Kingofpain89 wrote:
Stephan King? Rolling Eyes

I know, and apparently Dickens is rubbish now.  C'mon keep up!  

Badmike wrote:KingofPain will kill me for this, but for all it's good parts (and there are a lot) The Stand is just too damn long (something that also make It and The Dark Tower fail in my eyes). If King has a fault (besides sometimes writing pure schlock) it's the need for an editor with a critical eye and no fear of telling King he's rambling.

If you are referring to the later uncut version, I completely agree.  I thought the original was near perfect when I read it as a nine year old and again later when I was 16 (I've read it several times since then, the uncut version I only read the one time).  It was too long, as was Insomnia.

FormCritic wrote:King is certainly a hack....if you read something like The Dark Half.  or watch a movie like Maximum Overdrive.

Hehe....I understand your disdain for the movie Maximum Overdrive.  It did have some hilariously entertaining moments but for the most part was unwatchable as are  most movies adapted from King's books.  I kind of liked The Dark Half though.  Not as good as some of his other works but still a page turner for me anyway.

FormCritic wrote:I most enjoy reading King's non-fiction.

While I havent read a lot of his non-fiction, what I have read is excellent.  He co-wrote Faithful with Stewart O'Nan.  A very good book about the 2004 Boston Red Sox winning the World Series.  Head Down is a short non-fiction story he wrote about the West Bangor, Maine high school baseball team.  And you can't really go wrong with Danse Macabre.

This thread has gone so far off topic now.  

stratochamp wrote:but i digress. i wanted to comment on MetSigmas comment that we are not historians. i am not a paid historian, but as i have stated too often, i collect so as to save these items for posterity (or for as long as the lousy pulp judges guild paper will last). new collectors occasionally contact me inquiring if i am willing to sell this or that item that they've seen on my wall; i have no inform them that then i would just need another copy (i do happily sell doubles of items that aren't extremely rare). items come in, but they don't go back out. i suppose some might refer to this as hoarding, but my take is while i might not be an historian, i'm preserving things such that will still exist when(if?) the time comes that they are perceived to be worthy of study by legitimate historians. oh and yes i like to play too. with the doubles of course.

I never meant to belittle this approach to collecting; sorry if it came across that way. Many here I'm sure are worthy curators for these items, some with substantial experience and expertise in preserving documents for posterity. My comments had more to do with my sense that there is very little historical significance attached to a single tournament "Collector's Edition" adventure, replica or original, and the (academic) value of same for "research". I suppose the original GT provides a snapshot of how tournaments scenarios were envisioned at a point in time, but I don't necessarily see that as being especially important, even for a true historian.

Also, I had totally forgotten about the one sociological study (my own area of knowledge) of RPGs that I know of, Shared Fantasy (by Gary Alan Fine), an analysis of gaming groups done in the early '80s (IIRC) which I found quite insightful and valuable from a scholarly standpoint. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants an "outsider" take on the early hobby.

grodog wrote:
There are a bunch that have actually come out of the University of NC during the middle to late 90s, as well as two or three recent ones from MIT, in addition to Holmes' own overview/history (Hippocrene, 1981).

I'll have to look those up. I'm not sure Holmes' counts, as he wasn't exactly a detached observer (and wasn't he an M.D.?).

MetamorphosisSigma wrote:
I never meant to belittle this approach to collecting; sorry if it came across that way. Many here I'm sure are worthy curators for these items, some with substantial experience and expertise in preserving documents for posterity. My comments had more to do with my sense that there is very little historical significance attached to a single tournament "Collector's Edition" adventure, replica or original, and the (academic) value of same for "research". I suppose the original GT provides a snapshot of how tournaments scenarios were envisioned at a point in time, but I don't necessarily see that as being especially important, even for a true historian.

Also, I had totally forgotten about the one sociological study (my own area of knowledge) of RPGs that I know of, Shared Fantasy (by Gary Alan Fine), an analysis of gaming groups done in the early '80s (IIRC) which I found quite insightful and valuable from a scholarly standpoint. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants an "outsider" take on the early hobby.

it didn't seem to me that you were belittling anything.