Any C. J. Cherryh Fans Out There?

I'm a writer and my greatest inspiration from fiction authors is C. J. Cherryh.

Next would be John C. Gardner but he didn't do Sci-fi :-)

I try to always have some unread books by her squirelled away for when I'm in the mood :)

She isn't very well-known in France. There were translations of some of her novels around the time Downbelow Station and Cyteen won some awards then that was about it until internet shopping became more widespread and obtaining english language books a breeze. There's been a recent re-translation of the first book in the Foreigner series though.

Very cool :-)

Hope they translate the Morgaine Saga for you...

I love CJ Cherryh books, almost without exception.

I wish they'd allowed her to do part three to the Rider at the Gate series, instead of stopping at book two, Cloud's Rider.

**bacon**

>3 AMZoltai: I'm not holding my breath, I'll probably end up picking an English copy before they do.

Yes, Cherryh is excellent. And I really must get started on the huge pile of Foreigner books I have...

(Currently reading The Pride of Chanur, incidentally, for review for SF Mistressworks.)

The theme in her works that keeps getting under my skin is that of hard, unyielding reality. A universe that does not care about noble intentions or desperation, a universe that you have to deal with or die. It's like the opposite of romance.

#6

Her Chanur books are not among her best IMO.

As for the Foreigner books, when I first read the first one I didn't think much of it and certainly wasn't going to read the entire series based on that rading. However I did reread it some years later and found it much better, and have read the subsequent books in the series.

Whew!

The Faded Sun Trilogy is very much like that---"hard, unyielding reality" Amtep

I personally prefer the Chanur books to any of her other works, although Downbelow Station is superb.

I've not yet read the Faded Sun Trilogy, but it's on my TBR for this year.

If you prefer a bit more romantic SciFi/Fantasy, check out the Morgaine Saga, starting with The Gate of Ivrel.

One of the things I love about CJ Cherryh's works is she doesn't talk down to you, the reader, but expects you to pay attention and figure out some things for yourself.

It is easy to write about aliens who look different, Cherryh writes aliens who think differently, and that's tricky.

Good point, ringman!

10> So very True, "she doesn't talk down to you, the reader, but expects you to pay attention and figure out some things for yourself."

That's one of the things I love about her writing...

I can highly recommend the Audible Audio Books for the Chanur series that came out last year :-)

I stockpile Cherryh for a rainy day any time I find her books.

Faded sun is also on my list to read this year.

Her brother, David Cherry is also an accomplished fantasy illustrator and cover artist. As already mentioned, those Morgaine novels are well worth a read...

Anyone else notice that CJ Cherryh books are not usually available in used book stores?

I think it's because we KEEP them...

#16 by fuzzi> I used to see a lot of her books at all the used bookstores, but they're getting less common. Now they'll be a couple hardbacks and several paperbacks. Usually the Foreigner or Chanur stuff. I think a lot of her large 80s backlist is fading out, as with other authors. I notice fewer and fewer of my old favorites there anymore. I think a big part of it is just wear and tear taking out copies that aren't in print anymore. And eventually many find a home with someone who doesn't resell very often. It all adds up to not so much 70s and 80s stuff to be found anymore as the glut you'd find 10 or 20 years ago.

Brightcopy, I see plenty of 1970s and 80s books available, but not Cherryh's.

I also don't see a lot of Tad Williams available either.

Maybe our locations have something to do with it?

C.J. Cherryh, Jane Fancher, and Lynn Abbey have teamed-up on getting their backlists into e-book format.

They're selling them, themselves, on http://www.closed-circle.net/ :-)

#18 by fuzzi> I'm not saying I don't see plenty of 70s and 80s books. Just that it used to be easier to find certain authors 70s and 80s backlist than it is now. With as many authors out there, there's going to be someone you can find on the shelf.

Tad Williams is another one that I used to find a lot of but not much anymore. Used to his Otherland series was on the shelf in multiple volumes for each one, plus some Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Now I mainly just see some Shadowmarch with maybe one Otherland volume. Though he's not as much in the vein of the 70s/80s I was talking about earlier. Though I've found his to be more available in just the last 10 years with the scarcity happening more in the last few.

I wonder how much of it has to do with book overstock being released. I shop mostly at Half Price Books, and they're very homogenous from store to store. You can sort of tell that they must have gotten a big shipment of some book, because all of a sudden these like-new copies will show up at all every location. I wonder how much of some authors availability rising and falling has to do with receiving and then running out of these overstocks. It'd make sense that you'd probably see a boom period followed by a dwindling and then a real scarcity. It'd hit "used" books (meaning both actual used books and overstock) from the 70s, then 80s, then 90s, etc.

