OT: good fantasy books

[Nick_K]

Cor said:
Most everything by HP Lovecraft

the problem, he is a bleeding racist. I wish someone would go back and modernize his work, take out all those refrences to eugenics.

While he was definitely prejudiced I don't think that Lovecraft's work is all that bad here. It's important to remember that racism was the general way of thinking in his time. I can generally shrug off this sort of thing in a book from the 20s where I wouldn't accept it from a modern author. Also, most of his stories don't have racist elements in them, due to lacking characters from any minorities.

Lovecraft is far from unique here as well. I remember a socialist friend of mine getting a tad irate about classist elements in Lord of the Rings, for instance.

With the exception of a few digs at the Chinese, I think that most of Lovecraft's more obviously prejudiced elements are targeted at groups that I believe are now well assimilated in the states - immigrants from southern Europe and whatnot. That takes quite a bit of the sting out of things.


Oh, I'm not sure you're using the term 'Eugenics' correctly here... Eugenics is essentially the idea that one can 'selectively breed' humans. It's not necessarily racist, although it is generally considered to be immoral. Eugenics was embraced by the nazis and this effectively destroyed its credibility.
I don't remember references to it in Lovecraft - his prejudices are mainly displayed by descriptions of immigrants as inferior.

[MaxWilson]

Totally off-topic, but eugenics still hasn't been totally discredited. Marriage between first cousins is outlawed in about half of the states in the United States, and it's justified on eugenic grounds.

-Max

[jutetrea]

In regards to Brust (and its very pleasant to see that he is at least known, usually its a "who?") I really liked his first 5 or 6 Vlad books, then they started to lose something. I seem to remember one "about the author" where he changed his whole view on assassination...which kind of limits a book about an assassin Can't be bothered to dig through the box I haven't unpacked yet, but thought it had to do with being morally wrong - possibly occurring around the Orca novel.