I’m giving the page a second section because page 1 was starting to behave oddly.
As always, wait at least 30 days from issue of the book before starting to discuss. And give our overseas friends some extra leeway: the distribution system doesn’t reach everywhere as fast!
Hello all! I am still enjoying my “archaeological dig” (reread) through the series and it occurred to me to pose this question to everyone: Atevi fastfood?!? What would this be, any guesses? Fish and chips? Would they have the Kaibu selection of the season? (sort of like the oscillating appearance of the McRib?)
After sharing so many excellent and kaibu meals (especially at the dowager’s table) one is horrified as a reader to contemplate it! 🙂
Contemplate fish tacos 😉
Any word on when DAW expects to release Precursor, Defender, Explorer as eBooks?
I know they’re working on it—it’s no easy task to convert a pdf to css and get the headers and divisions to behave. When we do it, it’s about a week long job.
I know you guys don’t have time to follow the discussions on MobileRead, so I’ll just summarize the word on PDF conversion as “It’s a ….! Almost any other format is a better place to start!” When I do a book scan, I work up an RTF file, and then export an HTML file for each chapter. Then I have several scripts I run, and zip it up. Then I read through it and make sure it comes out OK. That’s what takes the most time – not counting all the read-throughs correcting OCR errors – that does take days for the average book. HarryT spends an hour or two each day and takes weeks to go through a Dickens book, word by word, comma to full-stop.
We start (on one of our own) with Word Perfect >PDF, then WP > HTML, then HTML to prc/mobi; and prc to epub, and then from prc to all others. I long for the day when we get down to a handful of formats.
I am ever so cross. I went to the Amazon U.K. site to try to order Intruder and saw that it was ‘out of stock’. How can this be before a book is even released? It was listed as due to be published on 6 March 2012 for many months, but now cannot be bought on the U.K. site!
I notice that the book is still listed on the Amazon U.S. site as available from 6 March.
I’d really built up my expectations for the book, so I am not best pleased. I know one can obtain copies of the book from the U.S. via Bookfinder, etc, but that will take time. 🙁
I have ordered my paperback ‘reading’ copy of Betrayer, but was hoping to order both books at the same time.
Does anyone know what is happening to Intruder in the U.K?
I wouldn’t worry too much about that. “Out of stock” seems to be the normal state for US books that are a week or two from their release date, and most of the time they come back once the release date arrives. I have mine on pre-order, and I haven’t had any word that there’s a problem.
Thanks very much for the reassurance, ellarien. Now that I think about it, I do believe the same thing happened with the hardback edition of Betrayer last year.
I have, however, complained to Amazon UK about this, just in case. 🙂
On another tack, I notice that the next title in the sequence is 80 per cent complete. Hope DAW use the same illustrator for the cover as has been used for the latest titles. Betrayer (by the same illustrator) looks a bit too rushed, though the composition is great. My favourite so far is the cover for Deceiver because it shows Bren’s Assassin’s so well – as how one would imagine them, in fact. Each one has different facial features, showing character (something that cannot be said for humanoids in Michael Whelan’s work, though he was an ace book illustrator in many ways). I do like the cover of Intruder very much, but find the Deceiver cover more interesting because it focuses on the personalities that I find most interesting in the books.
Also would wish DAW could publish the next title sooner than in another year’s time – though not at the expense of the cover illustration, of course…
Got my copy of Intruder at 1.30 today. Dropped everything and have just finished it. Made my day- thank you!
That’s 5.25 uk time.
Well??? Any comments? Is it ‘good’?
I’ve just had a notification that my copy is being sent today. Can’t wait.
Well, I just logged on to Amazon and it won’t arrive till the 6th (sigh …)
I actually cancelled my order with Amazon because of the uncertainty surrounding the book’s arrival stipulated on the UK website, and ordered the book from another supplier, who said he had the books in stock.
I’m hoping to get the book within the next couple of days, given that the supplier said the book had been posted today.:)
Mine was shipped out from Amazon UK today, ETA Wednesday, but there’s always a chance that it will get here more quickly. Whenever it gets here, I’ll probably drop everything else I’m reading and plunge in.
Loved it – will say no more- don’t want to spoil it for anyone. About to start the second careful read through. Glad it was a day I could stop and just read it- wasn’t expecting it til next week, when I wouldn’t have been able to indulge. Housework can always wait. Got it from Amazon so perhaps worth bearing with their idiosyncrasies?
