Live by the crystal ball - learn to eat ground glass

[threemonkeys]

I can't help it. I buy titles from secondhand stores or remainder bins just because the blurb looks vaguely interesting. I.e. I spend small amounts of my money on purchases with no research and no real knowledge of what the book will be like. I take the book home and put on my to-read shelf. Then the doubts set in. I wonder if the book is going to be any good. In the meantime, there are books by authors I know waiting to be read. As a result the to-read shelf fills up with these cheap on-spec purchases. Every so often I make an effort to clear out a few of these - preferably by reading them - or at least trying to read them. Unless they surprise me with unexpected quality, they usually pass without comment here. One raised an interesting question however.

Divergence by Tony Ballantyne is a bit of a train wreck really. Not content with starting this space opera off by 20 pages of a spaceship crew bickering stupidly amongst themselves, the next big chunk of the book is taken up with over elaborate back-story flashbacks. But it had the plot device of of an almost god-like AI manipulating people according to some ineffable plan to some result that the AI desires. It is the space opera equivalent of a prophecy myth in fantasy.

That is what got me thinking. Where have all the prophecy legends gone? They used to be everywhere. Now you hardly ever see one. I get why that might be - its hard to build up a decent threat when you know that the prophecy is going to see everybody right. Divergence suffered from that same lack of threat. So am I just reading the wrong fantasy books or has prophecy gone out of fashion?

Comments

[littenz.livejournal.com]

The prophecy thing got over done in fantasy for a while, whereas the concept fits badly with SF (mind you a good writer should be able to pull it of).

I think the nature of fantasy as a conservative genre means that the authors aren't really used to breaking the tropes and turning the prophecy concepts on their ears that stifles the development of the story ideas. That and the cookie cutter nature of most fantasy means the bandwagon has yet to get back to the prophecy busstop (sorry about the mixed imagery).

I wonder if Russellk could write an anti-prophecy novel (hint).

[austspecfic.livejournal.com]

I'll let Russ know you are dropping hints in LJ lands, Simon.

[littenz.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

That saves a long swim (I didn't pack my butterfly wings this morning) and a walk to tell him this.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Tad Williams claims that one of his series turns out to be anti-prophecy because the prophecies prove to be deliberately misleading. Of course to verify that means reading the series which is an awful lot of words to contemplate.

[littenz.livejournal.com]

Hmm...read a Tad Williams series or about twenty other books sitting in the current backlog. Choices, choices.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Its the series that Williams himself calls his "godawfulhugefantasytrilogy". It hardly inspires one to commit the time.

[littenz.livejournal.com]

Would that be the "Overland" series?

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Otherland? No - it was the "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" series he was describing.

[littenz.livejournal.com]

There's something longer than "Otherland"? Gack!

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

They look roughly the same size, but the comment was made while Otherland was still a work in progress.

[austspecfic.livejournal.com]

Meh! prophecy smophecy!

I wouldn't be looking for a prophecy in a space opera myself...but it could exist.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I think it does exist occasionally - just not using that particular term to describe it. Think psychhistory instead of prophecy.

[darthsappho.livejournal.com]

The obvious solution to prophecies eliminating threat is to prophesy something nasty instead of the protagonist's inevitable victory.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

There is a prophesy like that in the first season of Buffy. A typical Whedon strategem.