[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: favorite science fiction/fantasy authors - what are yours?

[P. Alexis Nguyen]

Lee:
> I read to escape the bad news of the present, so to speak. I want my books
> to transport me to places that are different and may be better, and they may
> be worse, but there's some character to make things better. I want my books
> to stimulate my imagination, entertain me, and show me different ways of
> thinking, trying to see us humans through the eyes of someone from another
> world, or a dragon, or whatever.

Ali:
I agree with this somewhat.  For me, my reading falls into two
distinct, unequal portions, the bigger being escapist fiction/fantasy
(the other being the more "literature-worthy" books that some of my
college friends thinks is the only acceptable form of reading -
something about the college environment must bring out the snob within
certain people).  It's about escaping from the real world, not having
to deal with the news and all it's terrible scenes for a little while.

Oh sure.  The Twilight series is never, ever, EVER going to win any
important awards for writing, story, or anything else (I hope), but
it's ridiculously fun to read, and I'd much prefer it over a Faulkner
or a Hemingway or even a history book (and that includes art history,
a personal love of mine).  And the supernatural kick I've been on as
of late hasn't seen anything that's going to be remembered as
literature - at best, some will be remembered as fondly as a Dumas
(pere, not fils) work.

There are already too many terrible things happening and that people
do to each other already; I don't want that in my reading.  I want
fantasy, and I also want that my fantasy remain fantastical - I want
the hero to win, good to triumph, and villains to perish (and I
realize very much that even this is somewhat subjective since, for
example, I think Lancelot of the Arthurian legends was a terrible
person who never got what should've been coming to him and many, many,
many people think that Lancelot and Guinevere is the great love
story).  I don't want to have to remember that we're in a recession,
that there are wars all over the world, or even something minor like
the Korean civil war is technically still going out.  None of that in
my light reading, thank you very much.




Carol:
> Yes. Thank you. I snipped most of your response because these two are the
> reasons that most appeal to me--escapism and "what if?" Futuristic
> societies, OTOH, don't interest me at all. We're too dependent on technology
> already.

Ali:
Funny story.  Many summers ago, at the U. of Pennsylvania, a little
mouse got into the system, chewed through some wires, and shut down
the entire university for the rest of the day.  We had electricity,
the computers worked, and all of that, but the network was very, very
much incapacited (couldn't even print from your desk), thereby
rendering the whole university unable to do much work.  And yet I
still can't quite agree about being too dependent on technology ...
must be the fact that, as I am often reminded, I've never known life
before the Internet (but I'll also remind everyone that the Internet
was born many, many years ago, not in the 90s when it became popular).

~Ali, who lives in terror at the thought of life without computers