FFT - ROUND of 16 - Lawless vs Firekind - Heat 01

[Colin YNWA]

Sponsored by 2000ad in Stages* - see links below.

Lawless - more info

VS

Firekind - more info

What an opener... but then they will all be great from here on in. From the dust bowls of colony world, 43 Rega to the jungles of Gennyo-Leil come two giants of Tharg's Thrill-garden. Each holding the flag for something important. Lawless is the last true Meg thrill and Firekind the last single 'book' story. One must fall...

Form book - Thrill vanquished to date (in order of round met earliest to latest):

Lawless: Samizdat Squad; Chimpsky's Law; Mazeworld; Thistlebone
Firekind: American Reaper; Mean Team; Harlem Heroes; Meltdown Man

Round 6 - or "Round of 16" as folks seem to like to call the last 16 these days (?!?) will feature just one thrill a day. I'd like to pretend this is to give these epic thrills more space and time to be commented on... but really its to buy myself a bit of extra time to plan what comes next!

To Vote Just reply in this thread naming your favourite thrill of these two series at the beginning of your post (or use Bold tags so I can spot it easily) and say what you like about these wonderful stories after that.

Match ends early on the morning of Thursday 18th August and the winner gets a place in the Quarter Finals.

What on Earth is ALL of this?

For those that need 'um and can be bothered to follow 'um there's some simple rules

Any questions, just ask as ever - and have FUN!

*Important Note - this is done with neither permission, or money changing hands (damnit). Apologies for the former, I also meant to do this much earlier but... well ya know how it is...

[broodblik]

Lawless

[Trooper McFad]

Lawless

[Aaron A Aardvark]

Lawless.

[SmallBlueThing(Reborn)]

Lawless. One of these days i really should reread Firekind- because it left me completely unimpressed originally, and ive never been able to finish it since. May have to dig out that Extreme Edition and try it again.

But Lawless is a series i can reread from the start every now and again, and can't put it down until the most recent episode has been devoured.

SBT

[Funt Solo]

For making a musical version in their spare time because they love it so much: Lawless.

Firekind is also excellent.


P.S. Thanks for using the 2kstages site, Colin. You don't need permish!

[Magnetica]

Lawless.

[abelardsnazz]

I'm a big fan of Lawless but as it's the only John Smith thrill left in the running I'm going with Firekind.

[NapalmKev]

Lawless.

Cheers

[Barrington Boots]

Clear win for Lawless here for me.

[rogue69]

Lawless

[The Mind of Wolfie Smith]

lawless

[Richard]

Firekind

[Huey2]

Firekind

[AlexF]

Lawless is all kinds of delightful, and by gosh I can drink in the art anyday. It's cleverly plotted, the characters are well-rounded, it just feels like such a lived-in story.

But you know, all those things are true of Firekind as well.

Lawless has the advantage of mutiple story arcs, often doing very different things, where Firekind only had the chance to tell one story. And yes, there's that extra-length musical episode, not to mention at least one amzing blow-by-blow all-about combat battle action episode.
Firekind for me has one very special advantage, which is squeezing in some proper sci-fi antrhopology, with its close investiagtion of the Gennians, their mythology, their sex lives, and indeed the way that Larsen interacts with it all. Lawless has the Zhind, but that's mostly for plot-pushing, and some interesting things to say about robot theology, but that's more cursory rather than head-on.

I think just for John Smith and Paul Marshall's ambition of realising a wholly unique type of science fiction story, and a convincing alien world, I'm going Firekind.