Tell us of your favorite author(s)

Zkribbler

Zkribbler

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I am binge watching John Mortimore's Rumpole of the Bailey. (I also own three volumes of his collected short stories.)

In the usual courtroom drama, the main character is a handsome, insightful defense attorney, in a murder trial, adeptly defending an innocent client :please:. Always, the truth comes out, and the defendant is acquitted. :sleep:

In comparison, Rumpole is a crusty, blubbery, hard-drinking, cheroot-smoking, irascible English barrister, sometimes defending murder defendants but more often just minor villains. Sometimes he gets his clients off; sometimes not. Sometimes they're guilty; sometimes not. But in Mortimore's stories, there is always an undertone of bittersweet regret. :sad:
 
So he's similar to Columbo, except that Columbo always solves the murder?
 
Not really! Rumpole is a normal, fallible, human being, whose job has nothing to do with the truth. Columbo is an omniscient deity with no personal life who is solely focused on the truth.
 
Plotinus said:
Not really! Rumpole is a normal, fallible, human being, whose job has nothing to do with the truth. Columbo is an omniscient deity with no personal life who is solely focused on the truth.
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He does have a personal life. We just never see it (he's always talking about it).
 
Just looked at my bookshelf and theres' only two books written by the same author: Barbara Tuchman. So I guess she's my favorite by default.

It's interesting that one of her books (Distant Mirror) was approachable and very readable but I needed a dictionary to get through the other (March of Folly) and often had to read sentences multiple times.
 
Lewis Grassic Gibbon, author of Sunset Song, first novel in A Scots Quair.
Its about Chris Guthrie, a woman living in rural Scotland in the early years of the 20th century.
Heres a clip of the film trailer. I haven't seen the film but it won't have been as good as the book, ofc.

 
Valka D'Ur said:
He does have a personal life. We just never see it (he's always talking about it).
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He's always talking about it, but there's no indication that it actually exists. (Peter Falk assumed that it didn't and that everything Columbo told his suspects about his personal life was designed to trap them.)

Columbo is not only never seen outside work, he's never even seen away from the suspects. You never see him at the police station or talking to colleagues except when arriving at the crime scene. (Apart from one or two occasions in the very first episode, I believe, before the style had been established.) He exists, as far as we can tell, only in the field. He always wears the same clothes. He has no boss, no subordinates. He never receives any kind of promotion despite his astonishing success rate. He has no private life. He has no first name. He is apparently omniscient, aware of who the murderer is as soon as he sets eyes on them, and everything he says and does from then on is intended solely to trick them into giving themselves away. His forgetfulness, his chaotic personal habits, his naive admiration for the great and the good, his innocent questions that insinuate themselves into the suspect's anxiety, are all acts. Nothing he ever says or does tells us anything about his actual character, if he has one at all - he has no apparent likes or dislikes, no personality at all except the role he plays to entrap his suspects. He has no doubts, no suspicions, no distractions, no ruminations. He has no inner life at all. He needs no pipe, no classical music, no time for his little grey cells to think, no sidekick to discuss the case with.

Columbo is not a normal character. He is inhuman. He is some kind of avenging angel, an avatar of truth and justice. I suspect he is summoned into existence by the cosmic forces of order the moment a murder is committed, only to be dissolved again once the murderer is caught, ready to be re-summoned again next time.
 
Plotinus said:
He's always talking about it, but there's no indication that it actually exists. (Peter Falk assumed that it didn't and that everything Columbo told his suspects about his personal life was designed to trap them.)

Columbo is not only never seen outside work, he's never even seen away from the suspects. You never see him at the police station or talking to colleagues except when arriving at the crime scene. (Apart from one or two occasions in the very first episode, I believe, before the style had been established.) He exists, as far as we can tell, only in the field. He always wears the same clothes. He has no boss, no subordinates. He never receives any kind of promotion despite his astonishing success rate. He has no private life. He has no first name. He is apparently omniscient, aware of who the murderer is as soon as he sets eyes on them, and everything he says and does from then on is intended solely to trick them into giving themselves away. His forgetfulness, his chaotic personal habits, his naive admiration for the great and the good, his innocent questions that insinuate themselves into the suspect's anxiety, are all acts. Nothing he ever says or does tells us anything about his actual character, if he has one at all - he has no apparent likes or dislikes, no personality at all except the role he plays to entrap his suspects. He has no doubts, no suspicions, no distractions, no ruminations. He has no inner life at all. He needs no pipe, no classical music, no time for his little grey cells to think, no sidekick to discuss the case with.

Columbo is not a normal character. He is inhuman. He is some kind of avenging angel, an avatar of truth and justice. I suspect he is summoned into existence by the cosmic forces of order the moment a murder is committed, only to be dissolved again once the murderer is caught, ready to be re-summoned again next time.
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So I must have imagined the TV series about his wife (played by Kate Mulgrew)... :huh:
 
Valka D'Ur said:
So he's similar to Columbo, except that Columbo always solves the murder?
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Both Rumpole and Columbo dress like unmade beds and can be very irritating.
But Columbo is a straight murder mystery, albeit we know who did it [the fun is watching Columbo figure out how this week's "perfect murder" was pulled off.]

I would guesstimate about half of each Rumpole episode deals with matters outside the case, which gives his stories a much more "human" feel. He never faces the super geniuses that Columbo faces each week. He deals with receiving stolen goods, drug sales, rape, divorce. art fraud, libel. etc.
 
