ThReads Must Roll: the new, improved rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

A well-read lit degree-holding friend of mine is bumming me out w his enthusiasm for atwood's oryx and crake :(

people enjoying things is the worst

don't they know they should be enjoying this other thing instead

Do They Know It's Almost Valentine's Day At All

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32041

http://www.adweek.com/galleycat/jimi-hendrix-and-his-science-fiction-bookshelf/13597

Re the only actual book they specify, Damon Knight blurb makes me want to check it out, despite Farmer's later rep for beardo cheese:
http://www.adweek.com/galleycat/files/original/nightoflight.jpg

That's pretty cool, I've still never checked out Hendrix but that talk of where his imagination was at is encouraging.

What is beardo cheese?

http://www.valancourtbooks.com/on-an-odd-note-1958.html

Valancourt has been reprinting Gerald Kersh books. There's more if you scroll down a bit.

Been meaning to post about Valancourt myself. Got some stuff from them and interested in more.

What is beardo cheese? Hopefully not this particular book---must admit, the following appeals to me, as a launching pad premise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_Light

Assumed "beardo cheese" meant stuff that was overwritten and overlarded with puns and pulp characters of yore, wrapped up in 60s excess experimentation.

Valancourt recently republished Christopher Priest's The Affirmation, his first book to utilize his celebrated "trap door effect."

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/real-mr-difficult-cthulhu-threatens-destroy-canon-self-interested-literary-essayists-universe-finally
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/11/guest-post-nick-mamatas-asks-why-write-lovecraftian-fiction/

Two articles about Lovecraft by Nick Mamatas. I'm a bit tired of Lovecraft discussion but he's quite good and funny about it even if I'm sceptical about some claims. But I still haven't finished all my Lovecraft collections yet so I haven't formed a proper opinion.

Penguin Classics Thomas Ligotti book is revealed to be Songs Of A Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe.

Beardo cheese or o/wise, Farmer's first Riverworld novel, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, is flamboyant fun (it won the Hugo fwiw); his crazy 60s freeform novella contribution to Ellison's first DangerVis collection is a great artefact,and also won a Hugo. I like that he mixed up kinky alien sex, religion and lots of pulp archetypes along w/ yr regulation far-out sf concepts - A Feast Unknown (basically, Tarzan and Doc Savage as the sons of Jack the Ripper)is esp insane in this regard. Heh, looking at his wiki, Leslie Fiedler apparently called him, "the greatest science fiction writer ever", which is going it some, but he sure is a pretty unique flavour of SF, and he's not a hack - it all feels personal.

A Feast Unknown (basically, Tarzan and Doc Savage as the sons of Jack the Ripper)

haha waht

double waht

I've never bothered with him but maybe I have been thumbing through the wrong stuff (ie Riverworld books) at the bookstore

*checks the wiki*
Huh, I had forgotten the Jack the Ripper element.

I've heard he has lots of hack work. I think lots of good creators have hack work, sometimes to the extent of dwarfing their good work in quantity.

What do you know? Charles Beaumont is getting his own Penguin Classics book too.

Yay! From the old Rolling Science Fiction etc A book on my shelf twenty years before I read it: The Howling Man, short stories by Charles Beaumont. Title tale (later a Twilight Zone script, like several of these, most even better in the original) is the one about a traveler in bad weather, who stops at a monastery. Very hospitable to him, but why is that poor gentle man locked away? The traveler is increasingly troubled--he's also the first-person narrator, a nice, humble guy himself, which often means trouble up ahead, when a oh-so-non-literary, nice li'l narrator also has to convey the anxious spoon-feeding exposition and underscoring of the "literary"-as-fuck author. But *this* narrator, tortured by his conscience and his fear, his certainty, has obsessively drawn himself into hard-learned, self-taught eloquence, right from the beginning. How often does this happen?!
Beaumont was Hollywood king of the killer opening, though some of these come off too slick. And his sardonic-to-macabre humor , though often agreeable, even empathetic, could shade into something more repellent--misogyny, for instance: slick and shallow and sincere. Seems, according to William F Nolan's intro, that he came from some kind of boondocks gothic situation (orig name: Charles Nutt, a prodigy with sev. false starts before he made it, still youing, as a writer). A bit like Saki, H.H. Munro, whose sister confirmed that the aunts who raised them could be sadisict. Dunno about Nutt/Beaumont's alibi, but in any case, you could say the last laugh was on him: he died of Alzheimer's at age 38.
As Nolan tells it, he was a complex person, mercurial, but close and considerate to his wife, kids, and friends, with great enthusiasm beyond or along with the facility. I'd even like to read his damn car books! Also need to check out some of the b-movies he scripted, fairly well-known but not to me.

