I [heart] the Library - or - Living dangerously

[lorimt]

I just stopped by MITSFS to get stuff to read for the weekend. As I checked out someone commented "Are you sure you want to mix those authors without checking with a trained professional first?". Someone else asked why. "Well, those authors range from super-rational to not rational at all..." "Cherryh is rational." "Yeah, but you have to connect the dots. Doc Smith [sweeping hand gesture] _shoves_ dots at you. And with the Illuminatus trilogy [holds up fists], you've got two dots. And you can connect them any way you want..." Another chimed in with "Cherryh, Doc Smith and Shea all at once? My brain hurts!"

I was amused.

In other news, I'm too lazy to go through the 50 book meme, so I'll just talk about Cherryh, who apparently didn't make the cut.



Back in the day, at the Hastings library, I'd occasionally glance at the Chanur series as I was scanning down the shelves. I always passed it by as "cats in spaceships - no thanks". A few years later, while hunting for new -p-r-e-y- reading material, tauenn loaned me the Cyteen series. It was good. Really good. Somewhat traumatizing, and definitely not for everyone, but very good. It had some of the most complex character motivations and world politics I've seen in a novel. It had new technology with significant cultural impact. It had fascinating characters. It was shiny.

The next time I was in a used bookstore, I looked for more books by Cherryh. They were almost all fantasy or involved aliens. Mixed in was Downbelow Station, which I ended picking up at least twice, but not actually getting through. It would sit on my shelf, having been filtered, for some reason, into "a book I don't actually want ot read". To be fair, I think it's a harder start than Cyteen.

Now fast forward even more. I'm at MITSFS, looking up all my old favorites to see what else the author's written. Eventually I make my way to Cherryh. Once again, after flipping through lots of things, I come across the Chanur series. This time I decide to give it a shot. Within 30ish pages, all my "cats in spaceships" biases are gone. The aliens may look superficially like cats, but their culture is genuinely alien in an interesting/engaging way. They have goals/desires/interactions that are comprehensible, but based on different assumptions. The series also has a human character, who manages to be both realistically human and feel entirely foreign in this context. I've seen this "look at humans from an alien's eyes" done badly many times, but Cherryh makes it work well.

Since then, I've been working my way through more of Cherryh's books, starting with the most science-fictiony and human based. I'm actually reading Downbelow station right now, and enjoying it a lot. I'll admit to still being a bit leery of her fantasy, and some of the sci-fi too, but I figure I'll work my way up to it, and it means I'll have more books by her to discover later.

Comments

[gnibbles.livejournal.com]

Have you read her Fortress stuff? One of my friends who tried to read them complained that they were too descriptive and don't move very quickly, but I really liked the series. Then again, this was from about 7 years ago, so I may have just been on crack. :)

[lorimt]

Nope. Not yet. Will give them a try one of these days...

[tauenn.livejournal.com]

The Chanur books do have this tendency to make somewhat unfavorable first impressions on people in any of a number of ways. ywalme flipped to the map in the front of my copy at one point, decided "Knnn" was a silly name for a species, and may not have gotten over it to this day, I'm not sure. Then, of course, there's the Joke Title Choice Gone Wrong...

[lorimt]

Which're you thinking of? "The Kif Strike Back"?

[tauenn.livejournal.com]

The same.

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

I finally read them, and I have a better idea now why I found them so hard to get into when I was younger. The thing that struck me about the first book is the way information about the universe is presented. It seems like everything is explained just after you needed to know it. I spent most of the first book going "Okay, I can't visualize any of this. I look down the page, and there are descriptive words, but they just don't make sense, because I don't know what any of the things they're describing are." By the end of the first book, I was starting to have some idea what was going on, but I'm going to have to reread the first book now that I know approximately what a kif is supposed to look and sound like.

It seems to take "show, don't tell" to new and uncharted extremes.

Lesson for myself: If I don't know approximately what it's supposed to look like, I have trouble reading about it.

I think "Knnn" is an *awesome* name for a species. Knnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!

hani hani kif mahe knnn!

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

If the omnibus had the "Concerning Hani"-type summary at the beginning instead of the end, I might have had an easier time. It's also possible that the writing got better over the course of the series, because I got a feel for the new characters in Chanur's Legacy than much more quickly.

Knnn!

[tauenn.livejournal.com]

That is a very good point about the visualization challenges.

[mermit.livejournal.com]

Have you tried the "Foreigner" Series, about the translator? Those are really good also, and occasionally quite funny. My only problem with her work is that it always seems like everyone could use a nap.