GRRM hopes not to "Pull a Lost"

[Phostopheles]

>Thread drift<

I think that's a bit much. Know that a lot of people disagree. American Gods =/= children's fiction and I think it's a brilliant book--possibly his best.

(and it also won the 2002 Hugo, Nebula, Locus, SFX Magazine and Bram Stoker awards)

Chicago has Neverwhere currently as its book of year and is doing all these events based around it.

Except it's still relevant to the conversation, given that, like Rowling, Gaiman won an undeserved Hugo.

I find it quite amusing that the book you choose to defend him with is the one I take most issue with. American Gods is not brilliant, it's leftovers from Sandman that he didn't even bother weaving together coherently nor originally, not to mention riddled with sex scenes that read like a teenager's attempt at a slashfic. Throwing together a randomized global pantheon, justifying it with a shallow interpretation of the American melting pot, and managing to have very little actually happen to a spectator main character whose "shady" past and "foreboding" future are as annoyingly transparent as his personality is two-dimensional IS NOT GOOD WRITING. Not to mention it's pretentious as fuck to feel Gaiman's hipster-esque pride at knowing gods he thinks are "obscure" bleeding through every page (lol, maybe obscure to the average American...perhaps it's all some form of meta-trolling? Haha, American Gods won awards because Americans don't know shit about gods!). Rehashing classic tropes only gets you so far...Gaiman is fantasy crack, not high art.

/rant

[Padraig]

AFfC got announced the year it came out (IIRC). So 2005.

[End of Disc One]

AFfC got announced the year it came out (IIRC). So 2005.

You sure? I didn't read the series back then but I was always on Wotmania and I kept seeing the amazon add for A Feast For Crows...I thought it was up there for years.

[Axon]

I think we'll see the end of the series by 2016. You can tell he's back into it with the release of the show.

[Mandurang]

Except it's still relevant to the conversation, given that, like Rowling, Gaiman won an undeserved Hugo.

I find it quite amusing that the book you choose to defend him with is the one I take most issue with. American Gods is not brilliant, it's leftovers from Sandman that he didn't even bother weaving together coherently nor originally, not to mention riddled with sex scenes that read like a teenager's attempt at a slashfic. Throwing together a randomized global pantheon, justifying it with a shallow interpretation of the American melting pot, and managing to have very little actually happen to a spectator main character whose "shady" past and "foreboding" future are as annoyingly transparent as his personality is two-dimensional IS NOT GOOD WRITING. Not to mention it's pretentious as fuck to feel Gaiman's hipster-esque pride at knowing gods he thinks are "obscure" bleeding through every page (lol, maybe obscure to the average American...perhaps it's all some form of meta-trolling? Haha, American Gods won awards because Americans don't know shit about gods!). Rehashing classic tropes only gets you so far...Gaiman is fantasy crack, not high art.

/rant

You know, after finally picking up American Gods and utterly failing to see what the fuss was about, I am inclined to agree with your rant. But in a world where the biggest best seller has been The Da Vinci Code...

[neutronicus]

I tried to read American Gods, but Gaiman's prose bored me so much that I just couldn't continue.

[Whatever]

I think we'll see the end of the series by 2016. You can tell he's back into it with the release of the show.

i feel optimistic tonight: i agree

[Blackfish Blues]

I can't remember what he said about HP in Ireland. I know he has joked about HP before. But his issue with JKR is more about her disparagement of the genre than her beating him for the Hugo (that event just emphasised what she thought of the Hugo award).

I do agree that the turd comment wasn't very tactful. And as Wert, I wonder will he change his approach now that he is part of Hollywood again.

Ah, this might be the cause for my uninformed attitude; I did not know about JKR's disparagement of fantasy. I'll have to look it up her exact words, however, because indeed HP is hard to fit into the various fantasy subgenres.

(I stopped reading JKR's interviews after she gave half-assed justifications for killing off beloved characters, and made revelations about characters instead of actually writing them in the books. I still love her for the entertainment she gave me, though.)

The HP comment in Ireland was something about a bunch of kids who were or seemed to be HP fans and GRRM was shocked. <_<

"Turd"? Did I miss some post?

[Werthead]

AFfC got announced the year it came out (IIRC). So 2005.

AFFC was announced in September 2001 at the Philadelphia Worldcon (he said he'd junked a year's work on ADWD-as-it-was-then). I saw the first substantial chunk of it - the ironborn chapters bar Victarion's last one - published as a novella called Arms of the Kraken in Dragon magazine in August 2002 (with a note at the end that said AFFC would be out in 2003). GRRM let us know about the split in May 2005.

[Padraig]

Right. I managed to confuse myself badly. In 2005 he announced that the split chapters from aFfC will go into aDwD but yes, aFfC existed since 2001. He announced that big change in Philadelphia.

Ah, this might be the cause for my uninformed attitude; I did not know about JKR's disparagement of fantasy.