― dow, Thursday, August 23, 2012 10:29 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nice

― the late great, Thursday, August 23, 2012 1:51 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was just listening to a long Harlan Ellison interview and he namechecked Beaumont a couple times. Need to investigate...
---Elvis Telecom Sorry Elvis, my first time doing cutnpaste on Mac, but he prob posted that during the same week of Aug '12. Thanks Ward, I will check out Farmer.

The aforementioned Valancourt Book published a Charles Beaumont collection a little while back, The Hunger and Other Stories, which I considered getting.

I'd expect any Beaumont collection to be a bit uneven, but worth reading (at the very least).

Reposting from Harlan E thread because sf. Harlan E, Isaac A and Gene W discuss sf with Stud T and Calvin T.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZvcKB9vQO0

Thanks! I remember seeing that, esp. Wolfe's "dropping Gandhi" bit," and Ellison's reaction. Didn't remember the discussion of SF stories about TV and moon-landings, and how nobody put the two together in a story (Wolfe says somebody may have, but editors didn't buy it...) Could have sworn Pohl was on there too: I remember him with wire-rims, shrewd expression, trim stash, wiry build, light-colored suit (of course I also "remembered" Wolfe on this show as having shaved head, goatee, slim). Not seeing it listed on YouTube, except maybe where Pohl's talking to Bradbury.

Might try to look for that Bradbury/Pogo video. Checked out The Classic Philip José Farmer: 1952-1964 from the library and the first two stories, "Sail On! Sail On!" and "Mother" are both very good. The writing has trace elements of the problematic pulpy punning, but the ideas and imagery and energy all come through loud and clear.

Back cover sez:

"Mr. Farmer's name guarantees brilliant science fiction."
Alfred Bester

I just read Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Justice. They're cool, I guess, kind of mid-PKD in that they're unevenly written and full of big ideas (that aren't too deeply explored).

I don't get why they're so lauded.

Bought a cheap copy of AJ, but style didn't grab me, so didn't make it too far.

PJF official web page has a lot of stuff including original reviews from way back when
http://www.pjfarmer.com/reviews.htm
and excellent photo album
http://www.pjfarmer.com/photoal.htm

One thing of his I remember as being grebt and a good use of his talents is the short story "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod," which is Tarzan as if it were written by William S. Burroughs instead of Edgar Rice. Worth searching out, and why not right now, since it would have been PJF's birthday last week and Burroughs would have been 101 this week.

probably answered elsewhere re: PJF, but where's an absolute virgin to begin? What's low commitment (short novel, say) but representative?

Tough to say, intimidated by his graphomania and other manias myself. Perhaps at this point I prefer his earlier work, based on partial reading of this collection.

I would go with the 2008 reissue of Strange Relations. The original 1953 collection was just five novelettes (including one of my favorite by him, "Mother,") but the new edition adds The Lovers and Flesh, two good early novels. Those seven stories hit most of his major themes and will definitely let you know if you want to dig deeper into his work. One of the novelettes, "Daughter," is a sequel to "Mother" and also a pretty funny retelling of the Three Little Pigs story iirc.

"Mother" definitely a good place to start.

agreed on the ancillary books

Flesh also a fun read for baseball fans, as it has turned into a blood sport in the far future.

Couldn't find anything with Pohl and Bradbury other than a very short clip. Did find this clip of Zelazny reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRQ4wKLfYbc

http://borderlands-books.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/borderlands-books-to-close-in-march.html

I confess in recent years I haven't frequented it as much as I used to (mostly cuz I can't spend as much money on books as I used to and spend a lot more time at the library), sad to see them go though. I made a point of getting that hardback copy of Silverbob's Vol. 3 Short Stories from them just a couple months ago.

