Chapters and Authors in Jeffro Johnson's Appendix N

[jeffro]

Jun 6, 2017 5:03:08 GMT -6 cadriel said:

Jun 5, 2017 18:42:58 GMT -6 jeffro said:

It didn't just happened, either. But there is a school of thought and a brand of criticism that intentionally dethroned them and replaced them with lesser authors.

I have no way to respond to this. You believe that there is a conspiracy to get people to read inferior books, I just can't help you with that. Publishing is a market much more than it is an ideology; this kind of literature isn't what sells.

A. Merritt and Edgar Rice Burroughs sure sold. They dominated the field in their day. A. Merritt was synonymous with fantasy. Edgar Rice Burroughs was synonymous with science fiction. A. Merritt was singled out as the best of the bunch in fantasy, science fiction, weird, and multi-genre magazines. Edgar Rice Burroughs inspired an entire generation to pursue careers in science.

Has human nature just randomly changed in the past eight decades that this sort of thing just can't fly anymore? It all comes down to the marketplace rewarding winners and losers on an even playing field...?

Let's check in with a real conspiracy theorist, Joanna Russ writing from within the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction:

I know it’s painful to be told that something in which one has invested intense emotion is not only bad art but bad for you, not only bad for you but ridiculous. I didn’t do it to be mean, honest. Nor did I do it because the promise held out by heroic fantasy, the promise of escape into a wonderful Other world, is one I find temperamentally unappealing. On the contrary, it’s because I understand the intensity of the demand so well (having spent my twenties reading Eddison and Tolkien; I even adapted The Hobbit for the stage) that I also understand the absolute impossibility of ever fulfilling that demand. The current popularity of heroic fantasy scares me; I believe it to be a symptom of political and cultural reaction due to economic depression. […] That our literary heritage began with feudal epics and marchen is no reason to keep on writing them forever. […] Reality is everything. Reality is what there is. Only the hopelessly insensitive find reality so pleasant as to never want to get away from it, but painkillers can be bad for the health, and even if they were not, I am d**ned if anyone will make me say that the newest fad in analgesics is equivalent to the illumination which is the other thing (besides pleasure) art ought to provide.

That would have been the conventional wisdom back in the seventies. Back when everyone had grown up, gotten serious, moved beyond the tackiness of pulp style writing. You can see how filmmakers of the period had imbibed this sort of thinking. Science fiction movies were VERY SERIOUS, often dealing in DREADFUL WARNINGS about the future. If anyone wanted to do some sort of Buck Rogers thing, they'd surely be laughed out of the theater, right? Modern audiences were just to danged cynical and discerning for that sort of thing. And even if it SOLD, hey... it's BAD for you!

Right.

Then Star Wars came out... a film that cribs shamelessly from ERB's Barsoom stories and which had a movie poster which intentionally evoked the Frank Frazetta covers of his paperbacks.

And the marketplace spoke.

[welleran]

Jun 6, 2017 6:28:21 GMT -6 jeffro said:

Then Star Wars came out... a film that cribs shamelessly from ERB's Barsoom stories and which had a movie poster which intentionally evoked the Frank Frazetta covers of his paperbacks.

And the marketplace spoke.

Thank goodness, too! I would not care to live in a world with media controlled or dominated by Russ and her ilk.

[Deleted]

Jun 6, 2017 8:03:55 GMT -6 welleran said:

Jun 6, 2017 6:28:21 GMT -6 jeffro said:

Then Star Wars came out... a film that cribs shamelessly from ERB's Barsoom stories and which had a movie poster which intentionally evoked the Frank Frazetta covers of his paperbacks.

And the marketplace spoke.

Thank goodness, too! I would not care to live in a world with media controlled or dominated by Russ and her ilk.

