I'm gonna show my hipsterdom and name a fantasy parody comedy series that predates Discworld (but not Xanth or Hitchhiker's Guide), but only because I read the first 5-6 books as a kid in the 90s and became obsessed with it for awhile, and I finally went and read the entire series a couple years ago and had a blast. Myth Adventures by Robert Asprin still holds up, though the nerd world has forgotten it. Maybe some Kiwis will like it.
I post exceedingly rarely, but this warrants it, as you've roused some fond memories of an old Doc some 35-ish years ago, reading the Yugo translations of the first 2-3 Myth novels. I still remember them fondly, unfortunately however, those were the only ones they managed to translate before the war, though the translations were stellar, with extremely funny localisations by people who got the original jokes so well. The old Yugo SF/Fantasy magazine/translation scene used to be so good, we got all the big Names (Asimov, Clarke, JRRT, but also quite a few smaller and more obscure ones quickly and properly translated, even though English was at the time a tertiary language for most, and quite a few interesting local authors as well. Shame that the war and subsequent western-directed idiotisation of the population put an end to reading for the vast majority of the population, and nowadays, if you see anyone reading, chances are it's some ancient fuck like me, or a girl/woman reading some dogshit romance/romantasy garbage (that's sadly, almost exclusively what gets published these days).
On a related note, really glad that this thread exists, I picked up some solid recs for some newer (mostly Baen/DAW) stuff like The Lost Fleet or the Sun Eater series, that I've been pleasantly surprised by, and that I almost certainly would pass up on otherwise, so thanks for that whoever rec'd them. I'll probably take this month's opportunity to reread most of Pratchett's work, as i've missed a couple of the Books in the Discworld opus. I might despise Bongs, but god damn if they didn't make some of the finest examples of writing and comedy in the last century, no fucking chance you'd get something like Allo Allo or Monty Python nowadays sadly.
But enough about my old balkanoid sperging; now to get back on topic, I've read most of Tchaikovsky's books, and he's what i'd describe as an at most 7-7,5/10 author, who sometimes goes over very interesting (i.e. biologysperg) topics/story threads, however who can't really write endings well, and whose writing tends to be a slog at times (again, mostly towards the end of the books). However in a sea of sub-mediocrity, fetishslop and other horrors, he is elevated by pure virtue of not generally being plain BAD, and thusly i still rembember quite a few things from his works, and quite fondly at that. Children of Time is probably his best work, and the first novel is probably the best, i kinda have the feeling he recycled the premise 2-3x more times to milk the publishers for the sequels.
P.S: As a funny endnote, to this day i thought his last name was Aspirin (like the medicine). Studying/working in medicine really gives you autism/schizophrenia (or it's a prerequisite for the field
, who knows).
/end sperging
