Maru (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yakalskovich) wrote2003-11-18 08:19 am
yakalskovich) wrote2003-11-18 08:19 am
Entry tags:
Watchers everwhere
No, I'm not going paranoid, I just notice that the Watchers as the origin of civilisation (as in Andy Collins) is a meme that's apparently going mainstream at the moment. German television had thorough and completely serious feature about civilisation being older than we thought, and the Göbekli Tepe site, last Sunday at the traditional spot of the Documentary of the Week (inofficially); so anybody even slightly interested knows now. Here is the link, but beware, it's in German (sorry, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mercredi). It has in-depth background information, all sorts of links, and a discussion forum, and everything one could want - alas, in German. They never say "Watchers", of course, but if you've got this other piece of the puzzle, it really begins making sense.
And then I am reading Ricardo's book now, and find his Chosen suspiciously like Watchers as well: tall, pale, longer lived than the humans around them (albeit not immortal), theocratic, and utterly amoral; very archaic, beautiful, ceremonious and occasionally wearing feather cloaks. I haven't finished the first book yet, let alone the second, so perhaps something's going to come up to contradict my impression (which can simply have been caused by memetic crowding) - but it smells of Watchers. Perhaps I'm just slow on the uptake and that's the actual reason Storm asked Ricardo to be a guest at Grissecon; in any case, I found the title page of the German edition of the book, and was over-wowed, as his German publisher is Klett-Cotta, the most respected publisher of the fantasy genre in Germany, publisher of Tolkien and T.H. White, Lord Dunsany, and then some... And I realised where I had seen the Name Ricardo Pinto before: in a Klett-Cotta brochure almost two years ago, when I was writing an article on Fantasy for one of those silly free book magazines my former employer publishes. I remember compiling a list for the editor of that magazine, asking whether Klett-Cotta had sent this or that book for review so I could read it, and Ricardo Pinto was on that wish list. She didn't have the books, the only one that ever materialised was Stan Nicholl's orc book, but still, I have always wanted to read that but didn't get to until now, and now the time is right for that meme complex. I am overawed and will continue reading avidly, commenting on the book as I go along.
Ricardo's web site isn't just the usual author's web site either, with excerpts and press cutting and Amazon links; he's put the whole of the background he's worked out for the books online so we can properly immerse ourselves in his world.
mercredi). It has in-depth background information, all sorts of links, and a discussion forum, and everything one could want - alas, in German. They never say "Watchers", of course, but if you've got this other piece of the puzzle, it really begins making sense.And then I am reading Ricardo's book now, and find his Chosen suspiciously like Watchers as well: tall, pale, longer lived than the humans around them (albeit not immortal), theocratic, and utterly amoral; very archaic, beautiful, ceremonious and occasionally wearing feather cloaks. I haven't finished the first book yet, let alone the second, so perhaps something's going to come up to contradict my impression (which can simply have been caused by memetic crowding) - but it smells of Watchers. Perhaps I'm just slow on the uptake and that's the actual reason Storm asked Ricardo to be a guest at Grissecon; in any case, I found the title page of the German edition of the book, and was over-wowed, as his German publisher is Klett-Cotta, the most respected publisher of the fantasy genre in Germany, publisher of Tolkien and T.H. White, Lord Dunsany, and then some... And I realised where I had seen the Name Ricardo Pinto before: in a Klett-Cotta brochure almost two years ago, when I was writing an article on Fantasy for one of those silly free book magazines my former employer publishes. I remember compiling a list for the editor of that magazine, asking whether Klett-Cotta had sent this or that book for review so I could read it, and Ricardo Pinto was on that wish list. She didn't have the books, the only one that ever materialised was Stan Nicholl's orc book, but still, I have always wanted to read that but didn't get to until now, and now the time is right for that meme complex. I am overawed and will continue reading avidly, commenting on the book as I go along.
Ricardo's web site isn't just the usual author's web site either, with excerpts and press cutting and Amazon links; he's put the whole of the background he's worked out for the books online so we can properly immerse ourselves in his world.