Where are todays A. Merritt's, Edgar Rice Burrough's, and Robert E Howard's, where are they? They are being destroyed by people like Russ and her ilk, because now it starts in early childhood and continues throughout school and work. The watering down of everything, through the pervasive EVIL of political correctness and the thought police, an evil greater and more deadly to humankind than anything the heroes of these beloved author's ever faced. If anyone says to you that you shouldn't say or do something because someone might find it offensive - you in that moment know with absolute certainty that that person is EVIL and is your enemy and the enemy of every child that ever has lived or ever will live. May those forces of EVIL that want everyone to be a little round peg that fits in a little round hole, ultimately fail in their drive to destroy every good thing about humanity. Everything good that has ever happened or ever will happen is solely because of people who are not little round pegs.

[oakesspalding]

The implicit claim that decisions in the fantasy and science fiction publishing industry are made solely on the basis of profit maximization, by rational and non-ideological actors, couldn't be more false. Just ask Nick Cole.

In a sense, though, it's even worse than that. Many corporate profit-maximizers are risk-averse, and are thus subject by default to the latest fads.

[Deleted]

Jun 6, 2017 8:59:41 GMT -6 oakesspalding said:

The implicit claim that decisions in the fantasy and science fiction publishing industry are made solely on the basis of profit maximization, by rational and non-ideological actors, couldn't be more false. Just ask Nick Cole.

A different way of putting that is that many corporate profit-maximizers are risk-averse, and are thus subject by default to the latest fads.

Thank you for the link, I am a fan of post-apocalyptic literature and I had not heard of this guy. Here is what he said to censorship of thought:

I refused.
I am a writer.
No. One. Will Ever. Bully. Me.
Ever.

I am a writer.
A writer is often the last defense in a society collapsing into a one-mind totalitarian state where the rights of people are trodden upon by the ruling elite in the name of the “greater good.” Where freedom of speech and independent thinking are also curtailed in the name of the “greater good.” Where writers and other artists disappear either by blacklisting or “disappearing” because they say, or write, something that the intellectual elite hates. I am a writer. It is my job to stand up and say what cannot be said. It is my job to play with unpopular ideas. I would not deny anyone from doing so, and I expect not to be denied. I expect the same courtesy others are being extended. I expect not to be discriminated against merely because I am different. Better people than myself have written the truth at the cost of their lives. Many dead writers have paid for the freedom of others with the truth, and their lives. Writers are often the last flame of freedom on the flickering candle of civilization in the darkness of a world going mad.

I have heard of him now and will be checking out all of his books on Amazon. I want a majority like him on on every school board in the world.

Just so you understand him, he also said this:

5. Don’t offend people.
Shocking is overrated and overdone and boorish. It’s a cheap way to entertain people and it’s been done too much. Instead, weave, craft and cut to tell an intriguing tale. Challenge yourself to make your writing accessible to everyone. One of the strengths of John Grisham’s novels as told by him is that you can read his books and hand them to your grandmother or your teenager and not feel embarrassed by anything within. John Grisham sells a lot of novels.

In other words know the difference between what truly is offensive and the forbidden list established by political correctness.

[Finarvyn]

[admin hat]
Please, let's not get into a debate about political correctness. It is pointless and will result in much anger and potential thread lock.
[/admin hat]

[geoffrey]

I think it takes about 200 years before a civilization can assuredly judge literature. During the century a book is written, it partakes of the nature of that century. The century after a book is written, the civilization is reacting against the assumptions of the books of the previous century. It is not until the century after that that men can look dispassionately upon the books written 200 years before.

I think, therefore, that the 20th century's fantasy and science-fiction literature will not be finally sorted into either A) timeless or B) ephemeral until A. D. 2100. We will all be dead. At least most of our children will be dead. But many of our grandchildren will live to see the proper classification of 20th-century fantasy and science fiction. Of course, most of them will not care, being too busy arguing about the merits of the literature of the 21st and 22nd centuries.

