🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <19the odd92Feb6.014704.10067@latcs1.lat.oz.au>, agapow@latcs1.lat.oz.au (paul-michael agapow) writes:
|> In article <1992Feb4.232024.27070@newshost.anu.edu.au> stephen@vulcan.anu.edu.au (Stephen Hardy) writes:
|> >
|> >To all you Julian may fans out there, here is some good news. Minotaur books in Melbourne have got copies of the US release of Jack the Bodiless, retailing for $31.95. So if you want one, I'd get in fast, as stocks are ^very^ limited....
|> 
|> Whoah! look away briefly, and you nearly miss a chance to take a swipe at
|> Julian May! (This BTW is not an attack on Stephen, just an opportunity to
|> explore what for me is one of the unexplained mysteries of the universe.)
|> 
|> Why do people like Julian May?
|> 
|> More accurately, why do people keep reading Julian May?
|> 
|> i freely admit that i didn't read past the first book. (This of course
|> allows everyone to "Oh but they get much better ... :^)

Aha, well that is where you are wrong! The Saga_Of_The_Exiles does not get better.

First, I must admit that I loved the entire series and it is on my `reread every year or two' list. That does not mean that I am blind to the undeniably pulpy nature of the writing. Yes, the characterisations are blatantly achetypal, yes, Julian May exudes her homespun wisdoms from many a page, yes, it portrays all of the emotional sensitivity of a space opera, now and again. Yet, it is amazingly complex, and to my knowledge self consistent. It is well paced and the story line is interesting (IMHO). And be



yond all of that it is a bonza, ball-grabbing flight of fancy that appeals to my love of a good fight. Also, I am a sucker for psionics stories ...

But to stop at TSOTE is a crime to the now undoubtably female Julian May. After this series that revelled in all the facile elements of story writing she released _Intervention_ in which basically all of the above `faults' were rectified. What was left was a detailed, well constructed, reasonably well written book that blew the top off my head when I read it in 1988. It's that damn psionics fix, I just couldn't help it :-).

You also have to realise that TSOTE was written as a marketing ploy, and not much more. _The _Milieu_Trilogy (of which JTB is the first book)  was conceived and mostly written first. She believed that the story that she wanted to tell would be too bogged down in introducing jargon for the Galactic Milieu and metapsychics to become propular. So, she wrote a `fannish' series to introduce the terms (and to make a lot of money) set before (and in some sense after) the Milieu Series. Good marketing if you ask m



e, and I enjoyed TSOTE.  The one drawback obviously being that people such as p-m agapov did not like the style of TSOTE and thus are missing out (IMHO of course!) on books like JTB and Intervention which have different aims. 

That's my bit.

						Steve.

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*	Stephen Hardy			*	Oh I wish I had an employer whose	*
*	stephen@aerodec.anu.edu.au	*	       opinions these are not.		*
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