Thanks, Bob, and all the others, for letting the secret out
of the bag.
DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP is NOT a hard-boiled
novel. Repeat: NOT A HARD-BOILED NOVEL.
I read it after countless recommendations from various
well-meaning sci-fi friends, who all told me how dark and
gritty and noirish it was, a great mix of crime and sci-fi,
what a great writer Dick was, how much it was my type of
book, and that sort of thing. Maybe they were too busy
working on their Spock costumes to actually read the
book.
But Bladerunner did spawn a couple of literary sequels by
K.W. Jeter, I think his name was. I've only read one, but I
liked it a lot. A well-thought out, and honest sequel that at
times reads like a noir/sci-fi rewrite of a Grimm's fairy
tale.
And Sharon was right on about how we tend to compare the best
of our preferred genre with the worst of others. She even
proved it with her own funny, though rather off-kilter
summary of the hardboiled genre. But Tim wins, for his own
over-the-top-rant about whatever it was he was ranting about.
Odd, but when Tim confessed that "The cliche about 'ordinary
people under extraordinary circumstances' describes what I
like best in the plots," I thought he was about to plead the
case of all those crime-busting librarians, dental
hygienists, dog groomers and others of that ilk who populate
all those cozies (See? I can generalize with the best of
them!).
>I skip the parts where the hero tell all about
his/her political agenda, the
>plight of the homeless, how her/his grandmother saved
him/her from
>alcoholism, how his/her buddy married "the girl/guy,"
and all the parts
>about how he/she "feels." (Being PC can get
tedious)
Well, I guess Mike Hammer must be PC, then, what with all his
political talk about those pesky Commies. And Tim must really
breeze through Ed McBain's books, since his books seem to
largely consist of discussions of social conditions, life
histories, and how various people react to things. Sorry, but
bitching about the evils of political correctness, especially
when it has nothing to do with the topic at hand, is what's
really tedious.
(Yeah, I know--constant harping about the constant harping
about political correctness is just as tedious. Mea
culpa.)
Kevin Burton Smith The Thrilling Detective Web Site http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
This month: There's still time to vote for the 1999
Thrillies, and check out some thrilling new fiction by Don
McGregor and Mark Coggins!
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 27 Jan 2000 EST