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2 votes
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Nothing but the truth: The legacy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
5 votes -
From Agatha Christie to Gillian Flynn: Fifty great thrillers by women
5 votes -
Murder and the missing briefcase: The real story behind Harper Lee’s lost true crime book
5 votes -
Four books by Asian American authors republished as Penguin Classics
9 votes -
Encyclopedia Brown and the case of the mysterious author
9 votes -
Eudora Welty on Charlotte's Web, Dorothy Parker on Winnie the Pooh, and more classic reviews of beloved children's books.
5 votes -
Gene Wolfe turned science fiction into high art
7 votes -
The most prescient science fiction author you aren’t reading: Feminist dystopian fiction owes just as much to this woman — who wrote as a man — as Margaret Atwood.
8 votes -
Kosoko Jackson’s book scandal suggests YA Twitter is getting uglier
12 votes -
James Patterson donates $1.25 million to classroom libraries
9 votes -
Amazon and Viola Davis to adapt Octavia Butler's novel, Wild Seed
6 votes -
The rise of robot authors: Is the writing on the wall for human novelists?
4 votes -
James Kelman on the Booker, class and literary elitism
4 votes -
What author has the best worldbuilding?
It's a simple question, or is it? How would you measure best? Complexity? Realism? Creativity? Detail? I think it's fairly obvious that Tolkien has set the gold standard of all worldbuilding, but...
It's a simple question, or is it? How would you measure best? Complexity? Realism? Creativity? Detail?
I think it's fairly obvious that Tolkien has set the gold standard of all worldbuilding, but more recent authors like GRRM, Brandon Sanderson and JKR or the late Terry Pratchett have also created beloved worlds.
Some, like GRRM, are apparently more interested in complex worldbuilding itself rather than finishing their novels while others like JKR use the worlds more as a window dressing without keeping it fairly consistent. Is it alright if the Wizarding World is inconsistent if it serves the plot? How complex can Westeros become before it gets in the way of the story?
I think that GRRM and JKR are both extremes on the spectrum. When reading The Song of Ice and Fire, I felt like GRRM needed a proper editor to reign him in while JKR managed to build a fantastical world in 7 books which, upon closer inspection, makes no sense. On the other hand you have Terry Pratchett, who with the Discworld was clearly more interested in creating a parody of the real world, but still managed to make it very interesting and unique.
Thoughts?
21 votes -
Five emerging Australian authors talk about writing their breakthrough novels
7 votes -
Behrouz Boochani: Detained asylum seeker wins Australia's richest literary prize
4 votes -
Must writers be moral? Their contracts may require it
8 votes -
What social responsibilities do fiction authors have (if any)?
In 1977, Stephen King published a novel about a school shooting called Rage. It is somewhat infamous, as it has been connected to instances of real-life school shootings. King, in response,...
In 1977, Stephen King published a novel about a school shooting called Rage. It is somewhat infamous, as it has been connected to instances of real-life school shootings. King, in response, allowed the story to fall out of print and has never reissued it. The novel has a lot in common with other YA stories and tropes: a disaffected protagonist, meddling/out of touch adults, and newfound social connection with peers. While the main character is undoubtedly disturbed, the novel feels somewhat uncritical (or potentially even supportive) of his actions.
Certainly fiction is a space where authors are free to explore any point of view or theme they wish. The beauty of fiction is that it is limitless and consequence-free. No people are harmed in Rage because there are no people in it. Its characters are merely names and ideas--they are a fiction.
Nevertheless, Rage addresses a real-world phenomenon, and the beauty of fiction is that it doesn't live as a lie. As Ursula K. Le Guin writes,
"In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little..."
We like fiction because it resonates with us, exposing us to themes that can affirm, shape, or challenge our mindsets.
With this dichotomy in mind, I'm torn between whether authors should be free to explore anything they wish from the safety of make-believe, or whether they have a social responsibility because their words carry messages and ideas that directly impact lives. I'm not sure what to think, and I can come up with great arguments for both sides. What's your take? What social responsibilities do fiction authors have (if any)?
19 votes -
Leo Tolstoy on finding meaning in a meaningless world
9 votes -
State of the Sanderson 2018
12 votes -
Margaret Atwood writing sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, coming out in Sept. 2019
11 votes -
Danish ex-gangster shot dead on day his memoir on leaving criminal past was launched
7 votes -
“Devil Girl from Mars”: Why I Write Science Fiction (1998)
6 votes -
Pretentious, impenetrable, hard work ... better? Why we need difficult books
7 votes -
The man who made science fiction what it is today: On John Campbell, who "influenced the dreamlife of millions".
