Spinoff - Dinner Guests any five writers any time period

[Admin Pete]

(This thread was started by The Perilous Dreamer who was the Admin at the time. All the Admin posts prior to 2021 are by him.)

From the RJK interview.

Q: Five dinner guests. Which five writers (of any time period) would you invite to a dinner party?

RJK: Robert Louis Stevenson, J.R.R. Tolkien, Clark Ashton Smith, Ambrose Bierce and John Huston (who wrote 37 screenplays).

So I would like to ask the same question. Five dinner guests. Which five writers (of any time period) would you invite to a dinner party?


Mine would be: Edgar Alan Poe, Jack London, Joseph Alexander Altsheler, Robert E Howard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Edit: Changed this from six to five and see below.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

This is a fun topic! Let's see, my off the top of my head reply follows.

Brandon Sanderson: His magic systems and world building will make him a revered master of epic fantasy.

JRR Tolkien: It would be fascinating to pick his brain.

HP Lovecraft: Still the best horror I've ever read.

Gerald Gardner: I am fascinated by religions and the experience of their followers. For all practical purposes, he deserves most of the credit for what led to the modern day firm of Witchcraft/Wicca.

Nostradamus: Just for somebody funky. 😉

[robkuntz]

Dec 2, 2016 16:29:15 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

From the RJK interview.

Q: Five dinner guests. Which five writers (of any time period) would you invite to a dinner party?

RJK: Robert Louis Stevenson, J.R.R. Tolkien, Clark Ashton Smith, Ambrose Bierce and John Huston (who wrote 37 screenplays).

So I would like to ask the same question. Five dinner guests. Which five writers (of any time period) would you invite to a dinner party?


Mine would be: Alexandre Dumas, Edgar Alan Poe, Jack London, Joseph Alexander Altsheler, Robert E Howard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

You cheated with six...  I was going to add Poe but was forced to waffle at 5.

[Admin Pete]

Dec 2, 2016 17:52:23 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

Dec 2, 2016 16:29:15 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

From the RJK interview.

So I would like to ask the same question. Five dinner guests. Which five writers (of any time period) would you invite to a dinner party?


Mine would be: Alexandre Dumas, Edgar Alan Poe, Jack London, Joseph Alexander Altsheler, Robert E Howard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

You cheated with six...  I was going to add Poe but was forced to waffle at 5.

Apparently, I can't count today! Now I can't decide who I would drop off the list!

[Ronin84]

Mark Twain

H. Beam Piper

William Shakespeare 

H. P. Lovecraft

David and Leigh Eddings (They wrote together)

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Dec 2, 2016 19:05:30 GMT -5 Ronin84 said:

Mark Twain

H. Beam Piper

William Shakespeare 

H. P. Lovecraft

David and Leigh Eddings (They wrote together)

What can you tell me about the Eddings works? I read the first several books in The Belgariad years ago but got derailed; I think the library was missing the next book and I just never picked it back up but I always wanted to...

[Admin Pete]

OK I adjusted my first post back to five writers, so for second group of five dinners guests I would invite: Alexandre Dumas, Mark Twain, Robert Heinlein, Robert Louis Stevenson and Homer.

[Admin Pete]

Dec 2, 2016 21:16:54 GMT -5 The Semi-Retired Gamer said:

What can you tell me about the Eddings works? I read the first several books in The Belgariad years ago but got derailed; I think the library was missing the next book and I just never picked it back up but I always wanted to...

These I loved, they were a fun read, Leigh Eddings should have been credited on every book. A lot of the writing in all of his books has a strong Robert Heinlein vibe in some of the main characters and reminds me of Glory Road and Time Enough for Love. Most strongly in The Redemption of Althalus and in The Elenium and The Tamuli series, Heinlein could have written The Redemption of Althalus.

The Belgariad is Eddings' first fantasy series; The Malloreon is the sequel. The books follow the adventures of Belgarion, Polgara, Belgarath, their companions, and learning the Will and the Word.
The Belgariad series

Pawn of Prophecy (1982)
Queen of Sorcery (1982)
Magician's Gambit (1983)
Castle of Wizardry (1984)
Enchanters' End Game (1984)

The Malloreon series

Guardians of the West (1987)
King of the Murgos (1988)
Demon Lord of Karanda (1988)
Sorceress of Darshiva (1989)
The Seeress of Kell (1991)

Books related to The Belgariad and The Malloreon

Belgarath the Sorcerer (1995) with Leigh Eddings
Polgara the Sorceress (1997) with Leigh Eddings
The Rivan Codex (1998) with Leigh Eddings

This is a bit different, but great fun and all of his book are a sources of ideas.

