h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

She is my favoritest author in the whole world and I am so glad you got this entry done and accepted. It is great!

I read little sciece-fiction, I find most of it silly rubbish, but AM is an exception, because her books are not only about future worlds, they are about life. She is one author who can write as a child in first person without sounding absurd.

I used to love Anne McCaffrey but after a while I got tired of her constantly re-using the same fantasy as a basis for whatever she happens to be writing about: basically, that there's a bunch of people (dragonriders, crystal singers, etc, etc) doing something incredibly useful for civilisation but which is totally unappreciated by the ignorant, philistine masses. It didn't come as a surprise to me to learn that she'd been professionally involved in the performing arts, as this is exactly how many singers and actors seem to see themselves. To be honest, I went to art school and had a little spell of seeing myself that way too -- but that's a luxury I can't afford any more. Sorry if this all seems rather bitchy.

Hi Daniel, a lot of Anne McCaffrey's stuff tends to be pretty similar in theme as a lot of it is based in the same world... and you get cross over refrences... she writes about what she knows... as do a lot of authors...

Bitchy??? No... it's an opinion... ~grin~... if we all liked the same things... what a boring world we would live in...

Greebs..xx

Hi there.

It's funny how so many fans seem to love it when SF authors write novel after novel based in the same world. I always thought SF was supposed to be about imagination! Whole fan websites are devoted to explaining how various books by the same author are set in one or other of that author's 'worlds'. Some SF authors, like CJ Cherryh, even do the job for you and write the websites themselves.

I remember when I was really young and read Isaac Asimov all the time. When I'd read twenty-five or so of his novels and started to see how he was pulling them all together into the same framework, it really spoiled things for me. Why did his Robot stories, his Elijah Bailey novels, and his Foundation novels all have to fit into the same chronology? The later books, where he was explicitly tying loose ends, were incredibly tedious.

I guess that someone who's enjoyed one Anne McCaffrey novel automatically wants to find another one that's pretty much the same. The trouble is, once you've read a few of them and you're tired of the same thing over and over again, the writer is dead for you.

D

There aren'y many authors out there who don't write to their own formular. AM isn't the only one. Look at Elizabeth George, Steve Martin, Patricia Cornwall.
I must say Ken Follett doesn't. His books are all very different.

The SF authors I really respect are Kurt Vonnegut, Stanislaw Lem, and Gene Wolfe. That's because they fulfil the promise of a 'literature of ideas' -- ideas which are actually worth thinking about. And that's actually what I still love about Douglas Adams, for all his prolixity -- so many of his jokes have interesting ideas at the bottom of them.