Back in the 1980s, Cherryh's books were ubiquitous in UK bookshops, now none of them are in print and haven't been for over a decade. She's not even in the SF Masterworks series. Publishers treat her fiction as if it's out of fashion, but I don't think it is. She still has a lot to offer to current sf readers, and so does her back-list.

Incidentally, SF Mistressworks has to date reviewed four of her books: Angel with the Sword (see here), Voyager in Night (see here), The Faded Sun trilogy (see here) and Merchanter's Luck (see here). My review of The Pride of Chanur will be posted on the site in about three weeks' time.

#20 & #21 > does #19 change anything for you? :-)

I still prefer paper :-) Though at some point I plan to invest in a Kindle, if only because some of my favourite authors are releasing new rewritten editions of their back-catalogues.

Just chiming in as a me-too.
Was blown away when I read Cyteen although not everyone loves it - or indeed CJC's writing. But definetly one of my favourite authors.

There's a fan website Shejidan More Salads are always welcome.

#24 > With you on the awesomeness of Cyteen :-)

I'm always a bit shocked to read when someone who enjoys reading Science Fiction admits to not liking or worse, not even having read C.J. Cherryh. For me, she embodies almost everything I love about the genre - the bold, but stringent imagination, a sense of how vast and foreign the universe outside of our small human bubble is, great adventure stories that yet never lose sight of what is pausible and deeply flawed but interesting and convincing characters.
And I also very much agree with fuzzi 10 that she never insults her readers' intelligence but trusts that they are able to pay attention and work things out.

+1 to #26 > Larou :-)

I run an SF fandom charity; I accept donated books which I then sell online and at conventions and the proceeds go to a foundation that I'm chairing. It's very rare that I get any Cherryh with the stuff that people donate.

brightcopy, I didn't mean that I doubted you, but it's just been my experience, for the last 30 years, that whenever I go into a used book store, Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity or other 'resale' type of store, I cannot find books by CJ Cherryh.

I can still find a lot of Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey, but their numbers are dwindling as well.

I recently found Caliban's Hour online, but it was a hard copy. Child of an Ancient City is also a very good read. While I never "got into" Tad Williams' Otherland series (I tried at least twice), his Memory, Sorry and Thorn series is still great...I reread it in the last year and still was overwhelmed by how good it was.

CJ Cherryh is still my favorite, though. She is consistently very good.

#29 by fuzzi> Oh, I don't doubt your experience, either. That's why I was pondering how much of it was due to overstock as opposed to individual user resale.

I don't think I'll be reading more Williams. Unfortunately, I found he has the same problem as Peter Hamilton. He tells a good story, but throws way too many characters and subplots in so that it's a slog getting through it all. I like long books but I don't like books that I feel just need some better editing.

brightcopy, the two I mentioned, Child of an Ancient City and Caliban's Hour are not long, nor stuffed full of characters. If you've not read them, give them a try.

#31 by fuzzi> Will keep an eye out, thanks. I've seen the latter at used bookstores, but again that was years back and I think they ran out. I remember reading the dustcover and not being intrigued (that's not to say I don't think it's a good book - I just wasn't lured into reading it.) Never ran across the former.

brightcopy, I've picked up both recently through either abebooks or thriftbooks online. The Caliban's Hour turned out to be a first edition hardcover in near perfect condition, so I was very happy!

#33 by fuzzi> Yeah, I'm sure you can find just about anything if you go mail-order. I just generally don't bother because I want to hold the book in my hands before I plunk down any money. There's already plenty of books for me at local merchants to keep me in reading.

I plan on hitting Uncle Hugo's soon, though, so I'll look there. You can find just about anything there, but sometimes you need to bring a shovel and some breadcrumbs...

not read any yet. I think I did try one years ago, probably Downbelow Station but I dont think I got very far.

About finding CJC books: it must be geographic. I see her books in used book stores (& new book stores) frequently; esp. mass market editions, but also hardcover which are often Book Club editions. On the other hand, I do frequent quite a few stores quite often.... this would be in New England & upstate NY, mostly.

Cyteen I like almost everything I've read by Cherryh, and love lots of it -- Cyteen being the exception. I found it overlong, dull, implausible, and full of unsympathetic characters. Because of that I haven't gotten myself to read the 40,000 book yet, though I have it. Certainly it's an ambitious novel, but to me it doesn't utilize her strengths.