The Elenium and its sequel The Tamuli feature the Pandion Knight Sparhawk and his comrades.
The Elenium series

The Diamond Throne (1989)
The Ruby Knight (1990)
The Sapphire Rose (1991)

The Tamuli series

Domes of Fire (1992)
The Shining Ones (1993)
The Hidden City (1994)

The Dreamers series (written with Leigh Eddings) tells the story of a war between the Elder Gods and their allies and an entity known as the Vlagh.

The Elder Gods (2003)
The Treasured One (2004)
Crystal Gorge (2005)
The Younger Gods (2006)

As I said, think Glory Road for this book in some respects.

The Redemption of Althalus (2000) with Leigh Eddings

I did not care for his three non-fantasy books.

[Ronin84]

I just love the character of Sparhawk....

[Admin Pete]

Dec 2, 2016 22:47:12 GMT -5 Ronin84 said:

I just love the character of Sparhawk....

You and I both!

[Mighty Darci]

My first set of five dinner guests would be Emily Dickinson, Rudyard Kipling, Hector Hugh Munro aka Saki,  Antoine Galland, and Daniel Defoe.

[Admin Pete]

Dec 5, 2016 12:52:33 GMT -5 Mighty Darci said:

My first set of five dinner guests would be Emily Dickinson, Rudyard Kipling, Hector Hugh Munro aka Saki,  Antoine Galland, and Daniel Defoe.

Interesting list, I would hazard some great conversation out of that group.

[makofan]

Archilocus, Sappho, Christopher Marlowe, John Keats, ER Eddison

[Bandersnatch]

H. Rider Haggard, Abraham Merritt, Lord Dunsany, John Ruskin, Hans Christian Andersen

[The Master]

Samosata Lucian (Lucian's True History)

One frequently cited text is the Syrian-Greek writer Lucian's 2nd-century satire True History, which uses a voyage to outer space and conversations with alien life forms to comment on the use of exaggeration within travel literature and debates. Typical science fiction themes and topoi in True History include: travel to outer space, encounter with alien life-forms (including the experience of a first encounter event), interplanetary warfare and planetary imperialism, motif of giganticism, creatures as products of human technology, worlds working by a set of alternate physical laws, and an explicit desire of the protagonist for exploration and adventure.[8] In witnessing one interplanetary battle between the People of the Moon and the People of the Sun as the fight for the right to colonize the Morning Star, Lucian describes giant space spiders who were "appointed to spin a web in the air between the Moon and the Morning Star, which was done in an instant, and made a plain campaign upon which the foot forces were planted..." L. Sprague de Camp and a number of other authors argue this to be one of the earliest if not the earliest example of science fiction or proto-science fiction.[8] [9][10] [11] [12] However, since the text was intended to be explicitly satirical and hyperbolic, other critics are ambivalent about its rightful place as a science fiction precursor. For example, English critic Kingsley Amis wrote that "It is hardly science-fiction, since it deliberately piles extravagance upon extravagance for comic effect" yet he implicitly acknowledged its SF character by comparing its plot to early 20th century space operas: "I will merely remark that the sprightliness and sophistication of True History make it read like a joke at the expense of nearly all early-modern science fiction, that written between, say, 1910 and 1940."[13] Lucian translator Bryan Reardon is more explicit, describing the work as "an account of a fantastic journey - to the moon, the underworld, the belly of a whale, and so forth. It is not really science fiction, although it has sometimes been called that; there is no 'science' in it."[14]

Ancient Indian Author(s) name(s) unknown

Ancient Indian poetry such as the Hindu epic Ramayana (5th to 4th century BCE) includes Vimana flying machines able to travel into space or under water, and destroy entire cities using advanced weapons. In the first book of the Rigveda collection of Sanskrit hymns (1700–1100 BCE), there is a description of "mechanical birds" that are seen "jumping into space speedily with a craft using fire and water... containing twelve stamghas (pillars), one wheel, three machines, 300 pivots, and 60 instruments."[4] The ancient Hindu mythological epic, the Mahabharata (8th and 9th centuries BCE) includes the story of King Kakudmi, who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is shocked to learn that many ages have passed when he returns to Earth, anticipating the concept of time travel.[5]

Aristophanes

Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes has several works that include elements often associated with the "fantastic voyage", including air travel to another world. Examples include his The Clouds (423 BCE), The Birds (414 BCE) and The Peace.

