competence; Dick Francis

[kate_nepveu]

My new motivational reminder is "be the competence porn you want to see in the world," because I realized that I get the same nice warm glow when I accomplish what I know that I'm capable of. (Shocking, I know.) We'll see how long that is effective.

Meanwhile, rec your favorite competence porn, ideally text because time and access, and ideally not dude-heavy, as I have just finished an Aubrey-Maturin skim/skip re-read and am likely about to embark on a Dick Francis binge.

Also, speaking of Dick Francis, rec me your favorites. I think all I've read is Proof--or at least if I've read more, I don't remember a thing about them. I've already checked rachelmanija's tag and seen skygiants's review of The Edge.

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[sovay]

Also, speaking of Dick Francis, rec me your favorites.

I love Reflex (1981). I described why here.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you! I'm reading The Edge because I had it and I definitely noted the very chill reaction to being hit on by the actor roommate. It's nice to know there's even more to look forward to.

[minoanmiss]

Batgirl: Year One is awesome for competence porn. She's just starting out, she's new, but she's good and she gets better and better.

The King Must Die -- the bull-leapers are made of competence porn and glory. Even as a captive in a strange land Theseus recognizes the value and valor of being a bull-leaper and works towards it.

[kate_nepveu]

Super interesting, thank you!

Also I was thinking about how, a) learning-to-be-competent stories are a related niche for me (THE GOBLIN EMPEROR) and b) if I hadn't reread it pretty recently, I could have gone for Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! (How have I not yet taught my phone that what comes after Unbeatable is Squirrel Girl?!)

[minoanmiss]

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! cheers

[cofax7]

Oh, my, yes to the bull-leapers. It's my favorite sequence of any Renault novel and every time I reread it I'm sad about how short it actually is, in relation to the rest of the novel.

[minoanmiss]

I am so there with you on this!

But then we get a callback in Bull From The Sea, with "the last and greatest dance of Theseus the Athenian", eee!

[lomedet]

Oooh, Dick Francis! I went through a serious Francis phase when I was much, much younger. Take this with tablespoons of salt, but here are the ones I remember most fondly:

-Rat Race
-Break-In (and also Bolt, which has many of the same characters)
-Hot Money
-The Edge

[kate_nepveu]

Awesome, thanks!

[readinggeek451]

Dick Francis favorites:

The Edge
Banker
Hot Money

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks!

[dancing_crow]

I think I must have read all of the Dick Francis as they came out because horse-mad + mysteries = catnip. I didn't recognize them as competence porn until much later.

I have a preference for the ones from the late 1970s - Reflex, Twice Shy, Banker (my favorite, I think) and The Danger.

Of the later ones, I liked To The Hilt best.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you! I'm contemplating how to organize my reading, and I might do chronological, or I might skip around as whim takes me. We'll see.

[rosefox]

The only Dick Francis I have in hardcover is Straight. I remember it being tremendously good, but it's been a long time. I also remember reading High Stakes until it nearly fell to pieces; the main character is an inventor of children's toys, and there are wonderful details of that as well as the horse racing.

[rosefox]

While googling for this I found an article claiming that Francis's books were mostly ghostwritten by his wife (he, an ex-jockey, provided the expertise; she provided the writing skill) and that goes a long way to explaining the preponderance of extremely awesome women in them.

[thistleingrey]

ah, interesting!

[genarti]

What I've seen claimed is not that she was a full ghostwriter, but that that she did a lot of the research of the non-horse-related stuff, he wrote them, and she edited them. (Wikipedia, mostly quoting from interviews with them.) Whether "editing" means "rewrote so extensively it was basically ghostwriting," though, I cannot say. At any rate it seems to have been fundamentally a team effort between them, and acknowledged as such. And yes, I totally agree about the awesome women!

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks!

[genarti]

The Edge is high on my list of favorite Dick Francis books! So is To The Hilt. Also honorable mentions are the Kit Fielding duology (Break In and Bolt) and Comeback. I can give further details about any of them if you like!

I went on a Brother Cadfael kick this fall, and I think that could well count as competence porn, though certainly the historical research porn gets equal billing there.

Laurie R. King's Mary Russell books are somewhat divisive depending on various factors including (but not limited to) one's liking for her interpretation of the Sherlock Holmes characters and one's liking for the central romance of the books (absent from the first book but present thereafter). But they're definitely competence porn! I can't speak to the later books in the series, and haven't reread the earlier ones in some while, but I've been meaning to, because I have a lot of fondness for them.

Diane Duane's Star Trek novels, too.

And Watership Down, in its way.

[kate_nepveu]

Cadfael! I read about half of those and gently ran out of steam, but they were very soothing and I always mean to go back to them.

I read the first . . . ten-ish? Mary Russell books. Yes, ten. And then I stopped because I didn't like them any more. Also I'm pretty sure a bunch of them look Very Dubious in hindsight (the India one, for instance). I still have very fond feelings for _Justice Hall_, though.

I don't have a lot of Star Trek feelings so I've only read Janet Kagan's novel, when I was binging her works, I believe! (Yes, not even John M. Ford's Star Trek novels.)

I have also somehow managed to make it to now without reading _Watership Down_, which is another thing I always mean to rectify. O for a Time Turner.

[schulman]

Janet Kagan certainly counts as competence porn, but alas, there isn't any more. :-( Also Martha Wells, and happily she has a longer backlist. Have you read any Phryne Fisher books yet?

"Be the competence porn you want to see in the world" is my new mantra, thank you.

[kate_nepveu]

I love Wells's Raksura & Murderbot series but somehow they don't quite scratch the same itch; I'll have to think about why.

