dim@cbuxc.UUCP (Dennis McKiernan) (09/18/85)
_________________________________________________ Sheri Tepper has a wonderful gift: with a few sketches of her authorial pen she draws an entire culture/civilization. The world of the *True Game* is drawn so. And I cannot but admire her "chasm" civilization that Mavin visited in book 2 of the Mavin Manyshaped saga. God! Bridgers, Maintainers, etc.; giant roots reaching down past the Lost Bridge, all the way to the bottom; cutting roots on each side just the right length to reach one another and be grafted together to form a span; she has a wonderful imagination! But description alone is not sufficient to tell a great tale (Isn't it interesting that some of the pioneering SF stories were nothing more than descriptions of the strange, with little if any character development). Sheri also has the gift to show some of the internal motive/drive/development of her characters. In recent discussions on the net, several have pointed out that many of their favorite authors are women. Risking being called a male chauvanist, I believe that women *in general* are better at describing/understanding the internals of a character, and of showing character growth, whereas men are better at detailing action and describing how-things-work. Sheri delves into the inner workings of her characters very well, and so does Patrica McKillip. McKillip in her Hed trilogy *and* in her Forgotten Beasts of Eld manages to evoke the most haunting scenes of solitude that I've ever read: i.e., the protagonist in "Hed" shapechanged into an elk-like creature and spent a winter in the mountain valleys, and I could *taste* the solitude of his existence (nought but the vast silence of the empty wind); and in "Eld" the sorceress spent long days alone atop her mountain in the airy quiet. Perhaps some day my characters will grow and change to the same degree as theirs do... it's not that my characters don't develop throughout my tales (action is my forte), it's just that Tepper and McKillip are so very good at what they do. Perhaps my collegue Brust would care to comment. Dennis L. McKiernan ihnp4!cbuxc!dim _________________________________________________