Columbo was part of my TV-watching life before I crossed firmly over into watching science fiction instead of cop shows. There was a transition period when William Shatner was the guest star/murderer, and I did enjoy that episode.

One of the appealing things about Columbo was that the audience could follow along to try to figure out exactly which seemingly minor thing was what tripped the villain up and led Columbo to go from suspicion to certainty (in the Shatner episode it was the murder victim's watch; the victim habitually set it 5 minutes fast, but Shatner's character didn't know that and in trying to cover up the time of the murder, he set the watch to the correct time).
 
My favorite is still the pilot episode. Gene Barry returns home from his business trip [read "alibi"] but fails to yell out, "Honey, I'm home!" when he comes in through the front door.
 
Valka D'Ur said:
So I must have imagined the TV series about his wife (played by Kate Mulgrew)... :huh:
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Well, that was clearly a terrible idea, and the producers evidently realised it because if you recall they fairly quickly dropped the conceit that she was Columbo's wife and changed her name. I'd regard it as ill-conceived fan fiction.
 
Plotinus said:
Well, that was clearly a terrible idea, and the producers evidently realised it because if you recall they fairly quickly dropped the conceit that she was Columbo's wife and changed her name. I'd regard it as ill-conceived fan fiction.
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Of course it was a terrible idea - I never actually said I liked it, just that I remember it. Even at that time, I realized that it was ridiculous that she could be Columbo's wife.

To tie this into the OP... I used to have a couple of Columbo paperback tie-in novels (can't remember who wrote them). :p

And to get completely bizarre... there's a parody song about Columbo, based on the tune of "They Call the Wind Mariah" (They Call the Clod 'Columbo').
 
I really enjoy David Brin's Uplift series. Its a great teacher on international relations with its protocols and interactions that might be hard to grasp at first. Besides the great sci-fi settings it gives a complete answer to the mystery of the world around us as every great author has done. I'm actually surprised it hasn't been turned into another media yet (maybe for the better :/ ).
 
I think we had a favorite sci-fi thread where I'm sure I mentioned Benford, Brin, Nivin, Clarke, Asimov, and other greats. Outside of sci-fi but still in fiction I can't deny that James Clavell must be a favorite since I've read everything he's published. Dean Koontz, James Michener, Robert Ludlum are others where I'm probably close to a full catalog consumer. In non-fiction I have great regard for Alvin Toffler, and in spiritual matters BKS Iyengar and Ken Wilbur.
 
Yes, we do have a thread specifically for SF/F authors.

I'm trying to recall the last thing I read by an author I liked that wasn't SF/F. I think it must have been about a year and a half ago, before my vision deteriorated to the point that I couldn't read books... I binge-read an old children's series I enjoy, about the mundane and bizarre things that happen to a teenager named Henry Reed, when he spends his summers with his aunt and uncle.

Henry Reed, Inc.
Henry Reed's Journey
Henry Reed's Babysitting Service
Henry Reed's Big Show
Henry Reed's Think Tank

The stories are dated by now, as they take place roughly in the 1960s or so. But they're fun stories, and even my dad liked them. The author's name is Keith Robertson.


SF-wise, however, I just discovered a new fanfic author I like, who has written a series of alt-universe Voyager stories about Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres (the premise is that they actually met at Starfleet Academy, eventually fell in love, married, and were separated when Tom was assigned to Voyager and B'Elanna was working at Utopia Planitia, designing warp engines for new starships; neither were ever in the Maquis). It's in the adventure/romance subgenre, and I'll be giving the author a favorable review.
 
I deeply admire Cixin Liu. In addition to being a first-rate science fiction writer, I suspect he's a lot more clever than I'll ever be.
 
Let's see, my favorite authors in no particular order:

-Walter Miller Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz. Unfortunately, the author was badly affected by PTSD and clinical depression from his time in WW2 and became a recluse, never publishing another novel.
-John Varley. Mainly the Gaea trilogy, specifically Demon. The author moves from a fairly standard sci-fi exploration in the first novel (Titan) and moving into a roaring adventure novel by the last one (Demon) which is easily one of my favorite books ever. Plus, the main character is female (Cirocco Jones) and several of the most important characters are female (Robin, Nova, Gabby, Gaea [I guess]), and the author writes them exceptionally well.
-Edgar Rice Burroughs. A Princess of Mars and the other Barsoom books. I wouldn't call them well written, but they are fun pulp action romps that are wonderful fodder for the imagination.
-Poul Anderson. I love his Dominic Flandry books, which are basically James Bond in Space during the Fall of the Roman Terran Empire. Anderson's background in history and Norse sagas manages to give the books a grandeur that elevates them above space opera pulp. The author's other books, such as his take on Norse sagas in Hrolf Kraki's Saga and Mother of Kings are also quite interesting, showing his background in history to its full.
-Terry Pratchett.

Larry Niven's largely fallen off the list as I've realized female characters in his books are either nonexistent or sex kittens who have things just happen to them (like Teela Brown). As much as I like Dune, his later books like God Emperor, Heretics, and Chapterhouse are a bit boring with almost all of the big action occurring offscreen. This become super annoying in Heretics as we are told all book how Miles Teg is such an awesome general, that his mere presence can cause enemies to run away. As the book moves toward a conflict with Teg commanding forces for a battle, it fades to black; resuming once Teg has (inevitably) won the battle.
 
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