Ancient Japanese Author(s) name(s) unknown

The early Japanese tale of "Urashima Tarō" involves traveling forwards in time to a distant future,[15] and was first described in the Nihongi (720).[16] It was about a young fisherman named Urashima Taro who visits an undersea palace and stays there for three days. After returning home to his village, he finds himself three hundred years in the future, where he is long forgotten, his house in ruins, and his family long dead.[15] The 10th-century Japanese narrative The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter may also be considered proto-science fiction. The protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war, and is found and raised by a bamboo cutter in Japan. She is later taken back to the Moon by her real extraterrestrial family. A manuscript illustration depicts a round flying machine similar to a flying saucer.[17]

Ancient Arabic Author(s) name(s) unknown

Several stories within the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights, 8th-10th century CE) also feature science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden and to Jahannam, and travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction;[18] along the way, he encounters societies of jinns,[19] mermaids, talking serpents, talking trees, and other forms of life.[18]

In "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the protagonist gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist.

Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them.[20] "The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an archaeological expedition[21] across the Sahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon once used to trap a jinn,[22] and, along the way, encounter a mummified queen, petrified inhabitants,[23] lifelike humanoid robots and automata, seductive marionettes dancing without strings,[24] and a brass robot horseman who directs the party towards the ancient city.
Arabic manuscript of the One Thousand and One Nights

"The Ebony Horse" features a robot[25] in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun,[26] while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncanny sailor.[25] "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse" can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction.[17][27] Other examples of early Arabic proto-science fiction include al-Farabi's Opinions of the residents of a splendid city about a utopian society, Zakariya al-Qazwini's futuristic tale of Awaj bin Anfaq about a man who travelled to Earth from a distant planet, and certain Arabian Nights elements such as the flying carpet.[28]

Alternate guests would be Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

[The Master]

Of interest??

Other medieval literature

According to Roubi,[29] the final two chapters of the Arabic theological novel Fādil ibn Nātiq (c. 1270), also known as Theologus Autodidactus, by the Arabian polymath writer Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) can be described as science fiction. The theological novel deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation, futurology, apocalyptic themes, eschatology, resurrection and the afterlife, but rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using his own extensive scientific knowledge in anatomy, biology, physiology, astronomy, cosmology and geology. For example, it was through this novel that Ibn al-Nafis introduces his scientific theory of metabolism,[29] and he makes references to his own scientific discovery of the pulmonary circulation in order to explain bodily resurrection.[30] The novel was later translated into English as Theologus Autodidactus in the early 20th century.

During the European Middle Ages, science fictional themes appeared within many chivalric romance and legends. Robots and automata featured in romances starting in the twelfth century, with Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne and Eneas among the first.[31] The Roman de Troie, another twelfth century work, features the famous Chambre de Beautes, which contained four automata, one of which held a magic mirror, one of which performed somersaults, one of which played musical instruments, and one which showed people what they most needed.[32] Automata in these works were often ambivalently associated with necromancy, and frequently guarded entrances or provideed warning of intruders.[33] This association with necromancy often leads to the appearance of automata guarding tombs, as they do in Eneas, Floris and Blancheflour, and Le Roman d’Alexandre, while in Lancelot they appear in an underground palace.[34] Automata did not have to be human, however. A brass horse is among the marvelous gifts given to the Cambyuskan in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Squire’s Tale". This metal horse is reminiscent of similar metal horses in middle eastern literature, and could take its rider anywhere in the world at extraordinary speed by turning a peg in its ear and whispering certain words in its ear.[35] The brass horse is only one of the technological marvels which appears in The Squire’s Tale: the Cambyuskan, or Khan also receives a mirror which reveals distant places, which the witnessing crowd explains as operating by the manipulation of angles and optics, and a sword which deals and heals deadly wounds, which the crowd explains as being possible using advanced smithing techniques.

