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11 votes
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How to be a professional author and not die screaming and starving in a lightless abyss
15 votes -
“This has to end. We cannot say it any clearer.” A guide to the decades-long familial dispute over John Steinbeck’s estate.
7 votes -
In "The Testaments", Margaret Atwood expands the world of "The Handmaid’s Tale"
8 votes -
Orwell knew: We willingly buy the screens that are used against us
10 votes -
Beloved author Toni Morrison has died at 88
18 votes -
Despite being a best-selling author, Jane Austen was paid very little
6 votes -
Eight crime writers who wrote other forms of literature, including literary novels, memoirs, and even works of history
7 votes -
Rebuilding Jane Austen’s library
6 votes -
Jo Nesbø, master of Norway noir, returns with his creepiest yet
5 votes -
Novelists have condemned the Staunch prize – for thrillers without violence against women – as a ‘gagging order’, after organisers said the genre could bias jurors
7 votes -
Sandra Boynton is tweaking some of her beloved children’s books. But why mess with perfection?
7 votes -
Romance novelists write about sex and pleasure. On the internet that makes them targets for abuse
9 votes -
Liu Cixin’s war of the worlds
12 votes -
How the hell has Danielle Steel managed to write 179 books?
13 votes -
1982 video interview with Asimov, Wolfe, and Ellison
9 votes -
A very happy 50th birthday to 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'
9 votes -
Of vices and rears; or why I've stopped reading Jane Austen
9 votes -
How Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go! became a ubiquitous (and cliché) graduation gift
4 votes -
How to write about Africa
6 votes -
Binyavanga Wainaina: 'How to write about Africa'
2 votes -
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 -
Why you should read W. G. Sebald
3 votes -
Must writers be moral? Their contracts may require it
8 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