[Finarvyn]

200 years is a long time. Make that 50 years and you're onto something. I think that if literature is still around for a couple of generations (roughly 50 years) it must have some value. Howard, Lovecraft, Leiber -- those guys stand tall.

[DungeonDevil]

Then Star Wars came out... a film that cribs shamelessly from ERB's Barsoom stories

Likely more cribbed from the serial "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" of 1940 (esp. the opening crawler text), than ERB, but there is a small chance that theory may also have traction.

[jeffro]

Jun 8, 2017 21:46:46 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

Then Star Wars came out... a film that cribs shamelessly from ERB's Barsoom stories

Likely more cribbed from the serial "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" of 1940 (esp. the opening crawler text), than ERB, but there is a small chance that theory may also have traction.

Who do you think inspired the creation of Flash Gordon in the first place? And Superman. And Conan.

Comics, Star Wars, and D&D are all rooted in the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's not an accident that he is mentioned in the introduction to OD&D. It's not an accident that Dr. Holmes wrote Burroughs pastiche. It's not an accident that TSR published Warriors of Mars.

ERB was a giant among giants.

[cadriel]

To be far too pithy about it, ERB's Barsoom novels are essentially H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain stories transported to Percival Lowell's Mars. (It's an oversimplification, but one rooted in reality.) Not to mention the threads in American society, like theosophy, that run like an electric current through a great deal of early sci-fi and fantasy. Burroughs did some marvelous world-building and his stories are fine adventures, but he adhered so strictly to formula that you can just about see the innards working when you've read enough of his books. There's nothing wrong with a good formula story, but it's hardly an unreachable pinnacle of literary genius.

Probably the most lasting impact of Burroughs's work was to merge adventure fiction with science fiction as Verne and Wells had established it. That played a big part in getting SF into the pulps, which proved to be fertile ground for all kinds of new experiments - some brilliant, some not so much. I don't want to downplay that I've found his books to be excellent reading, I just don't think they're even the pinnacle of "planetary" SF. (My own bias is in favor of Dune, which I still think is the best SF novel I've ever read; it was unquestionably influenced by ERB in a major way, but went far beyond what he had to offer.)

[geoffrey]

Jun 9, 2017 19:57:05 GMT -6 cadriel said:

I just don't think they're even the pinnacle of "planetary" SF. (My own bias is in favor of Dune, which I still think is the best SF novel I've ever read; it was unquestionably influenced by ERB in a major way, but went far beyond what he had to offer.)

The best science fiction novel I have ever read is probably David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus (1920).

[DungeonDevil]

Jun 9, 2017 18:03:44 GMT -6 jeffro said:

Who do you think inspired the creation of Flash Gordon in the first place?

Do you have a source for the assertion that Alex Raymond was directly inspired by ERB? All I know is that Raymond was called upon to create competition for the hugely-successful, earlier strip Buck Rogers.

From our perspective, decades later, I think that Raymond's artistic talent has shone far brighter than that of Dick Calkins.

[jeffro]

Jun 11, 2017 0:54:22 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

Jun 9, 2017 18:03:44 GMT -6 jeffro said:

Who do you think inspired the creation of Flash Gordon in the first place?

Do you have a source for the assertion that Alex Raymond was directly inspired by ERB? All I know is that Raymond was called upon to create competition for the hugely-successful, earlier strip Buck Rogers.

From our perspective, decades later, I think that Raymond's artistic talent has shone far brighter than that of Dick Calkins.

Google it. "At first King Features tried to purchase the rights to the John Carter of Mars stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs; however, the syndicate was unable to reach an agreement with Burroughs. King Features then turned to Alex Raymond, one of their staff artists, to create the story. Raymond's first samples were dismissed for not containing enough action sequences."

King Features to Alex Raymond: YOU NEED TO BURROUGHS HARDER!

Granted, that's not what you're looking for when you say "directly inspired", but the point is... ERB set the tone, defined the genre, and created the model from which Flash Gordon was derived from. 

