Most Influential TV

This site has been languishing a bit. This has many reasons:

1) I have been ramping up my remodel painting, sanding, staining and general timesink. Since I already had no time because of twinsapoolza, my blogging time is down to almost nil. I am weeks behind in my main blog, so really shouldn't dally here.

2) The format of my reviews has been fairly stiff. Potter was a bit better, but I am still not feeling it, which is also the feedback I have been getting from its few readers (my site, not Harry Potter).

3) The book I am reading now is epic in length (>1300 pages), so I have literally had nothing new to write about in some time. Almost done so I will review it soon.

However, I stated at the very beginning that this site would not be limited to only books, but would also include movies and TV and whatever the heck else I felt inclined to discuss, media-wise.

So in that spirit, here is a list of the Top Ten Most Influential TV shows of the past 20 years. I am well aware that top ten lists are the last resort of the intellectually lazy and those devoid of ideas. So stipulated.

So in alphabetical order:

CSI - People just like dead bodies. They just do. The up close and personal crime scene investigation taps into the same morbid fascination that has been drawing people to serial killer movies and the like for decades. Sure on some level it is just another procedural spin off of Law&Order (see below) combined with the vague memory of Quincy, but there is no doubt this sub-genre has spawned almost an equal number of spin-offs itself.

Daily Show - When Craig Kilbourn hosted this show it was just a spoof of your nightly news, entertaining, but hardly ground breaking. Then Jon Stewart took up the reins and the show transformed into some of the sharpest, most entertaining political satire on television today. Each night Jon and his cast of correspondents holds a mirror up to our politicians and the media that covers them and the image isn't always pretty. In a time when young Americans have become increasingly detached from politics and current events, the Daily Show manages to not only entertain them, it actually informs. And of course it launched the career of mega-star, Stephen Colbert.

ER - ER barely made my list. On one level it just returned the hospital genre to front and center. On another it really seemed to up the whole level of expected quality for primetime network drama. I am not talking the writing, which was never that amazing, but the production values. Especially as it matured. I almost never watch that show anymore, but occasionally I have been sucked in and I can only imagine what the budget is for that show nowadays.

Law&Order - King of all procedurals. There is not a crime show on TV today that does not borrow heavily from this titan. The formula was so simple: People love cop shows and people love court room dramas. How about we combine them into a single show? The other genius thing the show did was to pare everything down to the essentials, with half the episode feeling almost like a recap from the previous week of a much longer show. Early generations would have hated this, but it was perfect for the attention-deficit, channel surfing society watching TV today.

Seinfeld - How does one define Seinfeld and what it does? "It is a show about nothing" is the common summary. What that actually meant is that it was a show about characters and funny ideas, not about tired sitcom devices. Sure Seinfeld was trying to make a relationship work or George was trying to keep his job, but those plots never mattered. They were just the backdrop to jokes about everything from overbearing soup sellers to muffin tops to masturbation. The characters were not trying to set good examples or teach any moral lessons. Comedy was found in how they were so flawed as people that they would always do the wrong thing in every situation. But more important than how this show broke the comedy mold was how it seeped into the American consciousness. To this day if someone says "Yadda yadda" or "Master of my domain" or "No soup for you" or "Newwwwman", any former show watcher knows exactly to what they are referring.

Simpsons - Longest running primetime comedy ever. Showed how a cartoon could be both wacky and smart, both for kids and adults. Hundreds of characters and biting satire that one could only really get away with in cartoon form. I mean, how does a president fight back against a orange-faced, four-fingered cartoon? And what I said about seeping into the American consciousness in regards to Seinfeld goes tenfold for the Simpsons. In fact seeping seems too mild. I would say American culture is drenched in Simpsons culture, which one can calculate just by adding up the D'ohs and Ha-Ha's one hears in a typical day.

Sopranos - Sopranos changed what people could expect from a TV show, in terms of acting, writing and direction. Seriously, the first season could easily have been the best movie of 1999 (Shakespeare in Love won) if released that way. Not only has it created a whole bunch of daring HBO and Showtime shows, where it changed the way those networks tried to market themselves, but most of the the FX and USA lineups wouldn't exist without it.

Survivor - Survivor really seemed to be something entirely new: Taking a group of people, forcing them into some sort of awkward, new situation and then watching how they react. A reality show. The real American forerunner was The Real World from MTV, but no one over 20 watched it. Internationally, Big Brother was the genre dominator, but it never reached the peak of obsession in the U.S. that Survivor did. One simple yardstick is was there an episode of the show everyone who was anyone watched and then talked about the next day? For Survivor that year one finale was one of those shows.

