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Nov. 4th, 2005 01:14 amI've never actually done the NaNoWriMo thing, but this week I've at least come up with a plot and written a couple of scenes -- not the most amazing start, and I don't know if I will continue on, but you know, at least I've written something this week. ^_^
When I was young I read all of the John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and I loved them. I read them several times. Even though I can laugh at some of the sillier aspects of the series now (John Carter was such a good swordsman that he could hold of ANY amount of enemies and be completely assured that nothing could penetrate his defenseive web of steel... or something like that, he was just THAT good), there was still some really cool things about the series, not the least of which was the whole world he created, with massive ancient abandoned cities, ships that flew through the air over dried up ancient sea beds, secret kingdoms that had been cut off from the rest of Mars for untold eons... all very imaginative and still wonderful.
I also read some of the author's other series that were in a similar vein, and for a while I collected anything else that was similar. And there were several authors out there that were writing very similar stories -- ordinairy man transported to another, primitive world, becomes fantastic hero, gets all the girls, the fame, the fortune, the sports chariot or flying sports ship, or whatever. Most notable of these were the Dray Prescott books, which went on for well over 30 volumes before the guy finally lost his contract, or stopped writing, or died, who knows. These were pretty well written and much more carefully plotted -- it was like a soap opera for the swords and leather straps crowd, or something. I have most of the books, and have made several attempts to read the whole series, but my last best attempt only got me up to about volume 16.
( more rambling )
When I was young I read all of the John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and I loved them. I read them several times. Even though I can laugh at some of the sillier aspects of the series now (John Carter was such a good swordsman that he could hold of ANY amount of enemies and be completely assured that nothing could penetrate his defenseive web of steel... or something like that, he was just THAT good), there was still some really cool things about the series, not the least of which was the whole world he created, with massive ancient abandoned cities, ships that flew through the air over dried up ancient sea beds, secret kingdoms that had been cut off from the rest of Mars for untold eons... all very imaginative and still wonderful.
I also read some of the author's other series that were in a similar vein, and for a while I collected anything else that was similar. And there were several authors out there that were writing very similar stories -- ordinairy man transported to another, primitive world, becomes fantastic hero, gets all the girls, the fame, the fortune, the sports chariot or flying sports ship, or whatever. Most notable of these were the Dray Prescott books, which went on for well over 30 volumes before the guy finally lost his contract, or stopped writing, or died, who knows. These were pretty well written and much more carefully plotted -- it was like a soap opera for the swords and leather straps crowd, or something. I have most of the books, and have made several attempts to read the whole series, but my last best attempt only got me up to about volume 16.
( more rambling )
