Elric

[Eagle Prince]

Anyone read the Elric novels?  How would you compare the two new ones (dreamthief's daughter and skrayling tree) to the older ones?  I really like dreamthief's daughter but skrayling tree was a little lacking, although I really liked White Crow with his spear version of Stormbringer and his pet mammoth.

[EUOL]

Boy, it's been a while...a LONG while...since I read Elric.  I remember liking them, though.  Fell, didn't you just read the series?  In fact, didn't you borrow some of my Elric books, and are now planning on absconding with them to Logan?

[Eagle Prince]

Lol, and the older Elric books are hard to get since they are out of print.  The only reason I got them is White Wolf republished them, but those are now out of print as well.  You can still easily get the two new Elric novels though.

[Spriggan]

my friend Steve's got all of them as well as most of the eternal warrior series wich Elric is just one part of.

[Eagle Prince]

Awesome, so have you read them?  The only other Eternal Champion novels I have are Corum's, although occationally they do pop up in different stories, like Sailor on the Seas of Fate.  The reverse is also  true, sometimes Elric pops up in stories of the other incarnations of the Eternal Champion.  Then of course there's all the different versions of himself he runs into, ie White Crow, Ulric, etc.

[Fellfrosch]

I read one and a half of the Elric books, which is surprisingly little given how long they are. I blame Nanowrimo, which popped up right in the middle of the second one and stole all of my attention. On the plus side, Elric certainly influenced my writing. I really enjoyed the books, and would love to go back and finish them.

And though EUOL and I talked about me borrowing his books, I didn't actually take any of them.

[EUOL]

I seem to recall that I didn't own as many of them as I thought I did.

I blame this on you traveling back in time and stealing them from me when I was in high school.

On the up side, the B. Dalton's in Idaho was going out of business (I don't know if it's local or nation-wide) and was selling its books at 40% off.  They also let me use my discount card to get another 10% off.  So, you know what that means.

Yeah.  I bought some books.  A LOT of books.

In other news, I'm going to be teaching Dune in my creative writing class this semester. Anyone up for an Evil Storytime classics?  I think discussion of the book here would help me come up with things to talk about in class.

[42]

I saw that you were using Dune for your class. My question is why Dune? It's a good book and all, but it could have been written more clearly. I seem to remember doing a lot of page flipping and referencing when I read it. It just doesn't seem like a good standard for marketable fiction. Course, it does mix science fiction and fantasy well.

[Eagle Prince]

In the Book of Vile Darkness, it defines Elric as evil.  It actually calls him an antihero, although I'm not sure he qualifies as an antihero in the strick definition of the term.  But basically it says that he does good things, but uses evil methods to achieve them and that's why he is evil.  So I was thinking about that, and its actually pretty true of his character.  And actually, not all of his goals are good-hearted, maybe about half of them.

One scene from the first book, "Elric of Melnibone" specifically in chapter five "a battle: the king proves his war-skill" is a good example.  Elric's couson, Yyrkoon, has uses his sorcery to call in a mist to hide their ships from an invading fleet of the Young Kingdoms.  After the battle starts, Elric boards one of the enemy ships and duels the captain.  They begin to talk, Elric actually seems interested in what the man has to say, then abruptly he shoves his sword up under the captain's breastplate and kills him.  He basically used the conversation as a bluff to sneak attack the man.  Its pretty sinister, and typical of the tricks Elric often employs.

[Eagle Prince]

These aren't exactly classics, but have you ever read the Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman?  I think they were first published in 91, 93, and 96.  There are two main characters, and the second is evil the same way Elric is.  Evil, but occationally does good things.  Just cause we're talking about evil characters.

[Fellfrosch]

I'd love to do Dune--that's one of my all-time favorites. The writing is not especially tight, but neither is that of LotR: the authors know their world much better than the readers, and don't always take the time to explain it as they go.

[EUOL]

EP: I read coldfire book one, and I own book two, but never got around to reading it.  I remember liking the first one--and they have fantastic Whelan covers--but it wasn't a 'must read the second' book.

42:  Actually, I think Dune is a very good standard of marketable fiction.  It was the Amazon.com top science-fiction book of the century, and still sells very, very well.  I think it is very well written.  I chose it for several reasons.

1)  It wasn't Ender's Game or LOTR, which I think have both been over-done in classes I've taken recently.

2) As you said, it is an excellent mix of SF and Fantasy.

3) It incorporates everything I want to talk about with my class:  Worldbuilding (something Ender's Game doesn't do,) Magic, SF elements (something LOTR doesn't do,) and the hero archetype.  It has both action and political plotting, it has a good mix of male and female characters, and it does some interesting things with viewpoint.  (It's one of the few books that really pulls of a good Third Person Omniscient.)

Yes, there are books I like more than DUNE.  However, for a 'catch all' SF/F book, I think it's one of the best.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Yeah, I didn't have a problem following Dune.

To further tangetilize this thread, I've always planned an "Epic SFF" class I'd like to teach some day.
I would have the students read:
The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings
Dune (possible a couple of sequels)
I would also have them watch the movie versions of Dune (both the "Sting" one and the mini series? not sure), and LotR, as well as Star Wars
Also, in a controversial mood, and because I'm sadistic, I would probably force them to watch the 5 original Planet of the Apes movies, possibly be really cruel and watch the more recent one. Also, read the Peter Boule book they were all based on (though the book itself isn't epic).
That ammounts to between 5 and 7 novels, and over 35 hours of film for one semester. I'm a harsh taskmaster.

I've also fantasized a comic book class, which would be STRICTLY comic book, and possibly some nonfic on comic books. Required reading would be Scott McCloud ("Understanding Comics" and "Reinventing Comics") and Will Eisner ("Comics and Sequential Art," "Graphic Storytelling...," and "The Last Knight"). "Maus" by Spiegelman, Moore and GIbbons Watchmen, Ross and Wade's "Kingdom Come," and probably Cerebus book 1. Lastly, probably a calvin and HObbes collection, I'm not sure which.

And lately, I've considered a Superhero class, with only sketchy ideas. I know we'd be reading some essential superman stories. we'd look at issues of continuity. We'd watch at least the first two superman movies, as well as some episodes of Smallville. I'd focus so much on Supes just because it's one character, probably THE archetypal superhero, so the different ways he was treated can be examined. I'm also thinking of including some mythology in the mix, something like Beowulf, who I think is the most like Superman in the mythology I know, but I think that Greek mythological references need to be acknowledged too.

[EUOL]

Seven books isn't too much to demand from a class.  However, 'epics' are going to be longer than normal.  Still, I think you'd be okay.

I've found that if you do a book in shorter than about two weeks in a lit class, you don't give it enough time.  With fourteen weeks in a semester, seven books is very doable.

[42]

Fell, I'm surprised that you think the writing in LotR isn't tight. I'm sure prof. Tolkien is turning over in his grave over that. Tolkien is probably the most accomplished English professor ever, next to C.S. Lewis. Also, British editors considered it blasphemous to edit Tolkien. Sure, he doesn't explain everything, but that gives it a exotic feel.

I find that Dune ws hard to follow because I couldn't quite get a fix on everyone's motives and attitudes. I know they are there, but they just don't seem to have a lot of reasoning behind them, especially for a book that spends so much time in the minds of characters.

I guess that I would choose something more contemporary if I were teaching a creative writing class. From my training as an art ed person, I've been brain-washed into believing that students should be involved with creating current art, along with recreating "artifacts" from the past decade or so.