Twin Peaks - In addition to being an early precursor of the upswing in direction and general production values in network TV, Twin Peaks should be most remembered for bringing quirky to the mainstream. A show could be weird or ambiguous and still succeed (Succeed criticly, anyway. It was never a big ratings grabber). The list of shows that followed included everything from Northern Exposure to Desperate Housewives.

X-Files - The show taught us to believe... that a sci-fi show can succeed and not have a Vulcan, a Klingon, or the word Star in its title. The show eventually wore thin, as the critical tension was whether each week's mystery was a real supernatural event or a hoax, which was not sustainable. Conspiracy theories and paranoia can only take you so far. Still, the first few years were very good and developed a style all its own (sometimes known as flashlights in the dark), as every good horror director knows: what scares you is not what you see but what you can't see. It was also nice to have a male/female partner movie with no real sexual tension between them (I think they played with this a bit near the end of Mulder's run; a mistake).

Spoiler Alert

I actually attempt to avoid serious spoilers, but you will find several minor ones. Be warned.

Yes, I was among the avalanche of people who got their Potter books on Saturday, July 21 and then devoured it. Considering I still had to take care of my two baby daughters and show a modicum of effort at work, it took me a week to blast through the 750 pages. Now while a disturbing percentage of America (Hell, the world) is aboard the Potter train, I can imagine a few remaining holdouts disgusted with this sort of behavior. Are the Harry Potter books really that good?

The short answer is, in fact, no they are not.

Don't get me wrong. The books are good. They are just not so good that the world should stop while everyone gets a chance to read them. Of course it is probably true that no book (or movie or television show) can meet that sort of standard, so let me also add the Potter books are not even among the best fantasy fiction being produced, targeted toward children or not. (Try David Eddings, Terry Pratchet, George R.R. Martin, or early Piers Anthony for just a few off the top of my head).

The Potter books are fun and easy to read. The steadily increasing page count never seems imposing because whenever you sit down to read a chapter, you always find that you do not come up for air again until a 100 pages have passed. They also have the advantage of improving with each book. Sequels better than the original are a rare commodity in any artistic endeavor. Ms. Rowling had an amazing run of luck to have her first one or two mediocre novels (which I found the Stone and Chamber to be) become best sellers, so everyone and their brother was already reading her stuff as she began to hit her stride. Rowling also did a very nice job from the beginning of creating a rich environment for her characters to inhabit: the school Hogwarts. She then did an excellent job of expanding that little microcosm into an entire fantasy world.

The real reason I and so many others HAD to read these books right away is because every one else was reading these books right away. In addition to wanting to keep up with the Joneses, there was the very real danger that if you did not read the book fast enough someone would spoil the ending for you. It would creep into late night monologues, onto chat sites, and into cocktail hour conversations. Someone at the table next to yours at the Hamburger Hamlet would start spouting off about how he knew all along that Snape would kill Dumbledore and you would be out of luck. In truth it was a literary arms race and everyone had to commit to a first strike or be left with only a smoldering, nuclear wasteland of a book.

WARNING, Long digression and rant about Quidditch:

Let me say right now that I hate Quidditch. And the reason that I hate it is not because I hate sporting events or broomstick flying, but that it was not well thought out. It really seemed like something J.K. threw into the first book for fun, only to find she had to return to it book after book. I mean, look at the rules: You get 10 points for putting the Quaffle through any of three hoops. However, grabbing the Golden Snitch scores 150 points and ends the game. How does that make a lick of sense? In no story I ever read did anyone ever outscore their opponent by more than 150 points. Only if one team was crushing another would capture of the Snitch not be the ONLY FACTOR in determining victory.

Let me compare it to basketball. A typical winning basketball team scores about 50 baskets for 100 points (yes, I know, 3-pointer and free throws...let it go). To get the 15 goal differential required for Quidditch to mean anything, the team would have to be leading 100-70, an absolute stomping. And then imagine the team you are stomping could shoot one basket, catch the snitch and win the game. How does that make any sense? There is only one way it might make sense and that's if the games lasted for days like a Cricket match (there is a history of silly scoring coming from the British Isles), so a 150 point differential could then be common and not a blow out. There is no evidence for this in the novels, although one could imagine it being part of professional Quidditch, off stage left. What is really frustrating is that the solution is quite simple. Make the Snitch worth 50 points instead of 150, a factor of 5x better than a goal, not 15x better. So a team leading 200-160 can lose if they don't get the Snitch but a team winning 200-60 can't. Boom. Problem solved, game becomes playable, I am not so annoyed. Oh, well.