It seems appropriate here, in the spirit of tastes differing, to mention that for me Cyteen is among the greatest of SF novels.

I've not yet read Cyteen, but I do have it on my shelf (in three volumes) and have it on my TBR for this year.

> 35: I had a similar problem with Downbelow Station; it went better when I re-read it about 5 - 10 years later and didn't try to rush it.

#36 thru #39 > I may have had to "work" a bit more with some Cherryh books than others but, to me, she's a unique author for one incredibly important reason---her fans can admit she's a challenging read without throwing her books out the window...

Does this mean Cherryh draws more "dedicated" readers, in general, or that, even though she can be "challenging" to read, at times, she still supplies "value" in the experience?

I know of many readers of other writers who absolutely stop reading their books if the authors make them "work too hard" to "understand".........

Oh for crying out loud, can't people just have different tastes without it being because they didn't "put in enough work"? :P

Well, brightcopy, I sympathize with just letting folks have different "tastes"---that's why there are so many authors :-)

Still, looking at it from the readers' side---why does it seem so many readers have trouble with C. J. Cherryh---and other authors---readers who don't have "bad reading habits" or are otherwise "deficient"...

I can appreciate an author's style even if I detest their content...

There is such a thing as prose allergy, though. Respected authors whose prose style simply doesn't appeal to you.

anglemark > you've provided me with my first example of synchronicity here on LT :-)

Just before I read your comment, I'd written the following to someone in another group: "...do you have a comment on the complex issue of "preference for certain writing styles"?

"I ask because I'm quite comfortable with "working" to relate to various author styles while others I've known (certainly not folks with reading "disabilities") struggle with this..."

#43 yes for me its Ursula Le Guin and probably China Mieville. Ive only read one Mieville so it may not be valid but Ive tried to read 4 le guins and only succeeded with one. And theyre short books!

I had a severe reaction to Perdido Street Station. There are lingering effects...

By the way, anglemark, I love your term, "prose allergy" :-)

Heh. I think I may have picked it up from Teresa Nielsen Hayden, editor at Tor Books, once upon a time.

I generally like "light reads", so why am I such a fan of the following authors, who are not known for their brevity?

CJ Cherryh
Tad Williams
Sharon Kay Penman
Tom Clancy
James Clavell

The story is the thing! I don't care if it's YA, children's, Western, mystery or...yes, even some romance, IF the story is good and the characters believable.

One of the reasons I love CJ Cherryh's "Chanur" series (and her "Morgaine" series too, for that matter) is the characters, what she does to make them not only believable, but to have depth of personality!

fuzzi > Cherryh is a remarkable "characterizer"---beyond that actually, she has her plots grow from within her finely-drawn characters...

Her Morgaine Saga + Exile's Gate is the best series I, personally, have Ever read...

I generally like "light reads", so why am I such a fan of the following authors, who are not known for their brevity?

Because "light read" isn't the same as "short book". As you say, light reads are characterised by a clear, easy-to-follow plotline and a rather simple prose style. The length of the book has nothing to do with it.

I've read an Author's Note by Piers Anthony where he describes some of the things he does to make his books easier to read:
- when using an obscure word for the first time, he defines it somewhere on the same page
- when a character shows up after being absent for a few chapters, he puts in a reminder of who that character was

I already considered his books good for taking along on airplanes etc, but before reading that Note I didn't realize the effect was deliberate :) And frankly, I can think of a few authors whose work would benefit from those techniques. (Looking at you, Peter F. Hamilton).

I love the way this thread has wandered :-)

Still...

It's hovering around a few fascinating loci.

#52

But surely if Hamilton did that the books would be even longer.

AMZoltai, both Morgaine and Chanur are my favorites, for different reasons.

Morgaine is deeper in some ways, but Chanur has more political aspects.

They're both very good!

anglemark, you are correct that "light reads" aren't necessarily short books, but the majority of my light reads are, so I was basing my opinion on my own experience. :)

I have a theory that once authors hit the bestseller lists, their editors become afraid to tell them what to cut, so their books get thicker and thicker. Cherryh seems immune to that, fortunately :)

Amtep, I my estimation, Cherryh is a consummate Master---Craftsperson/Artist :-)

#56 Not so much a theory. Most writers exhibit a severe dip in quality once they're bestsellers. Editors daren't edit them too heavily, as they did before, in case they spoil whatever it is that makes the books sell. See Robert Heinlein or Clive Cussler...

