Re: Anyone read Stirling's latest?

On Apr 8, 6:56 am, johan.g.lar...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> On Apr 7, 11:44 pm, Ahasuerus <ahasue...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > To be fair to SteveStirling, not all of his subsequent books have
> > swordfights, e.g. the heroes (for some values of the term) of
> > _Conquistador_ favored firearms when they were available, or even Hot
> > Lesbian S&M ***, e.g. the Hot Female Scientist in _The Peshawar
> > Lancers_ tells us that she is *not* a lesbian up front, presumably
> > just in case.
>
> You know, ifStirlingwere to write a novel where the characters know
> they are in aStirlingnovel, and are taking pains to avoid his most
> obvious cliches, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But that would be
> postmodern, and might make the author's head explode.
>
> Johan Larson

One of the things I've noticed in his latest novels is that he seems
to be far more interested in the worlds he's created than in any kind
of plot for them.  Conquistador is a notorious example of this IMO
where he sets up this nice scenario of the feds trying to figure out
what's going on, then the middle of the book basically turns into a
several hundred page travelogue of the alternate Earth, and then in
the last three or four chapters it's like Stirling's editor told him
"Uh Steve you're going to have to wrap this up soon" and he just
tacked on this rushed ending.  I've suggested before that maybe he
write a "non-fiction" book ala For Want of a Nail, or create a world
and let someone else write it.  That would seem to play to his
strength's of coming up with interesting scenarios while getting
around his disdain of plot and annoying characterization tropes