A DISTANT SOIL: The Ascendant Chapter 6 Page 1
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24 Comments
Zowie
So that means Seren took the ultimate crash course in management?
Colleen
Ok, that’s funny. 🙂
Arlnee
is it just me, or am I the only one who likes Rieken’s design better? Seren’s pretty, but Rieken… *sigh*
oh yeah like any of them would give me the time of day 😉
Colleen
Seren is extremely pretty, but Rieken is manly and interesting.
I sometimes wonder how things would be different in the story if their character designs were reversed.
I should spend my brain energy on finishing my project, not on interesting what-if’s!
The earliest character design for Seren had short white hair and big muscles. Very superhero-ish.
Arlnee
oh, and may I point out, I’m glad Bast’s penchant for verbosity dictated the size of the word balloon in panel 3 😉
Colleen
Every time I see that panel, I crack up. I don’t think I planned it that way, but whatever.
Arlnee
actually what I was going to say was “wow, Bast has only the second and third largest balloons in the panel! That never happens!”
Neil
Very Moebius and i bet you have read the”Crystalsinger”books too.
Colleen
No.
I just looked up “Crystalsinger” on Wikipedia. I assume you are referring to Anne McCaffery books.
A Distant Soil predates those novels. They were not an influence on my work. I think I read one of her dragon novels, and one book set in an alternate universe Venice, but I don’t recall the title.
Funny that, most people think I got all my ideas from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “Darkover” (No). Maybe it’s a generational thing. If you are THIS OLD you think the author got their ideas FROM HERE.
If you are thinking I got the crystal science from McCaffrey (or Bradley,) well, that’s a common SF/Fantasy thing, so common you won’t have any trouble finding lots of fun references to it on TVTROPES.Com. The crystal stuff was fairly new when I first used it in ADS, but you could find non-fiction books on crystal magic and “science” all over New Age book shops, even when I was young. I got most of my crystal magic/science stuff from all that, and thought I was terribly original putting it in my fiction. I think I still have some of those books around here somewhere. From the Wikipedia entry, there really doesn’t appear to be any resemblance between how I use crystals and how McCaffrey did.
Dilithium crystals in Star Trek predates us both. I recall a number of storylines about their importance and the battles to get them. And um…that Superman movie. 1978. I think that is where it all came from. I am pretty sure the entire Ovanon culture grew out of my first look at that icy, crystal Fortress of Solitude. Who needs Anne McCaffrey, that Julie Come Lately? (joking)
I don’t think anyone has ever compared my work to McCaffrey before. I suppose I should do a book with a dragon in it, now.
On the other hand, I like Moebius.
Er, not that there is anything wrong with McCaffrey, it’s just I think the real reason I bought her dragon novel was because it had an awesome Michael Whelan cover.
Colleen
PS: One of the remarks about my work in the pro community is that I am just a cartoonist version of Marion Zimmer Bradley. It is not meant as a compliment.
Neil
Moebius was also influenced by this New Age crystal stuff;that’s my point.See the illustration of the crystal and the whale at http://www.bpib.com i think.Never read Marion Zimmer Bradley.I’ve heard of Michael Whelan but the British editions have different covers -artist uncredited.If by dragon novel you mean “Dragonflight”mine shows a bunch of dragons above a broken egg in a feudal landscape.
Colleen
I’m sorry, I don’t follow you. Did Moebius do a book called Crystalsinger? There is no illustration at that link.
But yeah, I know that Moebius is a big crystal magic believer. I can’t say Moebius was any influence on my story, though. I didn’t see any work by Moebius until well into the 1980’s, long after ADS was first published. Those Marvel/Epic editions. I simply had no access to foreign comics when I was a kid. Moebius was a big influence on my line art work later, but my story was already set in motion.
Whelan also did a cover for McCaffrey’s Crystal book. I forgot all about it. I remember the Rowena covers, though.
Here is a link to Whelan’s dragon covers. The first one really grabbed me. I bought the book, but don’t recall much about it.
http://c-creations.blogspot.com/2009/01/anne-mccaffrey-illustrations-by-michael.html
I think that first illo is what first turned me on to his work. I’ve been a fan ever since, and have a small original by him.
As silly as it may seem, I avoided reading Bradley for years because of all the cracks about my work compared to hers, but I got over it. She’s an entertaining writer, just not an influence on me.
Biggest influences would be Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Lynn, Joan Vinge. Tanith Lee most of all.
It’s always fun to discuss influences. Watch me natter! LOL!
Colleen
Silly me, Michael Whelan’s personal website. Just awesome stuff.
http://michaelwhelan.com/
Neil
Go back to the link,click on “open frames” then click on illustrators top left on http://www.bpib.com/openfram.htm
Colleen
No offense, but it’s a lot easier to get people to look at stuff if you supply a direct link.
