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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[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. :-/