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

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)

few things turn me into a JRRT/LOTR stan faster than seeing someone claim that GOT is more adult/mature/complex (etc) because it's more violent or (worse) "darker" than tolkien.

Yeah his big rejoinder is, "What's Aragorn's tax policy?" ooooo---but what's Joffrey's tax policy, or that of anybody else on the Iron Throne or other Thrones. Do the peasants (or whomever) pay tribute and if so when do they harvest or mine or weave or distill or etc.? Everybody's fighting fleeing fucking drinking plotting arguing snarking talking talking talking 24/7 All's I know of their economy is the dwarf Hand of The King said the Iron Throne was far beyond overdrawn at the Bank of Something cos forever war.
(Again, this is the show: hopefully the novels are better than this, and much better than the "chronicles," which are wayyy worse than the show)

Beyond the big institutional stuff like religion and economics (which, granted, are only dealt with peripherally by Tolkien), he gives some sense of the culture all the characters are embedded in - the songs they sing, the things they like to eat, what they smoke, the stories they tell - you get a sense of the lives of average people. there's none of this GoT, it's all scheming and nursing old grudges and fatalism plus boobs

Tolkien is so fucking bucolic, where's all the high infant mortality, infectious diseases, serious cancer problem from all the pipe smoking.

shakey are you actually comparing the amount of detail in the LOTR books vs a tv show? this is bizarre and pointless even for you

I don't think that's what I'm doing, no

Tolkien is so fucking bucolic, where's all the high infant mortality

Among the hobbits aside, there don't actually seem to be any infants at all

The comparison is fair, considering four seasons of GOT, with no commercials breaking up the epic eps. I enjoy them sometimes, from moment to moment, but overall they do slog on, with no particular takeaway. I hope the novels are better

Is it four now, or five? No prob waiting for Season Whatevs DVDs to show up at my village library, this spring maybe.

Reading around in this Damon Knight anthology of ghost stories called The Golden Road. So far so good.

is there an sf/fantasy book covers/art thread? or should I start one? or just image bomb this thread

Rolling fantastical art thread (including fantasy/horror/weird art, surrealism/visionary, religious spectacle art and subtly strange art)
I'd be happy if you used this thread. It's not getting much action.

that doesn't quite seem to fit the bill for what I had in mind (ie Charles Moll book covers)

Charles Moll fits in fantasy though. I made that thread for everything from Bosch, Dali to pulps, paperbacks and all sorts of commercial art.
Start another thread if you insist something more specific but I just wanted anything fantastical or weird in there.

reading this now. more than 300,000 words! SF size queens crack me up. so far nothing has flattened me or made me ponder my existence, but it has been entertaining.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10968501_10153689509587137_1212808210369550914_n.jpg?oh=d35d015f6380e049278f231d4045112e&oe=554FD1CE&__gda__=1431543256_cbb0d020b32b3a57fadcd471ad3d13dd

I think I might have saw that recently because I'm sure I seen a "year's best" collection of surprising size.

that cover is terrible

steam monkeys

Used to read those Dozois anthologies religiously, but in recent years there seems to have been a bit of a fall-off in quality. Or maybe I'm just less in sympathy with current trends in SF short stories. i don't know. There seems to be a standard sort of voice used by most of the anthologised writers -- Robert Reed is a prime example -- which I am a bit bored by even though I can't quantify why. Or maybe it's just that Ted Chiang keep not writing new stories often enough.

Aaargh, I see that j michael straczynski is writing the TV version of 'Red Mars'. I don't see that this can end well.

oh man red mars on t.v.???!!!!

will watch no matter how bad...

i swear i was JUST thinking of how that would be cool for t.v. especially if they really followed the books.

That's really too bad they have straczysnski on it

there's no way this will be good

Used to read those Dozois anthologies religiously, but in recent years there seems to have been a bit of a fall-off in quality. Or maybe I'm just less in sympathy with current trends in SF short stories I gave on 'em too. It's like he (while turning out so damned many collections, various series and stand-alones) just stopped doing much close reading, and I went from liking maybe 50-60-70% of each volume to---much less, or so it seemed (as in the recent, weaker co-edits with Martin, they get longer as they get worse, thus any bad story can have outsize impact, making the overall impression even worse). And yeah, the last one I read had a really barfy story narrated by the maudlin owner of a dying doggie: a *Robert Reed* story, of all things, and I used to really enjoy the solemn pulp vitality of his salad days. Seems like a Dozois fave too, and there they are, circling the drain together. I guess I'll give the series another shot one of these days, though.

Think it's him, more than any overall SF trends, though I guess his taste has some influence.

How's the xpost Damon Knight ghost story collection, James? Edited or written by him? Either way, didn't know he was into ghosts; intriguing.

that Babylon 5 guy wrote for this awesome show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pppLcJFKVYQ

after he left his writing gig at He-Man...

