----- Original Message ----- From: "David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net> To: <dragaera at dragaera.info> Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2004 2:04 PM Subject: Re: From Neil Gaiman's journal > "bonham15" <bonham15 at cox.net> writes: > > > i actually came to lord of light rather late. i think last year it was that > > i picked it up for something like fifty cents from a used book store. it > > has held up amazingly well for a 40 year old story, as good ones will imho > > That's an attitude that continues to catch me by surprise -- that you > expect new stories to be *better* than old stories. I expect exactly > the reverse; we're living with the cream skimmed off a few thousand > years of literary history, and the best stuff from that much time is > mostly incomparably better than nearly anything created this year. It > takes something really fantastic like _A Fire Upon the Deep_, say, to > even look like a *candidate* for that sort of status in the long run. > -- ahhh. allow me to clarify my thoughts/opinions on this one. there is a ton of crap that gets put out every year since mass printing became viable. in the 1800's you had the dread penny stuff, early 1900's brought us a lot of serial type stories, and novels became more numerous. then god help us, danielle steele descends in the late 1900s. an absolute TON of crap gets put out each and every year and has for more than our lifetimes. the ones that stick around, like lord of light, or raymond chandler's incredibly written and paced detective novels are the best of that time and do hold up. there are great songs from the 50's, 60's and 70's that still get played every day, but much of the utter trash and crap recorded has faded by the wayside, leaving us to go, 'man, music was better then, not at all like this crap we have now'. imho, its very easy for science fiction type stories to feel dated rather quickly, especially if they are poorly written. some *never* will i think (neuromancer anyone?). some concepts become dated, some outpaced by events and then become quaint... good lord, i'm tangenting. i'm leaving now, too tired for coherent thought. i'll let everyone else dice me up on this, especially as i know this isn't very well thought out. andy