I have a lot of Moebius art books, and know he likes crystals already. That website is hard to navigate.
Here is the official Moebius website.
http://www.jeangiraudmoebius.fr/
An awesome Moebius image, with crystals, circa 1985.
http://www.illustrationartgallery.com/acatalog/info_MoebiusCrys.html
Neil
Thank’s for the links! Just looked them over.They remind me of Maxwell Parrish;the diminuation is very subtle.I’ve got that copy of “2010”.As for the authoress’,I’ve read “Downbelow station”which I remember as a girlie version of “The Man-kzin Wars” by Larry Niven.I suspect that the others are just as girlie with enough chocolate,coffee,husbands,pregnancies and starship parts for all.
Colleen
“I suspect that the others are just as girlie with enough chocolate,coffee,husbands,pregnancies and starship parts for all.”
I am not certain what that is supposed to mean, but be advised there are a lot of women on this website, and you are writing to one.
Miki
Downbelow Station was by C.J. Cherryh.
Except for the fact that they are both well written ‘hard SF’, I don’t see a lot of parallels with Niven’s Man-Kzin wars.
Arlnee
Wow. Just… wow. Okay.
Yeah, I’d love to get into this discussion. Like the fact that Niven was a big influence on my SF stories and when he was one of my judges for the Writers of the Future thing it was like having Spielberg judge your film at Cannes for me. Likewise Anne McCaffery (Yeah, I got both that year, woo!) Of the four finalists, two were hard SF and two were science fantasy. I was one of the two hard SF entrants, the other was by a guy who wrote a very Heinleinesque “you’re in the Corps now” kind of story… and yet my hard SF-fu prevailed. Having Niven and Pournelle both say it was the best of the year is a thrill that never goes away.
The parallels alluded to between the Chanur books and the Kzin is basically “man versus catlike warrior race” and like that hasn’t been done into the ground before or since. Other than that, nothing to link them. Chanur are basically anthropoid cats. The Kzin aren’t cats. They’re only called cat-like because humans need to be able to compare things to other things, and they have the rough shape of a cat, therefore. So even then, entymologically speaking, the analogy fails.
I laugh now that I once submitted a story to MZB’s “Sword and Sorceress” anthology and it got returned due to the subject matter, believe it or not. Because the heroine has to save her male friend from the “fate worse than.” Apparently it’s okay to write about the heroine getting raped and abused, but not the male sidekick. I still laugh about that, “rejected due to content.” By MZB. Seriously.
I think if it wasn’t for Moebius I wouldn’t have bothered with sneaking Heavy Metal home where my dad wouldn’t find it–not because he would have been shocked at the nudity (and wondering why his daughter was buying this stuff and not his sons) but because it was that “science fiction crap” that he coudn’t understand his intelligent kid could want to waste her time on.
But what do I know, I’m just a girl, and therefore not interested in hard science fiction, only coffee and husbands and pregnancy. Which means apparently that of the above books mentioned I’m only fit to read Downbelow Station.
Which I hated btw. Hated hated hated. Not because of the content, but because Cherryh’s writing style pretty much serves as a “what not to do” for me. Her and Mercedes Lackey, her protege. The “never use one adverb where three will do” school of writing. I was angry because I could have enjoyed the book if someone had gone over it with a red pen and cut every other descriptive modifier, and I couldn’t understand how it won as prestigious a writing award as a Hugo. That’s like Titanic winning “Best Picture”… or god forbid, “Avatar.”
But who cares what I think? I’m only a girl. Since I ditched my husband and pregnancy is not an issue with me, I think I’ll go get some coffee.
/thoughts on
yaoitl;drColleen
I’m with Arlnee.
Forget about the husbands and pregnancy: let’s mainline some caffeine.
Torsten Adair
Okay, I’m a guy, but I haven’t been an active reader of SF since 1988, when I used Harlan Ellison to work out most of my anger issues with high school. (How messed up was I? I identified with Winston Smythe and Bernard Marx. I was an “A” who did not fit in.)
Oh, I’ll read the latest Pratchett and Gaiman, but most of my money and time is spent on comics.
However, I am a Friend of Lulu, and an honorary Friend of Dorothy, so let me offer the following:
Caffeine, sugar, fat, and alcohol are the four basic food groups. (Perfect food: Irish Coffee) In emergencies: chocolate covered coffee beans (I’m spoiled… Jacques George here in The City). Otherwise: Diet Sunkist soda.
Miki
@Arlnee
Don’t let Neil’s posts get you down.
Sorry you didn’t like Downbelow Station. We will just have to agree to disagree on that one.
Arlnee
@Miki: no problem. There’s stuff I like you’d think was nuts too.
I met CJ years ago at a filk convention, shortly after it came out. Great person. Just don’t like her writing style. I tried a few of her books in other series. Just can’t read her writing.
Colleen Doran
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