RANT ENDED

So how about the Deathly Hallows?

Well first and foremost that title should come with a pronunciation guide. I kept saying Hollows instead of Hallows, which according to the dictionary are:

NOUN archaic,
a saint or a holy person

I guess they are also a holy thing, which is as much as I will say about the Hallows which kind of come out of left field in a disturbing, Vader made C3PO kind of way.

Without a doubt this is the grimmest book in the series. If you want dead characters, Rowling gives them to you in bushels. As a complete work, I actually found it slightly too dark and grim. There is a large section in the middle in which there is little action and only Harry Potter slowly sinking into a deeper and deeper depression. I might even describe those 100 or so pages as ponderous. The ending, however, kicks serious ass. As you might expect there is a major showdown with He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named and just about every character that has ever waltzed on through is there.

The book completely breaks the template that had sustained the books 1-6: Going to Hogwarts, taking classes, dealing with the Dark Arts teacher, playing Quidditch, being ignored by all the adults only to be proven right in the end. This book is Harry and friends versus Voldemort to the bitter end. You will miss the school stuff a bit, particularly as you slog through another bit of mid-book Potter angst and hopelessness, but I think everyone, Rowling included, was getting a bit tired of it. You could already see her breaking away from it a bit in books 5 and 6.

While the aforementioned Deathly Hallows seemed a bit much, the rest of the book does an excellent job of wrapping up all the mysteries and questions from the previous 6 novels. The nicest one was the full explanation of the complex web of Dumbledore, Snape, and Harry's parents. I think any Potter-maniac should be very satisfied upon reaching the end.

My one other complaint was that J.K. was so bloodthirsty that a couple of the deaths happened too fast. You either didn't get a chance to absorb the loss or you felt cheated of a final meeting or confrontation. Characters that have been around for 5+ novels should get some sort of death soliloquy, final foreshadowed speech, or at least a brief moment of silence.

To summarize, I loved the super-bang up ending and nicely orchestrated wrap-up. Was less fond of the depressing middle section that went on too long and the too rapid killing of a couple of characters. As an editor I might have suggested she cut down on the middle and add a little more verbiage to characters that were being offed, but if you have sold more books than God you probably get to make those decisions yourself.

Shared Novels, Part II

Well, I was right that it was going to be difficult to write more than one blog. I thought maybe I could write a one page review as fast as I read one book.

Not so much.

Wild Cards by George R.R. Martin is about as much fun as you can have while reading a book and keeping your pants on. No fair using your elbows or any device that requires alternating current. This series rolled in at the tail end of the Shared World fantasy boom that lasted approximately as long as the 80s. I can not make a definite connection between the Reagan administration and the need to escape reality, but I think the development of the Space Defense Initiative during this time period is telling.

Apparently the whole thing started with George becoming obsessed with a role playing game based on SuperHeroes. Instead of working on his writing, he spent all his time coming up with characters and elaborate missions for himself and all his friends, most of whom were also writers. Next thing he knows, something like a year and a half has gone by. As he paused to assess his personal situation he lamented that there was not some way he could turn all this work on the game into something he could sell...

And then the light bulb went on. Now for most people and times this would be a terrible idea, but this was the peak of Shared World books and George turned out to be quite a creative and talented fellow. He pitched the idea of a super hero shared world novel, where he and his writing friends would insert the heros they created for their game and amazingly enough, it was accepted.

Here are the key facts: An alien virus is released over New York City. If infected the most likely result is that you die horribly (pulling the Black Queen) and the next most likely is that virus mutates you in some random manner that is typically hideous and deforming (pulling a Joker). However, very rare, one in a thousand kind of odds, is that not only do you survive the virus unscathed, but it gives you some magnificent new power. These people are the Aces.

What makes this book work are two things:

One is that despite having superheros, it made every effort to keep things as "real" as possible. For the most part no one wears a costume (not that you could see it in text form, but still...), characters lie, cheat, steal, get drunk, have sex, and even commit brutal homicides. While it definitely derives from comic books, unlike that format which at least pretends to be targeted at teenagers, these books have no filter at all. If a writer wanted to imagine getting high and having sex with an invisible girl while flying circles around the Chrysler building, no problem. One example that is actually in the book is a hero who is powered by tantric sex. While not my favorite story (Tantric sex, really?) it demonstrates that even outright eroticism is not out of bounds. While less so today, when these books first came out they felt really edgey and you still get a fell for that reading them.

