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Thursday, November 8, 2012

Death Brackets: Speculative Division

Now to the other side of the bracket.  First up is Speculative which includes Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.

To follow all the Death Brackets, click here.




Welcome to the 2012 Author Death Brackets where some of the Berwyn Public Library’s most popular, living authors will participate in a virtual battle to see who comes out alive to claim the title as the favorite (and toughest) author among our patrons. There are 4 categories of 8 authors paired against each other, with the winner of each bracket squaring off in a final four battle.

The Death Brackets are to be taken with a sense of humor.  The library does not condone violence or wish bad things upon these authors.  We do, however, hope to lighten the tense election atmosphere by electing our own sole survivor.

[The idea of author death brackets and the graphic were originally conceived at http://www.criminalelement.com]

Speculative

Round One: 4 Battles
Stephen King vs. Dean Koontz
The first battle is a doozy, pitting two of the most popular horror authors against each other. While Koontz continues to write creepy bestsellers, King rules the charts with horror novels, science fiction, graphic novels, and short stories, and that is just in the last 2 years. With this slight upper hand, King turns dirty. Knowing that Koontz recently wrote a memoir about his dog, King kidnaps the canine, and kicks a distraught Koontz while he’s down for a swift victory. Winner: King

Jim Butcher vs. China Mieville
Butcher’s Harry Dresden is a wizard living in Chicago, keeping us all safe from the seedy, supernatural underbelly. On the other hand, Mieville writes complex, layered, and interesting speculative stories that challenge readers to rethink the idea of genre constraints.  But in the end, Butcher has the home court advantage, and his supernatural friends easily help him take down the more metaphorical Mieville. Winner: Butcher

Orson Scott Card vs. Neil Gaiman
These two genre giants are honored to meet each other for battle and spend the opening rounds paying homage to each other’s genius. The longevity of Card’s Ender Wiggins series in particular puts him in a good offensive position, but in the end, Gaiman’s darker themes allow him to fight dirty.  And when he pulls out his Newbery Medal, Card is forced to concede. Winner: Gaiman

George R. R. Martin vs. Jasper Fforde
Fforde’s literary based fantasy series is extremely popular with patrons. Fforde brings his best weapon, the pun, to arm himself in battle, but the juggernaut that is Martin and his epic The Song of Ice and Fire series filled with deceit, violence, incest, and even zombies, pauses for just a moment to laugh at the first pun and then cuts Fforde down with one swing of the sword. Winner: Martin

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Round Two: 2 Battles
Stephen King vs. Jim Butcher
Butcher knows he has a difficult task ahead of him, going up against one of America’s greatest living storytellers, but the wizard Dresden has some dark magic up his sleeve.  Too bad King has a monster of his own to counter attack everything Dresden throws at him. After weakening Dresden with an evil clown and a vampire, King finally brings him down in a wall of flames courtesy of his first creation, CarrieWinner: King

Neil Gaiman vs. George R.R. Martin
To counteract the literary might of the Newbery Medal, Martin sends the evil child king Joffrey out to the battlefield. Gaiman has a stable of bestselling creatures of his own, from superheroes to Norse Gods, but none of them are as desperate for power as the Martin characters battling for the Iron Throne. As prolific as Gaiman is the sheer number of brutal, blood thirsty, characters in Martin’s epic series overwhelms Gaiman, burying him and his Newbery in a fetid pile of bodies. Winner: Martin

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Round Three: 1 Battle
Stephen King vs. George R.R. Martin
Martin is feeling confident as his popular books and TV series are reigning supreme, but King is a grizzled veteran who has been at the top of the best seller charts for decades. The cocky Martin tries to put King away in the first round by releasing the dragons. But King, the horror master, sends out his full stable of evil beings to keep Martin tied up while he slips away to travel in time, back to the second before the battle begins, and attacks Martin from behind, ultimately ending this fight before it even began. Speculative Winner: King



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