The Many Worlds of Martha Wells: 25 Years of Fantasy Novels Before Murderbot
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- Опубліковано 8 бер 2022
- Martha Wells is probably best known today for her recent Hugo and Nebula award-winning Murderbot Diaries series. However, she's been writing speculative fiction for 30 years, and her earlier fantasy novels are wonderful and deserve more attention.
Her worldbuilding skills are well-honed, and she creates radically different worlds or settings in her books, many of which are standalone (!!!) novels.
I highly recommend exploring her works!
0:20 Murderbot Diaries
1:14 Martha Wells' worldbuilding & style
2:24 The Element of Fire
3:35 City of Bones
7:50 The Death of the Necromancer
9:49 Wheel of the Infinite
12:43 Books of the Raksura
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angiemyst
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Arizona State University
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This channel is perfect to discover good quality novels and authors
It deserves a much larger audience
Thanks for sharing with us
Thank you! I'm trying to shine a light on a lot of older or overlooked classics that deserve to be read.
This is the first time I’ve come across this channel, but the review was high quality, spoiler free and spoken with a narrative voice I could listen to all day. A lucky find - I’m off to check out what else the library ladder has got…
Thanks, and welcome aboard! I hope you find more that you enjoy.
Like many people I'm a huge fan of Well's Murderbot series, but my first exposure to her writing were her Raksura series. I really enjoyed her characters and world building in these books. Now I'm interested to read some of her other books.
Great! That's exactly what I hoped to do with this video -- get readers interested in more of her early works.
Discovered the rest of her work after reading Murderbot (which I love and can't wait for more of). She is brilliant at world building in remarkably few words.
I agree about her worldbuilding skills. It's a shame it's taken so long for her to garner serious recognition.
That’s cool that you senses some of Wells in the Broken Earth trilogy. Jemisin is on record as being a pretty hardcore fan of Wells. In fact, I first heard about wells back when I first discovered Jemisin’s Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and saw an interview in which she raved about the Raksura books, and she’s consistently praised Wells over the years, so even though she’s never suggested Wells influenced aspects of Broken Earth, I’d say you’ve got a pretty solid case there.
I need to read more Wells. I’m finally reading Murderbot and I’m finding them amusing to read while I walk to/from campus. This video makes me want to read some of her fantasy, someday :)
Thanks, Paul. The connections between the works of Wells and Jemisin are subtle rather than overt. It reminded me a lot of how G.R.R. Martin has stated that he was inspired to write ASOIAF after reading Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy. Their plots are quite different, but elements of Williams' trilogy clearly echo in the first couple of ASOIAF books.
@@thelibraryladder That’s often the best expression of navigating one’s influences. There’re other ways, but when an author can maintain their own vision without succumbing into their influences, it strengthens both texts. I haven’t read Williams or Martin, but as another effective example: Earthsea is greatly indebted to Lord of the Rings, but it still stands firmly on its own. Sounds like Jemisin is similarly capable of navigating her influences :)
Great rundown! I found Wells through the Books of the Raksura -- so wonderful and rich; I've read them over and over. Now I'm on my second read through of the Murderbot Diaries so I can enjoy the latest, System Collapse, with a fresh perspective. City of Bones is my favorite of her stand-alones. Her writing style really speaks to me.
Thanks! As you can tell from my video, I'm a big fan of her books too. :)
Thank you very much for another amazing video. You are by far the best at giving an overview about the works of an author. Please continue your wonderful work.
Thank you for those very kind words!
Murderbot series made me a better person. I can't wait to read the earlier books. :)
The Murderbot books are a unique exploration of what it means to be human. I hope you enjoy the rest of her works as much as I do!
While I adore Murderbot (and everything else Wells has ever written), the Raksura series will always be my favorite. And, no, it does NOT disappoint.
Murderbot left me in stitches so many times. I will have to check her other works once I'm done working through GGK
Wonderful!
Martha Wells needs more BookTube love!! She is fantastic.
Incredibly insightful video, thank you for such a competent introduction to Wells’ fantasy works.
Thank you! I'm very glad you enjoyed it.
To me Wells has the same energy as C.J. Cherryh: Vivid anthropological detail and a willingness to focus on non-human societies and characters -- both of which feel very out of fashion in the current SF/F milieu. Some of my favorites.