I found the first Phryne Fisher book's ending so distasteful that I have not read any others.

[melita66]

Hmmm, Martha Wells was who I was thinking of recommending as well. Maybe they're not competence porn, but main characters are usually quick-thinking and won't quit, although they might wait until a better opportunity to take out the enemy.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller? although I have a feeling you don't/won't like the Liaden series. Maybe try Scouts Progress. There's a scene that I feel is (and so does TV Tropes) a Crowning Moment of Awesomeness.

Melissa Scott and Jo Graham's The Order of the Air series, maybe.

I particularly like the mid-to-latter books in the Peabody-Emerson series by Elizabeth Peters like The Falcon at the Portal, He Shall Thunder in the Sky, and Children of the Storm.

Kristine Smith's Jani Kilian series.

Laurie R. King--my favorite is Justice Hall. The later books haven't been as good. The one set in Japan was...ugh.

[kate_nepveu]

I've been meaning to read those Smith books, thanks!

[oracne]

Some Dick Francis faves: Reflex, Nerve, For Kicks (so very 60s!), Decider, the first couple of Sid Halley books.

[kate_nepveu]

thanks!

[watersword]

I remember enjoying Hot Money and To The Hilt.

One of the things I love most about my favorite Heyer novel, Frederica, is that Frederica is so capable, and it's one of the things that the hero falls for.

[kate_nepveu]

is that one with the dog? that's all I remember about it, alas.

[carbonel]

One of the reasons I like the TV show FBI is because it's about competent people. I've watched way too many crime-based TV shows (which I have a weakness for) where the usual plot is where the heroes get themselves in trouble after doing something stupid and the rest of the episode is spent getting themselves out of or covering up said stupidity.

That's what's keeping me watching The Rookie, too, though the whole thing is really pretty minor.

[damerell]

I'm quite fond of Drake's Republic of Cinnabar books, which are basically Aubrey/Maturin in space (except I didn't like Aubrey/Maturin at all [1]); Adele Mundy is extremely capable in at least two areas, although given that it's written by Drake, one of them is murder (and the books are generally full of Drake-ish unpleasantness [2]). They're set in the standard mil-sf space navy universe, but OTOH that offers a chance to read something set in that universe that isn't written by a ghastly right-wing headbanger like Weber. [3]

Cadfael was mentioned upthread and I really like the books. They're a bit Murder-She-Caused, but it's a violent time and he's best mates with the deputy Chief of Police, so that provides a reasonable excuse for a supply of corpses to turn up on demand.

[1] I read an essay in the C.S. Forester society newsletter about how the author thought Hornblower was a ripping good read and much better than O'Brien, nodding to myself about how right the author was, and got to the end to find it was written by bloody Boris Johnson. I felt a bit dirty after that.

[2] I was particularly struck by this on reading a short story by him in a Thieves' World anthology. It featured the standard Drake protagonist who is compelled to do terrible things by force of circumstances... who looks rather out of place in Thieves' World, where every second other person does terrible things for fun and profit.

[3] This is absolutely not a recommendation, it's a long rambling gripe, but Weber loves competence a bit too much, hence Honor Harrington's transformation from a highly capable military officer to making Kimball Kinnison [4] look like a bit of an underachiever. When I gave up Weber was desperately retconning new medals and statusses into the universe so she could be awarded them. There's one of the spinoff books where we find that someone broke all kinds of records at the Academy, except of course the sailplane record set by Duchess Harrington, and we ask why? Does she have to be top at literally everything? When she blows her nose, does it sound a musical note of unearthly beauty?

He does it everywhere; there's three books about Bahzell, who's a hradan- let's just put it in familiar terms. He's an orc who turns to good and gets to be a paladin of one of the good gods. He's from the Horse Stealer clan, who steal horses for culinary purposes, who are naturally terrible enemies with the Riders of Rohan. In the third book we find out there's a special kind of Rider of Rohan who links telepathically with a special kind of intelligent horse (this idea also seems familiar, like maybe Mercedes Lackey might have written a book or two on this basis)... and the experienced Weber watcher knows that there is no possibility at all that Bahzell will _not_ become one of these "windriders" by the end of the book, because it's the biggest and most unlikely award going.

[4] GURPS Lensman strongly favours the idea that EES's protagonists are all polymath supermen because EES himself was a bit of a polymath superman.

[kate_nepveu]

...but I LIKE Aubrey-Maturin!

[damerell]

So I gather; but, I mean, perhaps they look less like Aubrey-Maturin to someone who does than to someone like me who doesn't - there's two of them, one of them's at home in the Navy and in command of a ship but the other one's sort of an oddball outsider so that the first one can talk to them about stuff rather than being The Man Alone, that about covers it as far as I know. You might find the resemblance less satisfactory. :-/

[rachelmanija]

Missed this till now! My favorite Dick Francis books are Odds Against, Straight, Proof, Flying Finish, The Edge, Bonecrack, Hot Money... Honestly I could name many more, but I will stop myself.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you! If I didn't like the second Sid Halley book as much as the first, should I keep going?

[rachelmanija]

No. The first one is one of my favorites, the rest of them are among my least favorites. I think of it as a standalone.

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks!

[fitzcamel]

[belated] Second the recs for Flying Finish and Rat Race.

(As for non-Francis competence porn, Mary Stewart's Madame Will You Talk has some great car chases. And it's a very different sort of thing in mood/affect, butNicola Griffith's Blue Place/sequels definitely seems to fit. Would the cricket chapter of Murder Must Advertise count?) [/belated]

[kate_nepveu]

thanks! and the cricket chapter is great, so much of MMA is great.