Thank you for the feedback. Unfortunately, I’m no longer freelance (for the moment), but working full time, and cannot in all conscience pull a sickie in order to read the book (though I’m still thinking of doing so!). I may just savour it over a few days after it arrives, then reread it, because with these books I pick up more each time I read them.
So, have the Kyo arrived, then? (Don’t answer that.) 🙂
Wouldn’t dream of letting on what happens- had it done to me and it’s far more satisfying to come to it with no idea! I ordered it as soon as I saw it on the website- might a/c for the early reciept?
Funnily enough, it doesn’t bother me too much to know small details of a book before I read it. When I get hold of a book I like and read it for the first time, I inevitably check the last few pages so that I broadly know the ending – otherwise the suspense is too much. It doesn’t spoil the reading experience for me.
While working in Covent Garden, I often used to visit Murder One, a bookshop in Charing Cross Road that had crime novels on the top floor, and a wonderful selection of SF on the entire lower floor – including old second-hand books. One could spend hours browsing through the books and coming out with several choice ones. Before choosing novels, I always checked the endings. It somehow helped me to assess the overall book. Unfortunately, that bookshop has now closed, among so many others in London. Waterstones seems to be the only bookshop that is functional, but the selection in that chain is pretty worthless to me. One’s choice of books seems to have become very restricted following the demise of bookshops…
Oh, I remember Murder One! I spent many happy Saturday afternoons down there in my London years. They had a pretty good selection of American editions, many of which weren’t easy to come by otherwise in the pre-Amazon age (short of physically going to the US, which I was doing quite often at that stage).
Virtually all my SF reading has been of books by American authors, and Murder One was the place where I chose my favourites over the years. They included Andre Norton (very ‘naive’, simple little books, the best really quite good, with some lovely Ace covers from the Golden Age) and James White (actually, wasn’t he Irish?).
I haven’t yet come across a really good British SF author – well, apart from Arthur C. Clarke, but I find even his work too ‘simplistic’ nowadays. The most recent British author I’ve found has been Peter Hamilton, but his books are excessively long (1,224pp for one volume), and also too ‘cold’ for my liking – and there is very little character development.
With the exit of Murder One, I don’t think I will be discovering more SF authors, since I was always extremely careful about choosing which books to buy, the decision being based on browsing through the contents, and getting a feel for the titles, something I cannot really get online (don’t trust feedbacks).
This is where your local public library helps. You don’t care for something? Ditch it and make a note of the author.
AN got me started reading SF back in the second grade. I still own all her books. Went back recently and reread a lot of them. Was impressed with how well they held up, particularly (curiously enough) her earliest, for all the Witch World books tend to be those people point to. I actually felt, reading them through this time—the first time I’ve read them since I began writing—that those were some of her least successful, except for the first one…which was really disappointing since I remembered Crystal Gryphon very fondly. I still like them, I just find myself massively rewriting them in my head…which isn’t true of the early ones.
Not familiar with Peter Hamilton’s work, but I have to admit, I’ve never understood how anyone can write a book that long and not have character development. Unless it’s really padded and/or filled with endless description.
And since I can’t read them without falling asleep, I guess I never will know! 😀 😀 😀
Curiously, I’m not good at deciding based on a front end excerpt. My favorite books often start a little slow because it takes time to set up a complex book. Being able to thumb through a novel lets me read a line here and a paragraph there and determine whether or not the author ever gets past that and into real story, and also whether or not there’s character development.
I wondered whether anyone could help. I can’t find a way of substituting the octopus thing that introduces my posts with a picture of my own. Have checked the site, but couldn’t find any info relating to this.
If anyone could assist it would be appreciated.
@Sapphire: Look in the left sidebar, under Where to get an avatar. Follow the link to Gravatar and upload your picture there under the same Email address you use for your membership here, according to their instructions. In a little while your picture will follow you back to this site, and elsewhere on the internet on Gravatar-enabled sites where you use the same Email address.
Creating a Gravatar now you’re already a member means it can take a little while before it changes here (I think the longest I’ve heard of was two days, the shortest about an hour).
This is what someone on the main blog was talking about, a few days ago – I guess it wasn’t quite clear that the mention of Gravatar was the answer to this question (asked by someone else), which is why I’m being wordy about answering (as usual).
