After reading the mentally taxing “Seven American Nights” I’ve decided to throw everyone a nice fun read, George R.R. Martin’s “Sandkings”.
Set in a futuristic setting, it falls somewhere between Sci Fi and horror, which makes sense coming from where I first read the story, a High School English elective class, Science Fiction/Fantasy and Horror/Supernatural. The teacher loved this story, and played it up a lot before allowing us to read it, and it was easily one of my favorite stories from the time.
Starring a man named Simon Kress, a pedantic and self centered man who is an avid collector of interesting animals. Owning many animals that would seem foreign to common readers, it opens on his home and a short background of him, leading up to the true focus of the story, the Sandkings.
I don’t want to spoil too much, but its a fun little story, with a lot less vague moments than our previous selection, but with lots of imagery and suspense.
Hope you all like it, I’ll let someone else open up serious discussion.
If I remember correctly, Sandkings was the first novelette to win both a Hugo and a Nebula award.
If you can’t read long epics, you need to pick up the Dreamsongs collection; two volumes of George R.R. Martin’s short stories, novellas, and even some teleplays when he was working in Hollywood. Tons of good stuff in there
(Dreamsongs was actually originally published in one volume called GRRM: A RRetrospective by a small, speciality press back in 2003; it was picked up by one of the big publishing houses and republished as two volumes last year. You can find Dreamsongs in any decent bookstore, but GRRM: A RRetrospective had a very small run and it’s hard to find. Back in 03, I stumbled on a handful of new copies at a college bookstore one day, bought one, and they were all gone within 24 hours.)
I haven’t read Sandkings yet, I’m not a part of this reading club business but I may as well check it out and see what you guys think. I’ve read most other stories in Rretrospective, my favorite being Unsound Variations for some reason.
I’ve read it. It’s pretty good, but I don’t think it’s THAT good. But it’s a good read. I forgot it was by GRRMartin though. I couldn’t get through the first book of Game of Thrones, but I did like Sandkings. Maybe I should check out his other short stories.
People’s complaints on Martin stem mostly from the fact that Ice and Fire has been very slow in coming.
In the short story format you don’t have to worry about his plots not coming to an end and can just enjoy the ride. He is an amazing writer with a vivid imagination, and Sandkings is probably one of the most notable examples of this.
There really isn’t a bad read in the entirety of Dreamsongs. If you were going to read just Sandkings I’d suggest just picking up this entire collection.
Yeah. I love the idea, and think it would make an awesome flash/indie game too. Though, like Lurb said, it’d also make an awesome Spore mod or something.
I remember reading it a while back and cannot for the life of me remember where.
Great story. I want it in playable form!
It’s hard to feel sorry for the protagonist. Not that we are supposed to, but I liked the way that the sandkings visage of him changes over time as they get to the heart of what he’s like on the inside. Truly his pets were his ego put on stage, and all he wanted to do was show off. I love his growing fear of the sandkings as they grow.
Based on liking Sandkings and not clicking with Thrones: if you can get hold of “Tuf Voyaging,” do so. It’s a collection of several episodic stories of one Haviland Tuf, an odd hermit fellow who falls into possession of a terraforming “seedship” that’s a galaxy-traveling library of all sorts of freaky alien lifeforms, the he uses to make a living. Solving a world’s food supply issues here, bringing down a dangerous cult there by being better at using the right flora and faunta to reenact the Biblical Plagues there, etc. It’s long out of print, I misplaced my copy long ago, and is one of those books that I still kick myself for losing, because it was one of the seed reads that made or cemented me as a sci-fi geek in the first place.
Hadn’t read Sandkings for a long while–I suspect I also first encountered it in Omni magazine way back when. It’s a fun read. I wonder if Martin toyed with the notion of making the carved faces predictive instead of merely a reflective reaction to Kress’ inner state–would have subtly changed the story up a bit if the sandkings had started carving images of him looking increasingly terrified, and then screaming etc., while he was still in nominal control of his castle.
