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Is Cherryh Lighter?
Topic Started: Jan 8 2016, 05:39 AM (1,642 Views)
starexplorer
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From a post on LibraryThing (not me):

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I have lots of favorite authors still around. In SF, Ursula LeGuin and Gene Wolfe come to mind immediately; and in lighter mode, C.J. Cherryh and Elizabeth Moon are both favorites. I'm sure I could think of others easily.


Any comments? There is a lot of :cherryh: 's work that I don't think of as "light". Most of it, in fact.
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Reading_fox

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I'd say probably medium.

She's certainly not a hard SF writer ala Reynolds. But it can be dense prose.

Heavy but not hard? And yet it isn't heavy going, it's gripping engaging writing, slow moving but captivating.

I'm doubt there's many authors who style can be reasonably assessed by one adjective.
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Kokipy

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don't know what is meant by "light."
if not dark/tragic/nihilistic, then yes, I guess she is on the side of the light.
if an easy read, then no. She requires that attention be paid. I think she is not really comparable to anyone else in that regard.
I think that LeGuin (whom I love) is, eg, not more challenging. I like Reynolds but I don't think he is more challenging. I enjoy Moon but she basically writes space operas and she is not, in my view, anywhere near CJC's league.
Some of the male authors get down into the science, which in my view makes them less readable and also less interesting and less enjoyable because I like the characters more than the science, but does that make Cherryh light by comparison?
I think books like Cyteen and Downbelow Station and the entire Foreigner sequence are engrossing, challenging reads, and i would not characterize them as light.
But if "light" means, basically you can rely on her not to kill off your favorite characters just for the nihilism of it, then yes.
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starexplorer
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I was confused by the comparison to to Le Guin. Gene Wolfe, ok, it's an argument. Putting that aside, I have trouble seeing Le Guin as less "on the lighter side" than Cherryh. Either by way of difficulty, content or themes. I was debating whether to engage in debate, but I figured what's the point? I have reading to do. :atwink
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joekc6nlx
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kendo bain sidhe
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I have difficulty reading LeGuin, maybe it's because of the way she writes, not what she says. That doesn't mean I don't like her stories, they're just told in a different style than other writers.
Heinlein does not equal Bradbury, though both were fine writers.
Asimov does not equal Scalzi, again, both were/are fine writers (Scalzi lives about 25 miles from me)

I believe that CJC's stories are just as "deep" as LeGuin's, but are written in a manner that is almost as if you're sitting in a room and someone is telling you the story. It doesn't make the story less relevant, it just makes it more understandable to me.

As an example, when I read LeGuin's novella "The Word for World is Forest", I had no difficulty understanding what she was writing about and the message she was trying to convey. On the other hand, I don't necessarily know what she was saying in "The Left Hand of Darkness". I don't believe I have that problem with CJC's stories, and not because they're "lighter", just that her style is so much easier for me to understand.
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Blond Tekikin

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Maybe light as in come home from bookstore, sit down, inhale book for five hours straight, then suddenly realize you've skipped supper and it's past your bedtime? Such eyeball-drying prose some might call 'light'.

There's a better word for it on the tip of my tongue, though. Engrossing? Not quite...
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Surtac
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Very interesting question. I'm going to have to ponder this for awhile before trying to frame a serious reply,

But I'd really like to know which Cherryh books were the ones under consideration.

:invert
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hrhspence
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I would never have considered CJ Cherryh's work as light. Butcher is light, humorous and read just for the fun of it. Not Cherryh. You think about her work as you read it. It's enjoyable to read, but it's thought provoking.
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magicdomino

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Some of Ms. :cherryh: 's books could be considered light, or at least, lighter. Finity's End and Merchanter's Luck are among my favorites, as are the Compact books, but they don't get into deep, philosophical issues like Cyteen does. The Foreigner series is somewhere in between with the question of how alien minds work, and some pretty dense political maneuvering, as well as lively plots and interesting three-dimensional characters.
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starexplorer
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Another in the thread has chimed in that he read Downbelow Station a long time ago and doesn't recall anything about it except that at the time he regarded it as "fairly undistinguished space opera."

