Recent Readings (and other literary talk)

[Necron 99]

Just finished:
- James H. Schmitz’s _Eternal Frontier_ (the last of his fictions I've not read, except for one short story co-authored with AE Van Vogt)
- _The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes_ by Scott Frost
- all seven of “The World of Tiers” novels by Philip Jose Farmer

Reading now:
- Susan Petrey's _Gifts of Blood_
- Mark Frost’s _The Secret History of Twin Peaks_

While digging through my shelves last night, I also pulled out Zelazny's _A Night in Lonesome October_, which I've not read yet.

Allan.

I had no idea you were a fan of Twin Peaks, Allan. Back in the day, when the show was in syndicate, I never watched it. Last year, while re-visiting old 90s TV shows, I ran across Twin Peaks on Hulu and finally made the time to watch the entire series. Enjoyed it very much and wished I had seen it, originally. I still haven't watched Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but plan to catch it once the weather turns a bit colder and I'm stuck inside more often than now. How were/are the books?

[Necron 99]

Halloween is my absolute FAVORITE holiday!

With regard to the young boy, bedridden, who sees and experiences the world outside his window through his trusted friend, Dog, I wonder if GRRM was inspired by this for the "warging" ability some of the Stark children used in A Game of Thrones and its sequel novels....

I guess anything is possible. I think many writers, especially modern day, are in many ways inspired by former writers and the writing they consume. Who knows, maybe it's something Martin read as a kid and subconsciously it came forth while writing AGoT.

[grodog]

Just finished:
- _The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes_ by Scott
Reading now:
- Mark Frost’s _The Secret History of Twin Peaks_

I had no idea you were a fan of Twin Peaks, Allan.

Twin Peaks was a huge influence on my old business partner Phoebe Phythyon (was John then), and strongly influenced the setting and game mechanics of our diceless RPG, _Heaven & Earth_.

I’ve been toying with incorporating small pieces of it in our current Greyhawk campaign, too.

I still haven't watched Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but plan to catch it once the weather turns a bit colder and I'm stuck inside more often than now.

I just rewatched FWwM a few weeks ago, since Henry and I finished watching S1 of the series just as summer wound down. I didn’t recall it well-enough to know if it would be OK to view for his age (15; he’s mature for his age, but I think we’ll wait a bit longer to watch it), and if it would be too spoilery for S2 (it will be, I think).

I haven’t seen S3 yet, will dig in with Henry, or watch on my own if he’s lost interest.

How were/are the books?

They’ve all been good, although the Twin Peaks travel guide was pretty useless (I may repurpose the map as a logging village in the Gnarley, perhaps).

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer was dark, definitely R-rated like FWwM, and compliments it well. Would be interesting if they were able to restore the missing pages from the diary, assuming their contents were ever revealed in the series.

The Dale Cooper auto-bio was a quick read. Good, but not super-revealing for him/his character (or at least not as much as LP’s diary was). My understanding is that the audio cassette issued at the same time as the book includes additional material, but since it’s not available on CD (but it may be in some of the special features on the DVDs, perhaps), I don’t know how the contents compare.

The Secert History of TP was excellent and is the best of the ones I’ve read to date, but delves into a lot of history/backstory and metaplot that seems tied to S3. It was released prior to S3 so it does seem to have spoilers, but I’m not sure now. (There’s a follow-on novel published the year after S3 released, but I’ve not read it yet, since it seems to be more spoilery). SHoTP has some excellent inspiration for a Delta Green game, too, I think.

Allan.

[Necron 99]

Listening to Bradbury's The Halloween Tree again on morning and evening walks. Some choice descriptions from passages of the early chapters. Again, I've grown to love his descriptions and use of descriptive language, much as Tolkien did.

They banged doors, they shouted Trick or Treat and their brown paper bags began to fill with incredible sweets. They galloped with their teeth glued shut with pink gum. They ran with red wax lips bedazzling their faces.

But all the people who met them at doors looked like candy factory duplicates of their own mothers and fathers. It was like never leaving home. Too much kindness flashed from every window and every portal. What they wanted was to hear dragons belch in basements and banged castle doors.

And so, still looking back for Pipkin, they reached the edge of town and the place where civilization fell away in darkness.

The Ravine.