Two was the decision, forced upon them by one of their earliest submissions, to start the books in 1945 and re-write history story by story to the present day. We see how society changes. We see how this catastrophic virus alters all the major historical and cultural touchstones, from the McCarthy hearings to the Kennedy assassination to hippie culture to the civil rights movement. Maybe I am an alternate history geek, but I love these kind of sci-fi "what if" mind experiments. If you are as well, be sure to check out Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, where alien invaders show up in 1942. It also really helps to set up a mythos for the world, as some of the early stories you read end up in the history books of characters that grow up decades later.

So far I have only read the first three books out of what I believe is now something like 17 (they are still publishing them). I would hazard a guess that the series probably does not maintain a high quality throughout, but the first three are a blast.



Wild Cards (I): The first book is really the only one that stretches out over historical time, starting with Howard Waldrup's story of Jet Boy and the release of the virus in 1945. This is rapidly followed by Roger Zelazny's "Sleeper", a great story of one of the first victims, Croyd, an ace who most certainly does NOT use his powers to fight crime, setting the tone for the book: These are people with powers, but not necessarily superheros. The next two tales are about the Four Aces, who start out fighting for Democracy around the world but end up on the wrong side of the McCarthy hearings. The first of these, "Witness" by Walter Jon Williams is definitely the better, garnering a Nebula award nomination. The second Four Aces story, "Degradation Rites" by Melinda Snodgrass, is a bit redundant, fleshing out the same events from a different point of view. Helpful for developing the Dr. Tachyon character (an actual alien, not a Wild Card), but dissapointing that they couldn't manage a similar exploration with another story.

Next is "Shell Games" by George R.R. Martin, which introduces The Great and Powerful Turtle, a powerful telekinetic who travels in an armored VW bug that he flies using his mind. The Turtle is a definite favorite, possibly because he is both the first true hero of the book (he DOES fight crime) and outside of his shell as average a Joe as you are likely to meet. The book then starts to lose its way a little bit, something that is fairly standard in these Shared World novels -- it is hard to keep so many authors on the same wavelength. "The Long Dark Night of Fortunato" by Lewis Shiner is the wierd Tantric sex/magic sorcerer story I mentioned before. Kind of hard to buy that reverse ejaculating can give one magic powers, alien virus or no. "Transfigurations" (Victor Mila) is a fun look at the summer of love in a world of Wild Cards, including a musician Lizard King who can actually turn into a Lizard King. "Down Deep" (Edward Bryant & Leanne C. Harper) is actually a bad story, a mess of early 70s mobsters and a giant sewer alligator.

The book finished all right, with "Strings" (by Steven Leigh), a story of a mind-manipulating politician and "Comes a Hunter" (by John J. Miller) which introduces the Yeoman, our first non-superpowered bad ass. If you want to see a Vietnam Vet with a bow hunt down Asian mobsters, look no further. It would have been better if it wasn't so derivative of Rambo and Green Arrow, but what can you do. Neither are as good as the beginning stories, but you got to cut these writers some slack. A Shared World is hard to do and they are just starting.



Aces High (II): The beginning of this book is a continuation of the historical revision started in book one, giving us that last decade from mid-seventies until modern (mid-80s) day. The book then rapidly kicks into a series of connected stories, revolving around an invasion from a giant alien being known as the Swarm. It also introduces a major villain, the Astronomer, whose nearly limitless abilities are powered by bathing in the blood of others. Yikes. And yes, it does tickle me that the ultimate baddie is an astronomer. Of course he is.

With every story both revolving around and progressing the main storyline, this second book in the series is the first to give a real novel feel, as opposed to a short story collection. George does a good job of adding a number of connected mini-stories about a Walrus-looking Joker named Jubal between each contributed story to help stitch it together even more. Admittedly fighting off an alien invasion is about as pulpy a premise as one can find, but it was definitely fun and the plot moved along more or less clearly from beginning to end.

