"Warlord" <warlord at dragon.com> writes: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: rone [mailto:rone at ennui.org] >> Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2004 4:45 PM >> To: SKZB List >> Subject: Re: From Neil Gaiman's journal >> >> >> David Dyer-Bennet writes: >> "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. >> >> A story sometimes exists in the context of the time it was written, >> though, and many stories don't age very well. > True, but many do, and even if they do not it is not terribly difficult > to put ones mindset at the time in question. I love rereading anything > by E.E. Doc Smith, for example. Heck, I got so desperate recently I reread a ten-book series just because it had his name on the covers. (Well, he'd written a story that the first volume was kind of built around.) -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b at dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>