I'm starting to get aggravated.
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BlueCatShip
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I have a slightly different interpretation of the original quote. Or perhaps I'm just being contrarian / devil's advocate again.

I read that as, the commenter sees some of CJC's works as lighter in mood than others; or alternatively, portions of a given book are lighter in mood, so the book as a whole is not so dark / dreary / negative / nihilist.

My reaction for a long time to the BSG Reboot was, "too dark / depressing / negative." I've later watched it and, while it's still very dark, I can deal with it or understand it better, and appreciate it more. I'll eventually watch the whole rebooted series. However, what I've seen is also mature SF on video, which I thinik is uncommon still on video (TV, movies).

I like CJC's style best out of any SF author I've read. Many others are very good and are favorites, but I like hers best.

She can write dark (moods). She can write deep thinking, philosophy. She can write complex plots with good science and good social / anthropological background, especially with a grounding in an understanding of history and languages and cultures. Yet she keeps the hard science accurate too, without going overboard on it. She writes real, solid characters, rather than cardboard cutout, one-dimensional characters.

Her style's complex and dense, concise. I really admire how much she can get into how few words, that tell us about character and plot and are still such a readable style.

Engaging? Engrossing? Oh, you bet. I can still get lost in her books and not come up for hours. Food? Sleep? Hah! Who needs 'em? OK, yeah, still might need 'em, but wow, can't turn loose of the book!

Heh. The first two of her books that I ever read, I read almost non-stop over a weekend each, and oh, was I hooked. (Downbelow Station and Pride of Chanur.) I think the next two I read were Chanur's Venture and Merchanter's Luck, before a trip to the bookstore and the university library. I read Brothers of Earth and Voyager in Night and/or Port Eternity from the uni library, and possibly Hestia too.

Hmm, I sure didn't think of Downbelow Station as average space opera. I think that reader needs to reread the book. Or possibly had read a different book than I did. Heh.

BTW, I intend to read a couple of Scalzi's books. I've only read Fuzzy Nation so far, his sequel to H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy Sapiens books. I recently found Scalzi's blog, and have really enjoyed his writing there, so I'm going to give his fiction a read.
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starexplorer
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Here the clarification by the OP:

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I lumped LeGuin & Wolfe together because I think of them both as "literary" SF writers, in the richness & quality of the writing, ideas, & imagery, and in the development of larger themes. LeGuin in particular I think can be called a great, classic writer in speculative fiction. Wolfe is odd: sometimes spectacular (Fifth Head of Cerberus, Book of the New Sun), other times missing the mark (Book of the Long Sun -meh).
I didn't mean to put down the other two by using the term "lighter". I love them both. I've read the Chanur series three times. But I think of them more as space opera, action books. Well-imagined universes/worlds; three-dimensional characters; good action; even some good reflections now & then -- but still, basically entertainment. Very good entertainment. Talented & reliable, yes! Brilliant, no.

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joekc6nlx
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kendo bain sidhe
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It's the OP's opinion, and opinions are like belly buttons, everyone has one and most of them are full of fluff..... :rofl:
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Kokipy

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An interesting clarification, but it gives no shrift to the pervasive theme of the Other in CJC's work. I also feel LeGuin opened doors that CJC sailed right through, taking up the charge and carrying it forward. Her focus is not on social justice or sexual politics directly but the worlds she builds all make elemental assumptions about those things that are as radical as many other works where the issues are more specifically delineated and beaten to death. I disagree with the OP fundamentally, I think. I think he/she has not read these books with the depth of attention they merit.
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Xheralt
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I'm surprised by how many :cherryh: fans on yahoo.com's cherryhlist actually don't like the atevi books...
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