while the pacing is pretty poor, especially in the fourth book, the storytelling is fantastic. My favourite part: by the third book, the character you thought was the bad guy, boasting several qualities you couldn't ever imagine yourself forgiving someone for, is now a quite sympathetic protagonist, without ever having denied any of those things that made you hate him early on. There's a story going round that Martin has said he started this series because he saw what Robert Jordan was writing, and was so disgusted with what the genre had come to. Second fair warning: Martin is an unlikeable person, and he's likely to take six or seven years to finish the series.

Joel Rosenberg, Guardians of the Flame: Also currently a shadow of it's original four books, Rosenberg has described this as his paean to the industrial revolution. It's about a bunch of people from our world (bear with me, this was one of the original series to use what's now an overworked cliche) who set out to eradicate slavery in a fantasy world by making it uneconomic. The series goes over generations, and diverges to make minor characters protagonists in spin offs, but it really starts to lose what made it great when it leaves the original characters. He's also done a few other series that are very readable. I'd never say he's a good writer, but he's a pretty enjoyable one.

Iain M Banks, The Culture: Not really a series, but a bunch of books set in the same universe, in the far, far future when technology has rendered everything from age to governments obsolete, mile-wide sentient computers are the smartest things around, and figuring out what to do with your life is the hardest thing most people will ever do. Great plotting, good characters here and there, and one or two of the sharpest bits of observation you'll find in the genre (no surprise, he also writes literary fiction under the name Iain Banks, most of which is pretty good too). My favourite is Use of Weapons, mostly because of the ending.

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash: When people ask me my favourite book, this is one of the three I usually mumble about. It's got at least two of the best characters you will find in any sci-fi novel, observations so trenchant that they hurt, and lines that you will have to read twice to believe how good they are ("... and after that it was just a chase scene."). I have multiple copies of this book just so I can give them to people who want something to read. I love it so much I'm going to force a paragraph from the opening scene on you (chosen because it has no spoilers):

"The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the asteroid belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, [censored] happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like bad day, stops on a peseta."

It's a fast-paced enjoyable read with a 20-page scene in the middle discussing Sumerian mythology and how linguistics determine thinking patterns that doesn't slow it down at all. It's a satire on modern consumer culture from someone who is enthusiastic about that culture. It has at least four ultra-cool scenes, without the rest of it being an excuse to set up those scenes. Unfortunately, it also has a pretty poor ending (a common fault for Stephenson), and an unfulfilled demand for a sequel following one of the subsidiary villains. Objectively, I can't give it more than a 8.5 out of 10, but I love it anyway.

Even worse, no matter how much I love Snow Crash, I can't even finish anything Stephenson has written in the last five years. His Baroque cycle, set in a period of history I'm particularly interested in, is turgid, devoid of believable or sympathetic characters, downright stupid in its plotting, and would lose a footrace to the tortoise. His other books range from quite readable (Cryptonomicon) to forgettable (Interface). Breaks my heart to see all that potential go to waste. I'm not sure I actually want a sequel to Snow Crash now.

There's a hundred other authors that deserve a mention, but this is already way too long. Good to hear Loungers appreciating Jack Vance and Steven Erikson and David Gemmel (that's a guilty pleasure) and Guy Gavriel Kay and Richard Morgan and Mary Stewart. No love for Steven Brust, Theodore Sturgeon, Michael Marshall Smith, Robert J Sawyer, Vernor Vinge, or John Steakley? Think I'll go order some Greg Bear short stories now.