Cherryh came up as a topic of discussion a few weeks ago on the Notes from Coode Street podcast. They thought the lack of interest in giving her lifetime achievement awards may stem from the perception that so much of her work is part of a larger series and getting started in reading Cherryh could seem quite daunting.

I know I've only read her short stories and never tackled her in novel form though I own a few and a friend has regularly recommended her since the 1980s. I seem to remember critic John J. Pierce saying she carried John W. Campbell's dictum about writing a science fiction story as if it's to be read by those in its future world about as far as you could go

I notice her website has some recommendations where to start -- or I could just start at beginning with the first novels she wrote.

It's the old so many books, so little time ...

Don't forget Merchanter's Luck a nice little book that gets largely ignored.

#56, yup, some people are just too successful for anyone to be able to tell them their new work sucks when it could still be fixed. I have invented a name for that: the Lucas effect. :)

I always hate it when authors get "too big to edit." That's why so much more of King's work in his later years is "miss" rather than "hit". And even more than editing, he needs a publisher to say "This is a complete piece of crap. There's no way we would publish this because no one would buy it." Because no matter what, if it has Stephen King's name on it they would buy it.

#51 precisely! 2 books I read recently were similar in length. One was a struggle, the other a breeze!

On the topic of publishers not telling successful writers what to do, I doubt CJC would be writing volume 57 of the Foreigner series if that weren't what her publisher were willing to pay for. I don't begrudge her that; she needs to keep the lights on.

Reviewing the Pride of Chanur, I think her appeal remains chiefly nostalgic. Her fiction doesn't quite cut it for the 21st century - too reliant on filing the serial numbers off human cultures, not quite global enough, so to speak.

The first time I read 'The Pride of Chanur', I must admit I was disappointed; I was expecting an interesting take on humans as aliens, and instead I found I was getting a wish-fulfillment cat fantasy, with politics. But I have resolved to give it another try, partly because I like the idea of seeing humans as aliens.

I do agree with the 'author too popular to edit" effect. I remember reading A Tale of Two Cities and falling over what seemed to me like Lionel Fanthorpe-scale paid-by-the-word padding.

If any of you want Sci-Fi with a scary edge, try Rider at the Gate. It's not John Saul, but it's not cute fuzzies and winged unicorns either.

(61) Codexus, I'm snitching that phrase and sharing it with my (adult) son, who is a big fan of Star Wars, and less a fan of George Lucas...

>58 iansales: Got to agree with you on Heinlein, but I read Cussler's first novel and thought it needed a good edit job too.

In terms of the main point of this topic, I read one of Cheyrrh's novels a couple of decades ago and was notably unimpressed to the point that I haven't read one since. I'll have to try one again sometime to see if I still agree with my younger self, but I've got enough books on my to-read pile that I'm not rushing out to get one.

This is an interesting discussion - the thread about authors getting too big for edits - because I've always had the idea that some don't really want to write another book in whatever series they've done but the publishers ask for more of the same "and make it this size because we like the way they all look on the store shelves."

I don't know anything about publishing, that's just been my feeling.

Well, I think that'd be the state before the "too big to edit" stage. Because at that point they can generally just walk to another publisher once they've proven they can sell books.

#69 Which first Cussler novel? :-) Because once he'd made it big with Raise the Titanic, he cut new deals for his earlier books and then sold the first novel he actually wrote, Pacific Vortex, which really ought to have stayed unsold. I considered Cussler's novels a guilty pleasure for many years, but around Treasure, they started to decline in quality, and Shock Wave was so bad I don't think an editor went anywhere near it.

#71 it seems to me that I heard a discussion or read about authors who would like to be able to write different things but their publisher doesn't want them to and their contract doesn't allow them to go elsewhere. Is that why some authors have begun to self-publish or to publish under a different name?

Is there anybody lurking about who could add to this?

#73 > Some authors do let themselves get trapped in contracts that suffocate/"enslave" them and some publishers do push authors to write what the publisher thinks will sell.

These are both reasons for many authors to begin self-publishing.

As far as using a different name, I don't have data on that...

Or they may write what they write not because they are banned from doing other by contract, but because they write what they can sell.

Yep, stellarexplorer, that's another possibility :-)

In the past authors have submitted books to contract, which the publishers refused, so they published them elsewhere. Ian Watson's Converts wasn't published by Gollancz because they didn't like that it was comic. So it was published as a paperback original by Granada.