Technological inventions are also rife in the Alexander romances. In John Gower's Confessio Amantis, for example, Alexander the Great constructs a flying machine by tying two griffins to a platform and dangling meat above them on a pole. This adventure is ended only the direct intervention of God, who destroys the device and throws Alexander back to the ground. This does not, however, stop the legendary Alexander, who proceeds to have constructed a gigantic orb of glass which he uses to travel beneath the water. There he sees extraordinary marvels which eventually exceed his comprehension.[36]

States similar to suspended animation also appear in medieval romances, such as the Histora Destructionis Troiae and the Roman d’Eneas. In the former, king Priam has the body of the hero Hector entombed in a network of golden tubes that run through his body. Through these tubes ran the semi-legendary fluid balsam which was then reputed to have the power to preserve life. This fluid kept the corpse of Hector preserved as if he was still alive, maintaining him in a persistent vegetative state during which autonomic processes such as the growth of facial hair continued.[37]

The boundaries between medieval fiction with scientific elements and medieval science can be fuzzy at best. In works such as Geoffrey Chaucer "The House of Fame", it is proposed that the titular House of Fame is the natural home of sound, described as a ripping in the air, towards which all sound is eventually attracted, in the same way that the earth was believed to be the natural home of earth to which it was all eventually attracted.[38] Likewise, medieval travel narratives often contained science-fictional themes and elements. Works such as Mandeville’s Travels included automata, alternate species and sub-species of humans, including Cynoencephali and Giants, and information about the sexual reproduction of diamonds.[39] However, Mandeville’s Travels and other travel narratives in its genre mix real geographical knowledge with knowledge now known to be fictional, and it is therefore difficult to distinguish which portions should be considered science fictional or would have been seen as such in the Middle Ages.

[The Master]

Consider also

Proto-science fiction in the Enlightenment and Age of Reason

In the wake of scientific discoveries that characterized the Enlightenment, several new types of literature began to take shape in 16th-century Europe. The humanist thinker Thomas More's 1516 work of fiction and political philosophy entitled Utopia describes a fictional island whose inhabitants have perfected every aspect of their society. The name of the society stuck, giving rise to the Utopia motif that would become so widespread in later science fiction to describe a world that is seemingly perfect but either ultimately unattainable or perversely flawed. The Faust legend (1587) contains an early prototype for the "mad scientist story" (and indeed would later be adapted as explicitly science fiction in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet).
Frontispiece of the 1659 German translation of Godwin's The Man in the Moone

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the so-called "Age of Reason" and widespread interest in scientific discovery fueled the creation of speculative fiction that anticipated many of the tropes of more recent science fiction. Several works expanded on imaginary voyages to the moon, first in Johannes Kepler's Somnium (The Dream, 1634), which both Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov have referred to as the first work of science fiction. Similarly, some[who?] identify Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638) as the first work of science fiction in English, and Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1656).[40] Space travel also figures prominently in Voltaire's Micromégas (1752), which is also notable for the suggestion that people of other worlds may be in some ways more advanced than those of earth.

Other proto-science fiction from the Age of Reason of the 17th and 18th centuries includes (in chronological order):

Shakespeare's The Tempest (1610–11) contains a prototype for the "mad scientist story".
Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), an incomplete utopian novel.
Margaret Cavendish's The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World (1666), a novel that describes an alternate world found in the Arctic by a young noblewoman.
Simon Tyssot de Patot's Voyages et Aventures de Jacques Massé (1710) features a Lost World.
Simon Tyssot de Patot's La Vie, Les Aventures et Le Voyage de Groenland du Révérend Père Cordelier Pierre de Mésange (1720) features a Hollow Earth.
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) contains descriptions of alien cultures and "weird science".
Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) in which a narrator from 1728 is given a series of state documents from 1997–1998 by his guardian angel, a plot device which is reminiscent of later time travel novels. However, the story does not explain how the angel obtained these documents.
Ludvig Holberg's Niels Klim's Underground Travels (1741) is an early example of the Hollow Earth genre.
Louis-Sébastien Mercier's L'An 2440 (1771) gives a predictive account of life in the 25th century.
Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne's La Découverte Australe par un Homme Volant (1781) features prophetic inventions.
Giacomo Casanova's Icosameron (1788) is a novel that makes use of the Hollow Earth device

[The Master]

More

Shelley and Europe in the early 19th century
Mary Shelley by Richard Rothwell (1840–41)

The 19th century saw a major acceleration of these trends and features, most clearly seen in the groundbreaking publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in 1818. The short novel features the archetypal "mad scientist" experimenting with advanced technology.[41] In his book Billion Year Spree, Brian Aldiss claims Frankenstein represents "the first seminal work to which the label SF can be logically attached". It is also the first of the "mad scientist" subgenre. Although normally associated with the gothic horror genre, the novel introduces science fiction themes such as the use of technology for achievements beyond the scope of science at the time, and the alien as antagonist, furnishing a view of the human condition from an outside perspective. Aldiss argues that science fiction in general derives its conventions from the gothic novel. Mary Shelley's short story "Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman" (1826) sees a man frozen in ice revived in the present day, incorporating the now common science fiction theme of cryonics whilst also exemplifying Shelley's use of science as a conceit to drive her stories. Another futuristic Shelley novel, The Last Man, is also often cited[who?] as the first true science fiction novel.

