Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2003 20:22:31 -0500
Subject: (urth) [OT] Other authors: Lawrence Miles
From: Adam Stephanides 

(I meant to post on this to the other authors thread a while back, but never
got around to it; but better late than never.)

While not in Wolfe's league, Lawrence Miles is a very interesting SF writer,
and well worth investigating IMO.  He'd be a lot better known if it wasn't
for the fact that aside from one short story ("Grass," which came out last
year iirc and attracted a bit of attention), all his SF afaik has been
written for Dr. Who books and offshoots thereof.  That sounds terrible, but
writers of Dr. Who books seem to have a good deal more freedom than writers
of Star Trek books, say; and you don't have to be a Dr. Who fan, or know a
lot about Dr. Who (I'm not, and don't) to enjoy his books.

All his books are worth checking out, except perhaps for CHRISTMAS ON A
RATIONAL PLANET, his first (and THE BOOK OF THE WAR, which I haven't read).
But his best are probably DEAD ROMANCE and DOWN (neither of which contain
Dr. Who).  While DEAD ROMANCE is better, DOWN does a couple of interesting
things with unreliable narration; and for fans of Iain M. Banks, it can be
seen as a sort of reply to the Culture.  For those interested in narrative
technique THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET is also worth noting; it's one
of the few novels I've seen which is written almost entirely in the style of
a history or biography (e. g. almost no directly quoted dialogue; sometimes
providing contradictory versions of an event from different "sources"
without saying which is correct).

There's also an online sample of his writing at
http://www.gallifreyone.com/fppreview1.htm

--Adam


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