I started the Gap series - One word - Wow.

[Alynna Lis Eachann]

Can they be found on the UK Amazon website? I do imagine that a British edition would be out of print... perhaps you can find American editions there. *shrugs*

[Nav]

You could order them, but that can take quite a while if it's at a smaller bookshop. The problem is more to do with stock than the books being out of print. In fact, I think they re-issued the Gap books with new covers last year (they're more colorful now and have pictures of ships on them, as opposed to the triangle designs of the earlier editions). Most stores seem to have one copy of each book in, and so when it's gone, it's gone until the next delivery.

[Satansheart Soulcrusher]

What, are you all mentalists?

dictionary.reference.com/search?q=mentalist

Whatever you might think about the series, I have read all 5 books. I was hooked from the first one and I have to say it is the best sci-fi I have ever read. Even Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy, or Iain M. Banks' Culture novels can't match it. The bit right at the end

Spoiler

where Morn reads the message that Dios has left for her

actually brought tears to my eyes, which for me is so rare it only happens like once every decade or something.

[Satansheart Soulcrusher]

Can they be found on the UK Amazon website? I do imagine that a British edition would be out of print... perhaps you can find American editions there. *shrugs*

Amazon UK has all 5 available to order, but some are 3-5 weeks whereas others are only a day or 2. I have seen all 5 on sale together in some bookshops.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, you can still get Amazon USA to ship to the UK, at least I'm pretty sure you can. I got all 4 Doom novels, and I seem to recall that some came from Amazon UK and some from Amazon USA.

[phantomcougar]

I have been looking into this in the UK. There isn't a bookshop in my local area and even further afield which stocks the second book! I am told it is being re-printed. But the others in the series are all still on the shelves. The firstthing I will do when I getto Deansgate tomorrow is check out their shelves. How can you read a book so good and not have the next in the series. I wish I'd never started it until I'd got them all. And I'm sorry Danlo but Istill don't like MN!

[Stead]

I just finished The Real Story, too, and I liked it a whole lot.

Pretty awesome how there wasn't a lot of diagouge, but there was plenty of story. The book, (my opinion) would have been fine as a stand-alone.

But with a bunch more to follow, it's even better!

Angus is my favorite character since Lebbick.

[Zarathustra]

I can understand people complaining about descriptions of sexual violence in this story. It's true: the Gap series delves into the darkest and most vile potentials of what it means to be human. Perhaps the reason people get turned off by it is precisely because this potential for "evil" is real, and Donaldson's writing is so vivid that it wakes us up from our complacency, from our habitual "turning away" from life's unattractive truths. It's not pleasant to think of death and torture. However, we live in a world where this is happening all the time. If we are not prepared to face it, to entertain the possibility of it, to even acknowledge it in our stories (which for SRD are about "what it means to be human"), then what are we doing with our stories? Just passing the time? Escaping from reality? If so, then I think we are missing the whole point of SRD's stories. They are not exercises in escapism, but instead tributes to the triumph of mankind's potential to care for one another (and the world) over mankind's potential for destruction (of each other and the world).

And from a purely narrative perspective, the power of a story's resolution is directly proportional to the stakes and the danger of the conflict. You can't have a truly epiphanic ending without dragging your characters through hell. Believe me, Donaldson's sex/violence isn't gratuitous. It's there for a reason. If you can't handle it, and you stop after the first (or even the second) book, you've really cheated yourself out of a fantastic literary ride. This story is one of the most complex, character driven, action-packed, and intelligent stories I've ever read in ANY genre.

[Loredoctor]

Extremely good points!

[amanibhavam]

I just finished The Real Story, too, and I liked it a whole lot.

Pretty awesome how there wasn't a lot of diagouge, but there was plenty of story. The book, (my opinion) would have been fine as a stand-alone.

But with a bunch more to follow, it's even better!

Angus is my favorite character since Lebbick.

IIRC The Real Stroy was a stand-alone book at first, and SRD decided that it warranted a continuation later.

[amanibhavam]

I can understand people complaining about descriptions of sexual violence in this story. It's true: the Gap series delves into the darkest and most vile potentials of what it means to be human. Perhaps the reason people get turned off by it is precisely because this potential for "evil" is real, and Donaldson's writing is so vivid that it wakes us up from our complacency, from our habitual "turning away" from life's unattractive truths. It's not pleasant to think of death and torture. However, we live in a world where this is happening all the time. If we are not prepared to face it, to entertain the possibility of it, to even acknowledge it in our stories (which for SRD are about "what it means to be human"), then what are we doing with our stories? Just passing the time? Escaping from reality? If so, then I think we are missing the whole point of SRD's stories. They are not exercises in escapism, but instead tributes to the triumph of mankind's potential to care for one another (and the world) over mankind's potential for destruction (of each other and the world).

And from a purely narrative perspective, the power of a story's resolution is directly proportional to the stakes and the danger of the conflict. You can't have a truly epiphanic ending without dragging your characters through hell. Believe me, Donaldson's sex/violence isn't gratuitous. It's there for a reason. If you can't handle it, and you stop after the first (or even the second) book, you've really cheated yourself out of a fantastic literary ride. This story is one of the most complex, character driven, action-packed, and intelligent stories I've ever read in ANY genre.

I think it is not a small bit of hypocrisy if someone turns down The Gap because it has sex and violence in a world where we can watch wars online on CNN and no newsreel in the TV passes without at least one corpse or crime.

[snoopy]

I can understand people complaining about descriptions of sexual violence in this story. It's true: the Gap series delves into the darkest and most vile potentials of what it means to be human. Perhaps the reason people get turned off by it is precisely because this potential for "evil" is real, and Donaldson's writing is so vivid that it wakes us up from our complacency, from our habitual "turning away" from life's unattractive truths. It's not pleasant to think of death and torture. However, we live in a world where this is happening all the time.

I know that my reaction to recent events in the world was to some extent influenced by having read the Gap books. The rape and torture in the series was difficult to read. However, in many ways it made those acts more real and awful to me. Confronted with the pain and humilation of Morn in such a direct way, I found that I was personally more morally revolted by such acts than I had been previously because they were more vivid in my mind.

When I heard the many stories of the serial raping and torture in Iraq, I have to confess that I was absolutely horrified. I cannot imagine living in a place where the "authorities" could come and take me a way and torture me, or rape my wife just because they wanted to do it.

[Tom]

The best theater and the best movies are the ones that make you feel a true purging of the emotions, a catharsis, and draw you in so much emotionally that you feel with the characters. This is true whether those emotions are ugly or fantastic.

There is no reason why this isn't true in literature as well, and probably one of the reasons why sci fi and fantasy are sometimes scoffed at by literary critics. Very few authors or movie directors have had the courage to really explore those extreme emotions with these genres.

Here is where SRD really excels. No pussyfooting around. This is what would actually happen in those circumstances with these types of characters. If you don't like it, change the channel.

Tom