Anhaga wrote:Stirling has proved elsewhere that he can write more realistic Alternate history.
Stirling is only at his best when he's got someone to guide him; his
finest books, THE GENERAL Series, which he wrote using outlines
given to him by David Drake is a good example; His recent Terminator
2 trilogy was a pile of utter shit really.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
M-1 Garand in 1920 with a 20 round detachable magazine.
When it was accepted by the US Army in 1936, it had just
an 8 round en-bloc clip.
Technology does not always move at bleeding edge, Stevieboy.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
The Yosemite Bear wrote:how hard would it be for us to create a MTG senario with an evil south africa controlling all of africa/middle east in Hearts of Iron.
Not very.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
Correction: Not very- assuming Paradox ever gets around to fixing the senario editor.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
Anhaga wrote:It's strange though- if you read his earlier fantasy work, he has no problem with keeping a tight, clear and unrepetitive storyline backed up by excellent conceptual work.
Unlike in his later books where every time he introduces a character we get a recap of their life story almost...
I find his later stuff interesting conceptually but I tend to get bored by it and end up dropping off the series (I read the American Front books up to American Empire and then really couldn't be bothered any more)
I think it's because when he was writing his earlier fantasy (and alt hist--compare Guns of the South to anything from the Great War series) he was just another writer. Now he's a Big Shot and the copy editor treats his stuff with a light hand, which is why we get the same clever turn of phrase over and over and over and over and over throughout each book.
He's perfectly capable of writing tight, clean fiction. Look at his short fiction, where he doesn't have the luxury of being long-winded.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
Well, I finally started reading a Stirling book ( The Peshawar Lancers), and it isn't bad at all. Of course, everyone here is talking about how it's a good book compared to others, so that may be a moot point...
I have no interest in reading Island in the Sea of Time series. I'm too busy reading the 1632 series.
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
