u/Adonisus

https://preview.redd.it/4wqndnsv8nkh1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=e46f083098a72cbd04cb73f2907c33253fafa111

Granted I should probably consider this a blessing, since I could probably finally cut myself off of that hellsite....

.....But I still have too many friends and people I like who still use it. I swear to fuck I don't know how Elon can destroy twitter even worse than he already has.

Anyway, to put it in conext: every time I try to log on to twitter, it puts me into a cloudflare loop that either wants me to prove I'm human (check a box, boom done). I also use passkey so I don't have to constantly re-enter my password. Then it goes into challenge mode, hands on a white screen, and then when I try to go back in it says I've tried too many times.

Being a Westerner, I know of her as the author of the Guin Saga (which, I'm told, sort of helped to create a lot of tropes that you see in modern JRPGs). I also know that she was an incredibly prolific author who wrote in just about every genre under the sun (including crime fiction, BL, SF, horror, etc.)

I've also heard some mixed views on her work, from those who love her to those that think she benefited from nepotism (specifically being married to the editor of SF Magazine) and that most of her work is pulpy slop. I'm also heard that the later volumes of the Guin Saga were garbage.

I've recently been getting into Polish literature (where, outside of the likes of Lem or Sapkowski), and I recently discovered Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski and his rather extraordinary body of work.

Honestly, the man's output leaves me dumbstruck with admiration. He has some 600 books attributed to him, including: novels, short story collections, verse, drama, history, essays and so many other things that I don't even know what (and that's not even getting into his art career and his music)

I recently started reading an english translation of his famous historical novel Stara basn (it's called An Ancient Tale in english) and the fact that he was able to write something this incredible and detailed yet still have the time to write as much as he did.

I've been slowly getting into Polish literature (you know, past the stuff like Lem and Sapkowski), and I recently discovered Jozef Kraszewski through Wikipedia. I was honestly floored by what I read: the most prolific author in Polish history, with some 600 books to his credit including novels, short stories, verse, drama, and several pieces of history.

In particular I'm interested in his History Of Poland book series. I really want to read Stara baśń, but unfortunately there isn't any English translations that I'm aware of.

Should Taiwan be allowed to be an independent and sovereign nation, or should it be returned to Mainland China (which considers it to be their rightful territory)?

My personal position is that it is wholly up to the people of Taiwan on what they want to do with their island.

Don't you hate it when you only find out about an author's existence after they do something terrible?

That's my experience with Craig Silvey. I had no idea who he was until he was arrested a few months ago. I only found out after the fact that he was one of Australia's most loved and respected living authors, that he wrote literary and daring novels for Young Adults and children, that he played an electric ukulele and fronted his own indie rock band, that his work was standard and popular fare for school libraries in his home country.

....Then, of course, I also found out that he'd been arrested on charges of producing and distributing child SA material (that first charge was dropped but he apparently did plead guilty to the distribution charge). By chance, I found a used copy of his famous book Jasper Jones at my local used book store for pennies on the dollar.

That's how I discovered that Craig Silvey was both a horrible human being...and an absolutely amazing writer.

The book itself takes place in Corrigan, a small Australian town in the mid-1960s and is told from the perspective of 13-year old Charlie Bucktin. Charlie is sleeping in his bed one night when he's awoken by someone throwing pebbles at his window; an older kid named Jasper Jones. Jasper is the 'troubled kid' of the town, as famous for getting up to mischief as anything else, essentially making his the town outcast (the fact that Jasper is also part-aborigine also plays into it). Jasper leads Charlie out into the woods where they make a terrible discovery: the body of an older girl (and Jasper's only friend) named Laura Wishart swinging from a noose. After inspecting the body they also discover that she was assaulted before she died. This makes Jasper panic even worse since this makes him the primary suspect, so he convinces Charlie to help him hide the body in the nearby dam until they can find out who actually did it (Jasper suspects a crazy old man named Mad Jack Lionel).

Meanwhile, Charlie is trying to live the life of a typical young man in small town Australia: he loves to read, loves to play cricket (a not insignificant part of the book revolves around the game), and hanging out with his neighbor Jeffrey Lu. They act and talk like real kids of the era, including frequent cursing (It's Australia, after all. I'm pretty sure even the priests drop the f-bomb at least once per sermon). Jeffrey in particular not only plays cricket, he's also really good at it and is trying to join the town's cricket team. The problem? Jeffrey is Vietnamese, and 1960s Australia was really really racist (if Jasper's issues didn't clue you in). This is further complicated by the fact that the Vietnam War is happening, a many of Corrigan's young men are off fighting it. Charlie also occasionally hangs out with his love interest, a girl named Eliza. Problem is, Eliza is also the younger sister of Laura the dead girl, which complicates things even further.

