Begbie wrote:Didn't you write a story about entering a beard competiton and came second?
a) No
b) what the hell are you doing awake
c) my excuse is I've been painting kitchen cupboards, drinking and watching Prometheus (interesting film but possibly not as portentious as Ridley Scott may have liked, apart from not actually explaining why the Engineers grew the Aliens... but I haven't googled for knowledge yet).
d) It would take me six weeks to grow a beard, and I've already been told I'm not allowed to.
To enter into the spirit of things, though, I did read (and now own) an awful lot of Michael Moorcock [including both his Hawkwind novels, as actually penned by some bloke called Michael Butterworth), every word ever written by Roger Zelazny, a pile of Jack Vance and of course reams of Robert E Howard. And ER Eddison, and William Hope Hodgson. I have even read John Norman, to my shame. I believe I have read Lord of the Rings over 20 times and frankly I now regret the wasted time. I have read the Silmarillion, once, but suspect it might be better the second time around. I could not finish Nikolai Tolstoy's book about Arthur (the name escapes me), but then again I believe he finished it [the narrative] before the actual Arthur was born... And TH White, and Poul Anderson, and Andre Norton.
So I do kind of like fantasy but I like to see some inventiveness. I've got some ORc books whci I haven't read yet which I hope will show some. And a book of Tim Powers short stories, though they are more kind of supernatural.