No, Protector is older than Ringworld, at least in its origins: “The Adults”, the story of Pssthpok and Brennan, dates from the 60s. The latter half was added later. Niven himself said in some notes in Tales of Known Space (after Ringworld, before … Engineers) that it was clear to him by the time he finished *Ringworld * that the Pak had built it, but there wasn’t room enough left in the story to examine that, so he settled for letting Louis and company not work it out.
Don’t you mean Hideaki Anno? Sadamoto was just the character designer on Evangelion, and while he does do the Evangelion manga that gets intermittently published (he’s apparently really slow), his manga take on the story is far better than any other incarnation of Eva, including the recent Rebuild of Evangelion re-imagining.
No second from me. It wasn’t just for a funeral, it was for a grand scale royal funeral that was to take place in a couple of days. It was chosen by Bernie, not Elton, because it was Bernie’s own favorite song. (In case you don’t know, Bernie Taupin is Elton’s lyricist.) And then it had to be sung — live — thrity feet from the Queen (whom he adores), not to mention the little boys who had just lost their mother, and to a billion people across the world … all the while somehow managing not to conflate the lyrics he’d just been faxed practically the night before with lyrics that he’d sung for thirty years on stage. He did it perfectly. All in all, not just a good remake, but a very important and significant one.
Admittedly, the first series (Belgariad) was light reading, but I liked the characterization (I still like the Silk character). The environment was interesting, too, and I even liked his rehash of the creation myths.
Then, Edding wrote the EXACT SAME STORY with the Eleniad (btw…can I offer extra vitriol for authors who name a series the anything-IAD?). OK, different names on the characters, some other variations on the theme…but the same story.
Then…this new drek, the one he writes with his wife. OK, it’s a little different from the Bel- and the Elen-, but the first book should have done it. Tehy have proceeded to write 3 more of exactly the same story. Suck-o!
And Feist. Sigh…I liked his Riftwar series. Now it’s garbage, as the protagonists are the great-grand nephew of someone you didn’t like anyway, and there are some lizards or demons. Sigh…
I agree. Not only that, if you read his forwards, you find his wife was involved all the time. I wonder if the extreme misogyny you see in his books was all written by her, the female characters in that book are all quite annoying.
I did like the NPCs in the Belgariad, though, like you did. And I loved Sparrowhawk. But the stories are identical.
Aaaaaaaaand I agree with Feist, too. I used to read him a lot.
I had the joy of having tweens and teens when Cartoon Network started showing Dragonball. I got to watch Goku and company from when he was a little boy to when the series finished in Dragonball GT with Goku…as a little boy.
Dragonball introduced a cast of characters and gave them some personalities. They tried to do this at the beginning of Dragonball Z, but the longer it went on, the more it became to all Goku show. Now, anime tends to recycle the same plotline over and over…and over and over…again, but Dragonball Z stopped even trying to hide it within a story. Then Dragonball GT started, and at first they tried to capture the wistfullness that made the early Dragonball episodes enjoyable, but soon it was once again the same plotline.
Supposedly, the creator was writing simply for a paycheck. I don’t know how true that was, but it was obvious he really, really didn’t care by the end.
I wondered about that misogyny thing. The females are either cold and distant (Polgara) or annoying as hell (XeNedra, snake lady, others). I’m sure I’m missing the character that will convince me otherwise, but I think you’re correct. Eddings femme must be a blast at parties!
I liked Silk, and thought he should have had his own novel. The dirty hunchback, too (name escapes me…Belkin? No, that’s my mouse’s brand).
All in all, Eddings has well and truly pissed on what was a good series.
the saddest thing about Feist is that his first series was great, and his crossover with Wurts was “Good +”. Everything after…questionable at best.
The thing that really pissed me off was…Ok. Everyone thought premarital sex was wrong for females. Ce’Nedra and Garion were separated. Polgara was some Ice Maiden, apparently never having sex until she married…what’shisface. (You might make an argument that she did with that lovely knight, but knowing him, I don’t think so.)
Belgarath, however (whom I really did like) is having sex with all and sundry! And he’s a drunken old sot (according to his own damn daughter) so it’s OK.
