Marko: "...and so, no, my Mil SF novel still hasn't sold."
Me: "Have you thought about putting in more lesbian bondage ninjas? It seems to work for S.M. Stirling; look at how many books he's sold."
Marko: "Actually, that's the title of the third book in my series: Terms Of Enlistment, Lines Of Departure, and Lesbian Bondage Ninjas."
I must be reading different Stirling books than you. Which series has the lesbian bondage ninjas?
ReplyDeleteThe Nantucket books. There was something along those lines in Go Tell The Spartans, too, if I remember...
ReplyDeleteI gave up on the Nantucket series halfway through the second book - something I almost never do. I just couldn't take the nonsense anymore.
ReplyDeleteHe did much better in the "Dies the Fire" series.
I lost interest in the Dies The Fire series after three books or so - the element of the fantastic that grabbed me in the beginning was gone, and all that was left was a pseudo-medieval political drama that doubled as a recruitment drive for wiccans and the SCA.
ReplyDeleteI did recently start his Shadowspawn series, though, and I quite like it.
As it happens, the primary antagonist can be not-too-inaccurately described as a 'lesbian bondage ninja.'
And I have no problem with any of those things.
Don't much care for Stirling. And felt his involvement with Pournelle weakened the brand.
ReplyDeleteAnd in the Dies the Fire ... series, the Portland Protective Association has a lesbian who rises to high rank as an assassin for the Queen Regent.
ReplyDeleteOh right, I had forgotten about the Sailor-Moon ninja troupe. Thanks for the reminder!
ReplyDelete-Kresh
Lesbian Bondage Ninjas?
ReplyDeleteWhile in my younger days I'd have answered something like "Yes, please!" or "Only if I can watch!" I can now only repeat the constant refrain of one Rocket J. Squirrel: "Again?" It's so played out now.
Whatever happened to the days of happily married heterosexual ninjas who found no reason to cheat due to mind-blowing ninja sex? Did all of that meme get used by Eric van Lustbader?
Is it wrong to be giggling while imagining gecko45 making a lesbian bondage mall ninja post.
ReplyDeleteGuardDuck,
ReplyDeleteI sure hope not, because I know I just did. :D
I thought that the lesbian ninja in the Dies The Fire series, Tifaine D'Ath or whatever her name was, was an interesting villain. More believable than the premise of the sreies, that's for sure! No gunpowder? Ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the series anyway, particularly the archery and mounted cavalry battles using modern nomenclature ("kill box"). But Tifaine D'Ath doesn't appear in the last couple of books, and she is missed.
Oh S.M. Stirling no?
ReplyDeleteGuardduck,
ReplyDeleteThat just totally kicked over my gigglebox.
My problem with Stirling's "Dies the Fire" is that Stephen Boyet did the same thing, better, 20 years earlier with "Ariel."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Ariel-Steven-R-Boyett/dp/0441017940/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1
Bonus points for the Gecko45 reference!
ReplyDeleteAhhhh. I am familiar with the couple in question from the Nantucket series, but I guess I must have higher standards for "ninja". And possibly for "bondage".
ReplyDeleteThey definitely had "lesbian" covered, though.
Well, yeah... but the Coast Guard captain would be more like a "lesbian samurai".
ReplyDeleteperlhaqr,
ReplyDeleteI am taking liberties by conflating traits of different characters. (Such as Alice Hong's ninjettes...)
Hey now. I demand my "lesbian", "bondage", and "ninja" all reside in the same character if we want to refer to "lesbian bondage ninjas"...
ReplyDeleteI'm a stickler that way.
*stickles*
Marko should collaborate with Phlemmy on a whole new sub-genre:
ReplyDelete"Lesbian Crazed Capuchininja"...
I confess that when I read Heinlein's "Friday" I put Tam's face on her.
ReplyDeleteLewis beat me to what i was going to say. My first thought regarding LBNs was "Oh John Ringo No!"
ReplyDeleteOn a slightly different tack:
ReplyDeleteTell Marko to get the book properly formatted and put it up on Amazon and B&N, then get you and Bobbi and others in the circle to publicize it.
Other than the effort to do so, there is no downside. Nobody's going to take away your birthday and send you to sea if it doesn't sell. If anybody at all buys it, that's a buck or two toward the ammo fund you didn't have before, and who knows, you might get lucky. I did.
Regards,
Ric
I obviously haven't read enough of such stuff yet, because every time I re-visit Tam's site this week, my eyes see "MILFs novel..."
ReplyDelete"So, there I was, patrolling the service corridor behind the Spencer's Gifts, hoping to find the mayor's nephew before it was too late. The Albanian gangs that ran the Sbarro had recently branched into human trafficking and those were some stone cold perverts with small hands..."
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I know how Marko feels. I've been trying for years to find a publisher for my Choose Your Own Adventure book based upon "The Pleasure Prison of the B'Thuvian Demon Whore." What a bunch of slack-jawed, bed-wetting editors!
Well, Tam, this post should generate some interesting google search hits for you.
ReplyDeleteI read the first three books in both series pertaining to the Alien Space Bats and their event, but had to give up on the Dies the Fire bunch after it just got too magicky for my tastes. Also, the constant reiteration of "by the way, the main female protagonist is a Wiccan" really got old for me. I don't have anything against Wiccans, I just got tired of reading about it over and over. She's got a different world view than people we usually talk to. I get it. In the name of the Goddess, let it go.
I was much more interested in the adventures of the Nantucket folk sent back in time, but that was probably due to my "construction porn" fetish as you discussed in an earlier post. Also, they had sweet, sweet firearms and steam power instead of being restricted to swords and steam that didn't expand for some reason.
Question: wouldn't that make rice hard to cook? Silly Alien Space Bats.
I second the above comment about Marko putting it up on Amazon. I'd love to read some military Scifi from him and I'm sure ye olde blogger nation could get him rolling with regard to stimulating reader interest.
WV: resess; I spend way too much of my resess time reading Tam's lesbian bondage ninja posts.
Tx, Nantucket just got sent back in time to the Bronze Age. The rest of the planet got the "All your physics are belong to us" effect.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking at the second series of Dies the Fire books as "usual Fantasy novel with interesting politics" rather than really a continuation of the first half, which had a lot more to do with dealing with the effects of the author's "I said no guns, damnit" physics effect.
ReplyDeleteHmm.I immediately thought of Gwendolyn Ingolfson when you mentioned Stirling and Lesbian Bondage Ninjas. You might not survive a date with that gal.
ReplyDeleteThere's a Mall down in San Jose that is chock-full of lesbian mall-ninja bondage get-ups - it's the shop with the swords and armor.
ReplyDelete@Rob Reed: exactly right. If an author uses someone else's idea as a story basis, he/she should be gracious enough to acknowledge the fact (or for legal reasons, at least allude to it). And while "Ariel" was fairly bad, at least Boyett grew up enough to admit how immature his early writing was. I doubt that we will see any such admission from Stirling.
ReplyDeleteStirling is unimpressive, at best. How about an apparently asexual female formerly in bondage makes ninjas look like brownies? John Ringo's Katrina in the Ghost series.
ReplyDeleteYou mean Whoreverine?
ReplyDelete