Underrated, perhaps, if not entirely neglected (And I am not resigned)

[oursin]

Sad to see that Vonda N McIntyre has died, though it was not unanticipated - earlier news that she was seriously ill.

While I concede that Dreamsnake is indeed great, and one of the reasons why we should go back and reconsider the 70s, I also have a lot of time for the 'Starfarers' sequence, which, although it actually appeared late 80s-early 90s, has a lot of the same vibe, including all that diversity that certain elements seem to think is some new millennial phenomenon wot.

And thinking about McIntyre, and ok, she was working predominantly within sf rather than strictly fantasy, but, even so, I suspect that one would find the same sorts of things being said -

How is it this thing that this thing is, that when they get somebody to write a piece on some phenomenon, it is somebody with zilch, or possibly less-than-zilch, actual background knowledge???

What's the next Game of Thrones? All the contenders for fantasy TV's crown.

This comes up with such startling apercus as 'whose hero, in an inversion of the standard fantasy trope, is a heroine'.

It is to bang one's head upon the desk, srsly.

There is also 'subverts fantasy tropes, showing the protagonist not as a shining hero but as a guilty and broken man'.

Aaaaaargh.

And yes, I would like the actual TV series of Starfarers, but I suspect that a series in which people solve problems by intelligence and cooperation and competence rather than hacking and slaying and betrayal might be even more of a no-no than the bisexual polyamory...