Science fiction: what do you recommend?

[Alatar]

A little googling has turned up some interesting news on this:

THREE GENERATIONS OF WAYNE FAMILY TO STAR IN TOUR!
[09/JAN/06]

The Live Tour of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds hitting the UK in April will feature three generations of the Wayne family.

Jeff Wayne, of course, will be conducting the orchestra and 'The Black Smoke Band' on stage.

Jeff's father Jerry will be heard as 'NASA Mission Control' in the well-known and dramatic 'Epilogue' which closes the album and show.

Now, we are very pleased to announce that Jeff's daughter, actress Anna-Marie Wayne, will be featured on the huge on-stage video screens at the shows as 'Carrie', the woman who is so beloved of Richard Burton's Journalist.

Here's a PDF of an article about the production:

http://www.thewaroftheworlds.com/downlo ... ec2005.pdf


The Movie is going to be fully CGI and there are some test shots of the Martian Machines available here:
http://www.thewaroftheworlds.com/features/default.aspx

[Maria]

Hey, Imp... my son was reading Tarzan novels at the age of 6. I'd been reading them to him for about a year before that, and then we moved and I didn't have time to read to him any more... so he started reading them himself. He read most of the series before moving onto more juvenile stuff like the Animorph series and the Harry Potter books. Then he jumped back into adult sci fi and fantasy novels and has been devouring them for the past 10 years.

I read most of Edgar Rice Burrough's books as a child (The Tarzan books, the Mars series and the Venus series) , and tried to re-read them as an adult but they weren't nearly as enjoyable... so it's probably a good thing for kids encounter them early. They are full of adventure and romance and ever so many "lost" civilizations, and none of this modern "anti-hero" crap to pollute a child's mind with. The heros are GOOD, the villians are BAD, and the romance is pure. No shades of gray like so much modern stuff, and the vocabulary is just kewl. No dumbing down the words in these books!

[Rowanberry]

If you aren't bothered by religious references and downright allegory, C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy might turn out worth reading. I've read the first two parts; the first one was less allegorical than the second.

[Impenitent]

Maria, I might try Tarzan (does it have guns and swords? If it doesn't have weapons and lots of fights he won't read it. Sigh) He's just read Robin Hood, enjoyed it, learned some quite interesting archaic words.

Uh-oh! I'm osgiliating from Sci-fi to kids fiction. My oops!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Imp, if he is a big fan of sword fighting, I would go with the Mars series above the Tarzan series. John Carter, the hero of the Mars books, is "the greatest swordsman of two worlds." The Tarzan books have fighting, but its more hand to hand combat (or in many cases hand to tooth and claw). I loved both the Mars books and the Tarzan books when I was a kid, though.

[Primula Baggins]

I second the Mars books. They are a hoot. Thrills! Romance! Battles with exotic alien beasts on the forlorn dead sea bottoms of storied Barsoom, under the hurtling Martian moons!

My brother and I both read them as young teens, and for the longest time we wanted to put a bumper sticker on Mom's van: DEJAH THORIS SLEEPS AROUND.

[vison]

Yeah, Dejah Thoris. What a name. Wonder what significance it had, if any? Was it like Theda Bara?

"the hurtling Martian moons". *sigh* How I LOVED those books. Remember Tars Tarka? I am going to find them and read them again. Yes, I am.

I wanted to BE Tarzan for some years. Luckily for me, the trees in our area were scarce of suitable vines.

BTW, remember the old joke of which the punchline was, "The VINE, Jane!!! The VINE!!!!" ?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

What a terrible disservice those awful movies did to ERB's legacy.

[Primula Baggins]

And now they're making A PRINCESS OF MARS. Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News is involved. I don't think it's gotten past the script stage.

The source material is no LotR, but it does resemble LotR in one way: it has a flavor that any adaptation must capture (and most of us love or hate PJ's LotR in proportion to how well or badly he caught that flavor for us).

But the flavor of Barsoom is even more elusive, because you have so many things that are easy, common tropes—beautiful barely clothed women, an ancient world, exotic ruins, monsters, sword-bearing warriors, thrilling aerial battles—and then on the other hand you have John Carter of Virginia and his delicately Victorian sense of honor, and his love for the pure and beauteous and almost entirely naked Dejah Thoris, whose name and honor he will suffer no man to sully with a word.

I don't think they'll get it.

[Alatar]

Did anyone ever read the Biggles novels? I only had one, which I barely remember, but it was quite fantastical. Something about the inside of a volcano I think...

