On 2/3/22 12:31 PM, glen wrote:
Well, I'm not sure what Martin is on to next. But his participation in
the upcoming Elden Ring lore seemed to exhibit he had some ambitions
left. Since he names Zelazny as inspiration, maybe there's a sliver of
possibility there. If we could only get Peter Jackson, that'd push it
through. 8^D
I'll check out The Moon and the Sun. I don't remember you mentioning
it before.
tM&S might not be your cup of tea, I don't know. I probably mentioned
Vonda to you when I looked you up in Portland 6 years ago... I was on my
way (among other things) to visit with her in Seattle. Her Starfarers'
trilogy (from the 1980s) might be the most apt for a harder SF
preference. She got a big shot in the publishing arm when she was
contracted to do the novelization of the Trekkie "Wrath of Khan"... upon
release, her publisher then had the numbers to republish and repromote
her backlist at that point.
Vonda who had a degree in (molecular?) biology or genetics or both,
diverged somewhat from her more typical hard SF with this one which is
nominally a period historical fiction with the twist that "what if Louis
XIV's explorers encountered mer-persons?" and the rest somewhat
follows. The movie follows the same theme but more tritely. In the
book, the protaganist is a young woman whose brother is the court
Natural Scientist who herself aspires to "do science". Her brother's
duties in court (hanging out with the King and playing intrigue with the
other courtiers) left room for his sister to use his facilities and
influence to do her own work. When the explorers brought back a
handful of specimens of Mer-Creatures she studied them with a different
eye than the King and others who simply wanted to tap into their
(mythologized) immortality. So it was also a story of female agency,
capability and empowerment. Most of Vonda's work had strong elements
of that. She also wrote a number of books that worked well for both
Young and Older Adults, of which tM&S could be included.
Vonda was *highly* conflicted herself over the attention given to her by
Robert Heinlein who claims his titular character Friday was inspired by
her. She whispered to me during the Nebulas when that was mentioned:
"He may have been a fucking Chauvanist Pig but who can resist being
promoted by 'the Dean of Science Fiction'?" or some such. She never
married nor had any long-term romantic partnerships that I knew of but
her writing contained a lot of same-gender and polyamorous (group
family) relationships.
The as-yet-released novel she was working on when she was diagnosed is
supposedly now (her last push) finished and ready for publication
(according to her, literally 2 weeks before her death). She described
it to me as nominally *also* a historical fiction of a similar ilk, but
more of an epic perhaps, describing the long-slow-slide of the Minoan
civilization. As per the definition of former SFWA president (and ABQ
resident) Stephen C Gould, the difference between SF and Fantasy is that
in SF, one singular known fact is changed (faster than light travel,
time travel, wormhole, infinite cheap energy, etc.) and everything else
ensues from that, while in Fantasy, *everything* is up for grabs (e.g.
Magic) and everything ensues from that!
Zelazny's Amber-schtick seems to follow *somewhat* from that idea... in
some sense, it seems as if everything Magical he invoked was somehow a
natural consequence of the schmear of physical laws across the schmear
of parallel worlds suspended between the antipodes of Logos and Chaos
(my interpretation of his deal)...
On 2/3/22 10:57, Steve Smith wrote:
Regarding the Amber series and Zelazny. They were very influential on
me... really the first/only "Fantasy" I ever cared much for. If
Zelazny's writing could be credited properly it would be to call it
*Hard* Fantasy which seems somewhat a contradiction in terms. When
I moved to the area, I was surprised to discover that Roger Z had
moved to Santa Fe himself not long before. One of his later Amber
novels included Santa Fe and Berkeley locations, so I might have
guessed. In any case, I discovered that he gave (twice-annual?)
one-day workshops on fiction writing in Taos and Los Alamos. I
attended a few of them over the years and really enjoyed his personal
style and writing tips.
Regarding a serialization/adaptation of Amber... I would not expect
it to be an easy one to adapt well... just as I've been very
disappointed in the treatment of the Foundation Series on AppleTV...
The one redeeming opportunity *might* be Zelazny's "hard boiled"
style which I do find renders well onto the screen with both dialog
and imagery.
My cousin's (Vonda McIntyre) 1997 novel The Moon and the Sun (beat
out Martin's Game of Thrones for the Nebula that year) and went on to
be made into a "Hollywood Blockbuster" starring Pierce Brosnan as
Louis XIV. The project had lots of starts and stops but was finally
*completed* in 2014. It was finally released in theaters last month.
I went to see it as my first visit to a cinema since COVID out of
loyalty. It was a fine Disney-style PG movie for pre/teenage girls,
it didn't begin to do justice to the novel (as often happens).
Vonda died fairly abruptly of Pancreatic Cancer 3 years ago (April 1,
following her quirky nature) but had enough time to polish of her
last and final Novel which may eventually be published. Her literary
agent has been coy. She was never forthcoming about why the movie
itself was so slow in release. I now suspect *she* may have been
holding it up somewhat as it was such a weak adaptation, despite a
huge budget and a star leading man.
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