"Pennies from Hell" (Lewis Shiner) starts it in 1979, another tale of the Tantric magician Fortunato who show us our first glimpse of the dreaded Astronomer. Still not among my favorite characters (did I mention he was also a pimp) or stories (he falls in love with an antique specialist). But then the action starts in "Unto a Sixth Generation" (Walter Jon Williams), a tale of the creation of the android Modular Man and the first wave of the invasion. Nothing groundbreaking here, but some clever fake man interacting with real ones (including sexually) mixed with pretty good alien-battling action. Mixed in between pieces of 6th Gen. is "Ashes to Ashes" (Roger Zelazny) a fairly amusing tale of Croyd (aka the Sleeper) who has been sent to retrieve a rapidly decomposing alien body.

The novel then slows for a beat as we check in with the Turtle in "Winter's Chill" (George R.R.) and are formerly introduced to both the malevolent Astronomer and his dangerous new employee, James Spector, in "If Looks Could Kill" (Walton Simons). The Turtle story is sad with a twist that is not surprising, but still heart wrenching nonetheless, as George does a good job making you care about this character who is simultaneously one of the strongest (power-wise) and weakest (will-wise) in the novels. James Spector is a murdering sociopath who is a rare recipient of both an Ace and a Black Queen: the queen killed him in a horrible way, but his Ace power brought him back. He kills by sharing this death with others, something that interests the creepy Astronomer quite a lot.

Things then pick up again with two stories starring Dr. Tachyon, an alien from the race that brought the virus, and his odd soon-to-be sidekick, Captain Tripps, who can use drugs Dr. Jeckyll-style to transform into multiple personalities with accompanying powers. "Relative Difficulties" (Melinda Snodgrass) introduces Tripps and the rest of Tachyon's cut-throat family, while "With a Little Help From His Friends" (by Victor Milan) teams them up to find the mysterious device that just may be the thing needed to defeat the invasion (I told you it was pulpy). I love Captain Tripps, whose disturbed alter egos are just damn funny (Moonchild, Cosmic Traveler, Jumpin Jack Flash, etc.). These stories also finally flesh out Tachyon enough to make this formerly odd little character (a psychic, foppish alien witha penchant for drink and whores) also sympathetic. Nothing like seeing how bad one's relatives are to engender sympathy.

"By Lost Ways" (Pat Cadigan), the showdown with the Astronomer, is a bit anti-climatic, but it turns out they are just saving him for some real havoc in the 3rd book. The story is then nicely wrapped up in "Half Past Dead" (John J. Miller), as Yeoman, Fortunato, and Tachyon fly off to end the Swarm at its source. Not exactly an unforgettable ending, but it did tie the whole book together and avoided leaving you with a sick, confused feeling a lot of Shared World novels can give you. You know what this book was about and why all the things happened. For the comic book afficionado, it read like a very good cross-over series (a single story that crosses across multiple comic books, usually employed as a sales gimic, only rarely suceeding as a story).




Jokers Wild (III): In this book the writers perfect what they refer to as a "mosaic novel". Instead of having a series of short stories that do or do not connect together, this novel is one long book with no obvious breaks. It is the same story told from multiple characters, with each character written by a different author. While I believe the final production was a complicated affair requiring quite a bit of Editorial discipline, it looks a bit like one of those stories where you just keep passing the manuscript along and each writer adds another section, starting where the last author left off. I found this worked remarkably well, as each author's voice mixed with the voice of the character and the character's point of view, so the transition from one author to the next feels very organic and proper. A story from the point of view of Fortunato the sorcerer should read different than that from James Specter the killer or Hiram the effete restaurant owner.

This novel takes place in a single 25 hour period, which I assume was very helpful for plotting this out for seven different authors (Shiner, Martin, Snodgrass, Simons, Miller, Harper, & Bryant). It introduces a new character, the Wraith, a master thief who can walk through walls, who is pictured a couple times in this blog, both at the top of the page (Japanese version of the cover) and right next to this description (U.S. cover). Mostly it continues with those characters introduced in the first two books, although Hiram Worchester, aka the gravity controlling Fatman who runs the restaurant for Aces atop the Empire State building, is fleshed out from a minor to a major character.

The two main plotlines involve two villains: Kien (the evil Vietnamese general that Yeoman has been hunting for two books) who is trying to retrieve a sensitive item stolen by the Wraith and the Astronomer, who is attempting to take revenge on (i.e. kill brutally) all the heroes who humiliated him in book two. The two storylines begin heavily intertwining, with several smaller plots that also spin off as the novel relentlessly moves forward.

