{"id":8466,"date":"2011-09-24T10:47:44","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T22:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=8466"},"modified":"2011-09-24T10:47:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T22:47:45","slug":"oh-no-i-missed-talk-like-a-pirate-day-but-theres-still-great-pirate-tales-of-sff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/09\/24\/oh-no-i-missed-talk-like-a-pirate-day-but-theres-still-great-pirate-tales-of-sff\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh No! I Missed “Talk Like A Pirate” Day! But There’s Still Great Pirate Tales of SFF …"},"content":{"rendered":"

Avast thar me ‘earties—I can’t believe I’ve missed International Talk Like A Pirate Day!<\/strong> September 19 was “the day” and of course that was when I was reflecting on the joys of spring equinox and looking ahead<\/a>—and so completely missed this Very Important Annual Event.<\/p>\n

So I’ve decided to celebrate it to today, anyway! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Last year I celebrated by listing some favourite pirate reads, including Margaret Mahy’s The Man Whose Mother Was A Pirate<\/strong><\/em>,\u00a0 Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island<\/strong><\/em>, and Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Today—and in the spirit of NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week<\/a>—I thought I’d talk specifically about pirate tales in the SFF genre.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>First off the blocks is easy-peasy: it has to be William Goldman’s The Princess Bride!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And then there’s Tom Powers’ On Stranger Tides<\/strong><\/em>, which is being used as the basis for the next Pirates of the Caribbean<\/strong> movie. (More Captain Jack Sparrow<\/strong>—not to be confused with the Captain Jack Harkness<\/strong> of Torchwood <\/strong>fame—yes, please! Actually, that would be “yes, please” to both!)<\/p>\n

And the classic kids’ story, JM Barrie’s Peter Pan<\/strong><\/em>. And more recently, Kage Baker’s The Hotel Under the Sand<\/strong><\/em>. (Both of which I mentioned last year—how not?)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But you know, after that I kind of got to scratching my head, trying to think of SFF books that were specifically about pirates, or featured a main pirate character—not just with a background mention of pirates, as with the Blackbeard incident in Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver<\/strong><\/em>, but actually, specifically, about<\/em> pirates.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I did think about CJ Cherryh’s Rimrunners<\/strong><\/em>, where former space marine Bet Yeager falls in with a “spook” ship, but that is not quite the same thing as pirates—and although the Earth fleet in Cherryh’s “Downbelow”<\/strong> ‘verse has effectively taken to behaving like pirates, they don’t see themselves as such …<\/p>\n

So you might have to help me out here—what are some other great SFF novels either based specifically around pirates, or featuring a pirate as a major character?<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Avast thar me ‘earties—I can’t believe I’ve missed International Talk Like A Pirate Day! September 19 was “the day” and of course that was when I was reflecting on the joys of spring equinox and looking ahead—and so completely missed this Very Important Annual Event. So I’ve decided to celebrate it to today, anyway! \ud83d\ude09 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8466"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8494,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions\/8494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}