Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Yes, I agree with you about the politics - his political views are diametrically opposed to my own! - and in some of his books the "kinky sex" scenes are just ghastly (the "Ghost" series I wouldn't touch with the proverbial barge-pole), but I don't recall there being any such scenes in "Road to Damascus". He's such a good writer that I can forgive him his political views, even though I regard them as being utterly wrong.
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I enjoyed Ghost, and the succeeding books in the series.
I don't consider the viewpoint xenophobic, though I can see where others might. I've met Ringo, and "xenophobic" is too simple a reading of where he's coming from. The BDSM I basically shrugged about. I know some people who are into that lifestyle, and Ringo has it more or less correct for a segment of that population. It just doesn't happen to be
my kink.
Who was he writing it for? Himself. His publisher decided to take a flyer on it, and enough other folks liked it that it became a popular series.
I wouldn't call it SF (though you might stretch and call it Alternate History). It's action adventure thriller, with lots of combat and lots of sex. There's a market for both.
I
was amused when I heard that Ringo's mother had written him out of her will because she recommended her son's book to patrons at her beauty salon, quite unaware of what sort of book it
was, and was unpleasantly surprised when they told her.
(And if you look, I think you'll find most BDSM fiction published these days is written by female authors for a female audience, and tends to be shelved in the Romance section. In the genre, consider the popularity of Jacqueline Carey's "Kushiel" series. Her protagonist is a masochist, and Carey has gotten complaints from female readers that she doesn't go far
enough, and tends to have the action take place behind closed doors and not explicitly described. The series is popular enough that Tor has an editor specifically looking for more books like that.)
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Dennis