Fantastic – thank you for your response. I will try to post a picture anon (though it probably won’t be of my wonderful, magical cat who died several years ago, since he featured on the cover of one book and also inside several and might be recognized by someone!).
Thank you, again. 🙂
Jane: with regard to Andre Norton’s books, I never did get into the Witch World series beyond the first one (they weren’t really SF to me, although from memory I believe the main character transfers from Earth to another dimension in the first book). AN’s best books for me were the ones that featured aliens such as the Zacathans – one of her best in this lot was The Last Planet. But her books really read like children’s novels nowadays.
With regard to Hamilton, I do believe there is a huge amount of padding in his work, and he also lets his stories run away from him – they just become too tangled. Around 400 to 550pp is about right for a decent SF novel (you also don’t want it to be below c. 350pp.
Agree totally with your comments about the way one assesses books – that’s exactly what I used to do when there were bookshops with good stocks of SF titles.
Tulrose suggested that a local public library can help. However, even disregarding the fact that many public libraries are closing in the UK, in my experience such libraries never contained up-to-date stocks of SF. Their stock was always very limited in all categories.
@Sapphire. It’s strange how much variation there was in public libraries in the UK. The ones in the North East of England when I lived there went out of their way to promote it. I remember them scheduling events with Brian Aldis, Terry Pratchett, Bob Shaw and Raynor Unwin amongst many. One time the local library even ran an exhibition of Tolkien’s letters. I think I must have met about 15 or 16 wrtiters over the seven or eight years.
Then coming to London and finding that SF was relegated to a cupboard watched over by a stern faced security type librarian was a less than welcome shock.
Oh and Also agree about the Hamilitons…especially after going through one trilogy of close to two thousand pages to see how he would solve the problem and God turned up and pressed the reset button. That was the last time I touched one his books.
Many of Norton’s books read like “children’s novels” because they ARE children’s novels. I think the marketing category was “Young Adult” back in the day. All of her works prior to Witch World were written for young readers. If you look closely you’ll see that WW is her first book with a female character as a major player.
As nearly as I can determine, Norton wrote the kind of book that she liked to read, and the YA market was steadier income that trying to sell adventure stories to Campbell, Boucher, or Gold. She started writing Boys Adventure books, then Boys Science Fiction Adventure books, and then Science Fiction Adventure books. The step from BSFAB to SFAB was never a large one, but I don’t’ think her fans wanted a large step…
Indeed – I would say they were aimed at the teenage market of that time, as were many of Arthur C. Clarke’s early novels, for example, like The City and the Stars.
SF has grown up since those days, and become more sophisticated. I still like the simplicity and the cracking good storylines of some of those early titles, but don’t find them nearly as satisfying as more complex books such as CJ’s. I can read one of Andre Norton’s books in less than a day. It doesn’t really leave any deep, lasting impression and is largely forgettable, even though one remembers scenes from her best books for a long time and gets a generally pleasant feeling from reading her work.
I became a fast reader when a kid in the Far East – nothing else to do really during the monsoon. For a short period when I was 15 and was laid up with a cold that wouldn’t go away I went through 15 books a day. Because of the amount of books I needed to satisfy my appetite I’d read anything. Didn’t matter what it was from Romantic drivel to Chaucer in original text. Good SF was always my favorite though. Still is!
So the way I assess when browsing in a bookshop is I just pick up a book and read all of it. If I like it I buy it and any other books by that author. I had a pretty good comprehension for the speed went at – although there was a processing delay. An alarm would go off in my head and I’d have to back track – what I’d usually find was a typo or bad grammar, sometimes even plot conflict(especially for book series)- Usually about 20 pages back from when the niggle hit my conscious processes.
Agree with you all re the later Hamilton books … way to long for the content. The early ones are OK though.
I didn’t read books all the way through in bookshops – just scanned through them to get the basic storyline. As you say, ‘alarms’ occurred, with me almost subconsciously, typos stood out, and if an ending wasn’t satisfactory (to me), the book would not be bought. I too read extensively as a child (sometimes went to the library every day and got four books out each time), and SF was definitely my favourite genre. Perhaps it’s the sense of wonder that’s an attraction?
