Since no one is breathing that atmosphere, what's the problem? Corrosive to surface equipment?
Which Book Are You Reading Now? Volume XII
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Since no one is breathing that atmosphere, what's the problem? Corrosive to surface equipment?
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Actually, that's probably it. Plus it might end up being enough to clog up engines and stuff....
Are there any really good 'villain protagonist' novels in fantasy or sci-fi? Path of Destruction and Darth Plagueis in the Stars Wars EU are some of my favorite books ever.
(TVTropes has kind of let me down here.)
(TVTropes has kind of let me down here.)
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Well, I was gonna say "no", but it seems like your standards for "good" are pretty low, going by your examples.
James Bond is probably the quintessential example of the villain protagonist and some of the Fleming stories kind of skirt sci-fi a bit.
James Bond is probably the quintessential example of the villain protagonist and some of the Fleming stories kind of skirt sci-fi a bit.
My signature features one, though you may not like the genre
I'm not going to respond to this, except maybe by pointing out that Heir to the Empire (which you've claimed to like) is amateurishly written and dry as any Star Trek fanfic.
Is James Bond a villain?
No, I'm looking for actual bad guy stuff. Read Worm years ago.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
If you're a Calvinist, all novels have a villain protagonist.
Which reminded me, "The Private Memoirs of a Justified Sinner" by James Hogg has a devout Calvinist as its protagonist and hes certainly not a hero.
edit: Tom Ripley in the novels by Patricia Highsmith is a villain.
Lexicus
Deity
@Mouthwash if you can tolerate a large amount of very pedestrian writing Harry Turtledove has a lot of viewpoint characters who are inarguably villains, e.g. Southern Victory series has the Confederacy's Hitler-expy as a viewpoint character. The novel Bridge of the Separator is a straight villain protagonist story, the origin story of the villain in all the (chronologically later, but published earlier) Videssos books.
"I'm not going to respond to this. [Immediately responds to it.]" I applaud your self-restraint in restricting yourself to only one underinformed attempted cheap-shot.
Bond is unquestionably a villain protagonist, as a hired murderer for the British Empire (one of the most self-evidently evil organizations in world history) and casual rapist. I do have to apologize, though, for insinuating that Ian Fleming was a better writer than Drew Karpyshyn. He was not.
For my money, the best depictions of villains in Star Wars belong to brief PoV segments rather than attempts to make them protagonists. I think that the scenes from Zsinj's (well, General Melvar's) point of view in the Wraith Squadron X-Wing books are outstanding. Same with the chapter from Dooku's point of view in Matt Stover's Revenge of the Sith novel - it might even be the single best chapter of Star Wars writing ever. Pellaeon and Thrawn are justly praised. You get the idea. But trying to stretch a villain out over a whole book (or in Karp's case, multiple books) rarely if ever works for me. Make the protagonist's villainy clear, and the book becomes an interminable read. Fleming's Bond was unintentionally evil, but evil nonetheless, and that (along with Fleming's other defects as a writer) makes reading any old Bond story a slog. But obfuscate that villainy with attempts to gin up empathy, and the whole thing looks transparent.
A reader needs to be able to root for a protagonist rather than just disgustedly throwing the book away with a cry of "a plague on both your houses", but outright villain protagonists make that tough. I've never been satisfied with writers who try it. Something about it just rings wrong.
Ajidica
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Isn't basically any book set in the Imperium of Warhammer 40K technically a "villain protagonist" novel? I mean, the Imperium is a bunch of Genocidal Catholic Space Nazis - the only reason they aren't explicitly the villain is that there are bigger villains out there.
Ussually the pov character is more balanced. Most novels use this. When the novel has the insane weirdo as pov character it can get difficult to read; eg lautreamont's the chants of maldoror (but lautreamont was only in his 20s and dieing from -iirc- syphilis).
I mean clearly 'evil' pov character, though; not just flawed but with sensitivities ala de maupassant's great short stories
I mean clearly 'evil' pov character, though; not just flawed but with sensitivities ala de maupassant's great short stories
Got 3 secondhand books from Oxfam this morning:
- The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson, about John Cooke, the prosecuter in Charles I's trial
- Rustication by Charles Palliser, a very good author
- The Crow Road by Iain Banks, since its a long time since I've read any of his "serious" novels
EgonSpengler
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I've started reading March Violets by Phillip Kerr, and I can't tell if it's a serious homage to classic noir, or more of a loving, straight-faced satire, a la This is Spinal Tap. I can't tell if I'm laughing with it or at it, but I'm enjoying it either way. It's decently well-written, too. Too many times, parodies aren't readable/watchable in their own right, so when the humor fades you're just left with a poor version of the thing, but so far this seems to be a fun "hard-boiled detective" story, even as it turns the volume up to eleven.
I mean, come on. There's no way this book was written with a straight face. It had me laughing so hard on the subway home last night, I was crying. The other commuters must have thought I was having a fit.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Good choice! That's one of my favourites of his, the opening line alone is priceless. Did you ever catch the Beeb's adaptation (aired in 1996-ish)?
Never saw that. I've only read The Wasp Factory of his serious stuff but I've been on a bit of a binge of his Culture novels recently so when I saw it cheap thought I'd try it.
How would you classify the Corleone family in The Godfather? Practically everyone in the book and films is a villain, even the police.Ussually the pov character is more balanced. Most novels use this. When the novel has the insane weirdo as pov character it can get difficult to read; eg lautreamont's the chants of maldoror (but lautreamont was only in his 20s and dieing from -iirc- syphilis).
I mean clearly 'evil' pov character, though; not just flawed but with sensitivities ala de maupassant's great short stories
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
If you haven't read his other 'non-M' books, then I'd also recommend looking out for The Bridge (his favourite child), Whit, and Espedair Street as well.
The others, not so much. None of them are really bad, but I found the above all funnier and/or more humane. Complicity and Walking on Glass are OK, but kind of also-rans (I think he was trying to re-capture the spirit of TWF with the former, and The Bridge worked better than the latter). The Business and Dead Air are pretty much just cover-to-cover authorial rants about capitalism/right-wingers: not necessarily a bad thing, but the books are otherwise fairly lightweight/ inconsequential. Canal Dreams is odd but rather forgettable. The Steep Approach to Garbadale and Stonemouth are more 'prodigal returns' á la Crow Road, and A Song of Stone is just utterly depressing. The Quarry is another one that doesn't really go anywhere, but it is kind of poignant, being the last one he wrote.
The Culture books are generally less hit-and-miss on quality, IMHO: seems like IMB wrote better when he felt less constrained by the idea of being a Proper Serious Writer (kinda sorta), and was just letting his imagination run wild.
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