Things are even further complicated by Charlie's somewhat troubled home life. His incredibly headstrong (and some would say narcissistic) mother is a very controlling woman, often overly dramatic and taking her ire on her more passive (one would even say passively aggressive) husband. Jeffrey's family is dealing with the constant racism (there's a rather dramatic event that happens in church where one of the women snap and attack Jeffrey's mother). Some of those young men I mentioned earlier aren't making it back form Vietnam, and Jeffrey's family is an easy target for their trauma.

I won't lie: the last third of this book is intense (for a YA novel, at least). You find out that Corrigan has secrets, and that the town isn't just troubled; it's rotten to its core. There are good adults (like Charlie's father), but there's just as many (if not more) who are actively denying or looking away at the ugliness that's happening just underneath the surface.

....And you know what? I want more.

Yeah, that's the real conundrum here. Craig Silvey is a legitimately amazing writer. I'd even go so far as call him a new favorite if it wasn't for the fact that he...well, you know. I suppose buying his books second hand is a possible solution but as of right now his publishers are basically trying to bury everything he ever wrote (at least until the trial is over).

"An equality of property... constantly operating to destroy combinations of powerful families, is the very soul of a republic... Let the people have property, and they will have power — a power that will for ever be exerted to prevent a restriction of the press, and abolition of trial by jury, or the abridgement of any other privilege." - Noah Webster.

Yes, the dictionary guy. Yes, he was a founding father. Yes, this is a real quote.

Later he became a grouchy old reactionary, but when he was younger he was putting out bangers like this.

There are a handful of writers in SF that I think qualify as 'cult writers'...writers who were considered geniuses among their peers but never quite managed to gain significant sales or critical attention. Cordwainer Smith is probably the epitome of this, at least to me.

But there's one author I think doesn't get nearly the accolades he deserves, even though his prose and his imagination are some of the most brilliant I've ever encountered. In many ways, he's also pretty similar to Cordwainer Smith in his storytelling, and like Smith he's also criminally underrated.

I'm talking about Edgar Pangborn, and specifically I'm talking about the cycle of fiction that takes place in his 'Darkening World'. This particular series is made up in print of three novels (Davy, The Judgement of Eve, and The Company of Glory) and a story collection (Still I persist In Wondering). All of them take place in a post-apocalyptic America several generations after a nuclear war and a plague have wiped out the old civilization and much of humanity. In many ways, this cycle is surprisingly similar to the perrenial classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, but from the other direction; in the later, the church is actively attempting to gather and safeguard knowledge of the old world with barbarian hordes trying to destroy it. In the Darkening World, the new theocratic religion that has risen up is actively attempting to suppress and destroy knowledge of the old world, while some others are attempting to reclaim it and escape the reach of the church.

Much like Smith, we get hints of a greater universe that we only are allowed to see bits and pieces of. There is a definitive timeline here, but it can only be gleaned from context clues: We know that their was a nuclear war, we know that some generations after that war there arose a messianic figure named Abraham who became the figurehead for the new 'Holy Murkan Church', we know that various kingdoms and principalities have arisen in the now pastoral and pseudo-medieval world. We know that there are several terrifying animals that inhabit the wilderness which may or may not be the offspring of animals that were kept in zoos...and we also know that there is an enormous number of 'mutants' who live on the fringes of society due to their 'corrupted blood' (i.e. the effects of radiation on their genes).

Of all of these, probably Davy is the one that is most well-known (it was even nominated for a Hugo). It's essentially a bildungsroman about the eponymous character. It's presented as a manuscript of his memoirs, annotated by friends and people who knew him. Davy himself is an anarchic character who, while presented as being free-thinking and progressive in a lot of ways, is also still very much a man of his time (especially when it comes to women).

If you ever get a chance, give this man's work a read.

It used to be that every major horror author at one time wrote at least one, gigantic door-stopper of a novel with either apocalyptic proportions (King's The Stand, McCammon's Swan Song) or some kind of lengthy saga involved (Barker's Imagica, King's It).

But it seems like it's largely a lost art, at least from my perspective.

So, could anyone hear recommend some recently published Epic Horror...or, barring that, something from the past that's also really good?