[ritt]

Jun 9, 2017 18:03:44 GMT -6 jeffro said:

Who do you think inspired the creation of Flash Gordon in the first place? And Superman. And Conan.

Comics, Star Wars, and D&D are all rooted in the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's not an accident that he is mentioned in the introduction to OD&D. It's not an accident that Dr. Holmes wrote Burroughs pastiche. It's not an accident that TSR published Warriors of Mars.

ERB was a giant among giants.

Preach it, Brother!

I agree 110%

[MormonYoYoMan]

Goodness knows Flash was contracted to compete against Buck, though (a) Buck/Tony was derived from John Carter (Billy Carter's uncle) and (b) King did turn to a staff artist (Raymond) to create something King could own when they couldn't get rights from ERB for Carter.

So you're all correct, so knock off the fussing or I'll stop stop this car right now.

[DungeonDevil]

Jun 11, 2017 22:42:17 GMT -6 MormonYoYoMan said:

So you're all correct, so knock off the fussing or I'll stop stop this car right now.

Okay, just make sure it's at a nice, clean gas station.

[Deleted]

Jun 11, 2017 0:54:22 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

Do you have a source for the assertion that Alex Raymond was directly inspired by ERB? All I know is that Raymond was called upon to create competition for the hugely-successful, earlier strip Buck Rogers.

I happen to own the IDW reprints of Flash Gordon. The books are huge (18" x 12" and thicker than the DMG) because I think they reprint the strips in the same size that they originally appeared in the Sunday comics. At the start of the first book is an 11 page history of Flash Gordon but there is no mention of King trying to make a John Carter strip (this story comes from the recollection of ERB's secretary without any paperwork to corroborate.) While certainly possible, King Features' creation of Flash Gordon was part of three strips: a crime strip to compete with Dick Tracy, a space opera to compete with Buck Rogers, and a jungle strip to compete with an officially licensed Tarzan strip by United Features Syndicate. I find it unlikely that King would try to create an officially licensed John Carter strip that was to be printed directly under a knock off of ERB's other hero, Tarzan.

In any event, a Flash/Burroughs connection does exist as the writer of Flash Gordon, Don Moore, worked as an editor at Agosy All Story Magazine and is known to have edited both Tarzan and John Carter stories as well as stories from fellow Appendix N-er A. Merrit.

[DungeonDevil]

Jun 13, 2017 15:50:23 GMT -6 @hedgehobbit said:

In any event, a Flash/Burroughs connection does exist as the writer of Flash Gordon, Don Moore, worked as an editor at Agory All Story Magazine and is known to have edited both Tarzan and John Carter stories as well as stories from fellow Appendix N-er A. Merrit.

Good to know!

[Deleted]

Jun 5, 2017 14:14:06 GMT -6 cadriel said:

Jun 4, 2017 16:05:32 GMT -6 @samsonandsolomon said:

These books are all a lot older than we are and we find them to be fascinating and by comparison most of what has been written over the last 25 years is pretty pale lifeless stuff. Everyone seems to be too scared to write anything good anymore.

I don't know, back in the 1950s Theodore Sturgeon wrote this:

I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other art forms.

With time, the better stuff tends to rise to the top, and people forget about the crap. Sturgeon was talking about the "golden age" of science fiction, and the period just after it, and saying that 90% of that was crap. The stuff that survives, and it's generally between 5% and 20% of the output, tends to be the material that has a lasting quality. (Appendix N is interesting in that it actually does contain bits of dross that would otherwise have failed this survival test.)

Right now we are in the period since about 1990 until who knows when that much less than 5% will be remembered 50-80 years from now. So much stuff right now has a socio-political agenda attached to the point where much is just unreadable. If I wanted to get into those things I would go volunteer for groups on whichever side I agreed with. I read fantasy and science-fiction to escape the current world and imagine some other world, I don't read to wallow in the worst that this world has to offer. Give me an REH world where I can take up a sword and kill evil when it butts into my life.

