2012-09-29, 05:41 | Link #41 | |||
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
|
Quote:
As for Rowling, I'm on the fence. I think where she goes from here will have a big effect on whether she becomes a classic. A mark against her is that she's largely read for entertainment rather then artistic reasons. But then, that didn't hold back Sherlock Holmes, did it? Quote:
Quote:
|
|||
2012-09-29, 11:09 | Link #42 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Dai Korai Teikoku
|
Quote:
I'm not sure what Rowling has done for her genre. Quote:
|
||
2012-09-29, 12:05 | Link #45 |
books-eater youkai
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Betweem wisdom and insanity
|
@ Aegir I could simply say than Sumeragi is right but maybe I shuld developemore my thought; the idea for this thread was to talk about author and book than might ''might pass the test of time'', or if you prefer, to become a classique. Your two examle are already classique so there's no room to question if they will be classique, they are already.
__________________
|
2012-09-29, 12:12 | Link #46 |
Not Enough Sleep
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: R'lyeh
Age: 48
|
Agatha Christie novels are already consider classic and secondary several have been turn into movies. With the lack of creative talent in the movie biz, it won't be long till someone remake those.
__________________
|
2012-09-29, 12:34 | Link #47 | |
Nyaaan~~
Join Date: Feb 2006
Age: 40
|
Quote:
Re: Rowling -- I think she'll have a place in history. My rationale? Some may dislike the comparison, but she reminds me of Tolkein. Her vivid imagination has created a vast "world" and "system" that has resonated with a large number of people. It doesn't hurt that her writing is actually good too. I first read Tolkein when I was .. 9/10 years old? Even picking up to this day .. I'm not sure I'd say his writing was the best, but I don't think anyone would argue about his amazing imagination/creativity and that he's the father of the medieval fantasy genre.. Re: Sherlock Holmes / ACD -- If we say that .. my thought naturally goes to fiction by Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum. Would we category these as thrillers/suspense/mysteries and move on or do they have their own categories? They've pretty much defined the modern military/spy thriller. |
|
2012-09-29, 12:46 | Link #48 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Dai Korai Teikoku
|
Quote:
Quote:
Robert Ludlum: The American Spy Thriller One thought on Tom Clancy is that he isn't really much of a military fiction writer, despite his expertise. Yes, Red Storm Rising was a definite classic in being the first to portray post-Cold War military situations, but in terms of actually portraying battles themselves, I would rather read Arc Light (Eric L. Harry's best work with all others being "slightly" insane) or Korean military thrillers. |
||
2012-09-29, 12:46 | Link #49 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Quote:
Now is Agatha Christie a great literary genius, of course not. But there is something to be said about writing great genre fiction too. Also as a fan of the Sherlock Holmes and Christie's works I will say they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Doyle and Christie have both written bad and great stories. For me Doyle's work has stronger characters. Sherlock and Watson are way more memorable than any of Christie's characters. But as far as mysteries go, as a reader I find Christie's works more fun & engaging because I have a chance of figuring them out even with her crazy ending. It's pretty impossible to figure out the mysteries in the Holmes books, because Holmes always has knowledge we as readers don't get. I also think Harry Potter will stay relevant. Not necessarily because of its literary importance but because of its pop culture importance. It's like the Star Wars of books. edit: Also about Holmes vs Christie novels being made into movies...well these things are cyclical. But I would argue Conan Doyle's writing lend themselves to films more. If you think about it, it's the characters of Holmes & Watson (not necessarily Doyle's stories) that keep getting made into films/adaptions. Of course there are straight adaptions of Doyle's works, but more often than not it's iconic characters that Doyle created that get placed into new stories & situations. Agatha Christie's characters are not as iconic. Sure we can film the same story over & over again, but it's not really necessary. The films of her works that I've seen, didn't always capture the books either (the only one I really loved was Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution).
__________________
Last edited by Kirarakim; 2012-09-29 at 13:07. |
|
2012-09-29, 13:20 | Link #50 | |
Sleepy Lurker
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Nun'yabiznehz
Age: 38
|
Quote:
Rather, what really singles him out in a crowd is his particularly thought-inducing (or controversial, in some cases) set of ideas; one of his last works, State of Fear, stirred a lot of attention (both good and bad, approving and disapproving) in the Climate Change landscape, as he was questioning a lot of the data and reasoning (IMHO he was not so much set against CC than he was against certain emergent -and potentially dangerous- ideological/intellectual trends). Of course, you don't have to always agree with him, but the amount of trouble he goes through to make his point (in SoF he even dumps a truckload of real life literary references for the reader to read and judge) is certainly admirable. That, IMHO, is what garnered him a lot of fame - the idea of salvaging fossilized DNA and tinkering with it to revive dinosaurs (in JP, he almost subverts some potential criticisms about dinosaurs not being exactly the way he portrays them by suggesting that the dinosaurs are actually already genetically modified for the park's convenience), eco-terrorism and the climate change turning into an industry of sorts, politicized science, chaos theory predicting that Man cannot control Nature and that ecosystems are highly unpredictable, quantum mechanics showing that funky stuff can happen with certain particles, etc, etc. A lot of that was groundbreaking, cutting edge science or stuff we were uncomfortable talking about. The problem is that those ideas are tied with current trends, technology and themes that might disappear, become common/boring or fade in the background in the decades to come (in State of Fear he even discusses an ironically similar topic, where he likens ideas to trends, which by nature rise and fall, become popular then get quickly forgotten when they fall out of context). Books like 1984, have themes that can remain valid even decades into the future because the bottom line, the message deep beneath can transcend time. But, let's imagine, 50 years from now: will people still be highly concerned/fascinated about tampering with DNA of long-lost species? Climate change? Uncontrolled artificial intelligences and nanomachines? I can't say - because as MC said it himself in one of his books (either SoF or Timeline), people have absolutely no idea about what the future is made of. General fears and passions, however, need not worry about that. They can remain pertinent no matter which decade or century they're applied to.
