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WRITING FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTIONJanuary 1, 2002
WRITING FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. Okay, I’m prejudiced on this one. Lisa Tuttle lives in England, which is far too far away, but she remains one of my oldest and dearest friends. She and I wrote WINDHAVEN together, back in the dawn of days when both of us were hungry young SF writers scrabbling for every sale. And if all that wasn’t enough, Lisa has also dedicated this book to me (he said, blushing modestly). All that being said, I still think WRITING FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION is an excellent “how to” book for any aspiring writer. Lisa has drawn on her own triumphs and trials, and she fills the book with good solid advice. And above and beyond the practical considerations, the book is also fun to read, full of anecdotes and insights from Lisa’s own career. The tale of how she and I came to write WINDHAVEN together is also here, complete with extensive embarassing quotations from our correspondence in the early 70s. Gods, but we were young… A million years ago, when I was a kid in grade school who dreamed of telling stories, I found L. Sprague de Camp’s SCIENCE FICTION HANDBOOK in the Bayonne Public Library. De Camp’s “how to” book inspired me so much that I would take it out every few months and read it all over again. Lisa Tuttle’s WRITING FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION should prove similarly inspirational to a new generation of dreamers. J.R.R.TOLKIEN, AUTHOR OF THE CENTURY. Shippey, one of the world’s leading Tolkien scholars, makes an eloquent and persuasive case for JRRT as the most significant author of the 20th century, and demolishes many of the criticisms leveled against LOTR by critics reluctant to admit a fantasist to the pantheon. A very readable book, this will give you a new appreciation of the depth and artistry of what JRRT accomplished… and Shippey’s comparison of Tolkien and Joyce is certain to provoke howls of outrage from the literati. |