The ravine, filled with varieties of night sounds, lurkings of black-ink stream and creek, lingerings of autumns that rolled over in fire and bronze and died a thousand years ago. From this deep place sprang mushroom and toadstool and cold stone frog and crawdad and spider. There was a long tunnel down there under the earth in which poisoned waters dripped and the echoes never ceased calling Come Come Come and if you do you’ll stay forever, forever, drip, forever, rustle, run, rush, whisper, and never go, never go go go…

The boys lined up on the rim of darkness, looking down.

And then Tom Skelton, cold in his bones, whistled his breath in his teeth like the wind blowing over the bedroom screen at night. He pointed.

“Oh, hey—that’s where Pipkin told us to go!”

He vanished.

All looked. They saw his small shape race down the dirt path into one hundred million tons of night all crammed in that huge dark pit, that dank cellar, that deliciously frightening ravine.

Yelling, they plunged after.

Where they had been was empty.

The town was left behind to suffer itself with sweetness.

They ran down through the ravine at a swift rush, all laughing, jostling, all elbows and ankles, all steamy snort and roustabout, to stop in collision when Tom Skelton stopped and pointed up the path.

“There,” he whispered. “There’s the only house in town worth visiting on Halloween! There!”

“Yeah!” said everyone.

For it was true. The house was special and fine and tall and dark. There must have been a thousand windows in its sides, all shimmering with cold stars. It looked as if it had been cut out of black marble instead of built out of timbers, and inside? who could guess how many rooms, halls, breezeways, attics. Superior and inferior attics, some higher than others, some more filled with dust and webs and ancient leaves or gold buried above ground in the sky but lost away so high no ladder in town could take you there.

The house beckoned with its towers, invited with its gummed-shut doors. Pirate ships are a tonic. Ancient forts are a boon. But a house, a haunted house, on All Hallows’ Eve? Eight small hearts beat up an absolute storm of glory and approbation.

But they were already crowding up the path. Until they stood at last by a crumbling wall, looking up and up and still farther up at the great tombyard top of the old house. For that’s what it seemed. The high mountain peak of the mansion was littered with what looked like black bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke out smoke signals from three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far below in the dim bowels of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. Even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars.

[Necron 99]

I recently finished reading book one of the Moonshae Trilogy, The Darkwalker on Moonshae, a series set in the Forgotten Realms. I had read a lot of FR books back in the 90s, late high school through my AD&D 2nd Edition years in college. I enjoyed pretty much all of them, but this series was one I never picked up. With my recent delve back into 2E, I decided to read some of the ones I missed. The story is set in the kingdom of Corwell, on the island of Gwennyth in the Moonshae Isles, and tells the adventure of Prince Tristan Kendrick and his companions fighting to defend the kingdom and the Ffolk of the island from the Darkwalker, a beast set upon the land to destroy the power of the Earthmother.

By the time I finished reading, it was one of the most enjoyable I've read in the FR line of books. However, to be fair, I was unsure that I was going to continue reading it, because the first 1/3 or so of the book seemed a bit boring, the story was interesting, but the characters seemed a bit too bland and in some ways, cliche' in fantasy stories. There was even a character that I would have described akin to a "Jar-Jar" that showed up for some parts of the early and it put me off. I pushed through, though, and was glad that I did. After the mid-point of the book the story and characters become amazingly good. It felt like someone turned the dial up to eleven the rest of the way. The best part of the book starts after the protagonists escape from a Firbolg dungeon. As the group travels home to Caer Corwell, a battle begins on an open field between Tristan and his company, and an army of invading Northmen, accompanied by Firbolgs and a group of dark horsemen.

I don't know what I was expecting, to be honest because up to this point the book was pretty, meh. But holy crap, when the battle started and certain characters started dying off, I was blown away. I can say I was not expecting to feel like I was reading GRR Martin. The battle was just the start and from that point on, the book maintains a roller coaster feel with really great scenes and battles as the fight for the Goddess and the fate of the isles is concluded. The adventure is also a great look into the druid "class" found in AD&D, with prevalent use of druid specific spells throughout the story.

Another thing that really stuck with me was the cover of the book; the cover art is actually a scene from the first battle in the book that takes place between the dark riders and a company of female-only knights. Really cool.

[Ancalagon]

I recall reading that one back around the '88-'90 time frame but couldn't have told you anything about it if asked recently due to the passage of time. Glad you enjoyed it. I don't think I got around to reading the next book in the series, The Black Wizards.

[grodog]

I think my copies of these arrived from my folks’ home when they sold over the summer. I don’t recall much about them either, but the druidical ties sound interesting.

