Excerpt from Lord of Light

Reading Zelazny's Lord of Light, this excerpt struck me as oustanding exposition:

Ahead, a crowd gathered to watch the passing troop. Horses were ridden only by those who could afford them, and few were that wealthy. The slizzard was the common mount -- a scaled creature with snakelike neck, many teeth, dubious lineage, brief life span and a vicious temperament; the horse, for some reason, having grown barren in recent generations.

Good stuff, good stuff.

Update to the Nerdy Implosion

Here you go, the latest entry on the Harrison v. St-Denis blogathon. Hal has a great deal of smart stuff to say, who could have redicted that, but it basically distills down to "it's all tedious" if you askme.

That Word

Mike Harrison rants against "world-building" here and Patrick St-Denis responds here and flowing as an undercurrent throughout the reaction and overreaction is the bugaboo: escapism. I. Am. Sick. Of. This. Word. So sick, in fact that I banish it. Yep, henceforth, that word shall be known only as 'that word'.

Why?


That's a good question. The answer? Simple, 'that word' represents the self-loathing, inferiority complex that has dogged specfic ever since, well, ever since rationalism and realism conquered the literati. Screw them, if what we love to write and to read seems 'that word'-ist to them. Screw them. I do not care what they think. I do not write in a ghetto. The exercise of imagination is the genesis of creation, not something of which I should be ashamed.

Edit: and here are the linkages where further discussions may be had . . .
The Lotus Lyceum thread: http://lyceum.kapo.ws/?p=78#comments
Johnathan Wood's take: http://thexmedic.blogspot.com/2007/02/worlddestroying-so-theres-been-lot-of.html
Gabe Chouinard's blog: http://deadcities-icon.livejournal.com/139469.html
James Enge's blog: http://jamesenge.livejournal.com/11302.html
Paul Jessup weighs in (or will): http://kapo.ws/wordpress/?p=754

Anybody I missed?