(Dec 13, 2020 05:35 AM)Leigha Wrote: [...] What do you think?
From a review of the
The Book of Skaith (actually a combined trilogy):
"Much of Skaith is ruled by the theocratic Lords Protector. As with most religious leaders, once upon a time they had the best of intentions: feed the hungry, house the homeless, help the needy. Many generations later, a large portion of the population has become “Farers”, homeless, hungry and resourceless, they demand food and shelter from the farmers and herders who have been virtually enslaved by the Lords Protector. Every year there are more Farers and less food to feed them, and fewer farmers to grow the food."
They committed the equivalent of crimes, too, that were excused by the elite establishment. It's not literature or a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination (i.e., probably worse than Ayn Rand), but the work's value is that literally anyone can read it and get the point, as far as who the Lords Protector and their henchmen the Wandsmen represent. (As well as the power-acquiring role and opportunism that mimicking religious altruism plays in secular and collectivist politics.)
Decades ago,
Leigh Brackett hit the nail on the head in terms of what's happening now, as well the beginnings of it back then.
I can't remember the name for Duh, the "Farers" in the quote above were the group on Skaith that the working citizens were forced to accommodate. She clearly modelled them on the lifestyle of that hedonistic, drug-abusing, nomadic fraction of the hippies during the 1960s and early '70s (with quasi- Manson Family glint in their eyes) that were living off of welfare, hand-outs, etc.
Perhaps the memory has become faded, but my first impressions of Leigh Brackett's trilogy of novels was that it was pulp or hack writing in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, or the space-operas of her very own husband
Edmond Hamilton. But reading some of these almost "glowing" reviews years later, I'm starting to wonder about my past assessment -- though
this particular blogger's negative appraisal does reflect more what I remember. (I actually had a guilty pleasure for pulp sci-fi back in my early days, thanks to my brother's stack of such lying around, but just want to warn the disenchanted ahead of time of the quality.)
Certainly I'm not knocking Brackett's overall output. She was a co-writer of the
The Big Sleep and other classic film screenplays, after all (a woman pioneer, actually). I've definitely forgotten
how complex(?) the cultures were that she depicted on Skaith. Maybe her trilogy did resemble a mitigated space-opera version of "Lord of the Rings" in that sense.