(urth) Gaiman, Mieville, Pullman, etc.

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes danldo at gmail.com
Wed Dec 1 09:42:58 PST 2004


Alga,

Welcome back! You've been missed.

> First, I have not read "The Problem of
> Susan" (is that actually the name of the story?), though I would very much
> like to as I have never, never forgiven Lewis (and we are going back to my
> early teens here) for what he did to Susan. Where can I find it?

It's in Al Sarrantino's new antho, "Flights." It got onto this list partly
because there's a longish GW story in there.


> Third, I believe the Poughkeepsie ref goes back to Harlan Ellison who once
> replied sarcastically to the eternal fan question at a convention, "Where do
> you get your ideas?" "Poughkeepsie." It's an old factory town in upstate New
> York. If it wasn't Ellison, it was someone else; perhaps someone more
> conversant with SF history can set the record straight.

That story does come from Harlan, but it was Schenectady he used.


> But Pullman has acheived a classic, which people will be reading many
> decades from now. 

Well, two thirds of a classic ... grumble mumble. _TAS_ was, simply
too long by a third. The Mulefa stuff, yes, could easily have gone, 
and so could a couple of other things. And as for the ending - sorry,
but it was as irrritating to me as the kid-porn ending in _IT_ (a book
that was too long by about two thirds, written at the peak of Stevie's
"bloated" period ... but endings have usually been King's week point,
from the "and everyone gets killed!" ending of _Carrie_ to the recent 
wet fart that concluded the up to that point simply brilliant _Dark 
Tower_ sequence); I can see what he was trying to do there and it
could have been done well, but he simply failed to prepare the
ground for it, and so when it happens it's out of left field and (to
my mind) unjustified. 

--Blattid but really Dan'l

-- 
www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
"Saddam would still be in power if he were the President
of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off."
     -- The Forty-Third President, 10/8/04



More information about the Urth mailing list