[cadriel]

Jul 16, 2017 17:39:59 GMT -6 @samsonandsolomon said:

Right now we are in the period since about 1990 until who knows when that much less than 5% will be remembered 50-80 years from now. So much stuff right now has a socio-political agenda attached to the point where much is just unreadable. If I wanted to get into those things I would go volunteer for groups on whichever side I agreed with. I read fantasy and science-fiction to escape the current world and imagine some other world, I don't read to wallow in the worst that this world has to offer. Give me an REH world where I can take up a sword and kill evil when it butts into my life.

I'll be honest, I can't think of a work of fantasy or sci-fi where the social or political "agenda" is why I didn't like it. I mean, there are books that do have agendas that I don't agree with - Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series springs to mind - but I dislike it because it is bad writing.

I've read a fair amount of the modern popular fantasy fiction, and to be honest I find most of it insipid. I somewhat dislike the popular A Song of Ice and Fire, not because of any political or social reason, but simply because I resent the author's attempt to make all of fantasy horribly nasty and unpleasant while capitalizing on it. (I'll probably read the next d**n book, though.) I found The Wheel of Time to become a tiresome soap opera, and find efforts like Shannara bland and uninspired. I've found some of them pleasant, though, like Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and more recently Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicles. I've even read a bunch of The Dresden Files that are so poorly written and cliched that I forget I've read them. There are a few authors I particularly like who vaguely remind me of classic fantasy authors, like Stephen Brust or a recent discovery, Matt Hughes. But I've found very little of this to have anything to do with social or political themes in the authors' works, and that's a good chunk of the post-1990 fantasy I've read.

You're not the only person I've heard with this kind of rant, but it's never really made sense compared to what I see on the bookshelves. I agree that a lot of popular fantasy is bad, but because of problems with the product, not with the author's agenda.

[Deleted]

Jul 16, 2017 18:13:34 GMT -6 cadriel said:

Jul 16, 2017 17:39:59 GMT -6 @samsonandsolomon said:

Right now we are in the period since about 1990 until who knows when that much less than 5% will be remembered 50-80 years from now. So much stuff right now has a socio-political agenda attached to the point where much is just unreadable. If I wanted to get into those things I would go volunteer for groups on whichever side I agreed with. I read fantasy and science-fiction to escape the current world and imagine some other world, I don't read to wallow in the worst that this world has to offer. Give me an REH world where I can take up a sword and kill evil when it butts into my life.

I'll be honest, I can't think of a work of fantasy or sci-fi where the social or political "agenda" is why I didn't like it. I mean, there are books that do have agendas that I don't agree with - Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series springs to mind - but I dislike it because it is bad writing.

I've read a fair amount of the modern popular fantasy fiction, and to be honest I find most of it insipid. I somewhat dislike the popular A Song of Ice and Fire, not because of any political or social reason, but simply because I resent the author's attempt to make all of fantasy horribly nasty and unpleasant while capitalizing on it. (I'll probably read the next d**n book, though.) I found The Wheel of Time to become a tiresome soap opera, and find efforts like Shannara bland and uninspired. I've found some of them pleasant, though, like Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and more recently Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicles. I've even read a bunch of The Dresden Files that are so poorly written and cliched that I forget I've read them. There are a few authors I particularly like who vaguely remind me of classic fantasy authors, like Stephen Brust or a recent discovery, Matt Hughes. But I've found very little of this to have anything to do with social or political themes in the authors' works, and that's a good chunk of the post-1990 fantasy I've read.

You're not the only person I've heard with this kind of rant, but it's never really made sense compared to what I see on the bookshelves. I agree that a lot of popular fantasy is bad, but because of problems with the product, not with the author's agenda.

Yeah, you named a lot of bad authors there, I agree about that. Stephen Brust is really good and I have not read Matt Hughes, I will have to check him out.