I’ve been rereading:
- Robert Holdstock’s Where the Time Winds Blow (nearly done after setting it aside for awhile over the summer)
- Moorcock’s Swords Trilogy (the first three Corum books; just began book three)
- Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander trilogy (read earlier in the month)
- Dune in it’s original magazine serials (finished over the end of summer)

Allan.

[Necron 99]

I think my copies of these arrived from my folks’ home when they sold over the summer. I don’t recall much about them either, but the druidical ties sound interesting.

I’ve been rereading:
- Robert Holdstock’s Where the Time Winds Blow (nearly done after setting it aside for awhile over the summer)
- Moorcock’s Swords Trilogy (the first three Corum books; just began book theee)
- Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander trilogy (read earlier in the month)
- Dune in it’s original magazine serials (finished over the end of summer)

Allan.

Excellent!

Moorcock is an old author of whom I've not yet read any novels or stories. I need to put these on the list. Dune is another one of which I am familiar, but have never read any of the novels, those are already on my backlog. The other two I'm not familiar with, I'll have to look them up.

[Ancalagon]

I think my copies of these arrived from my folks’ home when they sold over the summer. I don’t recall much about them either, but the druidical ties sound interesting.

I’ve been rereading:
- Robert Holdstock’s Where the Time Winds Blow (nearly done after setting it aside for awhile over the summer)
- Moorcock’s Swords Trilogy (the first three Corum books; just began book theee)
- Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander trilogy (read earlier in the month)
- Dune in it’s original magazine serials (finished over the end of summer)

Allan.

Excellent!

Moorcock is an old author of whom I've not yet read any novels or stories. I need to put these on the list. Dune is another one of which I am familiar, but have never read any of the novels, those are already on my backlog. The other two I'm not familiar with, I'll have to look them up.

I read all the Elric books 25+/- years ago and enjoyed them. I should revisit them one of these years since its been so long...

[grodog]

Moorcock is an old author of whom I've not yet read any novels or stories. I need to put these on the list.

Mike’s books are very fun, and (unsurprisingly) full of D&D inspiration. He’s written the classic Eternal Champion mega-series across several heroes’ books, where the characters meet and interweave plots/encounters/NPCs in crossovers. Think of them as a series of large, extended family adventures, where branches intertwine at times. IIRC, the core Eternal Champion novels comprise about 20-ish books: Erekose 2, Elric 6, Corum 6, Hawkmoon 4, Count Brass 3 (Erekose/Hawkmoon), but many more spider in and out from the core, or overlay with it in other character arcs.

He’s also written literary and history fiction, and fiction that is a sort of hybrid between the traditional fantasy and the lit/hist styles. And he’s written comics and SF too, and edited New Worlds, ERB zines when he was a teen ager, etc. Mother London was his 100th novel in 1988.

My favorite fantasy novels by him are: The Warhound and the World’s Pain (MM’s twist on the grail quest; introduces the Von Bek family, which ties into EC), Blood: a Southern Fantasy (explores the nature of the multiverse, building on the second- and third-stage Elric novels), and the Elric first-stage 6 books culminating with Stormbringer (although I like the latter sequels a lot too, many other folks stop with Stormbringer and don’t like the later additions as much).

I wrote my high school thesis on Moorcock, ran the Nomads of the Time Streams web site for a long time, and met him and several times at cons. I’m happy to share more info/detail as you desire it =)

Dune is another one of which I am familiar, but have never read any of the novels, those are already on my backlog. The other two I'm not familiar with, I'll have to look them up.

Holdstock is best-known for his novel Mythago Wood and sequels.

Dune is great, but I actually like some of Herbert’s other fictions more. From a piece I wrote in 2017:

Frank Herbert – Frank Herbert is of course best known for Dune and the many worlds of its Imperium. If Herbert had never written another word, Dune would firmly set him in my list. Fortunately, however, Arrakis is not the only noteworthy world Herbert created. In Destination: Void he created Ship and its environs (a messianic cross between The Computer from the Paranoia RPG and James Ward’s Metamorphosis Alpha RPG/Brian Aldiss’ novel Starship), and built that universe out in The Jesus Incident (and its sequels, written with the poet Bill Ransom) and its deadly planet Pandora. He also created the ConSentiency universe of secret agent Jorj X. McKie via the stories “A Matter of Traces” and “The Tactful Saboteur,” and his further adventures in the novels Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment. If you’ve never branched out beyond Dune, Herbert’s other worlds and characters offer the same well-crafted literary themes spanning unique worlds and philosophies.

Allan.