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"The Weirwoods" by Thomas Burnett Swann (Copyright 1967)


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Hello everyone!

I was just wondering if everyone was aware of a book called "The Wierwoods" by Thomas Burnett Swann? I saw it on Amazon and it looked promising so I went ahead and bought it. Anyway it is about the Etruscans who have a centuries long pact with the people of a wooded place called the Weirwoods. The people of these woods are called the Weir ones and there are some who are much like the CotF with slitted gold cat eyes and also webbed feet that make a squish sound when they walk. Anyway there is a father who breaks this pact and steals a weir-one for his daughter as a slave. It has been quite promising so far and just wanted to share as I think this book probably influenced our beloved writer.

Just go on amazon and type in the author and title have a look!

 

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Thank you, thank you @Crowfood's Daughter :wub:

I am going to order it now and read it regardless because if anything it will be something good to get in to while I patiently wait for Winds. 

This came out when GRRM should have still been in high school (if my memory serves) and right before GRRM wrote his first tale which was a fight between good evil. 

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17 minutes ago, Castellan said:

thanks for posting. i looked him up on wikipedia. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Burnett_Swann

He is a poet, critic, and fantasy author. Yup, seems to hit all the marks for George as well ^_^

And Swann, with two n's, like House Swann? George does like to give his homages (if this is the case) 

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I knew other books of Burnett Swann, which were traduced in french : he loves greco-roman mythology and re-wrote it with a lot of intelligence, I find (in a quite similar way than antic authors were doing it); he understood very well how anti-dogmatic greco-latin mythology is. Funnily, he has the same traducer in french than GRRM for ADWD and the next books. 

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51 minutes ago, Castellan said:

thanks for posting. i looked him up on wikipedia. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Burnett_Swann

 

27 minutes ago, Crowfood's Daughter said:

That is exactly what I was thinking!

I just took a few minutes and read the wiki link. I'd say this guy Swann is more of an influence to George's work than Tolkien is. I think Tolkien gets brought up a lot because his work is still out there and active and more recognizable. I don't know how much of George's older work you may have read, but based on the bio information from the wiki link, this guy Swann fits exactly in with GRRM's older work. 

Both of you, great find :thumbsup:

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I only read an intro, but it sounds like the the water sprites are going to bring some revenge to men for enslavement and encroachment on their weirwood.  At the risk of stating the obvious, those are the two reasons behind the hammer of the waters and Garin's water attack in the Valyrians.  

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1 minute ago, Unchained said:

I only read an intro, but it sounds like the the water sprites are going to bring some revenge to men for enslavement and encroachment on their weirwood.  At the risk of stating the obvious, those are the two reasons behind the hammer of the waters and Garin's water attack in the Valyrians.  

You have been paying attention!!  Valar Dohaeris my friend.

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5 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

This came out when GRRM should have still been in high school

College, probably. Wikipedia puts his birth year as 1948. Says he earned a B.S. in Journalism in 1970 at Northwestern.

"The Weirwoods" is a great find! Thanks, Crowfood's Daughter! I'm looking forward to hearing more (right now, I'm bogged down in "The Expanse" series.)

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22 minutes ago, zandru said:

College, probably. Wikipedia puts his birth year as 1948. Says he earned a B.S. in Journalism in 1970 at Northwestern.

"The Weirwoods" is a great find! Thanks, Crowfood's Daughter! I'm looking forward to hearing more (right now, I'm bogged down in "The Expanse" series.)

Ah yes, you are correct, my friend. I was trying to math in my head before I had coffee. I don't recommend that to anyone, by the way. It's painful. GRRM tells in one of his anthologies that he graduated high school in 1966.

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4 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Ah yes, you are correct, my friend.

This is why I send money to the Wikimedia Foundation every year. (please excuse this brief commercial announcement  ;-)

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11 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

He is a poet, critic, and fantasy author. Yup, seems to hit all the marks for George as well ^_^

And Swann, with two n's, like House Swann? George does like to give his homages (if this is the case) 

Wanna read it too. Cheers, @Crowfood's Daughter. And great catch, I'd say it's very likely that House Swann is indeed a homage! :thumbsup:

 

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This little bit about a new interpretation of statues and paintings reminds me (vaguely) of the way in The Dying Light, the dissident type who reinterprets his planet's culture and history and realises the carvings of the different types of animals that they defeated in the glorious past, are in fact humans.

 

Swann began writing fiction in 1958 with "Winged Victory", a science fiction story based on the famous headless statue known as the Winged Victory of Samothrace. In Swann's story the statue's head is discovered and found to have been modeled upon an alien visitor whom the sculptor took for a goddess.

Extraterrestrials also feature in "The Painter", in which the painter Hieronymous Bosch is abducted by hideous aliens and forced to paint them, thereby providing the inspiration for the grotesque images in his painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. This and many other early stories appeared in the British magazine Science Fantasy. Some stories also appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF).

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Just got home from work and found my book waiting for me in the mailbox. I'm rather excited and curious. :D

I purchased the in Audible the other day, but I can't stand the pace and annunciation by the narrator, so it didn't sit well with me, which is odd because I believe this is the same narrator that had done a few other of George's old stories, and I liked him there. 

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21 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Just got home from work and found my book waiting for me in the mailbox. I'm rather excited and curious. :D

I purchased the in Audible the other day, but I can't stand the pace and annunciation by the narrator, so it didn't sit well with me, which is odd because I believe this is the same narrator that had done a few other of George's old stories, and I liked him there. 

Ah, cool! I've yet to get mine... :(

 

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