I ditched a lot of books using the ‘scanning’ selection process, but once I hit on authors I liked, I would buy all/most of their books, eventually getting rid of the ones that didn’t grip me, and which I knew I wouldn’t read again. The SF authors whose work I have on my bookshelves include:
C.J. Cherryh;
Bujold (Vorkosigen novels only);
James White (the hospital books with all those aliens and well-crafted stories, and the interesting Watch Below, an early book of his);
Dan Simmons (Hyperion cantos is amazing, though would dread reading his books again because his work is so nasty and ‘cold’, and may dispose of them);
Andre Norton;
Elizabeth Moon (her military SF only);
Sheri S. Tepper (the best ones only);
Joan D. Vinge (Catspaw, etc);
Alan Dean Foster (the early Iceriggers and Flinxes). He does churn them out, but the best of the Commonwealth novels are decent light reads.
There are SF books/authors that have been praised by many, but I simply cannot engage with them (also do not like dystopian fiction).
With regard to Hamilton, agree about the early novels, which are shorter than the later ones. Mindstar Rising, etc, are quite readable, but not top SF for me.
Still waiting for Invader (drumming fingers impatiently on work surface)…
I agree with everyone about Peter Hamilton. The early ones are the best and much as I love SF I can’t even bear to open his later ones. Also, the best of Sheri Tepper is very good indeed but you have to pick and choose. Joan D Vinge’s Catspaw series is a favourite and I devoured James White early on. I recently went back and re-read John Wyndham’s “The Trouble with Lichen” to see if it was as I remembered from 1960, and it was.
I must be very lucky in my local library system. If they don’t have what I think may be interesting for $1 I can send for it through inter-library loan. It may take a while to get to me but eventually it will come through. I’ve had SF books show up from some surprising library systems, one of which was Georgetown University.
*sniff* Ah…well…
😀
I’m actually a very slow reader, but I can…and could even before I began writing myself, tell from the tone of a book and the way the characters thought/spoke/reacted at random points throughout the book whether it was my cuppa or not. And as you said before, a hint of where it’s headed tells me a lot. For me, the most important part of a book is how they get there, not the actual ending, but the ending needs to imply a connection to the rest.
Even better are the books that promptly make me forget the ending in the puzzle of the story. That’s the kind with endless re-readability. Causality needs to be believable…but surprising, if that makes any sense.
I guess it’s fair to say for me the most important parts of a story are causality and motivation, preferably with lots of facets to both so that, until the last few pages, that ending isn’t obviously inevitable.
OK…time to go to bed. I don’t even know what I’m saying…*yawn*
Pretty much in accord with your list Sapphire. But read some authors back in the 80s who wrote some very good stories never to be seen again, to me at least. And its been so long ago that their names now escapes me – which bugs me sometimes.
Rawn’s ‘Dragon’ series was quite good & I also like Wurtz & Feist collaboration ‘…. of the Empire’ trilogy. Some of Brin’s work was also good as was the ‘Sunfall’ Trilogy of William James – I must google and see if he wrote anything else in the Universe. Modesitt’s ‘Recluce’ Saga is quite entertaining. The early books of the David Weber’s Harrington novels also appealed but now it drags on. He’d have been better killing her off when he intended and if people wanted more then filling out her early military career might have kept me. Of the recent crop I find Michael Z. Williamson (bar 1)& K. D. Wentworth solo efforts worth reading.
Meanwhile I’m twiddling my thumbs waiting for Invader. I think I’ll have to resort to drink this evening.
Another author whose early work was excellent is Julian May. The Saga of the Exiles sequence, Intervention and also the three books ending with Jack the Bodiless are well crafted and unusual. I like what she did with the Pliocene Epoch, as well as characters such as Uncle Rogi. Those books are all on my bookshelves, but nothing that May wrote after these books did anything for me.
I found David Brin’s work disappointing, apart from the Uplift War, which sits on my shelves. He has been much admired by some, yet his stories do not grip me.
All my paperback SF books sit on shelving I have in my study. They are arranged on the left wall, near to my work surface – so I can look at my friends while I am working. They are all of the same height and actually create a nice pattern in their alcove. The really special ones such as the Foreigner sequence, which I have in hardback (as well as paperback on my ‘SF shelves’), are on bookshelves in another room.
Let’s hope our copies of Invader arrive in a day of so (tomorrow would not be too soon).
