Owing to the screen size of your device, you may obtain a better viewing experience by rotating your device a quarter-turn (to get the so-called “panorama” screen view).
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
Science-fiction & fantasy literature: a critical list with discussions.
You can get a site directory by clicking on the “hamburger” icon () in the upper right of this page.
Or you can search this site with Google (standard Google-search rules apply).
(Be aware that “sponsored” links to other sites will appear atop the actual results.)
Search term(s):
Welcome to the Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works web site!
You have apparently come to this page from a link on a search engine or another site. If this is your first visit here, I much recommend that you take a few minutes to look over the introductory material accessible via the red “Introductory” zone of the Site Menu available from the “hamburger” icon in the upper right of this (and every) page. An understanding of the purposes and principles of organization of this site will, I hope and believe, much augment your experience here, for this page and in general. You can simply click this link to get at the site front page, which, unsurprisingly, is the best place to start. Thank you for visiting.
This is a brief discussion of A. A. Attanasio and, of course, of some speculative-fiction books by Attanasio.
This discussion and list does not necessarily include every book by Attanasio: it includes only those books that I both know and like. Just as with the author list itself, omission of a particular item may mean I didn’t think highly enough of the omitted item, or it may simply mean that I have not yet sufficient familiarity with it. (In a very few cases, I have listed some books merely on the strength of my opinion of the author: all such books are clearly marked below, as throughout these lists, with a hash mark (#) before the title so you know what’s what.)
I don’t pretend that this discussion is a deep analysis. My intent is no more than to give you a rough idea of what kinds of tales Attanasio tells, how those tales are usually told, and what makes them and Attanasio worthy; in sum, to help you rank A. A. Attanasio (and the works by Attanasio listed here) on your personal literary “to do” list.
A Few Words About A. A. Attanasio
Regrettably, I have not yet had an opportunity to write an essay on this author, but the “Other Resources” section below will lead you to some information about the “Notable Books” listed farther down this page.
First off, there is A. A. Attanasio - the official website (Attanasio also has a separate blog, Snakewalk, but it has not been updated in over a decade.) There is also an Attanasio page at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. And there is also the “Rabbit Hole”, an online ’zine to which Attanasio is a major contributor. That seems to be it for significant pages.
There are, of course, various one-off individual-book reviews. As I began sorting through those, I was at first simply disappointed by by them; but after a while, the whole thing became remarkable. To put this in perspective, so it doesn’t seem as if Attanasio is just a wildly idiosyncratic taste of mine, works by Attanasio have been nominated in the category “Best Novel” of the year for the Nebula (Radix, 1982), the World Fantasy Award (Hunting the Ghost Dancer, 1992), and the British Fantasy Award (Arthor, 1995); yet a great number of reviews available on line express not merely dislike but almost rabid revulsion for the works they purport to review. Obviously, there is a major dichotomy between what, for want of better terms, we might call serious and amateur reviewers of Attanasio’s works. (That dichotomy springs, I reckon, from the complexity and depth of Attanasio’s works: neither the successful ones nor the less-successful ones are quick, easy “sci-fi reads”.)
The few reviews that seemed to have at least some critical utility—which does not mean that I agree fully with any or all of them—included those of Kingdom of the Grail at eNotes; of The Dragon and the Unicorn, Arthor, and The Perilous Order (the first three of the four-book “Arthor” series) by Simon McLeish at Simon’s Page [links are to archived copies]; of The Dark Shore and The Shadow Eater (Books 1 and 2 of the “Dominions of Irth” trilogy, not yet read here, written as by “Adam Lee”) by Robert Francis at The SF Site [links are to archived copies]; and of The Last Legends of Earth by Eric Raymond at Raymond’s Reviews.
Though normally I hate like poison to say it, here you may have to fall back on reader reviews at one or another Amazon division if you want to get a sample of opinions on Attanasio’s works (they seem generally quite positive, unlike most of the one-off amateur reviews elsewhere). Beyond those things, Google Is Your Friend.
This site is one of The Owlcroft Company family of web sites. Please click on the link (or the owl) to see a menu of our other diverse user-friendly, helpful sites.
Like all our sites, this one is hosted at the highly regarded Pair Networks, whom we strongly recommend—click the link to learn more. (To get 20% off on hosting fees if you move to Pair, use code pairref-FyXypEEk)
(Note: All Owlcroft systems run on Ubuntu Linux and we heartily recommend it to everyone—click on the link for more information).
) in the upper right of this page.