In 1836 Alexander Veltman published Predki Kalimerosa: Aleksandr Filippovich Makedonskii (The forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon), which has been called the first original Russian science fiction novel and the first novel to use time travel.[42] In it the narrator rides to ancient Greece on a hippogriff, meets Aristotle, and goes on a voyage with Alexander the Great before returning to the 19th century.

Somehow influenced by the scientific theories of 19th century, but most certainly by the idea of human progress, Victor Hugo wrote in The Legend of the Centuries (1859) a long poem in two parts that can be viewed like a dystopia/utopia fiction, called 20th century. It shows in a first scene the body of a broken huge ship, the greatest product of the prideful and foolish mankind that called it Leviathan, wandering in a desert world where the winds blow and the anger of the wounded Nature is; humanity, finally reunited and pacified, has gone toward the stars in a starship, to look for and to bring liberty into the light.

Other notable proto-science fiction authors and works of the early 19th century include:

Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville's Le Dernier Homme (1805, The Last Man).
Historian Félix Bodin's Le Roman de l'Avenir (1834) and Emile Souvestre's Le Monde Tel Qu'il Sera (1846), two novels which try to predict what the next century will be like.
Jane C. Loudon's The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827), in which Cheops is revived by scientific means into a world in political crisis, where technology has advanced to gas-flame jewelry and houses that migrate on rails, etc.
Louis Geoffroy's Napoleon et la Conquête du Monde (1836), an alternate history of a world conquered by Napoleon.
C.I. Defontenay's Star ou Psi de Cassiopée (1854), an Olaf Stapledon-like chronicle of an alien world and civilization.
Astronomer Camille Flammarion's La Pluralité des Mondes Habités (1862) which speculated on extraterrestrial life.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race (1871), a novel where the main character discovers a highly evolved subterranean civilization. PSI-powers are given a logical and scientific explanation, achieved through biological evolution and technological progress, rather than something magical or supernatural.

C.I. Defontenay's Star ou Psi de Cassiopée (1854), an Olaf Stapledon-like chronicle of an alien world and civilization is an (IMO) good read, although I think the translation could have been done a bit better.

[Mighty Darci]

Dec 6, 2016 14:59:14 GMT -5 The Master said:

Samosata Lucian
Ancient Indian Author(s) name(s) unknown
Aristophanes
Ancient Japanese Author(s) name(s) unknown
Ancient Arabic Author(s) name(s) unknown
Alternate guests would be Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

Truly there is nothing new under the sun.

[robkuntz]

This post is <----New...

[Deleted]

Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Paul

[Deleted]

Also, "Forbidden Planet" isn't "Faust," it's "The Tempest."

[hengest]

Philip Dick
Julian of Norwich
St. Basil the Great
Owen Barfield
J.R.R. Tolkien

[mao]

N no particular order

Lovecraft
Howard
Serling
Vance
( the guy that wrote"Hammers Slammers")

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Sept 3, 2020 22:09:21 GMT -5 mao said:

N no particular order

Lovecraft
Howard
Serling
Vance
( the guy that wrote"Hammers Slammers")

"Hammers Slammers" would be David Drake, I have read and enjoyed that book.

[simrion]

Glen Cook
Gene Wolfe
Edward Whittemore
Poe
Gary Gygax!

[karaunios]

Homer (assuming he existed)

Hesiod

Chretien de Troyes

J.R.R. Tolkien

R.E. Howard

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Sept 13, 2020 2:05:09 GMT -5 karaunios said:

Homer (assuming he existed)

Hesiod

Chretien de Troyes

J.R.R. Tolkien

R.E. Howard

You doubt the existence of Homer!!

[karaunios]

If it were up to me, he's existed, but many historians say he didn't, because the Iliad is written in several Greek dialects. But others say that he preferred to compile all of them as he heard them to keep the tone of the work.

I prefer the second approach!

[Admin Pete]

This Admin - Vladimir, The Dark Prince

My list would be
Homer
Aesop
Jules Verne
H. G. Wells 
Mary Shelley