Interesting.
Apr. 5th, 2004 12:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmpfThis is one of the books I bought this week:
http://www.strangewords.com/archive/viriconium.html
Hmm... I've read Gene Wolfe (assuming the writer of that article meant 'The Book of the New Sun'), I'm about to read Harrison, and I'm planning to buy the relevant book by Vance as well, sometime (assuming that the guy who wrote the article meant the 'Tales of the Dying Earth').
There are two things here that I'm interested in. No.1 could be called 'the magnified city'. Wolfe, Harrison, the VanderMeer book I bought yesterday, and China Miéville fit that pattern, as well as many other books. Also, movies like 'Blade Runner', 'Dark City', etc., and probably, in some way, the comic series 'Les Cités Obscures' I'm also planning to read. I have a strong fascination with cities, and their exaggerated counterparts in literature.
The other thing is the apocalyptic theme - or maybe the theme of decadence and decline. All the three books mentioned in the article above are set in a far future, truly at the end of history. And that, also, is something I'm inordinately interested in.
Those two, combined if possible, are what I'm currently most interested in in fantasy and science fiction, I think.
'Finder' also has elements of it (Anvard is clearly a 'magnified' or exaggerated city, and the world surrounding it is one in which civilisation is barely existent anymore.)
http://www.strangewords.com/archive/viriconium.html
Hmm... I've read Gene Wolfe (assuming the writer of that article meant 'The Book of the New Sun'), I'm about to read Harrison, and I'm planning to buy the relevant book by Vance as well, sometime (assuming that the guy who wrote the article meant the 'Tales of the Dying Earth').
There are two things here that I'm interested in. No.1 could be called 'the magnified city'. Wolfe, Harrison, the VanderMeer book I bought yesterday, and China Miéville fit that pattern, as well as many other books. Also, movies like 'Blade Runner', 'Dark City', etc., and probably, in some way, the comic series 'Les Cités Obscures' I'm also planning to read. I have a strong fascination with cities, and their exaggerated counterparts in literature.
The other thing is the apocalyptic theme - or maybe the theme of decadence and decline. All the three books mentioned in the article above are set in a far future, truly at the end of history. And that, also, is something I'm inordinately interested in.
Those two, combined if possible, are what I'm currently most interested in in fantasy and science fiction, I think.
'Finder' also has elements of it (Anvard is clearly a 'magnified' or exaggerated city, and the world surrounding it is one in which civilisation is barely existent anymore.)
