View Single Post
Old 04-27-2003, 04:27 PM   #225
Salocin
Wight
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Zion
Posts: 106
Salocin has just left Hobbiton.
Sting

In order from Best to not as good as Best, here are my favorite fantasy/SciFi authors.


************Tolkien*****************

Besides ME stuff I really liked Roverandom, Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wotton Major, and Leaf by Niggle in that order. Is it just me or is Leaf by Niggle about Pergatory?


***************C.S.Lewis**************

In order:

The Space Trilogy-
Amazing. The best SciFi I have ever read. I would include the Dark Tower here.

The Screwtape Letters-
Increadable insite into the wiles of the enemy. Required reading for anyone who wants to not go to hell [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] .

The Great Devorce-
Increadable insite to why certain aspects of Christianity that one might question are the way they are. Again, required reading for above reason.

The Chronicals of Narnia-
Maybe its just that I take these for granted because I grew up with them and sort of "discovered" Lewis's other stuff, but I like his other stuff better. Still really good though.

Shadowlands-
Say the BBC production. Really good.
Animal Land-
I am not sure if that is the title. Stories of cute fuzzy animals Lewis wrote with his brother at a young age. Published post-humerously from notebooks that were almost burned. Anyone else ever seen this?


*************George MacDonald*************

His books are the only ones I can not put in order:

Lilith-
Besides the Universalism, a pretty good Fantasy. The presence of a plot is questionable though. It seems as if the nameless protagonist could have done any number of things different and the outcome would have been the same. Again, the Universalism.

Fantasties-
Another good Fantasy (they called them Romances back then) I never finished it though. Again, an intreging plot is lacking. Besides his letting out his shadow and falling for the evil willow lady, the nameless (see a pattern) protagonist never does anything but walk [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img].
Please don't be turned off by my negative reviews of those two books. They are really good, its just that their good qualities are hard to explain.

The Princess books(The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie)-
Really nice fairy tails with good morals. Good for reading to small children though, as with all of MacDonald's stuff, there is a lot of deeper meaning, so you should probably read them again when you are older (I assume almost everyone here is "older")


************Lloyed Alexander************

Pyridain Chronicals-
Really cool. Tarran matures before you're very eyes!

Some weird books about a tom boy herroine in the 19th century-
Probably the only girlly books I ever read. The first one was sort of good, but they are all the same and the plots are completely rediculase given the time, place, and characters.

Doesn't he have a bunch of weird books about cats? I mean really weird ones like Time Cat or something? Oppinions please.


*****Stephen Lawhead (tie with Alexander)*****

Pendragon Cycle-
Taliesin and Merlin are works of art. I never got past the third part of Aurthur and never read any of the other books. The last two points of view in Aurthur were just to boring though the first one (was it Pelias?) was really good.

Dragon King Trilogy-
Pretty good. Way to protestant and it seems to artificial compared with, say the Pendragon Cycle and Pyridain Chronicles. It is quite comical seeing him try to portray a civilization of protestants that got raptured as mystirious, mystical, and ancient. [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

Bizantium-
I haven't actually read this *yet* (its length is very intimidating) but I have heard good things about it.

Doesn't he have a SciFi trilogy? Anyone read it who could tell me if it is any good?


*************Frank L. Baum**************

The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause-
I really nicely done, fairy tale type, "alternative" to any Santa Clause myths. Unlike the Oz books there seems to be a deffinate hyrrerarchy and Order of power in this book. I liked it a lot. Is it true they did a messed up chartoon based on this?

The REAL Oz series (not the run offs published after he died)-
Good fairy stories with nice plots, interesting magical items (I love the three magic pearls!), and interesting characters, though one or two are extremely similar. No really underlying meaning or messages (though there is an interesting theory of The Wizard of Oz being an Allegory of the first William Jennings Brian Presedential campain. The Scarecrow is the Farmers, the Tim Woodman is industrial workers, the Cowardly Lion is Brian, and they are taking the free silver standard (the silver slippers) up the gold standard of the Yellow Brick Road. There is more to it than that, but that's all I remember.), just a mindless fairy story. The main draw back I see is that, for such a developed fantasy world, there is no underlying power structure controlling the magic, or atleast we never see more than glimpses at it (the magic cult with the aprons is the only example I can think of). It just seems like everything is possible. There is not Higher Order. There is a nice detailed map in the latter ones though [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img].

Other Oz like Fairy Tails (Queen Zixi of Ix, Dot and Tot of Merryland, The Demon of Electricity)-
His lesser known books, surely. They are basically the same as the Oz books, though a little better developed (he was bored with Oz, so I think he put more effort into them). I own Queen Zixi of Ix. They have Dot and Tot of Merryland in some closed stacks in a library out here. I got them to let me in and read the first few chapters once (I think they thought I was doing a report because they kept asking if I wanted to take notes and if I did to please do them in pencil [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img] ). I have never been able to find The Demon of Electricity, though the description I read sounds very intreagueing.


Well that sure was long. I won't be posting here in a while [img]smilies/redface.gif[/img] .

Hey, this is my 100th post! One more and I'm a wright

[ April 27, 2003: Message edited by: Salocin ]
__________________
Christ is Risen!
Salocin is offline   Reply With Quote