I'm not sure what you'll find online. She doesn't think HP is fantasy and she would have nothing to do with the Hugos when nominated. The organisers just picked a random librarian to collect her award since nobody from her publishers would be involved. GRRM OTOH thinks the Hugo is the primary award in science fiction. Something he'd like to win someday. So having JKR win (beat aSoS) and not treat it with any respect was a slap to the face.

"Turd"? Did I miss some post?

Sorry. That was something GRRM said. While the comment in Ireland doesn't ring bells. But i've already proved that my memory is going. :)

[Phostopheles]

You know, after finally picking up American Gods and utterly failing to see what the fuss was about, I am inclined to agree with your rant. But in a world where the biggest best seller has been The Da Vinci Code...

Don't even get me started, haha. It's hard having faith in a world where the best-selling authors are the ones that churn out crack fiction on an annual basis. Brown, Steel, King, Patterson, Cussler, Rice, Goodkind, Grisham...hell, even Crichton and Jordan were guilty of it. I mean, if you look at best-selling authors of all time, the only well-esteemed writers who even came close to such a "quantity over quality" mindset were mystery novelists like Christie and Doyle. And much as I love them as guilty pleasures I have no pretentions toward their being great literature. Each probably had a half dozen (and that's being generous) of legitimately engaging novels, but on the whole what they produced was crack to pay the bills; I grant the same concession to all of the authors listed above, including Gaiman. But American Gods simply isn't anywhere near the best in his bibliography, particularly when juxtaposed with Sandman. I'm not even a proponent of the graphic novel as a medium for deep literature and yet its superiority is almost indisputable to anyone willing to look past the stigma.

But sort of back to my main point, I do applaud Gaiman for at least trying not to write himself into a rut...I just find it depressing (and ironic) that not only did he fail to avoid that with American Gods, but that sheeple are as sheeple do and hailed it as his best anyway.

[mormont]

[mod] Discussion of the merits of Neil Gaiman's work is best kept to the Literature forum. It's off-topic for this thread. Same goes for JK Rowling, for that matter. Stick to the topic, please. [/mod]

[Phostopheles]

I'm not sure what you'll find online. She doesn't think HP is fantasy and she would have nothing to do with the Hugos when nominated. The organisers just picked a random librarian to collect her award since nobody from her publishers would be involved. GRRM OTOH thinks the Hugo is the primary award in science fiction. Something he'd like to win someday. So having JKR win (beat aSoS) and not treat it with any respect was a slap to the face.

...Wow.

I don't know what to think. Like, yeah, it seems that Martin, Rowling, and I all agree that Hugo should go to exclusively to sci-fi and especially not to children's books. And yet at the same time it's a fan-voted award, so it's basically like Rowling saying "I don't care about the fans," Martin saying "Wow, the fans are stupid," and both of them (including me) saying "Popular opinion is usually wrong, i.e. the Hugo awards suck." I'm surprised that didn't create as much of a shitstorm as I imagine it should have...especially since I think if it had gotten through to the fans, they wouldn't have voted American Gods for best book the year after... :P

[BladeDancer]

I think it is a good thing. Martin states he wants an ending with a payoff, that wraps up the foreshadowed hints, ties up the various plot lines and proves satisfying to the fans. What's not to like? The problem with Lost was that it was a truly great show with an ending that was unsatisfying to many fans and this tarnished their overall experience and opinion of the show. Martin wants his fans to close the book after the final chapter of ASOIAF and be really satisfied with the conclusion. Fans were pretty happy with how Return of the Jedi finished - there was a payoff and the climax seemed fitting. Not so with Lost. Martins strives to replicate the Star Wars experience rather than the Lost experience wrt to the finale.

Obviously there is concern, given his age that Martin will never finish the story. This is a possibility, but if he does, he wants it to end fittingly and not lamely. I don't have a problem with that. Tolkien took decades to write LOTR, and that stood the test of time. Martin wants to do the same with his series. OK, it might be frustrating for us who have to endure the wait for the next book, but if the series is brought to a fitting conclusion then folks will look back on the series for many decades as a true classic.

[Axon]

I think it is a good thing. Martin states he wants an ending with a payoff, that wraps up the foreshadowed hints, ties up the various plot lines and proves satisfying to the fans. What's not to like? The problem with Lost was that it was a truly great show with an ending that was unsatisfying to many fans and this tarnished their overall experience and opinion of the show. Martin wants his fans to close the book after the final chapter of ASOIAF and be really satisfied with the conclusion. Fans were pretty happy with how Return of the Jedi finished - there was a payoff and the climax seemed fitting. Not so with Lost. Martins strives to replicate the Star Wars experience rather than the Lost experience wrt to the finale.

Well said. ASOIAF really is a fantasy Star Wars - except that it is darker, and no one can write politics like GRRM. Lucas made an attempt to offer up that same kind of political intrigue between factions in episodes 1-3, but ended up falling short. Granted, if given a full series of novels, he may have done better.

Lost, for me, fell short of its potential. It simply was not resolved in a satisfying way. I recognize that they had to stretch the plot lines out longer than they had to, and that behavior contributed to the emotionally flat ending, but some shows have been able to pull off excellent endings despite their extended length and large cast - Star Trek: TNG immediately springs to mind.

