How old are Safehold fans?

Hi RFC

Take heart Sir !!!

"Wisdom comes with age" - - -

Mind you, sometimes age comes alone

{In my case, the jury's still out }

R
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pokermind wrote:Hi RFC

Your bio says you were at onetime planning on being professor, I had thought I might like to be too, and lucked out to teach a college level course. Had you done so you would have noticed the students stay the same age while you get older. Remember the old musical with Peter O'Toole Goodbye Mr. Chips where it is noted the teachers get older but the students are eternally youthful? With children your difference in age remains the same forever however, with students it gets larger yearly, and thus more depressingly. Perhaps God did you a favor by changing your life's carrier path

Poker

Nope. I gotta disagree. I've been working at universities longer than current grad students have been alive. Every year I swear that students keep getting younger all the time. How are their parents even letting them out of the house?

runsforcelery wrote:I'm flattered that you all took the time for this, but I suspect one reason for the skew "younger" towards Safehold is that the Honorverse has been along for so much longer. If you started reading those books with OBS in 1993 when you were 30, well . . . .

Perhaps. However, if the name on the cover had been other than David Weber, I would have passed on by. If I had not known the quality of the writer, it would not have appealed to me.

I had hoped that it would turn out that younger readers were also reading the Honorverse books, too.

pokermind wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
[Snip]

You're not making me feel any younger here, you know . . . .

Hi RFC

Your bio says you were at onetime planning on being professor, I had thought I might like to be too, and lucked out to teach a college level course. Had you done so you would have noticed the students stay the same age while you get older. Remember the old musical with Peter O'Toole Goodbye Mr. Chips where it is noted the teachers get older but the students are eternally youthful? With children your difference in age remains the same forever however, with students it gets larger yearly, and thus more depressingly. Perhaps God did you a favor by changing your life's carrier path

Poker

I did teach for two years while I was in graduate school, Poker, and you're absolutely right.

Oops...

runsforcelery wrote:

Donnachaidh wrote:This is a good point, I was in college when Off Armageddon Reef came out; I was in kindergarten when On Basilisk Station came out.

You're not making me feel any younger here, you know . . . .

SWM wrote:Nope. I gotta disagree. I've been working at universities longer than current grad students have been alive. Every year I swear that students keep getting younger all the time. How are their parents even letting them out of the house?

Rats, I'd hoped this thread would give me a chance to lie creatively about my age! And yeah, when I see the college kids walking past my window I wonder when universities started admitting kids who should be in Jr. High!

To paraphrase Mark Twain - "When I was 15 I thought my parents were the dumbest people on Earth. When I was 21 I was amazed how much they'd learned!"

To reply as one of the younger people.... i DID read the Honorverse-novels but i stopped with the last "main"-Novel. Its just that i have the feeling that the series has two major Problems which just doesyn't make it interessting for me anymore:

1. Honor is perfect

She simply can't do anything wrong and doesn't seem to have any faults at all and to top it off she can read emotions......
Hmm when i think about it Honor could despite all that still be an interessting character or be used interesting story-arcs if it wasn't for her social and political position which simply makes almost every plot i could think of right now implausible (I think rfc said something to this effect somewhere in the forums).

Well if you can't use that character just use another , it isn't as if there aren't enought pov-charakters..... which ties in with my other problem:

2. A lack of progress:

The whole story kind of stagnates with only minor progress with every single novell and sometimes i have the impression as if there isn't any progress at all. I know that that isn't the case but its very close and one of the reasons is the rehashing of the contents of the former novel(s) - which i don't need. I've read those! Including whole chapters that are identical!!! - and the many, many characters which are given screentime, and often not doing anything but explaining and expositioning what they will do, perhaps what they have done and why they do it and not in any short sentences or paragraphs but many pages and once i finish a chapter and think "What happend this chapter?" i have to come to the concluision: nothing at all or only a little bit.
Don't misunderstand me, it does give a new facet to the already existing story and thats important, of course, but its become way too much for to little actual action and or story-progression and the fact that there are so many pov-characters makes this an imho critical fault in the novels as there is almost no space left for actual story. The absolutley horrible rehashing of the events before the actual novels only makes it worse.

To give an example of what i mean:

I had the impression that the last two novells had the equivalent in story as the rescue of Iris and Davyn for one book and the movement off the troops from chisholm to and through ravensland (note WITHOUT the actuall transport to Sidarmark) for the other. And thats it. Way too little.

Well and thats the reason i'm no longer a fan of the Honorverse. Of course from around the books 5-7 it began to get strange as my point 1 was getting more and more prominent but at least the rest of the story was good.

Hmm that was more than i wantetd to say but thats my opinion.

KNick wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:I'm flattered that you all took the time for this, but I suspect one reason for the skew "younger" towards Safehold is that the Honorverse has been along for so much longer. If you started reading those books with OBS in 1993 when you were 30, well . . . .

Perhaps. However, if the name on the cover had been other than David Weber, I would have passed on by. If I had not known the quality of the writer, it would not have appealed to me.

I had hoped that it would turn out that younger readers were also reading the Honorverse books, too.