Ah yes, Andre Norton: a number of us have shared fond remembrances of her works on this blog several times. First Sci-Fi book I read was her Time Traders. I had already decided I wanted to be an archaeologist and her time machine taking our heros back into European pre-history — it still is utter, transportative magic. The first Witch World book holds up, as Jane said, superbly well: the plot and characters just pull you along in her unique way to make the place feel real (without much heavy description: wish I could master that). The second witch world book is pretty good too. I don’t know her book The Last Planet, though, and will need to go find it.
I’m mulling over re-reading for the nth time Lewis’ Narnia series. No, not Sci-fi, but in I love British fantasy writers. We lost a lot with the death of Diana Wynne Jones a year ago.
The Last Planet was an alternate title for Star Rangers, as I recall. Maybe for the Ace double edition? When I first got into SF, I was a member of the Andre Norton Fan Club…I was Kartr. Bwahahaha. I’ve always wanted to do a painting of him with his striped hair.
I pretty much owe my association with Carolyn and so my whole writing career to Andre and Kartr. As a kid, I wrote to her (through Ace) and (wanting to sound clever and not just gushy fan-girl) I asked her (a) about the pronunciation of Kartr’s name, (b) what it was about the statues ears that made her “clearly not of Ylene.” (Carter and They were rounded. Kartr’s are “vaguely pointed”. :D)
Her prompt and kind response helped me realize that authors were real people, and was a reason that, many years later, I had the nerve to write to CJ.
I did several drawings of Kartr over the years—he aged with me—but this was the last and so probably definitive one:
http://www.janefancher.com/htmfiles/boxes/ArtBox/GLGs3.htm
(you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page—the fellow at the top is Rinchen, from Lynn’s Beneath the Web)
Still in agreement Sapphire, Like early May and it was ‘Uplift’ I was thinking of for Brin. I think LOTR series & Hobbit were my first Fantasy stuff – age ~12 and read TLTW&TW shortly afterwards followed by Gardners’ ‘The Weirdstone of Brisingamen’ – The first Hardback book I went and bought myself with my “own” money. Sci-Fi was before that but who I’m not sure now maybe Verne? Norton et al. were also read in my youth.
Raesean I came to archaeology late completing an MA Single Honours Archaeology and a Cert. Field Archaeology (when I revered to my youth in the ‘naughties’) and returned to H.E. (Attended all the Freshers Week extravaganzas although I did avoid drinking live goldfish from a pint of beer – ah the folly of youth & a strong stomach!) – followed by an MSc(Information Technology) … also FSA Scot. Quite a few here seem to have an interest. I’d consider CJ one also. Did you take it up professionally?
The drink (25yo Single Malt) is finally catching up with me. And no Intruders in sight. Time for bed. Good night all.
Bob: I don’t generally read fantasy, but C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books were one of my first great discoveries on my trips to the local libraries (as purely gripping fantasy books without any hidden messages), as were the Gardener books – and the LOTR books are the only fantasy books I really love. My sister rates Ursula K. Le Guin, and yes, she writes well, but after the death of that little creature in one of the books, I never wanted to read any of her books again.
Archaeology: I completed a four-year University of London diploma in eastern Mediterranean archaeology a few years ago. I studied the Early to Late Bronze Age cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, so primarily the Minoans, Hittites, Mesopotamia and the Mycenaeans. I achieved distinction and managed to work with a professor in Turkey one summer, finalizing the report on a world-famous shipwreck that provided evidence of the extensive trading links between the Late Bronze Age civilizations, which extended to central Europe (probably through down-the-line trade in the case of the latter). I sometimes think that it is the mystery about these cultures that was the attraction to them. We will never really know how they functioned, since any written records that have been deciphered tell us little about them. I am tempted to go back to studying archaeology in these areas, but don’t think I would like to face writing as many intense essays as I did then. The standards at the Institute of Archaeology and the Institute of Classical Studies were pretty high.
No Intruders in sight yet for me, either. On the other hand, I did receive the paperback copy of Betrayer today, as well as the first-edition hardbacks of Defender and Pretender (one more to go). I wasn’t going to buy Pretender because of my dislike for the cover (I turn the book upside down every time I leave off reading it to avoid looking at the cover), but decided that I should have the complete set in hardback after all. Now my sister is also hooked on the Foreigner series.
Jane: yes, as you point out, Star Rangers was the alternate title of The Last Planet. My copy wasn’t one of the two-in-one books – it is a first edition dated 1953 (and signed by John Clute, who gave it to me, rather than by Andre Norton!).