There are also cases where publishers won't offer a contract to an author's next project because they don't think it's commercial enough. So the author either changes their project until it is, or they look for someone else who will publish it as is - these days, that'll be either a small press or self publishing.

A number of authors have also begun self-publishing "preferred" editions of OOP novels from their back-catalogue - eg, Gwyneth Jones, William Barton, David Herter. Since I'm a fan of those three authors, and don't own a Kindle, I find this especially annoying...

Funny how there are so many posts on this single author - I don't remember any other that elicited so much discussion.

I recently picked up a copy of Regenesis so it's on my TBR pile. I hope it doesn't suffer from the aformentioned "to big to edit" syndrome...

#78 it kinda went off topic a bit!

iansales > regarding back-catalogue > check-out comment #19 about Cherryh, et.al....

sf_addict, I think it just kinda wandered around a few loci, like a great coffee-house Convo :-)

# 80 yes, I saw that. It's not that authors are putting their back-catalogues out as ebooks, it's that some of them are rewriting the books as they do so.

Well, C.J. Cherryh always seems to garner great discussions with quite varied topics. She's amazing!

iansales > thanks for the clarification :-)

I just read my first Cherryh, Merchanter's Luck, and was less than impressed.

I spent a lot of the book wondering what the hell was going on and why. This despite the fact that people were endlessly explaining the situation to each other back and forth and then going off and explaining it to someone else. Sometimes there were long discussions where the local (to me, a newcomer, incomprehensible) political situation left over from a previous book was explained and the characters would then go off and explain it all to someone else. Lots and lots of yadda yadda yadda in the book - interspersed by moments when the plot looked it finally might start to get going... whereupon everyone would start another round of yadda yadda explaining in tedious detail (including bank transactions) what was going to happen and why it was a bad idea.

Maybe those familiar with the 'universe' might have had more idea but I was at a total loss. I spent a lot of the time parsing sentences to try and work out what they meant too. A very odd stream of conciousness writing style that left me cold. The plot, when it finally emerged from under all the baffling verbiage, was very thin and didn't make much sense to me at all and ended very anticlimactically.

Did I just start in a bad place with Merchanter's Luck or am I doomed not to get on with her books?

My own personal recommendation is to start with Downbelow Station, the foundational book in that world. But what I see as masterly, you may see as obscure. Downbelow was my first Cherryh, and within a few pages I was hooked, partly because I was confident I was in good hands, and that the author would honor the author-reader contract, so to speak.

I think the Chanur books were my first exposure to CJ Cherryh, and I've never looked back.

Some people rave about Terry Brooks or Douglas Adams, but neither of those authors' works appeal to me. It could be that you might like Downbelow Station or not, but it's worth a try.

My first was Downbelow Station then I read The Morgaine Saga and fell in Love :-)

Morgaine is great!

Yep, fuzzi, imho, best female character Ever :-)

Though, Signy Mallory was uber-cool, too...

And Pyanfur...

Ah, Pyanfur...

While digging through my library, I realized I had a C J Cherryh book that I had slated for discare: Fortress in the Eye of Time. I remember just not being really bored by the writing style. Maybe I'll give it another shot before tossing it.

#84
Hi TOJM -- from your post it seems like you might prefer something with more action -- in that case, as others have suggested, you might try The Pride of Chanur. Aside from lots of action & a clear plot, it has interesting alien species; some pretty human-like mentally, some less so, and some very weird.

Fortress in the Eye of Time is the highest of high fantasy, so it's going to be a very different experience from her space stuff :)

My all time favorite (I've re-read it so often I've lost count) is Voyager in Night because of its extreme weirdness. I hesitate to recommend it to TheOtherJunkMonkey because there's also a lot of talking, though. But at least it's not part of a series and the talking is done by characters who are dealing with urgent problems.

If you're okay with fantasy then I do think Morgaine is the best starting point. Gate of Ivrel is the first book but these days it's mostly available as part of a collected work.

I must admit I love Cherryh's sf but I can't stand her fantasy - except perhaps The Paladin, I dimly recall enjoying that one.

#94 I reviewed Voyager in Night for SF Mistressworks here.

Hmmm...

This thread just keeps getting more interesting :-)

I Love Cherryh's Sci-fi and Fantasy---just smitten is all...

