From: Roald Laurenson
Location:
Date: 12/27/2008
Fictionwise.com is serving these up:
Queen of Angels - so now Slant is complete with its predecessor, very interesting in an entirely different light
Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies, which includes two favorites of mine, The White Horse Child, and above all, Petra
Hardfought, on it's own, a greatly poetic adventure which connects a little with Anvil of Stars
Women in Deep Time, which also publishes Hardfought, combined with two other very good stories, Scattershot (another connection to Anvil of Stars), and Sisters
Well. The boon is that we can have more of Greg's imagination to appreciate, wherever we are, and these are certainly some fine examples.
Regards,
Clive
From: Greg Bear
Date: 12/29/2008
And more to come, I believe...
From: chris pickens
Location: Fairfax, CA
Date: 12/29/2008
Hi there,
I have read Queen of Angels several times and every time I
can feel more of the story. Mr. Bear has done something
very significant with sci fi with this story - though I
do not think I am smart enough to articulate it. By far,
Queen of Angels stands well on its own without Slant.
Interestly however, you are correct: Slant opens up so
much more to ponder in Queen of Angels --- I feel like Mr.
Bear wrote a 1000 page world-builder BEFORE writing
Queen of Angels and realized that at some point he would
have to explore this world in a second book later.
The two stories are an amazing feat of storytelling.
Cheers
Chris Pickens
Physics Instructor, Ph.d. Astrophysics.
Fairfax, CA
From: Greg Bear
Date: 12/29/2008
Thanks, Chris! I'm writing a novel that ties QUANTICO into this particular story sequence even now. Should be an interesting segue.
From: Roald Laurenson
Location:
Date: 12/29/2008
Ok, I will be patient. I thought just to pass on what Fictionwise sends, which comes once a week.
On Queen of Angels, yes, that is a very ambitious story, and I can remember a very strong response the first time reading it. There's a shift, with Slant, of something besides a few intervening years, and this is very interesting. Somehow Slant feels even more deeply, or maybe it is 'smoothly' imagined, and I like this. On the other hand, the evocation of the Haitian technological but own-cultured society is fascinating in Angels, among other things.
It seems the difference may have to do with the relative nightmarishness of the problems, the catastrophes. It's something of the way, if it is not too far a stretch, that Petra jumps out as a fantasy that feels so sympathetically real. In Slant, the nightmare is less; and so the story and stories interwoven are right with us.
Some of my abiding enjoyments and interests come in the imagining of future societies, the ways we might knit the kinds of things we discover into new social realities. I would guess that this next book will be the greatest challenge of the three this way, for coming 'first'.
To say we'll be looking forward...of course.
Best to both,
Clive
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