wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (09/16/85)
Have just started reading a rather odd book by BRIAN Herbert, Frank Herbert's son. It is called SIDNEY'S COMET, and is a tale of how Earth's garbage and waste, which had been sent into deep space for disposal, was collected and sent back as a comet by the organisms that resented being on the receiving end of this disposal process. A rather strange future society is created for the story environment. Doom and disaster are imminent... Having recently read DOON, the National Lampoon parody of DUNE, I am struck by the sense that this book seems to also be a parody of Frank Herbert's style... Maybe it is not intentional, but it comes across that way. It could be that the son is trying to emulate his father's writing style, but, being new at it, the result seems more like a parody than a tribute. I don't recall seeing any mention of this book on SF-L when it came out (Berkley edition published June 1983). It is intended to be humorous (at least according to the jacket blurbs), but so far (30+ pages), it isn't very funny. Will see if it improves. Any Herbert or Dune collector will have to have a copy of this for completion's sake, of course... By the way, this brings up a topic we could fuss over -- parent-child groupings of SF writers. Anybody know of any other SF writers whose parent(s) were also SF Writers, or who has a child who writes SF professionally? [For that matter, I don't recall hearing much about the children of *any* SF pros. Do Clarke, Heinlein, Zelazny, or most others of the SF "big-names" have any children? (Individually, not all together! :-) If they do, I never heard of them... Most male writers seem to give an impression of bachelorhood, or never mention families, except for wives, in the little autobiographical blurbs or story introductions they write now and then. I don't recall a female SF author discussing family, either. I suppose, though, if such offspring were not writers themselves, but just "ordinary people" -- dentists, accountants, whatever -- there would be no reason for us to have ever heard of them. There is an incentive for children of famous parents to get into other fields, so they won't be shadowed by their parent's reputation, so maybe that makes it unlikely for a writer's offspring to also become writers, I suppose. (Or maybe they really *know* how little it pays, or how frustrating it can be, which steers them away from the field! :-) The only parent-child combination that comes to mind in SF is Fritz Lieber Sr. and Jr., and the Senior was an actor, not a writer...] Regards, Will ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin
hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) (09/20/85)
In article <1516@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) writes: >By the way, this brings up a topic we could fuss over -- parent-child >groupings of SF writers. Anybody know of any other SF writers whose parent(s) >were also SF Writers, or who has a child who writes SF professionally? > >[For that matter, I don't recall hearing much about the children of >*any* SF pros. Do Clarke, Heinlein, Zelazny, or most others of the SF >"big-names" have any children? (Individually, not all together! :-) >If they do, I never heard of them... Most male writers seem to give an >impression of bachelorhood, or never mention families, except for wives, >in the little autobiographical blurbs or story introductions they write >now and then. I don't recall a female SF author discussing family, either. > ... >Regards, Will > >ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin Ursula K LeGuin has (I believe) two daughters. Elizabeth, who lives in Berkeley most of the time, recently had a daughter herself. Elizabeth is a concert violist and an exceptional musician. She claimed once to have no interest in writing as a profession. With two writing parents, and a grandfather who was (I believe) also a writer, one would imagine that it might be rather tiresome competing. Hutch