And then…Velvet, being the first semi-liberated female in the whole series, goes and has sex with Silk and this makes her what? A whore, by all the other standards, doesn’t it? And then she goes and nags him into marrying her! Can’t one woman think a little differently?
And so many of the other women talk openly and freely about controlling their husbands through guile or intrigue. Ce’Nedra herself uses her cuteness to wrap that idiot Garion around her finger.
Ok, I’ll stop now, or this will become a Eddings-bashing thread. I did so love the other knight as well, though, I’ve forgotten his name. The stuffy one, who killed the lion?
I think you meant Sparhawk, the character from the Eleniad (which people are complaining about) whose name sounds almost exactly like Sparrowhawk, the character from A Wizard of Earthsea (which people are complaining about).
Frank Zappa in the '80s replacing the bass and drums on two of his classic '60s albums with sparkly new, digitally recorded parts. It was bad enough on We’re Only in It for the Money*, but when he repeated the exercise with Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, he defeated the whole purpose of the album, which was meant to sound like a bunch of old '50s doo-wop records.
*Contrary to popular belief, replacing the rhythm section on this album was not done out of necessity because of damage to the original master tape. The damage to the stereo master tape necessitated a remix from the (undamaged) multitracks; Zappa just thought it would be a cool idea to update the recording while he was at it.
In The Rivan Codex (I think that’s the right one), he comes right out and said he wrote the Elenium and Tamuli as practice for the Mallorean. Therein lies the derivativeness. Still doesn’t mean I like them. Someone needed to :smack: Danae about twelve or thirteen times. I don’t care if she was a goddess, she was still a spoiled brat.
I absolutely love the Belgariad and Mallorean and the biographies of Belgarath and Polgara, so I’m not getting into that fight. I will say that the most recent series Team Eddings has written is total crap. I think that they heard so much praise for Silk that they decided to write a series where all of the characters, gods and mortals, thought they were as clever as Silk and sit around swapping quips and congratulating themselves on their own cleverness. (Could that sentence be any longer?) I read the first book, part of the second, and then concluded that the Eddings are dead to me.
I have generally positive memories of The Redemption of Althalus, but I’ve only read it once and it was a long time ago.
While I agree with the bulk of your point about Dragonball, in all fairness I need to point a few things out. Dragonball and Dragonball Z are based on the manga by Akira Toriyama, which they follow to excruciating detail (to their detriment, imho; a lot of the wonky pacing has to do with their approach to adaptation, which is to say not adapting it at all).
Dragonball GT was entirely made up by the animation team, who up till then had only written the (generally sucky) Dragonball movies (except the Bardok and Trunks OVA’s, and Fusion Reborn, which were Toriyama creations).
As to your other point; children’s and preteen anime tends to be the same thing over and over; much like American children’s cartoons (and prime-time sitcoms as well ).
I hate when people make generalizations about anime, because it’s almost always wrong; anime is treated as a medium choice, like filming in black and white instead of color, there are anime of all ages and varieties.
Richard Peck wrote two very charming YA adventure novels, set in 1910s America: The Ghost Belonged to Me, and Ghosts I Have Been. (I want to say small-town America, but they had trolley cars, so not that small…)
They were both smart, clever, and charming. They featured characters having encounters with the uncanny, but the action really was centered on the characters’ lives, and their times. With an influence from the uncanny, of course, but not taking over the whole plot.
Then he wrote two more books with the same characters.
And the uncanny is no longer a lens illuminating the lives of his characters, but pretty much has taken over the whole story. To the detriment of the wonderfully fun characters that made the first two books so appealing.
I’m still sorry I read The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp, and nothing I’ve heard about Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death indicates I’m missing anything by not reading it.
Yes, there’s a reason I’m only making an Amazon link for two of those titles.
I’ll add Agatha Christie’s later books (especially the “spy” type ones–she could NOT do espionage) and Martha Grimes. I loved Richard Jury(the detective), but the books just got sooo bad.
I second, third and fourth Dylan. And Linda Ronstadt. And Frank Sinatra.
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