I'm obsessed with the Murderbot series and have the Raksura books om my TBR. I highly enjoyed learning about her standalone novels, as I didn't know much about them. Great video, thanks!
Thanks! Wells writes in so many different fictional worlds that incorporate elements from different genres, that it's hard to know where to start. Personally, I think reading her works in the order she wrote them works well, as it allows a reader to acclimate to her style of storytelling while her writing gets progressively more polished and thought-provoking with each book.
The Wheel of the Infinite is one I’ve been meaning to try for awhile. I haven’t read anything by her yet.
I hope you enjoy her books as much as I have. Thanks for watching!
Just found your channel and am looking forward to more of your fantasy content!
Thanks! There’s plenty more fantasy content coming, and I plan to include some other favorite genres of mine as well.
Fantastic video! As of today, I have only read The Death of the Necromancer from her pre murderbot books. Enjoyed it very much. Plan to read all of Raksura this year. So happy that Wells is getting recognition.
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I need to finish reading the Raksura series, myself.
Also read her Fall of Ile Rien trilogy. Lots of adventure and fabulous characters.
She has a similar background to Steven Erikson. I just read the 1st Murderbot book and found it good, but didn’t hook me enough to keep going with the rest of the series. Sounds like I might like her earlier books better.
Thanks for sharing. Stylistically, her Murderbot books are quite different from her earlier fantasy novels, which don't feature cyborg existential brooding and mordant humor. Her fantasy books have more traditional narrative voices.
I really enjoyed the raksura series - have abought the lot : )
Thanks for sharing your experience! I need to finish reading the series. :)
I am so impressed with your videos!! High quality and almost seems pbs of sci fi/fantasy. Keep it coming
Thank you! Fantasy is my favorite genre, but I enjoy many others as well. I plan to start producing similar videos focused on classics from other genres soon (e.g., science fiction, mystery, horror, children's books, etc.).
So much of BookTube is focused on the latest and most popular books and authors. Instead, I'm trying to shine a spotlight on lesser known classics that are at risk of being overlooked or forgotten.
I agree. Well done.
I have wanted to do this myself, spotlight some of the older books, but you are doing it so well! Your edits and fan art are so engaging and beautiful and its so well scripted.
I look forward to any genre or video you make! Im in! Thank you and keep it up!
@@DaBlackRose Thanks! Finding and incorporating the visual aids in my videos is a lot of fun, but it's also the most time-consuming part of the process. My last few videos have had over 100 visual elements in each, and I'm having to learn how to achieve any special effects as I go along (e.g., the dissolving mandala and flying castle in this latest video).
This is a hobby for me, but I want to make the most I can of UA-cam's capabilities as a visual storytelling medium, so that my videos aren't just 10+ minutes of me talking to the camera.
My goal is to post a new video every week, but I'm finding it difficult to meet that schedule. I'm just a one-person operation. As I get better at it, though, my hope is that I'll become faster and more efficient.
Thanks for this video and this overview about Martha Wells. I didn't know this author. I will read one of this book.
Great! I hope you enjoy reading her books as much as I do.
However, she's been writing speculative fiction for 30 years, and her earlier fantasy novels are wonderful and deserve more attention.:
PREACH! :)
I somehow missed this video but man city of bones sounds amazing. Added it to the list.
Also I love the goofy element of fire cover. A book about a flying flammable castle sounds dope
Added all of the books mentioned here to my tbr. They all sound so cool! I've never been particularly interested in murderbot but these all sound awesome
Her fantasy novels are all very different from one another, demonstrating different styles and settings, but they’re all very good. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
This video scratched an ich I had for years about Martha's work, I studied antrophology for a while and noticed that nobody saw that her writing was heavily influenced by it. Thank you.
Also, are those dragonflight books similar to Novik's Temeraire series?
Thanks! If you're referring to Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, there are some similarities to the Temeraire series, but many differences as well. Temeraire is a fantasy set on an alternate universe Earth during the Napoleonic era, while Pern is set thousands of years in the future on a planet that was colonized by humans but regressed to a quasi-medieval civilization due to the devastating effects of recurring natural disasters. At its heart, the Pern series is science fiction that reads like fantasy.
