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

okay found the mentions. you liked diaspora and james said the non-human trilogy is boring. so, if i see diaspora i will pick it up.

hmm never heard of this Robert Reed guy before, will investigate

just getting to the end of V4 of Silverbob, last few stories are incredible, peak-form stuff (Born with the Dead, Schwartz Between the Galaxies etc.)

one of the guys in this anthology comes in my store. i see him around all the time. did not know he was a SF writer.

Oh yeah there's a Reed "Great Ship" story in a mammoth (small m) dozois new space opera collection I picked up a while back. Was good enough to make me want more but then I forgot, thanks for the reminder! Did not know there was a second 'ancillary' novel either. Would read, except I've mostly forgot the pertinent details of the first one.

might get this collection:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Greatship-Robert-Reed/dp/0786753668

self-published even...

so that guy who lives around here won a hugo and everything. might pick up one of his books for the local color. now i know why i SEE his books around town.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Steele

could've sworn we'd talked more about egan other than 3 mentions by me and one from james (and a comment from ledge which was a bit scathing, but probably true).

there are two mammoth dozois new space opera books, 2007 and 2009 by the looks.

Mine's the first one. Not really tempted to get the second, I don't really tend to get lasting satisfaction from these anthologies.

Just got that Greatship collection though.

i've mentioned it MORE than once but to give props to dozois this is one of the most entertaining collections i've ever read:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-New-Stuff-Adventure/dp/0312198906

i loved that thing. and it was the perfect book to read whenever i read it because it really did its job as far as making me want to go out and search for more.

and now that i look the good new stuff had robert reed in it too. can't remember his story in it though:

Stephen Baxter, Tony Daniel, R. Garcia y Robertson, Peter F. Hamilton, Janet Kagan, George R. R. Martin, Paul J. McAuley, Maureen F. McHugh. G. David Nordley, Robert Reed, Mary Rosenblum, Bruce Sterling, Michael Swanwick, George Turner, John Varley, Vernor Vinge, Walter Jon Williams

Browsing the kobo store, God there's a whole load of space opera novels being churned out. Lee Fuller, Ben Bova, Michael Cobley, James Corey, Gavin Gibson, Gary Smith... it's probably mostly terrible, right? Sample spiel:

For nearly a century mankind has been at war with an alien race that no one has ever seen. The war has reached a stalemante. Lieutenant Commander Stuart of the solo scout ship Pegasus is ordered to transport a group of scientists outside of the galaxy to test a device that could turn the tide of war to mankind's advantage. It is outside of the galaxy that Stuart discovers a star with a single planet hidden from the galaxy by intergalactic dust. On the planet lies a secret that will answer questions of human origins and ultimately decide the fate of the entire galaxy.

Ho hum, another day, another chance to decide the fate of the entire galaxy.

i loved ben bova's exiles trilogy. that last book killed me for some reason. emotionally.

but yeah space opera is a big deal now. that and post-zombie stuff. and eco-sf.

i never actually finished the last book of blish's cities in flight when i was reading it last year or whenever. feel kinda bad about that. i'd had enough. enjoyed the first two a lot.

I liked the two Vinge books I read, too bad about the whole Kurzweil/singularity thing

how often do you guys start a book or story and go: yeah, fuck this. and not read it. just wondering. with this collection i'm reading it's happened twice. once with alternate history shakespeare story. *yawn* and another where for some reason people are riding around in jeeps on mars and they don't explain the whole "air" thing. which just seemed weird to me and i couldn't tell if it was a loving homage to olde tyme sf or what. there was a john carter-themed casino on mars, so, i'm guessing that was the case. but i stopped reading.

something's gotta be really terrible for me not to finish it. can't remember the last time it happened tbh

I try not to but if I do stop reading, I skim it to see if anything interesting happens later.

i think i've gotten to the life is too short part of my life. middle-age. i've got a zillion books at home i haven't read...i never would have done it when i was younger.

Last time I remember doing it was with a Manly Wade Wellman story about Byron (one of my pet hates is horror stories that mythologize older writers in a supernatural way).

I skimmed some Henry James too.

I'm all about abandoning books these days. Gave up last year on a Kundera, some huge post 9/11 novel, and an overwritten cognitive science book.

totally uninhibited about abandoning novels the minute something unforgivable happens. usually it's something to do with prose style. or something that tips the scale into 'this author is a sexist/racist brute'.

is right-wing space opera published by baen books still a thing?

Oh yeah, Allen Steele's pretty good with the mainstream/"hard" SF(but really more of a fun clever action-adventure approach). Wrote one for the new stories about Old Mars Martin-Dozois colletion I mentioned upthread (breathable air is a given in all these deliberately retro yarns, sorry Scott). He doesn't usually do deliberate(or maybe any) retro, though. He's not major, but okay (or maybe he is major, since he wins Hugos, I dunno).
Think Reynolds was mentioned more than once on the previous Rolling SF etc thread.

I've tried Allen Steele a couple of times, but not had much luck--he wasn't awful, just a bit jack mcdevitt-like in that everyone in the future acts like 1980s californians. but this is based on only a couple of books, and he seems to have written a lot, so may not be fair.

Baen is still very much a thing, with their ongoing quest to create the worst covers in SF history.

I couldn't get The Good New Stuff from the library, so I'm taking a look at The Good Old Stuff.

I reread "Who Goes There?" for the first time in about 30 years the other night. Campbell was weak on characterization and style even by 1938 pulp standards, but he puts the story across anyway. John Carpenter's "The Thing" sticks closer to the source material than the Howard Hawks version, recycling the character names and getting more of the funky, claustrophobic feel of the Antarctic research station, but the short story is more gruesome, paranoid, and cosmic than either movie.