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe – Staff Writer; wrote 9 episodes
She-Ra: Princess of Power – Uncredited Co-Story Editor; wrote 9 episodes
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors – Staff Writer; wrote 11 episodes and script for undeveloped movie
The Real Ghostbusters – Story Editor; wrote 21 episodes and Primetime Special
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future – Executive Story Editor; wrote 13 episodes
The New Twilight Zone – Story Editor; wrote 11 episodes
Jake and the Fatman – Executive Story Editor; wrote 5 episodes
Murder, She Wrote – Co-Producer; wrote 7 episodes
Walker Texas Ranger – Supervising Producer; wrote 1 episode
Babylon 5 – Executive Producer; wrote 92 episodes
Crusade – Executive Producer; wrote 10 episodes
Jeremiah – Executive Producer; wrote 22 episodes
Sense8 – Executive Producer; wrote 10 episodes

And that's neglecting his amazingly shoddy comics output

i kinda want to read the script he wrote for the undeveloped jayce and the wheeled warriors movie.

Just finished engine summer, found it quite compelling and easy going, pretty much read it in a single sitting. Obviously it's something of a puzzle book but it wears that aspect lightly, enough to play with if you like that kind of thing but not so much as to bewilder, or to cloud the narrative. The ending I think is almost perfect, emotionally and structurally. Overall I wouldn't call it life changing but it will probably stay in my thoughts longer than, say, your standard thrill powered space epic.

(found a cheap new sf masterworks copy, along with, on impulse, nicola griffith's ammonite. still to track down the rest of my ten upthread desiderata, ridley walker would probably be a good one to follow engine summer with.)

just finished ancillary justice. it's... ok? the ideas are good, and interesting. there's a lot to like & a lot to think about. the writing, though, is not that great. scenes of both action and dialogue/social grace are just not rendered very well. i gathered that in a vast multilingual empire (language is a cool element in it) gesture would be important but seriously the number of times characters would gesture this or that got to be a very annoying tic. the climax was really shaky. all the stuff about being a multi-body AI was really cool tho, and really cool that Breq had no real yearning to be "human". and of course the "she" thing, the mysterious annoyance of gender, which is wild. the big bad lord didn't seem to smart, idk.

i don't read much fantasy or scifi but her naming seemed really cumbersome and goofy. double-As everywhere, stop it.

i wondered thru the whole thing what political import the setting was meant to have. because in a way the empire is a sort of nightmare-parody of contemporary liberalism -- it reads the way conservatives describe the liberal order right now: a genderless, pansexual decadent empire that will not permit other, earlier cultural formations to exist, where everyone is forced to profess equality but in truth is there is not much more to life than constant jockeying status games and warring on the benighted outsiders

reviews of the next one have generally said it's worse, because it's more stationary, more about people talking. which sounds better to me frankly.

That actually sounds really interesting now

the second one is more like a mystery (albeit not a terribly mysterious one) set in said universe

kinda thought it pulls up short in that the radch citizens (as best i could tell) *do* have gender, they just ignore it/don't notice it/find it rude to discuss, like all the glove-wearing. which is both less plausible and less interesting than if they were genderless or hermaphroditic or whatever

idk i liked that element of it; not a radically different gender system (a la the aliens in leguin's left hand of darkness) but a different ideology of gender. it's stated somewhere that reproduction still happens somewhat normally (if medically managed if the genders aren't aligned for it?) and sex is kind of w/e

you're right though, wearing gloves is hella annoying, no way would that be a civilizational value.

one tossed-off detail that really rang out badly: so, the birthplace of humanity is a dyson sphere (way to just plonk down the real man's name btw, really bad)? and nobody outside can get in it? and the lord's whole mission is to protect it? or subjugate all of these previously-colonized worlds for its benefit? or something?

weird that humanity didn't seem to have any historical memory of its years leaving earth and colonizing outwards, setting up the gates, etc. i did kind of like that tho.

the stories in that collection that i'm reading - so far - are entertaining enough, but one thing i notice when i read (a lot of) new SF short fiction is how little of it actually surprises me. not that i've read a TON of new SF. but the new tropes/cliches/ideas are as firmly entrenched as the old ones. and are often just the old ones gussied up with slightly newer ideas on what a green eco-corporate post-warming/apocalypse/space travel/VR world is gonna look like. they are a smartphone upgrade away from the old ideas, basically. so, i tend to like the stories that are just good...stories. good storytelling. which is, duh, ageless and cliche-proof. because i don't often come across stories with ideas that make my head explode and these kinda ideas were everywhere in the old stuff i read. just endlessly inventive nutsto theories and imaginative exercises. maybe it was the drugs.

Think that's more on Dozois' narrowing interests, or maybe the publisher's. Hartwell is erratic, but provides much higher highs: his annuals have turned me on to extreme sports like M. Rickert and Peter Watts...

yeah, it could be him. a real lack of weirdness so far.

i'm intrigued by this one:

http://www.constablerobinson.com/images/book/large/9781472111661.jpg

would read.