Anyway, I have a strong feeling George knows exactly where and how his story ends, it's just a matter of getting there in a sensical manner. You can see he got off the path just a bit with AFFC. Many authors suggest that the easiest parts of any book to write are the beginning and the end - the details in the middle is the tough part. I guess we'll know more on July 12.

[Padraig]

Martin saying "Wow, the fans are stupid," and both of them (including me) saying "Popular opinion is usually wrong, i.e. the Hugo awards suck."

That is definitely not worth GRRM would say. As I said, GRRM thinks the Hugo is the primary award in science fiction. HP and American Gods are very popular books. People lose awards every day but its preferable to lose to somebody who appreciates winning. Most people didn't understand JKR's feelings towards the Hugo until after she won (I think her knowledge of the Hugos is very limited).

[limbstan]

I haven't read this full thread, nor have I seen any Lost, but I just want to make a point having been dissappointed with BSG (I watched them all).

The problem is that TV does not lend itself to an overall story arc. When they start shows, they have no idea what characters audiences will like, what storylines people will get into, or what they might have to change or introduce to produce interest in the show. And they also don't have any idea about how long the show will last.

So, when you watch a show, and you think, "Gee, I wonder how this will end?" Rest assured that the writers don't know either. It's just a premise.

And the sad part is, if they do know the end, you never get to see it. See Carnivale, Deadwood. These shows creaters had them mapped out from the start to the end even down to the number of seasons, and the end was never seen. Oh, and did I mention that these shows were on HBO?

Shows seem to work much better in quality if there's just no end (Sopranos, Mad Men) or if each season is its own arc (The Wire, Veronica Mars, Justified)

[Blackfish Blues]

I'm not sure what you'll find online. She doesn't think HP is fantasy and she would have nothing to do with the Hugos when nominated. The organisers just picked a random librarian to collect her award since nobody from her publishers would be involved. GRRM OTOH thinks the Hugo is the primary award in science fiction. Something he'd like to win someday. So having JKR win (beat aSoS) and not treat it with any respect was a slap to the face.

Sorry. That was something GRRM said. While the comment in Ireland doesn't ring bells. But i've already proved that my memory is going. :)

Thanks, now I have a better picture of the situation, even though, as I said, I stopped following Rowling's interviews after the Half Blood Prince book. I'm also completely unaware of the mechanics behind the Hugo award, so anything I learn here is a plus.

[mod] Discussion of the merits of Neil Gaiman's work is best kept to the Literature forum. It's off-topic for this thread. Same goes for JK Rowling, for that matter. Stick to the topic, please. [/mod]

If I may, ser Mod (with all due respect, I'm a Bear Island fangirl!) I think discussing Rowling IS on topic, since we're talking about GRRM's opinions of fellow (script)writers, and he did express an opinion on Rowling.

Like, yeah, it seems that Martin, Rowling, and I all agree that Hugo should go to exclusively to sci-fi and especially not to children's books.

Rowling won for "Goblet of Fire", which is in my view the turning point where her saga began turning into an adult saga and not a children's saga anymore, which is very evident in the following books. I shudder to picture an 8-year-old picking up "Philosopher's Stone" and reading all the rest without a parent's counseling; in the end she'd be shocked. But this is what puts HP outside the genres, I think; it starts as a fable and ends as a terrifying "hero's journey" with all the rewards but also the horrors that come from it.

[Nafro]

Harry Potter is children's trash. This is the first place I heard that it beat out ASoS. What a joke.

[Phostopheles]

That is definitely not worth GRRM would say. As I said, GRRM thinks the Hugo is the primary award in science fiction. HP and American Gods are very popular books. People lose awards every day but its preferable to lose to somebody who appreciates winning. Most people didn't understand JKR's feelings towards the Hugo until after she won (I think her knowledge of the Hugos is very limited).

I was merely pointing out what it comes off as, not necessarily what they actually think. Though I wouldn't be surprised in the least if both of them did harbor a twinge of disdain toward popular awards in general.

Rowling won for "Goblet of Fire", which is in my view the turning point where her saga began turning into an adult saga and not a children's saga anymore, which is very evident in the following books. I shudder to picture an 8-year-old picking up "Philosopher's Stone" and reading all the rest without a parent's counseling; in the end she'd be shocked. But this is what puts HP outside the genres, I think; it starts as a fable and ends as a terrifying "hero's journey" with all the rewards but also the horrors that come from it.

It's not an adult saga, though. Sure, she added a bit more death and gore, but nothing that would bump it out of the teenage/young adult demographic. And excluding the maturity of the content, it's still plotted like a children's series...

Harry Potter is children's trash. This is the first place I heard that it beat out ASoS. What a joke.

To be fair, I don't think it's trash. I just think it's a symptom of, in an effort to achieve everlasting youth, how adult society has been slowly lowering it's sensibilities down to the level of children. Just look at the best-selling novels, best-selling movies, best-selling tv shows...they're dominated by very low-brow, childish stuff. Because thinking is hard, so it's a lot easier if society as a whole decides not thinking is a good thing...