[Maria]

The moment I finally fell for my husband when we were dating was when I found out he had a complete set of Tarzan novels to match my own!

I read the Tarzan and Venus series when still a kid, but didn't have access to the Mars series until after I was grown up, and thus, the Mars series doesn't have quite the place in my heart as the other two.

There has never been an adequate Tarzan movie, in my opinion, and I have grave doubts as to "A Princess of Mars" turning out any better... but who knows? They might do OK.

There is plenty of fighting in all ERB's work, against both men and beasts.

[Alatar]

See, I watched the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies as a kid, before I read any of the books, so they were a great introduction to the character for me. I also loved Disney's version.

[Primula Baggins]

I loved those movies as a kid, too, but they're probably why I never read the Tarzan books until I read the first couple as an adult (and didn't go on). As a kid, a Tarzan who spoke like an educated man seemed boring to me.

(It's amazing, incidentally, how sexy the first couple of films were. I finally saw them uncut on a cable movie channel and was more than a tad surprised!)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Al, I thought the Disney cartoon was great. Definitely much more faithful then the old Hollywood movies. One of the last of the Tarzan books that Burroughs wrote was actually a great satire of the Hollywood movies.

Has anyone else ever read Philip José Farmer's Tarzan Alive?

Through the brilliant, exhaustive research of Philip José Farmer, the true, astonishing saga of Lord Greystoke - better known as Tarzan of the Apes - can at last be told. It's all here, the facts meticulously sparated from the fiction: Tarzan's imperiled birth on the shores of Africa ... an intimate account of his upbringing by Kala (proven more homonoid than gorilloid) ... his lifelong love for Jane (38-19-36) ... the adventures in the golden city of Opar ... travels to England, Paris, and Hollywood ...the previously unknown years as an R.A.F. pilot ... plus a heavily documented genealogy tracing Tarzan's ancestry to Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe, "Doc Savage", and Bulldog Drummond ...

Great stuff.

[Maria]

Has anyone else ever read Philip José Farmer's Tarzan Alive?

I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot cattle prod! I read Farmer's "The Dark Heart of Time : A Tarzan Novel " back in July, 1999, and was so disappointed that I was inspired to write my one and only Amazon book review:

Inconsistant with ERB storyline, July 12, 1999
Reviewer: A reader
Pathetic. Mr. Farmer didn't even get the timeline right. If Tarzan lived among the apes until 20 and was 30 in this book (stated twice) then Tarzon's son was a maximum age of 9 years old. In the ERB books, Jack was full grown and rescued Tarzan & Jane at the end of the Pal-ul-don book. It doesn't work. I read this thing to the tedious end- hoping for some time travel explain this blatent error. No such luck. I also got really tired of three and four word sentances. This manuscript is dumbed down to the 3rd grade reading level. "Tarzan never shivered" "Tarzan was surprised" "He became dizzy" Yuck. This book is an imposter! NOT a real Tarzan novel.

I assume the copyright finally ran out on the Tarzan franchise? I've never seen the Disney movie (surfing on tree limbs???), but I assume that's how they got their hands on the story.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Mr. Farmer didn't even get the timeline right. If Tarzan lived among the apes until 20 and was 30 in this book (stated twice) then Tarzon's son was a maximum age of 9 years old. In the ERB books, Jack was full grown and rescued Tarzan & Jane at the end of the Pal-ul-don book. It doesn't work.

Maria, actually if you read Tarzan Alive you would understand why this is. I haven't read any of Farmer's novels, so I can't comment on his fiction-writing abilities, but Tarzan Alive is great piece of imaginative psuedo-biography (and is very carefully exact on the timeline)

[Primula Baggins]

Farmer is actually a brilliant writer. If his style is less than sophisticated, it's on purpose.

That said, he is not, as Mr. Prim has said, everyone's cup of meat.

[Maria]

So he wrote Dark Heart of Time, got the timing wrong on the sequence of events in the original novels, and then wrote another book to explain the discrepancies?

[vison]

*Not everyone's cup of meat*.

Indeed.

I think I gotta meet this Mr. Prim one day.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

So he wrote Dark Heart of Time, got the timing wrong on the sequence of events in the original novels, and then wrote another book to explain the discrepancies?

Uh, Maria, Dark Heart of Time was written in 1999. Tarzan Alive was written in 1971, some 28 years earlier.