I can not emphasize enough how impressive this mosaic novel was. While still not high literature by any stretch, the plot lines are much more engrossing and rich with detail, both said and unsaid, than the previous works. It is also an absolute page turner which I could not put down. The authors work together so well you would not know it was a multi-author work if it didn't proudly proclaim it on the cover. Mostly it was just a lot of fun.

According to the endnote, the authors were so proud of how it turned out that they decided that this would become a formula they would repeat. Book one is a series of short stories more or less allowed to take any path they choose, within a loose framework. Book two is another series of short stories revolving around a central set of plot lines, with the characters and portions of the plot extracted from book one, basically allowing an exploration of the connections these characters may have. Book three would be a mosaic novel, taking these fully fleshed out and interconnected characters and conflicts and weaving them into a single novel. Supposedly this three book format slips into 4 and 5 book formats in later works, but I am definitely hooked.

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Summary: If you like comic book heroes these books are no-brainers. Don't expect anything profound, but they take the genre and go interesting places with it, creating a reasonably believable world just to the left of the one we live in. If you don't like comic books you need to be careful, as there is little doubt these books borrow heavily on the medium, particularly the "saving the entire world" sort of plot line of book two, which could have come right out of the Fantastic Four. Even the Shared World style is reminiscent of comic books, which tend to be a many-cooks-in-one-kitchen by their nature. However, these books also break away from many comic book conventions (which many comic book writers have also done, but that is another story), exploring anti-heroes, thugs, thieves, murderers and the like. The world remains as real as possible considering the rather absurd addition of aliens and super-power inducing alien viruses. People are poor, sick, drunks, vain, power-hungry, and lecherous. No one wears a cape. No one battles for Justice and the American way.

To break it down book by book, I think Wild Cards is a great sci-fi alternate history exploration, although it loses steam as it makes its way to present day. Aces High is more cohesive, but not quite as good as the first book, as of course it is just not as fresh and new. It also is the most pulpy of the three, with some very hackneyed plot lines, although well done. Jokers Wild is really amazing and a great book, most certainly the best Shared World book I have yet come across. It definitely makes me anxious to continue on with series...

Of course I got a few other books in the queue, which hopefully I will write about here soon.

Shared World "Novels" Part I

Thieves' World --



For some reason I got off onto quite the Shared World novel kick this winter. I think it can all be traced back to my George R.R. Martin obsession, a subject I will probably discuss at some lengths on this page. Anyway, while trolling R.R.'s web site for scraps of info on his Song of Ice and Fire series (oh so delayed... sigh) I came across his latest pitch for the latest Wild Cards novel. I had read the very first Wild Cards novel back in my teens and had not connected that the George R.R. I had been obsessing about for half of 2006 was the editor of that relatively successful series.

Huh, I said. And that led me off to the races. More on Wild Cards in a later post.

The Shared World novel in its modern, fantastic fiction form really started with the Thieves' World series, edited by Robert Asprin and his soon-to-be then later-no-longer wife Lynn Abbey, in 1979. The idea was a series of short stories written by different people all told in the same universe, which in the case of Thieve's World is the town of Sanctuary. In this shared world (hence the name) any author could develop a character, which any other author could then use. Generally the rule was no killing the character without the creator's permission, but otherwise anything went. As the books stretched their legs a little, the editors tended to impose some sort of structure or common event to tie the stories together. This could be a simple as a major event occurring in town that was mentioned in every story or it could be each story picking up where the last one left off, creating a more cohesive novel-like feel. These books really worked best when each author not only added one or two interesting characters to the world, but also each fleshed out another small piece of the imaginary world, adding music, politics, religion, architecture, history, etc. Eight people really can think up more neat stuff than one. The downside is obvious: the overall novels can only be so cohesive with so many cooks sharing a kitchen and worse, not all authors are creating equally.

When Thieves' World hit the stands in 1979 it was a minor phenomenon, outselling any previous fantasy short story anthology by at least an order of magnitude. Since each book only required a 30-40 page story from each author, the potential for really cranking these out was there and the publishers, no fools, began cranking out the books. Between 1979 and 1989 they cranked out 12 Thieve's World novels, not includng nearly a dozen one-author novel spin-offs, both officially sanctioned and not. They created a successful role playing game, published some comics, and had solid gold toilets installed throughout their palatial estates.

OK, no there is not that much money in Fantasy writing, particularly if you have to split in 8-ways.