Just finished Rogues, yet another xpost George RR Martin & Gardner Dozois-edited loosely thematic anthology of new short stories, novelettes and novellas (I think, though forget the word-limit for each category; some long-ass offerings for sure). I should say "finished with," since I won't bother with yet another Martin bog at the very end: yet another Game Of Thrones prequel, apparently intended to read like a modern-English version of an ancient chronicle (JRRT does it better, RR; sorry, since I gather from some of your dismissals of GOT critiques that you think you're improving on his work in some ways, at least). I know how this (with no dialogue, no scenes per se, just a lot of reference material for your TV writers and fans) will go from skimming and from the one in Dangerous Women. M&D the previous multi-genre entry in M&D's series of collections. That one was a lot richer and even deeper overall: maybe roguery is just too cute a linkage for so many stories at once? Or I can't handle lightening up, especially in transitioning from My Brilliant Friend and The Brothers Karamazov? Nah, it's the editors' fault!
But, of the stories most relevant to this thread (multi-genre, like I said with some good light mystery/caper yarns), Carrie Vaughn's "Roaring Twenties" (flappers who are actually witches on a mission, in an enchanted yet lobby-Fed-hacked speakeasy), has feminine narrative perspectives x interactions on the fly, ditto Lisa Tuttle's "The Curious Affair of The Dead Wives" (spooky late-Victorian love/sex quests, gender-self-image and other personal adjustments, plus power struggles, going bump in the night).
Scott Lynch is just a guy, but his witches are positively sassy with the resourceful responses in "A Year and A Day In Old Theradine." Think Leiber and Vance would approve. (They're both name dropped in Martin's intro, as is Howard, but I'll have to take RR's word for the roguery of Conan.)
Daniel Abraham's "The Meaning of Love" also moves right along with the lucid twists, but more bittersweet, in cycles of majors and minors, like a good who-knows-how-old robust folk ballad. Somewhat similar shading/realness but in a pastoral setting and different-enough voice: Patrick Rothfuss's "The Lightning Tree," whose central figure is like a more sensitive Tom Sawyer, albeit one who is evidently a fairy, the kind with an eye for human lasses (and vice-versa, though they may not be---well, you'll see).
The most surprising story is Paul Cornell's "A Better Way To Die," about a good subject of a bad (and/or mad? Or just superrealpolitik) king and regime and way of life, a subject and brave agent who truly believes in "the balance" when the king and some senior advisors shift between levels of cultural piety. integrity, sanity---can we really continue a sense of reality and power based on primogeniture when multiple realities are the seemingly do-able New World(s)? Somehow, this seems like a serious question here, as the cards and scenes are re-shuffled and played. The author has written Dr Who scripts. also for Batman & Robin and Wolverine comics (and a Superman graphic novel at my library), so maybe all that helped with roping me in, as it prob did re my early hero Alfred Bester.

"wobbly-Fed-hacked," the Fed hacker is wobbly, baby, geez what a small screen sorry all the fluffs here.

JRRT does it better, RR; sorry, since I gather from some of your dismissals of GOT critiques that you think you're improving on his work in some ways, at least

lol

"you know what Lord of the Rings is really missing? Quality rape scenes"

Yeah, his basic defense (vs all kinds of objections) is "I bring the realness to fantasy." But Westerns doesn't *realleee* have a culture: despite "let's put in some relationships" from time to time, activities, incl sexual (voluntary and otherwise) mine a narrow vein.

Westeros! Damn you small-screen autocorrect!

Sorry, I'll try not to do this at the library from now on.

But Westeros doesn't *realleee* have a culture

aggh yes thank you this bugs the shit out of me! (full disclosure I have only watched the show I am not bothering w the books) His version of realism is like some parody of 80s comics "they're not just for kids any more!" reportage - ie, "realism" = boobs + blood.

the huge cultural forces/institutions of the middle ages that he draws inspiration from - religion, lyric/epic poetry, regional traditions/holidays/celebrations - these are all either waaaaaay in the background in GoT or totally ignored altogether

(I meant he draws his inspiration from the middle ages there, if that wasn't clear)