I've read and enjoyed both series, although I prefer the Pern books. The Temeraire books grew a little too repetitive and the worldbuilding a little too unbelievable for my taste as the series progressed. Pern shows a similar diminishment in quality as the series progresses, but the more than 20 novels in the series are broken up into several trilogies and standalone novels that can be read independently of one another. The first dozen novels in the Pern series (by publication order) are well worth reading and I suggest reading them in that order.
Sounds very interesting. I'll have to track down Ms Wells books.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
I just finish The Death of the Necromancer. Of the three books by Wells that I’ve read so far, The Element of Fire and City of Bones, I believe Necromancer was the best by far.
It's a terrific book, and I'm glad you're batting 1.000 in your enjoyment of Wells. Are you planning to try Wheel of the Infinite or the Raksura series?
@@thelibraryladder I have a copy of Wheel of the Infinite, so that will be the next Wells book that I read.
Thank you so much for doing this survey of Martha Wells' earlier works. Like you, I have an abiding fondness for standalone novels. I discovered Wells' books as they were published [thankfully, I was spared that horrific cover on "The Element of Fire" by purchasing a second edition :-) ]. When I arrived at the F/SF section of any bookstore, I would start at the bottom right of the whole array, in the "W" section, hoping for a new arrival from the author of "City of Bones", which was the first of hers that I read. I am a devoted fan of Murderbot, and am currently reading "The Witch King", which promises to be one of her most complex bits of worldbuilding, with a distinctly Kemetian [ancient Egypt] flavor.
Wells, Le Guin, Norton, McCaffery, McKillip, and McKinley [what is it with these "Mc" women?] gave me refuge as a young female SF reader who felt so excluded from the narratives of the overwhelmingly male author pool in the late 1970s and 1980s. I felt there was no place for me in the worlds these men were writing, as I certainly wasn't willing to be the Frazetta female prize on the covers of the fantasies. In the science fiction, with the exception of a few nods in Heinlein [e.g. Friday], there were few characters with whom I could connect emotionally, and often characters or plots that were actively misogynistic. I resorted to re-reading because there were so rarely new works by men or women that welcomed female readers at that time. I did not discover CJ Cherryh, Tanith Lee until much later, along with Lois McMaster Bujold [a stealth "Mc"] and Sheri Tepper, whose novel "Grass" fascinated and delighted me. Now, to my utter delight, we are in a remarkable moment for previously marginalized voices and I'm rejoicing in this explosion of literary biodiversity and the cognitive/emotional/imaginal ecology it supports.
I hope that you will do more videos about the gifted storytellers in F/SF who are women, and who for generations were systematically excluded by editors and reviewers. I would love to see a story about James Tiptree, Jr. [Alice B. Sheldon] and her work. My favorite is "Brightness Falls from the Air" which I always thought would make a superb stage adaptation as its action occurs in such a compact space, its characters are so diverse and distinct, and the twists and conflicts revealed with such perfect pacing. I was pained to see that when Tiptree was outed as a woman, members of the SF community considered that slanderous, so certain were they that no woman could have written such rigorous, complex, and imaginative SF.
Thanks for your wonderful comment! You seem to have read my mind. I'm planning a series of videos focused specifically on overlooked women pioneers in SFF such as McKillip, McKinley, McCaffrey, Norton, Cherryh, Connie Willis, C.L. Moore, Katherine Kurtz, Barbara Hambly, and Mary Gentle, just to name a few authors who deserve wider recognition. Alas, my production schedule is slow and my list of planned videos is long, so it will be a few months before I get started on it.
Tiptree's Her Smoke Rose Up Forever is one of the best single-author short story collections I've ever encountered.
@@thelibraryladder I'm delighted to hear this! When I responded to the video last night I was scanning my shelves in my mind's eye trying to pick out the female authors and on the spur of the moment missed many of them. I share your awe at "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" and count myself blessed to have a fine hardcover of it. A graph of their arrival on the bookstore and library shelves would show a definite gathering of both strength and numbers from the early work of Norton and LeGuin and Kurtz it arcs upward, with a surge in the late 80s as a host of women joined the ranks and began to take the key awards and win critical acclaim. I think the editors at certain genre houses deserve significant credit for finding and promoting many of these women even in the face of opposition [such as the response within SFWA to N.K. Jemison's nomination for the Hugo the first time...and the second time...and the third time]. In your Ballantine video you mention the enormous influence of Betty Ballantine, for instance.