So back to me (isn't it always). Turns out I owned and had sitting in my extensive library about 6 of the 12 Thieve's World novels, of which I had read approximately half (so, 3 books total) way back in the mid-80s, the Shared World boom-times. It was a classic example of losing interest in the work, but continuing to buy the next book "just in case" I wanted to get back into it. I never did. Until this January. As someone who has dabbled a bit in speculative fiction writing, I had a whole new outlook on the form, which has some obvious advantages in terms of rate of output. Plus, I have a little anal-retentive part of my brain which loves to "complete" things I never finished as a young man. This same brain malfunction led me to finish every Infocom game I had ever started and not finished, by buying them all together as a package over a decade later. Leather Goddesses of Phobos, anyone?

So, enough babbling, are the books any good?

On the whole I would say the answer is they are OK. They are very grim, as the premise is that Sanctuary is the absolute asshole of the world. Death is common place and theft is among the more respectable ways to make a living. This makes the books a nice antidote to the typical fantasy fare, where things may start out grim, but our hero will always rise up against all odds and win out. Oftentimes as not, it is the town of Sanctuary that wins out over the hero. Also, most of the so-called heroes are really anti-heros. They are not people you would want your children to emulate.

As one might expect, some of the characters are much more interesting than others. Enas Yorl the immortal shape-shifting wizard; Tempus, Storm God avatar who is cursed loveless and undying; Jubal, former gladiator and present spy and slave master; Lythande the Blue Star Adept with a bizarre secret source of power; are all great. Even Shadowspawn, the overly-cocky if amazing young thief also has his moments, although his author, Offutt is not the best of the writing bunch. [Funny thing is that when I was 13 he was my favorite. Go figure.] Other characters, like the Prince Kadakithus, the storyteller Hakiem, the fortune teller Ilyra, or the priest Molin Torchholder are kind of ho-hum.

One aspect that was initially a big plus (through the first 4 books) and then starts to irritate is the constant meddling of the Gods, both from the new and the old Pantheons, as their wars reflect the conquering of old empires by new ones. Eventually you get a little tired of the Deus (quite literally) Ex Machina solutions to stories this allows.

Book 1: Thieve's World -- The first book is definitely the best. Not only is the whole thing fresh, but it has some of the best writers that eventually leave the series (Marion Zimmer Bradley, Joe Haldeman, Poul Anderson, John Brunner). The first One Thumb story, "Blood Brothers", is about as dark a tale as you are likely to find. Really though, most of these stories are quite good, with perhaps the exception of "Myrtis" and "The Face of Chaos", which are rookie author works: one was a last minute emergency fill-in, the other an early Abbey the girlfriend work (she gets better when she is Abbey the wife and later Abbey the divorcee).


Book 2: Tales From the Vulgar Unicorn -- This one is also fairly good, and anecdotally was the first one I read as a 13-14 year old. I never read the original way back when. The first half is actually tales that didn't make it into the first one due to time pressure. "Vashanka's Minion" by Janet Morris introduces Tempus, a demi-god with a curse. His story grows and grows and threatens to consume the books until he forced out of them altogether into a series of stand alone novels (more on those in another post). The final three stories show the first signs of real linking, the beginings of a change from a series of unconnected short stories to real "novels".


Book 3: Shadows of Sanctuary -- This is the real second book of the series, with all the stories written after the publication of the first couple of books, and the authors really utilizing each others characters to the fullest. It introduces the sex vampire Ischade, a mysterious witch cursed to kill those whom she beds. Ranking high among the more disturbing stories of the entire series is "The Vivisectionist", which in addition to being disturbing demonstrates an excellent example of the sort of games the authors can play with each other: I didn't kill your character, but I did something horrible to him. Now what do you do? Finally it also introduces one of my favorite characters, although admittedly one that doesn't really belong in this grim, thankless world, Lalo the Limner. He doesn't belong because he actually seems to be true of spirit and kind of heart. Drunk and broken-down, perhaps, but that is really par for the course in Sanctuary.


Book 4: Storm Season -- I kind of felt this is where the series starts to come apart a little bit. There is definitely an attempt to integrate the stories together more, which tended to be more confusing and muddled than otherwise. People's motivations are rarely clear. Fewer new characters get introduced and the Gods meddling gets out of control. This is also the first book with no new authors, so it may be an example of a need for fresh blood. It might also indicate a lowest common denominator, i.e. these are the authors with the free time to still play with this experiment. I don't want to get too down on it, the Lalo story "A Fugitive Art" is quite good. I also liked the story of Jubal's rehabilition, "Exercise in Pain" and while "Godson" jumps the god-meddling shark, it is a lot of fun.


