Re: RARA-AVIS: Altered Carbon

From: Mark Sullivan ( DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net)
Date: 25 Mar 2004


Thanks to the two Bills for your comments. I think I'll pass.

Jim,

I thought your class dealt with the early Chandler. How does that engage the question of why it is always Chandler's name that is dropped in reviews of SF books with noir/hardboiled overtones? William Gibson got it a lot. One blurb of Michael Marshall Smith's Spares described it as combining Raymond Candler and Robert Heinlein, another as "might have been created by Robert B Parker [Chandler at one remove] and Wiliam Gibson as they chewed the fat at Philip K Dick's place." Pat Cadigan gets compared to Chandler a lot, too.

I'm sure it's nothing more than that Chandler has become shorthand for hardboiled for lazy reviewers, particularly those more familiar with SF than CF. (Similarly, I probably overuse PK Dick comparisons in the opposite direction.)

Mark

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