__________________
|
|
2012-09-29, 14:30 | Link #51 | |
books-eater youkai
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Betweem wisdom and insanity
|
Quote:
As for Robert Ludlum, I would say than it would bebetter if they would stop to slap his name on book years after his death. I would say if it were book than he wouldn't had finished himself but another author endded but it'S not the case.
__________________
|
|
2012-09-29, 15:02 | Link #52 | |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
|
Quote:
Come 2075, I'm fairly sure that Agatha Christie will only be known for her Wikipedia entry saying she's the most prolific mystery author of all time. Conan Doyle had a lot of original ideas. Christie only had one, and made a career out of flogging it over and over again. Classic that does not make. If you want to talk about classics, the works that tend to become classics are not genre fiction. To give an example, if we look at the 1500-1600 one of the most well known books was Amadis de Gaul, along with Don Quixote, it's parody. Don Quixote transcended genre, and wasn't written to any strict formula. Amadis de Gaul, while well written, was strictly formula for chivalric literature. Don Quixote is read to this day. As for Amadis? It's only known because it's explicitly mentioned by name in Don Quixote. Agatha Christie will go the way of Amadis de Gaul. |
|
2012-09-29, 17:05 | Link #53 | |||
Also a Lolicon
Join Date: Apr 2010
|
Quote:
The article argues that Harry Potter is an anomaly in an age where people are reading less and less fiction. Anomalies tend to get remembered. Quote:
Quote:
Of course, that said, I'm not certain that VN's at that time will have much in common other than the format to VN's today, since VN's today are a very niche artform, made by and for a very small group of people, that is gradually getting smaller and smaller. |
|||
2012-09-29, 17:40 | Link #54 | ||
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
|
Quote:
I think Starcraft will be the classic, because it's so refined, and is likely the best made RTS ever. Dune 2 is simply too crude, and Starcraft was just as innovative, in that it featured asymmetric but balanced factions. Quote:
If we look at the popular literature of other centuries, most of it, like today, was genre fiction, not "high fiction". I don't think our culture has regressed, but I think people read more in different ways. Though I have to confess, I do find a lot of "dramatic" non-genre fiction to be rather dull. A lot of it is basically plots about some prostitute dying on the streets of Bohemia, or some lingering meditation on middle class mediocrity and sexual desire. I can only take so much of things trying to be profound. I think the best literature has the light touch of genre fiction, while still having a cohesive artistic edge. Last edited by DonQuigleone; 2012-09-29 at 17:56. |
||
2012-09-29, 18:18 | Link #55 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Quote:
Most of Christie's best known novels were published before WWII. Yes she wrote books for many years, that just shows how long her career was. If she stopped writing in lets say the 1950's would that mean we can measure her career? Christie might have been well known to my parents, but she was also well known to my grandparents and probably my great grand parents as well. Her career itself spanned generations. She also wasn't just prolific, but best selling! Did Christie write literary masterpieces, absolutely not. But I would argue she is important to the mystery genre. The thing is Sherlock Holmes is definitely popular genre fiction too. Yes Doyle should get credit for the creation of Holmes (a new kind of detective) but we don't often study "Holmes" as literature either.
__________________
|
|
2012-09-29, 18:21 | Link #56 | |
うるとらぺど
Join Date: Oct 2004
Age: 44
|
Quote:
The Andromeda Strain is comparable to The War of the Worlds, Circhton admits that he based Eaters Of The Dead on Beowulf mixed with true accounts of an early Arab Embassy to the Vikings, Congo is a 20th century version of King Solomon's Mines and AFAIK everything in The Great Train Robbery is basically true and he paints Victorian England more vivid and colourfully than say Doyle. (Crichton even included quite a long passage involving a character with a 12-year-old child prostitute in that one, something that is true but most author today will shy way from mention.) Last edited by MakubeX2; 2012-09-29 at 18:55. |
|
2012-09-29, 18:52 | Link #57 | |
books-eater youkai
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Betweem wisdom and insanity
|
Quote:
For the kind of detective Holme was; no. It's good to remember than Holmes got his influence from Edgar Allan Poe.
__________________
|
|
2012-09-29, 19:02 | Link #58 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Quote:
I wouldn't mind being more enlightened though.
__________________
|
|
2012-09-29, 19:10 | Link #59 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2009
Location: classified
|
Quote:
I'll cover the ones that I view as the most likely candidates of SF, Fantasy, and Horror, that--in my humble opinion--will stand the test of time from 1950 onwards. You'll note that I don't have Stephen King on this list because I don't think his books will last as horror novels. Methinks he'll be relegated to the contemporary drama/fiction category. Heinlein (most of his catalog, but Star Ship Troopers has the most sticking power) Asimov (Foundation, I may hate the story because of its horrible dialogue and 1 dimensional characters, but it was a major work of hard SF and that is undeniable) Clarke (2001, and Rendevous with Rama) Ursula Le Guin Poul Anderson Michael Moorecock Larry Niven (ringworld has been imortalized by Bungie's Halo) Alfred Bester (The Stars My Destination) Philip K. Dick (specifically "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep") William Gibson (Neuromancer) Clive Barker (hellraiser, Imagica) J.R.R. Tolkien Ann Rice (Interview With the Vampire) Craig Spector Dean Koontz L. Ron Hubbard (Yeah I know...don't even say it , but unfortunately he'll be remembered for years to come) Fred Saberhagen Ian Douglas Tad Williams (Swords of Shenara are practically classics now) Stephen R. Donaldson (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) Frank Herbert (Dune mostly)
__________________
|
|
|
|