Posted by Martin Read on March 26, 1999 at 06:04:16:
In Reply to: Re: Other Writers a la Vance posted by Terry on March 23, 1999 at 16:23:53:
: > It's the peoples, the cultures, the cuisines, the religions, that are important, not the details of how space ships fly or rayguns work.
: Just so. Vance goes out of his way to detail civilizations, but not the underlying mechnanisms. Plow through Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars trilogy and you see a writer a pains to tell you how "things" work. Vance's writing is much more how "society" works and what changes mean to humans.
: > I see in Vance a forecast of post-technologial society.
: Just reading _The Persian Boy_ by Mary Renault '72 about the travels of Alexander the Great through Persia and was struck by the same other-worldliness of the Persian civilization. I commend its reading to anyone, SF fans included. To me that detailing is much more important than if the action takes place on a space ship or a galaxy far, far away.
If you are interested in other views of Ancient Persian (+ Athenian, Indian and Chinese) society I'd advise you read Gore Vidal's novel "Civilisation."
If you like Mary Renault's work - probably her finest is "The King Must Die" - the adventures of Theseus set in a true Mycenaean framework. I did have the advantage of first reading this book in Crete - just before a visit to Knossos!