Book 5: The Face of Chaos -- Perhaps sensing a thinning of ideas, this book introduces an entirely new element to the city of Sanctuary: the Beysib invaders. While a good idea, most of the authors ignored it or referred to the Beysib only perfunctorly. The biggest problem is no author took on the task of giving us any decent background on these strange, bug-eyed, bare-breasted folk. I think you can probably blame Asprin here, who phoned in his Jubal story, clearly missing an opportunity for exploring the Beysib in a way that could better have tied this book together. Still, "High Moon" is probably the best Janet Morris of the series (so far), ending in a scene so dark that it drove me to read her mediocre stand alone novels just so I could see the evil witch Roxane get hers. David Drake's Samlor hil Samt character makes its second appearance (previously in "Goddess", Bk 2). While it takes a while to remember him, you eventually recall both who he is and wonder why he doesn't appear more often, as a bigger bad ass it would be tough to find. "Mirror Image" is a weird Lalo story, showing an excellent example of how the whole Gods thing has gotten out of control.


Book 6: Wings of Omen -- According to the jacket of another book published near in time, this was originally titled, Wings of Hell. Not sure why it changed, except maybe it was considered too edgey? More likely they thought it would interfere with another "Shared World" series that co-author Janet Morris was launching, based on adventures in Hell. Anyway, this one does a better job of exploring the Beysib and we learn a lot more about their culture, religion, etc. Some new authors are added, which I think does a lot to pump some life into the series. I particularly liked Robin W. Bailey's "Daughter of the Sun", introducing the best female swordsman since Red Sonya. And the Lalo tale "A Breath of Power" brings an actual Vulgar Unicorn to life which goes on to terrorize the town. Sweet. The on-going Tempus, Nikodemos, Ischade, & Roxane material is highly muddled, as a tremendous amount of action went on in a 3 book series of Janet Morris books (Beyond Sanctuary, Beyond The Veil, Beyond Wizardwall), the last book of which was published AFTER this book. Sigh.

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So to summarize, if the idea of grim, gritty fantasy appeals, I would give the first book a read. Maybe the second as well. Past that I think the whole experiment has to interest you, as some of the energy does seem to go out of the series. I did think Book 6 picked up the pace a bit, but I will have to see if that sustains. I have taken a break from these books, six in a row is a lot, but when I get through the next bunch I'll let you know.

Everyone Needs to Know My Opinion

Well, I suppose they don't NEED to know it, but wouldn't they be enriched?

Now the first question one might ask is, why do you need another blog when you don't post enough to the one you have?

Good question. The short answer is another blog is a bad idea and you are right. The long answer is that I don't care what you think and why is it any of your business you damn busy body!

Whoah. Whoah. I think we got off on the wrong foot there. Let's try entering into this with a little less jusdgment and a little more willingness to expand ourselves. And I don't mean with pies!

<<>cricket<>> <<>cricket<>>

Fine. Be that way. One reason this blog exists is that I have found I enjoy reviewing/summarizing stuff I have read or watched and the blog format seems a good place to put it. For years I have sent reviews of sci-fi books back and forth with my friend Aimee and while it is nice we have this "thing" we do, why can't the whole world share in it? Or at least the 5-10 people (max) I expect might end up reading this. This would only clutter my "main" blog which drives relentlessly forward. A book review there would drop off the blog rapidly, while here it won't go anywhere until I read another book or review another movie/tv show.

This may very well go nowhere, being a temporary fevered flash from a procrastinating mind (Mondays... am I right Garfield?!), but we shall have to see.

Now I have spent so much time introducing the Review Blog I have no time to actually do a review. Instead I bring the special bonus material: One of the origins of the original blog name: "Black Eidolon".

An Eidolon is an apparition, phantom or a ghost, whence comes the name for this blog. Its origin is Greek. A Black Eidolon would be a particularly malevolent spirit, the sort of over-the-top character you would expect as the mascot for a Death Metal Band. Despite this obvious Iron Maiden/Eddie-like connection the origin has no connection to any musical group, living or dead or pretending to be undead. The Black Eidolon for which the blog is named is a character I created with a terrible curse... But I have already said too much. Perhaps I will be able to say more later, when no one is watching.

Seriously, eyes front buddy. The nerve of some people.