I guess it depends on how strong your stomach is. I do not care to read anything where the author makes the main characters sex perverts and then rubs that agenda in your face throughout the book, I am not interested in porn and especially not sick deviant porn. That is just one example, some are even worse than that and when it shows up that is when I quit reading. Like I said, give me an REH world where I can take up a sword and kill evil things.

[Deleted]

Aug 1, 2017 21:27:30 GMT -6 @samsonandsolomon said:

Yeah, you named a lot of bad authors there, I agree about that. Stephen Brust is really good and I have not read Matt Hughes, I will have to check him out.

I guess it depends on how strong your stomach is. I do not care to read anything where the author makes the main characters sex perverts and then rubs that agenda in your face throughout the book, I am not interested in porn and especially not sick deviant porn. That is just one example, some are even worse than that and when it shows up that is when I quit reading. Like I said, give me an REH world where I can take up a sword and kill evil things.

Low mod voice on: Easy there with the complaints about "sexual deviation". In the context of the writers cadriel named, your comment doesn't make sense - except that the books feature occasional appeareances of LGBT characters. And whether those depictions are particularly tasteful, is a different matter - but they are definitively not "sick deviant porn". So, you'll want to either clarify those comments, or abstain from them.

[Deleted]

Aug 1, 2017 23:41:46 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Aug 1, 2017 21:27:30 GMT -6 @samsonandsolomon said:

Yeah, you named a lot of bad authors there, I agree about that. Stephen Brust is really good and I have not read Matt Hughes, I will have to check him out.

I guess it depends on how strong your stomach is. I do not care to read anything where the author makes the main characters sex perverts and then rubs that agenda in your face throughout the book, I am not interested in porn and especially not sick deviant porn. That is just one example, some are even worse than that and when it shows up that is when I quit reading. Like I said, give me an REH world where I can take up a sword and kill evil things.

Low mod voice on: Easy there with the complaints about "sexual deviation". In the context of the writers cadriel named, your comment doesn't make sense - except that the books feature occasional appeareances of LGBT characters. And whether those depictions are particularly tasteful, is a different matter - but they are definitively not "sick deviant porn". So, you'll want to either clarify those comments, or abstain from them.

Why you arrogant jerk. How dare you tell me I have to like books that feature things that are morally repugnant. I will not read or patronize any author who feels the need to force the LGBTQ political agenda down the readers throat. I have no interest in that stuff. I stated the truth, and I will not bow to someone that embraces evil and tells me I have to also. I have reported your post to the Admin. You are completely out of line. All depictions of the LGBTQ and other sick sexual deviant perversions are distasteful to the extreme and have no place in fiction. How dare you tell me what I have to believe, how dare you! Was your post deliberately couched to purposely make me furious with you, because you succeeded. Yes they are IMO "sick deviant porn" and I do not want to read it, not now not ever.

[Deleted]

Locked.

No worries, will reopen when the user has been properly reprimanded.

General rule: No hatespeech on OD&D '74. No -isms and -phobias. Or you get the boot.


Since Fin and I have had to enforce that rule a couple of times over the last few days, let me even be a bit more candid than I usually am:

Nobody has any sympathy for people who come here and appear to emulate their inner Alex Jones. We might miss those once, we might miss them even twice. But we will come after them, eventually.


So, and-I-can't-believe-we-have-to-go-there-again:

Don't come here and use words that in real-life would get you a fat lip. You're not here to fight the Great War, you're supposed to amicably exchange opinions about one of your favorite games.

I know, I know, we live in that world where ***every*** social expression is generally regarded as absolute, and as of "high meaning". Here, it isn't. Here, we try to get along. Not "absolutely". not because getting along would be the high ground. Simply because, to me poor uneducated tourist from Europe, one these pictures here shows a gaming table, however disfunctional it may be: The other doesn't.


So, just saying, it would be nice to spend a few days without having to ban anyone for being a prick to others.