Over the past ten years Tor has taken a firm stance in favor of diverse voices bringing a torrent of short, mid-length, and long fiction to readers. Their decision to publish novellas as a significant percentage of their annual lists has brought us delicious reads. Baen is making a similar effort, as is Orbit. It's a splendid time to be a reader.
I quite understand that producing videos takes time and yours in particular are well worth the wait. I am enjoying your channel immensely. Thank you for all you do.
It is indeed a splendid time to be a reader!
I'm a big fan of short fiction, so it's nice to hear that publishers are putting more resources into it. I'm working on a video right now that discusses some of the history of short fiction in the SF genre. Thanks again!
Thank you very much for yet another great (multiple-) review. And my reading list keeps growing... *sigh*
You're so welcome!
Androne is probably novel that you'd like.
You should read her Fall of Ile Rien trilogy. They take place a generation after the Necromancer book with some of the same characters. I liked the earlier two, but these are even better.
Thanks for the suggestion! I started reading the first book in the Fall of Ile RIen trilogy a couple of years ago, but for some reason, it didn't click with me, so I didn't finish it. Sometimes I find I'm just not in the mood to read something. I plan to revisit it at a later date to give it another try.
I didn't reference the trilogy in the video because I'd read only a small part of it and I didn't want to voice an opinion on it that wasn't fully informed.
You have a great voice! I enjoyed this video. You're much more ambitious than I am! I just get in front my phone camera and start talking without a plan.I have to edit out all my "ums" and "uhs" while I'm thinking about how I want to say things! 😂
Thanks! There are definitely pros and cons to my approach. The amount of work involved in making my recent videos significantly limits the number of videos I can produce, which is a problem, because there are a GREAT many books and authors I want to discuss across many genres. On the other hand, I'm having fun learning how to make these videos, and I hope viewers are entertained and learn something new from them.
@@thelibraryladder Well you're doing a fabulous job on them! And yes I'm well aware of how much work that has to be for you. I'd never have the patience! I hate editing my videos 😂.
@@TheBookclectic I’m going to start experimenting with YT shorts soon to see if it makes a difference in expanding the audience (and in relieving some of the video production pressure.)
@@thelibraryladder That's a good idea. I have never looked into nor thought about how to expand my channel, because I'm only on here to make friends who read books, but I do click on some of these shorts I see made by BookTubers I haven't seen before!
City of Bones sounds very interesting. I loved N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. The problem is finding older books in any format besides mass market paperback, which I won’t buy. So I’ll need to look harder.
City of Bones and The Element of Fire are my favorite fantasy novels by Wells. If you're located in the US, ThriftBooks-Reno on Amazon's used book marketplace currently has a hardcover copy in very good condition listed for $6.48 + free shipping. The listing doesn't say whether it's a book club edition, but it's a good price for a good book.
@@thelibraryladder thank you very much. I appreciate your help. I just placed my order for both books.
I hope you enjoy them. Feel free to share your thoughts on them here after you've read them.
@@thelibraryladder I will
Well I have read 96 pages of City of Bones, so I’m about a fourth of the way through the book. For me anyway it’s kind of a slog to get through. I will finish the book, but I hope something interesting happens soon. I absolutely loved N.K. Jemisin, but so far Martha Wells doesn’t compare. I’ll follow up here once I’ve finished the book.
Call me shallow, but when I see an uber-cheesy or trashy cover like that of 'Element of Fire', I just can't bring myself to add that one to my collection. Same with the cover art of many Guy Gavriel Kay original hardback editions. The later paperbacks are much more tasteful.
No argument here about the merits of some covers. I try to keep in mind that there’s more truth to the old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” than meets the eye. Most authors have little say in the cover design. Their contracts give the publishers control of the art design, so I don’t blame the author.
GGK’s Sarantine Mosaic duology is a perfect example. The hardcover first edition sported incredibly cheesy cover art, but the books’ contents are sublime. At least the spines don’t look too bad on the bookshelf.