I've not read Voyager in Night...one more for the Wishlist!

iansales, I didn't consider The Paladin as fantasy, unless living on a different world counts as fantasy?

iirc, it was a mediaevalish adventure about a woman who became a knight.

Distinguishing between Fantasy and SF can be difficult :) I consider Morgaine to be fantasy mainly because of the tropes. The underlying logic of worldgates is pure SF, but no-one in the stories understands much about them so it's pretty much like magic, and people run around waving swords and wearing leather. On the other hand if you focus on the backstory and the lack of actual magic then it's SF.

I know a couple of other works that are ambiguous that way.
- The Chronicles of Amber have magic, but the underlying quest for the true nature of reality (which keeps expanding in surprising yet fitting ways) is exactly what I like about science fiction. Also the magic is not arbitrary and most of it can be construed as logical consequences of the parallel-world universe in which they live. And parallel worlds are SF, right?
- The Coldfire Trilogy has an explicit SF setting (a colony settled by a generation ship from Earth), but the colony world contains a natural force that responds to human minds and is... basically magic. It even has gods, which get their power from human worship. But still, you know... spaceship. And the magic really is treated like a natural force, in the sense that humans study it as a science.

I think, in the end, both fantasy and science fiction consist of several aspects (scenery, tropes, plot elements, underlying rules) and a work that takes some from column A and some from column B can never be classified satisfactorily.

The Paladin is pretty much core fantasy - see here.

I consider Coldfire to be "science fantasy", much like Dragonriders. No matter how much they try to label it on the menu, or still "tastes" like fantasy. Also, LotR is still fantasy even if you add "A long time in the future, on the holodeck..." to the beginning.

iansales, I will politely disagree with Wikipedia. I think Amtep has got it right, except I still consider the Morgaine books to be SciFi.

I also like the Sword of Knowledge series. I hated them when I first read them because they weren't full of tension and action like many of her other books, but I tried them again and liked them much more the second time. I hated the Foreigner series, too, in the beginning because Bren was such a whiner (I wanted to shoot him myself), but the later books are much better.

#102 What makes you think it's science fiction? It takes place in an invented country? So do pretty much all epic fantasies - you know, like Middle-Earth or The Land or "Randland" or Malazan...

Or even some sub-genres of historical fiction, such as The Prisoner of Zenda. Ruritania is "an invented country"; or perhaps it's in an alternate reality?

I just checked "cross-genre" on Wikipedia and found these examples:

Action comedy (action and comedy)
Comedy-drama or dramedy (comedy and drama)
Comedy-horror (comedy and horror)
Comic fantasy (comedy and fantasy)
Comic science fiction (comedy and science fiction)
Crime fantasy (crime and fantasy)
Dark fantasy (horror and fantasy)
Romantic comedy (romance and comedy)
Romantic fantasy (romance and fantasy)
Science fantasy (science fiction and fantasy)
Science fiction Western (science fiction and Western)
Supernatural drama (supernatural and drama)
Tragicomedy (tragedy and comedy)
Weird West (Western and horror, science fiction and/or speculative elements)

Seems this mix-and-match could go on forever...

I see only one there with three contributors.

Folks could organize all this and give out prizes for the newest spawn...

When does red + blue stop being that and turn "purple"?

If you have 52 types of genre and shuffle them then draw 5, how often do you have a "winning hand"?

How many shades of mullato are there?

I'm not ranting about this, I'm exploring the terrain and wondering out loud :-)

Stepping aside from "What's the proper name for it?", The Paladin too is my favorite of Cherryh's fantasy. Generally speaking, I prefer her SF.

Cool, stellarexplorer, you've saved me from endless pondering---leave the "proper naming" to the marketing folks at the traditional publishing houses---sit down and read a great Story, eh??

I love Cherryh. I found reading her writing when I first started to be very difficult. It didn't flow and it seemed impenetrable. So I went back to the start of the first chapter and tried again. Eventually it sorted out (or re-wired my brain). I never had the problem again, though figuring out what is going on is often an on-going project when you read her. I started with one of the Merchanter novels, not sure which one now.

I love the Faded Sun trilogy, and the Chanur Saga . So funny, and there is a description of a space dock, that I swear will be an exact match when they exist. I also love the Foreigner series, though I have not read all of them yet. I think the first 3 were best of those I have read. I love the Merchanter stories and read all of them first, so I really didn't like Cyteen the other side of the war. Not read the sequel yet.