9 votes -
Yevgeny Vodolazkin: Russia’s prize-winning novelist on Orthodoxy, death and playing with time
4 votes -
What Isaac Asimov taught us about predicting the future
14 votes -
Louis Cha, who wrote beloved Chinese martial arts novels as Jin Yong, dies
11 votes -
The young queer writer who became Greenland’s unlikely literary star
6 votes -
Dacre Stoker on resurrecting his great-grand-uncle’s vampire
3 votes -
Nadine Gordimer wrote furiously, in every sense. The Nobel Prize-winning South African writer cared very much how people think, and not at all what people thought of her.
7 votes -
Robert and Virginia Heinlein's Colorado Springs House
6 votes -
The 19th century best-selling author excluded by the Brazilian Academy of Letters
5 votes -
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie accepts PEN Pinter prize with call to speak out
4 votes -
‘Would that all journeys were on foot’: writers on the joy of walking. Will Self, Fran Lebowitz, Helen Garner and others share their love letters to urban pedestrianism
6 votes -
Australia's barbaric policy confronted by Boochani's prison memoir
Summary The article is an interview with Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish refugee who has been detained by the Australian government on Manus Island since 2015. Boochani discusses his experiences of...
Summary
The article is an interview with Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish refugee who has been detained by the Australian government on Manus Island since 2015. Boochani discusses his experiences of detention and the book he has written about those experiences.
Extract
I don't remember exactly when I started to write the first words but I remember that I thought my writing of this time was like a mission and duty ... to make readers aware of this prison camp. I imagined there would be unknown readers from around the world ... That's why I wrote it in a literary language. Not only for this historical period or those people who are involved in this plight ... I wrote this book so that it extends beyond geographical bounds and generational imaginaries.
This chapter about the way they exiled us to Manus was one of the hardest parts to write … If you remember, years ago, I wrote a letter to you and complained that I was scared of writing, that I hate writing. You answered me, saying: ‘Behrouz I wrote about my relatives who were killed.’ Your grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins … I knew that I had to do it to survive. I knew that I could expose this system through these words … I could get back my identity through writing this book and not allowing this system to reduce me to a number.
Link
4 votes -
From Star Trek to Fifty Shades: How fanfiction went mainstream
5 votes -
Myths, monsters and the maze: How writers fell in love with the labyrinth
2 votes -
Isaac Asimov: Becoming Educated
7 votes -
Bad romance - To cash in on Kindle Unlimited, a cabal of authors gamed Amazon's algorithm
10 votes -
The authors who love Amazon
6 votes -
How a group of romance writers cashed in on Amazon's Kindle Unlimited
3 votes -
What's your favourite work by Noam Chomsky?
After a reread of The Responsibility of Intellectuals I've decided I don't feel nearly as sad as I want to; recommend something of his to (probably re)read!
7 votes -
Stig of The Dump author Clive King dies at 94
4 votes -
Margaret Atwood - Bad feminist?
8 votes -
Drawn from life: Why have novelists stopped making things up?
6 votes -
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name stripped from children’s book award over ‘Little House’ depictions of Native Americans
I am shamelessly stealing this from the front page of /r/Books, where it has been locked due to shallow and uncivil discussion. I assume we can do better here. "Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name...
I am shamelessly stealing this from the front page of /r/Books, where it has been locked due to shallow and uncivil discussion. I assume we can do better here.
10 votes -
What is your favourite Stephen King book, and why?
I'd have to go with The Long Walk, personally. It's quite haunting, the way they had every choice to sign up, but chose to anyway. The way they never quite get used to seeing their fellow walkers...
I'd have to go with The Long Walk, personally. It's quite haunting, the way they had every choice to sign up, but chose to anyway. The way they never quite get used to seeing their fellow walkers get shot. I love the ambiguous fascist state: what exactly happened to America in the Long Walk? There is an oblique reference to fighting Nazis in the 50s for instance, but the time period is never quite mentioned.
All in all, it's remarkable, but terribly sad. It reminded me of boys going off to war, and the truth behind all ambition.
8 votes -
'The Expanse' co-author Daniel Abraham tells the inside story about sci-fi books, TV … and politics
8 votes