Sorry – that’s Garner for Alan Garner, rather than Gardener. 🙂
I just checked. I stuck a “d” in Alan’s surname also – Why ??? I know how to spell it – My first book!
@Bob: Ooh, are you an FSA Scot (Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland?) My PhD is in Scottish Highland Social History (Social Organization of Clan Campbell via analysing lots of legal deeds). Alas, I am no longer professionally involved in archaeology. Funny enough, it was studying it during my masters at the University of Edinburgh that made me leave the field. In the States, archaeology and cultural anthropology are linked. Edinburgh’s world famous archaeology department completely stripped people and society out of the subject. I despise thinking of people solely as artifact typologies. So, I came back to the states, got a PhD in Celtic at Harvard (only place in the western hemisphere then to do it) looking anthropologically at the Highlanders and worked for those 10 years at Harvard’s Anthro and Archaeology, Peabody Museum. I got nominated to be an FSA Scot when I was in Edinburgh, but was a broke student and didn’t think I could afford the 10 quid (=pounds) yearly fee. Stupid. I teach Anthropology, archaeology and other topics that start with the letter A in the evening to college students still, though.
@Raesean Yes, I’m a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. If you wish I’d be happy to nominate you .. maybe you can afford the fee now? The yearly fee is a lot higher 60 quid I think … I’d have to check (I’ve set up a Direct Debit so whatever it is it just gets payed)… but (for those who don’t know) if elected the annual fee does include the annual Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (non UK residents postage is required)and of course your entitled to append FSAScot. Past Proceedings are available on the ADS website at York Uni for free but you’ll have to register on their website.
@Sapphire That goes for you too .. if your interested?
Anybody else who is a member of WWAS and can demonstrate to me that your request to be nominated is valid i.e. you have a demonstrable antiquarian interest. I’d be happy to nominate you also. But don’t reply or post here I’ll ask CJ if she could set up a page on which you can post a comment if you interested in being nominated or arrange for some way that we can be put in direct contact. I’ll have to know who you really are and we’ll have to correspond. Two sponsors are required … is another WWAS also a Fellow? and willing to second my nomination? If not I should be able to organize that.
Those with an interest might also want to check the RCAHMS website (Royal Commission Ancient & Historic Monuments Scotland. The Canmore DB is also freely accessible but again you have to register.
It is the 50th anniversary of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and that is the first science fiction story I remember reading. I may have read others before, but I do not remember them. Reading A Wrinkle remains one of the most significant events in my life (Tolkien when I was 15 going on 16 is another), the first time I really realized that a book could ground you, teach you, move you and change you.
When I was about 14, I discovered Andre Norton. Star Rangers aka Last Planet was a favorite and still is. Jane, I like your picture of Kartr. As a hero, he does wear well, doesn’t he. My other favorite was Judgment on Janus–does anyone else remember that one? I enjoyed the Witch World series, especially Sorceress of the Witch World and Year of the Unicorn. They are YA novels, true, but they have that sense of wonder and adventure that wears pretty well.
Has anyone else read the Witches of Karres or A Traveler in Time? (Rats, the authors’ names won’t come to me right now. . . When I remember, I’ll post)
I like Joan Vinge’s Snow Queen series and David Brin’s Uplift War and Startide Rising (what with the dolphin-crewed starship plus the haiku).
And, of course, there is Ursula K. Le Guin.
I am realizing that these books share the characteristic that I so enjoy about CJs stories, especially the Foreigner series: strong characters! People you would like to meet.
Witches of Karres by ___ Schmidt, if I sort of remember. Great, fun and silly read. I pull it out every few years for a re-read.
I got to download Intruder today on my Nook! Am in the middle of another book but will be reading it in a day or two! Can’t wait!
Sort of a P.S.–what is it with the pointed ears? Elves and Vulcans, atevi, Andre Norton’s Iftin on the planet Janus and, apparently, the people from Ylene, like Kartr, even David Brin’s Tymbrimi–they all are depicted, either in the text or in illustrations, as having pointed ears. CJ never described the atevi as having pointed ears, but the cover illustrations show pointed ears. . . Is it that we Terrans would find another shape of ear unattractive? We like rounded or pointed, but not square or greatly elongated? How about triangular?
Won’t some illustrator design us another type ear?
Just wondering. . .
LOL I’m thinking that was poetic license in the case of the atevi.