I loved Angel With a Sword and the rest of the stories in the shared universe of Merovingen Nights, and her Roman story/characters in the old-dead land of Hades in Heroes in Hell and her stories/characters in Thieves World shared universe. Didn't like the Morgaine series, mostly cause I hated the main character. Haven't read any other of her fantasy, though I have the books.

Have tried some of her newer stuff, The Gene Wars and it seemed bland and lifeless.

72) Sorry I didn't respond quicker, but I tried to get on Librarything a couple of times over the weekend and their server was having problems.

I actually have a copy of Pacific Vortex which I believe I picked up at a library sale for 10 cents. Cussler wrote a forward which basically said, "This wasn't good enough to sell when I first wrote it, but I can sell it now. Here it is."

I've always thought of his books as escapist reading, kind of like a Bond film, you just need to relax, suspend all disbelief and let the plot roll. I quit reading him after a dozen or so books, not long before he retired the Pitt character and started adding secondary writers.

It's been a while since I read his first couple of books by publication date, perhaps I was unfair of my description of them and they weren't quite as bloated as I remember them.

iansales wrote What makes you think it's science fiction? It takes place in an invented country? So do pretty much all epic fantasies - you know, like Middle-Earth or The Land or "Randland" or Malazan...

I have been told that the difference between Science fiction and fantasy is that the former could happen, the latter could not. I think that's a good way to differentiate between most SciFi and fantasy works.

So when I read The Paladin, while it did not take place on our earth as far as I could tell, it could have, or could have taken place somewhere else, like the Morgaine books.

The fantasy stuff is magic and elves and unicorns and dragons, like Cherryh's The Goblin Mirror, The Dreamstone and Fortress in the Eye of Time.

The SciFi is the Morgaine books, the Chanur universe, Downbelow Station and yes, as I see it, The Paladin.

This is my opinion, which isn't worth anything, it's just mine. ;)

fuzzi,

Even though I'm not that keen on categorizing literature too finely, I believe there can be books clearly science fiction where elements of them would never be possible---though possibility is not a specialty of mine :-)

AMZoltai, would you classify Star Trek as SciFi or fantasy, knowing that much of it is not possible?

Just wondering. :)

impossible SciFi, fuzzi :-)

What do you mean, impossible!? I've got a phaser, it lights my way to bed every night. In fact, I've got 2 of them, and since I've started using them, no cats have been harmed in the dark hall ;)

Yay, nhlsecord !! :-)

I amend my opinion...

Attaboy Mr. Zoltai :) Thank goodness for Star Trek conventions.

nhlsecord, I met Harlan Ellison at a Star Trek Convention :-)

I bet that was interesting! I didn't like his books, but he sounded like an interesting character.

I attended a few conventions in Toronto. I stopped going when they got really organized. Our first one was a lot like the one in Fallen Angels by Larry Niven but without the glaciers and the astronauts.

nhlsecord, :-)

#111 I have been told that the difference between Science fiction and fantasy is that the former could happen, the latter could not. I think that's a good way to differentiate between most SciFi and fantasy works.

Actually, it's not. Especially since it's led you to classify a core fantasy novel as science fiction :-) Lots of science fiction could never happen, some of it is even set in the past. Most people classify the two genres by their furniture and tropes, but even that is inadequate as too many writers mix and match tropes in an effort to be original. I've had several goes at defining the genres, and my best effort to date is by wonder and agency. It's not perfect, but at least looks beyond the furniture.

re: SF vs F, CJC herself does not distinguish between the two, and tends not to label any of her works as one or the other. There's a bit on her website somewhere where she discusses this.

What the author intends is completely irrelevant :-)

Its subjective. After all I class Dune as fantasy , but the film is sci fi!

These types of arguements lead to the term "Fantastic Fiction" - call it whatever you want to call it - if you limit yourself to specifics you end up avoiding a lot of good (and bad) writing. I became a fairly hardcore traditional SF fan for many years - I think Robert Jordan's books (I think I read up to book 6 or 7), killed any desire in me to read anything in the fantasy genre - and the bulk of what's been published since then has been fantasy, at least it seems so to me. It's only been in the last two years that I've started to read it again (George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books have brought me back). If I start reading a fantasy series and it's horrible, I put it down as I don't want to get disgusted with the genre again...

This is such a Lovely thread :-)

>123 iansales: one of my core positions. Thank you, Ian!

#123 Many years ago when the news.net was fairly new I read the SF group avidly. I still remember one lively discussion between an author and a fan in which the author described his viewpoint and intent for the fantasy he'd written and the fan vehemently insisted the author was wrong, that was NOT what the author intended! The author simply said he wrote what he wrote and after that it was up to the reader.