Many lols at the Things landing on Earth in a magnesium spaceship -- wtf John W. Campbell

Good Old Stuff has got some good, old stuff in it.

Have abandoned books all the time, but these days even ones that I like, since I have so little time to read, with the hope that one day I would return to them.

I tend to enjoy people of the future who act like Californians of the 1980s, long as they're not too much like Ronald Reagan or some lifeguard, but so far much prefer Reed to Steele.

I've got a book of Campbell stories somewhere, incl. several he wrote as Don A. Stuart (which may incl. "Who Goes There?"--don't remember, although it's in there). Agree that he was one mighty worm, tunnelling through pulp conventions and his own limitations--can see how that made him such an effective editor of younger, better writers--"Fine, you did that much, now consider this--can also see how it drove some away, and others simply outgrew him. Welp, we all gotta leave the nest some time.
gruesome, paranoid, and cosmic Him and L. Ron, bros 4 life (after life)

Lol, good description of Campbell.

Came to post that John Crowley has good essay in the current Harper's that discusses not finishing books.

Not finishing reading them or not finishing writing them

Ha, reading them, although he at makes at least one joke about this kind of misunderstanding.

The magnetic fields and serum tests in "Who Goes There?" sit oddly next to straight-faced acceptance of telepathy ("Dr. Rhine of Duke University has shown that it exists") ... it's weird but somehow not surprising that Campbell's determination to harden science fiction could coexist with eager interest in Dianetics ... under both impulses, perhaps, was the same sort of worship of mind power.

Didn't abandon Nicola Griffith's Ammonite but I did skim read the last 100 pages. Got a bit fed up with the all female colony who revert to the soil after being abandoned for a few dozen generations following the male destroying plague, apparently forgetting about or not seeing the need for either money or reading and writing. Instead they have a system of bartering that is so culturally entrenched you can't do anyone a simple favour without them becoming beholden to you, plus some tokens of exchange that are easily forged and impossible to authenticate without destroying. Communication is accomplished via storytellers, and a language of knots which fascinates our off-world anthropologist protagonist but is obviously error prone enough to precipitate a major plot point.

I also had trouble with the strange mix of science and mysticism, on one page the main character trances into her partner's ovaries and manages to literally manipulate the chromosomes of her egg as it emerges, then we're hit with this: "chromosomes began their stately dance, pairing and parting, chromatids joining and breaking again at their chiasmata, each with slightly rearranged genetic material. But the chromatids did not then separate again and migrate to the cellular poles in a second anaphase; instead they replicated." Add to this a fascination with telling us the colour of the sky and clouds (usually unsurprising shades of blue and grey) and giving the characters transparently symbolic dreams, and I felt like she was in dire need of an editor.

starting this today. will finish that year's best collection later. can't remember the last time i bought a new fancy book. they ain't cheap! i am a musty dusty buyer by nature. but this sure is a pretty thing.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10978620_10153712605357137_3799620630155046843_n.jpg?oh=d9ec648f420ba0c9169b5874b1fafac1&oe=555857D1&__gda__=1431915956_5aebc2f192190e39da345c6634c3a346

Okay, I give up---whut the hell is it

Jeff Vandermeer's Area X Southern Reach trilogy

just getting to the end of V4 of Silverbob, last few stories are incredible, peak-form stuff (Born with the Dead, Schwartz Between the Galaxies etc.)

Just finally read Zelazny's "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" in The Good Old Stuff. Wondering if I should read collection of this same title, or The Dream Master or the original story that grew into the latter, "He Who Shapes."

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame is v good and has some v inspired segments, but it feels more like a formal exercise next to Schwartz, which has a compelling narrator and some real emotional weight. Both stories are close cousins of Dying Inside, which should surprise no one.

I gotta dig into zelazny myself

iirc that Doors of His Face collection is really good

Only read a couple of these, but they were good: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/01/some-of-the-best-from-torcom-2014-is-free-to-download-now (a free ebook anthology)

hey guys: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/18/michael-moorcock-new-novel-the-whispering-swarm

Thank heavens! I was worried that the well had finally run dry.

part of me wants to collect all these just for the covers.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2lXpzxluQF0/TwNuoc6gfJI/AAAAAAAAEBY/b9lZGYaLBYk/s1600/Count_Brass_Mayflower_01.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pFZzH5z1yLU/TjmYsytRWhI/AAAAAAAADqo/UIQnJ2gdvEU/s1600/Phoenix_In_Obsidian_Granada_1976.jpg

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/moorcock_citadel.jpg

his 70's covers in general are great. after that elric goes to the dogs cover-wise.

Tor collection looks good, will check that out.

Halfway through The Greatship and am a little bit disappointed. Was expecting a kind of haunted house (shades of rendezvous with rama I guess), instead it's very much a galactic menagerie, the ship itself mere backdrop. Not that that isn't legit, and the obvious way to spin it out into multiple stories, I'm just not that into invented interspecies social mores of the 221st century. Also very strong theme of sibling rivalry, not my cup of tea either.

That Phoenix in Obsidian cover looks so familiar I'm sure I must have owned it but the plot summary is ringing no bells. It does confirm my belief that Moorcock is best avoided, though.

There was a shop I went to that recently closed that had loads of those paperbacks. I resisted because a lot of those are series novels that are now in corrected omnibuses. But for old anthologies I feel different because a lot of the story selections will be unique.