LAST EDITED ON May-13-13 AT 07:21 PM (EDT)
>I'm a little sad about this, if only because historically I've
>generally tried for the opposite effect ("you didn't have to be
>there") with imported material, and in the past have had (or at least
>been told I've had) some success with it. If I've fallen down on that
>lately, that bears acknowledging.
>
>It's always been tricky - there's explication and then there's
>exposition - but I guess I used to be better at it. Hey, UF has always had a bit of "you had to be there" to it, right from the beginning. Back then it was an effect of using author avatars and friends as story leads. Having moved well away from that stage of writing years ago, now it's more a matter of the reader being familiar with the material or not, and as my cousin use to say, "big whoop on that"
It's on the reader to fill in the blanks, not the author (unless you really want to start doing something like David Weber's infamous 20-30 page mid-story data dumps of What Has Gone Before). If all readers don't get all the levels of the story, oh well. I've been perfectly happy knowing that I'm enjoying things differently from someone who knows the source material cold. If I want to know more, I can go look it up and ask questions, and it's not a big deal if I don't get all the jokes.
Like was said upthread, I didn't know much about RGU when they came on the scene - I do now. I've picked up more than a little Norse mythology too <g>
Just because the current story is more heavily imported from one source than any I can think of since the CSI stories doesn't mean anything more than the author's found a different fertile ground he's interested in. It certainly doesn't mean there's a problem with the story.
Besides, if there's something that needs explanation that badly, there are always Annotations :)
Jeanne
