Line #50 Creator/LawrenceWattEvans


1	[[quoteright:210:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lawrence_watt_evans_2013.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:210:''There's no idea so stupid or hackneyed that a sufficiently talented writer can't get a good story out of it.'']]
3	->''In far too many fantasy stories only the main characters are people. Palace guards, in particular, come off badly; [[WhatMeasureIsAMook nobody seems to think twice about slitting the throats of a few guardsmen.]] I don't care what the job pays, you'd never get me to be a palace guard in some of these universes. If I wanted to commit suicide I could find more entertaining ways.''
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5	->''Besides, they're so utterly ineffectual. Really, has any clever thief or sneaky barbarian ever been stopped by palace guards? Why do all these palace-owners bother with them? If I were hiring guards, I would want them to have at least some instinct for self-preservation, and to know how to do something other than stand there looking bored until someone sneaks up from behind and cuts their throats, or jumps down from an overhanging ledge, or gets them to look the wrong way with the distinctive sound of a pebble being thrown.''
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7	-->--'''Lawrence Watt-Evans''', The Laws of Fantasy
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9	Lawrence Watt-Evans is a primarily SpeculativeFiction writer who also works in comic books, and has dabbled in a few other genres. He's most famous for ''Literature/TheLegendsOfEthshar'' series, and for a tendency towards {{Deconstruction}} and RationalFic.
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11	His peculiar name was due to a recommendation by a publisher. Lawrence Evans seemed too ordinary, so they recommended a hyphen between his middle and last name to make it more interesting.
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13	''Literature/SplitHeirs'', co-written with Creator/EstherFriesner, is a hilarious deconstruction of PrinceAndPauper tropes, with THREE royal babies, one female and two male - the two boys get MosesInTheBulrushes'd, and the girl is brought up as a prince.
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15	He has also written an engaging critical review of the works of Creator/TerryPratchett.
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17	!!Works by Lawrence Watt-Evans with their own trope pages include:
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19	* ''Literature/TheAnnalsOfTheChosen'' trilogy: ''The Wizard Lord'', ''The Ninth Talisman'', and ''The Summer Palace''.
20	* ''Literature/TheLegendsOfEthshar'' series
21	** ''Literature/TheMisenchantedSword''
22	** ''Literature/WithASingleSpell''
23	** ''Literature/TheUnwillingWarlord''
24	** ''Literature/TheBloodOfADragon''
25	** ''Taking Flight''
26	** ''The Spell of the Black Dagger''
27	** ''Night of Madness''
28	** ''Ithanalin's Restoration''
29	** ''The Spriggan Mirror''
30	** ''The Vondish Ambassador''
31	** ''The Unwelcome Warlock''
32	** ''The Sorcerer's Widow''
33	* ''Literature/TheNightmarePeople''
34	* ''Literature/TheObsidianChronicles'' trilogy: ''Dragon Weather'', ''The Dragon Society'', and ''Dragon Venom''.
35	* ''Literature/WorldsOfShadow'' series: ''Out of This World'', ''In the Empire of Shadow'', and ''The Reign of the Brown Magician''.
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37	!! Other works include:
38	* ''The Chromosomal Code''
39	* ''The Lords of Dûs'' series
40	** ''The Lure of the Basilisk''
41	** ''The Seven Altars of Dûsarra''
42	** ''The Book of Bheleu''
43	** ''The Book of Silence''
44	* ''Literature/SplitHeirs'' (with Creator/EstherFriesner)
45	* ''Touched by the Gods''
46	* The ''War Surplus'' series
47	** ''The Cyborg and the Sorcerers''
48	** ''The Wizard and the War Machine''
49	* The ''Tom Derringer'' series
50	** ''Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship''
51	** ''Tom Derringer in the Tunnels of Terror''
52	----
53	!! Tropes in his other works:
54	* TheAirNotThere: ''The Cyborg and the Sorcerers'' is one of the few works with a DisintegratorRay to consider the issue of the ray having to disintegrate all the intervening air molecules before it reaches its intended target.
55	* AlienAmongUs: Subverted in the short story "One Of The Boys", a {{Deconstruction}} of Franchise/{{Superman}}, about an alien that [[HumanAliens looks human]] and was raised on Earth all his life, but is still painfully, dangerously alien.
56	* CurseEscapeClause: The short story "Ghost Stories" (collected in ''[[Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf Bruce Coville's Book of Ghosts]]'') features the ghost of a seafarer who simply could not stop wandering the world, much to the annoyance of his wife. Since she was a witch, she put a curse on him, that his ghost would only rest once man had walked on the moon, and he was told about it. However, he's not in much of a hurry to move on, as he's found a young boy who's eager to hear his stories (and the boy's friend almost spills the beans before he knows that).
57	* CyborgWizard: The protagonist of ''The Cyborg and the Sorcerers'' is a cyborg space traveler who winds up on a planet where magic is real, and ends up becoming a wizard himself.
58	* InnBetweenTheWorlds: The 1988 Hugo-Winning short story "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers" features a hamburger joint that exists in the same spot in nearly all universes, making it a popular late-night hangout for inter-dimensional travelers.
59	* TheMagocracy: ''The Cyborg and the Sorcerers'' and ''The Wizard and the War Machine'', are set on an AfterTheEnd planet which has many mages which rule all their countries. Yet each nation's government is different; some good, some bad, some outright incompetent.
60	* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: In the short story "Efficiency", the agency keeping mythological creatures prefers to have these, in order to save the budget: it's cheaper to pay upkeep for one compound creature instead of two or three. For example, their dryad is also a naiad, as she lives in a mangrove tree. And their unicorn is also a vampire. [[spoiler:And that's not all he is...]]
61	* ProperlyParanoid: In his fantasy short-short story "Paranoid Fantasy #1", the protagonist proves to be an example of this trope, while his unprepared neighbor gets tied up and carted off by monsters.
62	* AProtagonistShallLeadThem: Played with in ''Touched by the Gods'': Malledd is chosen by the gods to lead his people, but nobody, including Malledd, knows he's the ChosenOne. He ends up [[spoiler:leading accidentally but never actually becoming king, because he doesn't want to]].
63	* RestrainingBolt: In ''The Cyborg and the Sorcerers'', the protagonist has brain implants, including an explosive; the computer-controlled ship he's paired with uses this and its radio control to make him do things he'd rather not do.
64	* RubberBandHistory: The short story "One-Shot" has a guy go back in time to save Kennedy from being killed [[spoiler: by a love-sick Marilyn Monroe. He drugs her and makes it look like a suicide. The Secret Service agent he confesses and proves his story to says he'll tell JFK about it after he gets back from Dallas]].
65	* ScienceFantasy: Watt-Evans has called some of his work this, such as ''Literature/WorldsOfShadow'', which has both sci-fi and fantasy parallel universes interact with ours. He's also said he thinks the line is rather arbitrary so a lot of the so-called "science fiction" is really fantasy which involves technological innovations that may be impossible. It's only obviously fantasy to him if something's ''clearly'' impossible according to our scientific knowledge.
66	* SuperEmpowering: The ''Cyborg and the Sorcerers'' series has sorcerers whose "magic" (PsychicPowers) originated from {{Mutants}} in an AfterTheEnd colony world nuked [[DaysOfFuturePast back to the Dark Age]]. They learned how to psychokinetically alter other's neurons to pass on their powers, and by the time of the story, the only way to get magical power is from another wizard; the original gene has long since died out.

Context Creator / LawrenceWattEvans