I write for you while you sleep
After three nights effectively sleepless, I finally slept almost ten hours and resent the absence from the Boston skyline of some of the architecture I dreamed about photographing. I don't know where this city would put more bridges, but it had them. I still feel I had visited the cobbled seaside plaza before.
Inspired by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sholio, I re-read Byron Preiss, Michael Reaves and Joseph Zucker's Dragonworld (1979) for the first time in decades. I have a used paperback in storage, but actually can't remember when I acquired or first read this illustrated brick of a book, although its mental filing near Carol Kendall's The Gammage Cup (1959) and Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's The Death Gate Cycle (1990–94) suggests early high school. I had remembered it imperfectly and characteristically: I responded to the adventures of a reclusive inventor who starts heroically out of his depth trying to stop a war and escalates to finding himself on a quest for dragons and tuned out much of the war itself and the politicking around it.
Amsel was a small man, small and wiry, with a great explosion of white hair under a floppy hat, and a face that could claim any age from thirty to fifty. He was dressed in loose-fitting green and brown clothes, covered with pockets. In the pockets were all manner of things: a thong-bound parchment notebook, a quill pen which carried its own ink supply (Amsel's own invention), a lodestone, a small hammer (for chipping off interesting rock specimens), a small net of tanselweb (for capturing interesting insect specimens), and a pair of spectacles (also Amsel's invention). He believed in preparing for any eventuality.
It's an odd, ambitious, slightly stiff book; it reads at times like a novelization of a film that doesn't exist, presumably with creature effects by Jim Henson. Assholio points out, its secondary world would look a lot more normally Tolkienesque if it were more magical, but mostly it has dragons and related species, second sight, and an assortment of invented animals, vegetables, and minerals, of which my favorite is the gemstone equivalent of an alkali metal whose exothermic reaction to water has been harnessed for thermal airship technology. We were trying to think of other non-magical secondary worlds that are not stealth science fiction or alternate history and mostly I was coming up with Lloyd Alexander's Westmark and the volcano of Carol Kendall's Firelings, plus the edge case of Megan Whalen Turner's Little Peninsula. Am taking suggestions, especially if I have overlooked an obvious Frances Hardinge.
All of the news I have seen has been such that I am avoiding my other social media because I just don't want to read the takes. The eye-blurring headache appears to be separate, but I also resent it.
Inspired by
sholio, I re-read Byron Preiss, Michael Reaves and Joseph Zucker's Dragonworld (1979) for the first time in decades. I have a used paperback in storage, but actually can't remember when I acquired or first read this illustrated brick of a book, although its mental filing near Carol Kendall's The Gammage Cup (1959) and Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's The Death Gate Cycle (1990–94) suggests early high school. I had remembered it imperfectly and characteristically: I responded to the adventures of a reclusive inventor who starts heroically out of his depth trying to stop a war and escalates to finding himself on a quest for dragons and tuned out much of the war itself and the politicking around it.Amsel was a small man, small and wiry, with a great explosion of white hair under a floppy hat, and a face that could claim any age from thirty to fifty. He was dressed in loose-fitting green and brown clothes, covered with pockets. In the pockets were all manner of things: a thong-bound parchment notebook, a quill pen which carried its own ink supply (Amsel's own invention), a lodestone, a small hammer (for chipping off interesting rock specimens), a small net of tanselweb (for capturing interesting insect specimens), and a pair of spectacles (also Amsel's invention). He believed in preparing for any eventuality.
It's an odd, ambitious, slightly stiff book; it reads at times like a novelization of a film that doesn't exist, presumably with creature effects by Jim Henson. As
sholio points out, its secondary world would look a lot more normally Tolkienesque if it were more magical, but mostly it has dragons and related species, second sight, and an assortment of invented animals, vegetables, and minerals, of which my favorite is the gemstone equivalent of an alkali metal whose exothermic reaction to water has been harnessed for thermal airship technology. We were trying to think of other non-magical secondary worlds that are not stealth science fiction or alternate history and mostly I was coming up with Lloyd Alexander's Westmark and the volcano of Carol Kendall's Firelings, plus the edge case of Megan Whalen Turner's Little Peninsula. Am taking suggestions, especially if I have overlooked an obvious Frances Hardinge.All of the news I have seen has been such that I am avoiding my other social media because I just don't want to read the takes. The eye-blurring headache appears to be separate, but I also resent it.
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I am so glad you got some sleep.
I know I've read other non-magical secondary worlds, but the only one I can think of right now is Richard Adams' Shardik and Maia,.
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Thank you.
I know I've read other non-magical secondary worlds, but the only one I can think of right now is Richard Adams' Shardik and Maia,.
That totally counts! I have not read either. [edit] And made me remember that Tanith Lee's A Heroine of the World (1989) may count, because I am not sure it has anything more supernatural in it than a pack of Tarot-equivalent cards near the beginning. I thought she had written something that would qualify.
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Agreed that Downfall of the Gods meant it literally. I have also read some of Parker's novellas that were just intrigue and engineering, so he should at least count in the same way as Megan Whalen Turner. And I had ironically thought of him in the form of Tom Holt and dismissed on grounds of historical fiction. Thank you!
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I don't think I'd rec those two books. The worldbuilding was inventive but the author's turgid id kept showing through.
no subject
Your choice of adjective is distressingly eloquent. So noted.