I think the author was a Del Rey editor but I can't remember his name except that there were 3 parts to it and I was so excited to be reading something personal by an author. I fell in love with the internet very early on. :)

nhlsecord, what you say reminds me of the feeling many authors describe (including me) that the book is their child---they give birth to it and "raise" it for a bit, then the "world" (readers) get to know it and relate to it in innumerably different ways :-)

nhlsecord, which group? rec.arts.sf.written or even the old sf-lovers?

> 129 I go a step further: the author gives birth to it, but thereafter it has a life of its own. In the permutations and interpretations of cultural ferment, what was born of the author gains its own meanings, and the author loses any privileged authority over what was once her baby.

#131 > Does the child of the author, even if it attains maturity, still "respect" its parent?

Only if it was respected itself in its formative years. ;P

stellarexplorer > :-)

anglemark, that's a good question ;) I was still reading it in the late 90's but not since then. I know it was a rec.arts group, probably the written one. Say, is LT the descendant of rec.arts... ? Where would Lt fit on the tree? Where would Mr. Zoltai's world fit? Wouldn't that be an interesting anthropology project? I remember my sister's biology project in which she had a pile of nails and screws and things that she had to fit into an evolutionary tree.

My, where this group goes. Does Ms. Cherryh know about this?

ETA I'm never going to get any sleep tonight.

The author can't dictate how a reader will respond to their novel. They may be trying for a specific effect, but there's no guarantee it will work on everyone, or indeed on anyone. So whatever the author intended is irrelevant, it's what the reader takes from the fiction that's important. The more skilled the author, the closer those two things are likely to be - for some people, anyway...

Also, in the spirit of, er, promoting discussion, I throw in some past thoughts I've had on science fiction and its difference to fantasy:

How science fiction works

Toward working definitions of science fiction and fantasy

No matter how they are defined, I STILL LOVE CJ CHERRYH'S BOOKS!!!

So there. Nyah.

That's why I like LT so much: intelligent discourse :-)

While I agree about the author not really absolutely owning their works, they do have one big advantage over everyone else - the ability to add to the canon. Of course, if their addition is bad enough the fans may decided to excommunicate it. This is more prevalent in film, of course.

And then there are the new authors brought in to add to canon, such as wrote McDune books. Those are much more easily ignored.

brightcopy, to extend the analogy I introduced, with your comment, some authors (and, sometimes, in spite of what readers desire) continue to give birth---perhaps a "Darwinian" urge :-)

some in so doing articulating an incisive case for literary contraception :)

That's why I like LT so much: intelligent discourse :-)

LOL, iansales!

stellar, "literary contraception" -- Whoot ! :-)

What would the contraceptive be - a rubber eraser?

:-), nhlsecord

>146 nhlsecord: That might work, but abstinence would be 100% effective! :-D

Actually, not by the usual measures of effectiveness, which include failures due to applying the method incorrectly :)

Like succumbing to a weak moment and pounding out a quick short story?

Or being lured by your Muse into a dark alley and waking up in a strange city...

Not being able to account for the children begging you not to leave on another trip...

Yeah. It tends to start with the small things. It's just a shopping list, it can't hurt, right? Right. Then it's a quick email to a friend, then comes the amusing anecdote... We all know how that goes.

#152 > So many ways to succumb to the wiles.........

I've read a huge chunk of Cherryh's older stuff with my favorites being The Faded Sun and Foreigner. Like Ian though, I read exclusively her SF and no fantasy. Just couldn't get into the fantasy I guess.

Actually, a greater dividing line for me is her older work versus her new stuff. I read Hammerfall and it was okay. Anything after that I couldn't get into anything, not even the Foreigner books. I stopped that series after book eight I think. I suppose I've just moved on.

I like CJ Cherryh's older stuff too, beniowa.

Morgaine and Chanur are still my favorites.

That's the way it is with a lot of my favorite authors as well. They should come with "sell by" dates. This kind of goes back to the "too big to edit" point as well.

)152 On the other hand, if writers don't write, they turn into "The Smoking Man" Bwoohaahaahaahaa!!!

>34 brightcopy: Don't forget your miners helmet and canary, if you have to go very deep.

#158 by LamSon> Well, I managed to make it in and out with a minimum of fuss. There were actually a significant reduction in aisle piles. They said they had made an effort to get rid of duplicates.