Hi RFC,

From an old fart on the Honorverse Forum on feeling the years ireced to you in How old are Honorverse fans?

robert132 wrote:
[Snip my quote quoting you]

runsforcelery wrote:
You're not making me feel any younger here, you know . . . . (end quote)

For RFC -
I discovered that "age" and "feeling old" are relative things when I was a 38 year old senior Petty Officer working for a 22 year old Ensign, so shiny new he squeeked as he walked up the brow and on to USS Nassau's Quarterdeck, making me feel like an old phart.

It's the duty of every senior NCO to train up the junior officers entrusted to his care, to watch over him without being a Mother Hen, encourage him to toddle along on his own, to wipe his nose and let him learn by making his own mistakes without allowing him to make the major ones that could really hurt him. To teach him how to look after the people assigned to his division, to stand up and take the rap when things go wrong without hanging the blame on some poor seaman when the decision that went wrong was the officer's and ensure credit goes to those who deserve it when things get done right and recognition is deserved.

I think Petty Officer (and later Warrant Officer) Harkness, in his own way, would agree with me.

Oh, that young officer? Today, 20 years later, he commands an Atlantic Fleet Aegis destroyer. He makes his "sea daddy" proud.

You ain't old RFC, you're just in a position to pass on life's lessons in your own unique and enjoyable way.

Thank you for that.

Icecold wrote:To reply as one of the younger people.... i DID read the Honorverse novels but i stopped with the last "main"-Novel. Its just that i have the feeling that the series has two major Problems which just doesn't make it interesting for me anymore:

1. Honor is perfect

2. A lack of progress

Here's how I view your objections to both series - and I do agree with your points - to a degree. RFC has addressed them, so here's his/my views about them. (If I may be so bold as to speak for RFC!)

1) RFC has noted that Honor is WAY too senior to be commanding fleets anymore - I expect she'll teach at Saganami, raise her kid and act as Steadholder Harrington, and eventually serve a stint as First Space Lord. She's already acting the part with the alliance following her advice in calling home their merchant shipping, then seizing the Solarian League's wormholes. We'll only see her in an advisory role from now on, not on the sharp end.

2) I'll admit I had the same impression of "A Rising Thunder." Lots of rehash, then it abruptly ended. I found "Shadow of Freedom" had very little rehash, the battles were satisfying and the plot hit the ground running. And the finale - it had me screaming "No, not yet! And for heaven's sake take Honor and the entire Eighth fleet with you!"

I'm willing to bet that once the three diverging lines in the Honorverse have been fully split, the rehashing will taper off quite a bit - the next Torch novel will have a lot of catching up to do, but since it doesn't affect the main line or the Talbott lines very much, we won't see much rehash from it in those future books.

We both agree that ART had a lot of rehashing, but the main thread had to catch up with the Talbott thread, and we saw the rehash from differing points of view. If RFC didn't have to keep his entire audience caught up on what had happened so far and make sure each novel can stand on its own as a complete story, I'd have loved it if he had just skipped ahead to the action! Unfortunately he didn't have that choice once he realized the story was simply too big to continue in one thread anymore. (Although a chapter or two of pulse-pounding action between the Solarian League and Beowulf would have been a welcome end to ART!)

If I understand your objections regarding the Safehold series, you're saying that there's lots of rehashing (or at least lots of talking and preparation and very little action.

Icecold wrote:To give an example of what i mean:

I had the impression that the last two novels had the equivalent in story as the rescue of Irys and Davyn for one book and the movement off the troops from Chisholm to and through Ravensland (note WITHOUT the actual transport to Siddarmark) for the other. And that's it. Way too little.

I gather that in HFaF all the attacks from Operation Rakurai didn't count as action? Paityr Wylsynn being brought into the inner circle? The revelation that the archangels will return in 20 years? Nahrmahn's death? The death march and execution of the Charisian POWs? The assassination attempt on Sharleyan? After that the rescue of Daivyn and Irys kicked in and we had a lot of fun until Siddarmark was attacked at the end.

MTaT had even more action, with the food lift to Siddarmark and the early skirmishes in Glacierheart. Nahrman returned. Then the war started, the Charisians arrived, and there were some GREAT battles. Oh, and the "weapons which shall not be named" destroyed the canal systems of northern Siddarmark and brought the invasion to a screeching halt in the north. I was certainly never bored!

My apologies if you didn't mean to imply that the Safehold novels are lacking in action and that you simply meant there aren't enough action threads to hold your interest. If you've read the entire series, there are plenty of "Whoa!" moments without swashbuckling and derring do. I enjoy the personalities, the dynamics between the characters, and the sheer emotion of the good vs. evil when both sides think they're on the side of God and the Archangels, although anyone with a functional brain cell and the proper information knows who the bad guys are. Unfortunately most of the planet doesn't have that information, so they think they're fighting on the side of the angels - even though they're siding with the bad angels, but of course they don't know that.

To each his own I suppose, but I find Safehold fascinating on so many levels. The Honorverse is more political, although it also has its moments of heart-stopping action.

RFC, keep on writing and we'll wait as fast as we can!

Hi pokermind

Here is a definition that I like - -

"Old age is 20 years older than you are"

R
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