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

so, like, you guys, area x/southern reach trilogy is seriously one of the greatest things i've ever read. in my life. i loved it so much i kinda don't even want to read anything else by the guy. i don't even want to read interviews with him. i would read an anthology that he edited. that i would do. maybe, possibly, a short story collection. but, for real, that kind of experience is sooooooo amazing to me. i didn't want it to end. i would read the last book soooooo slowly. it is written so well. i really want to read the first book again. not now. but eventually. that thing stunned me. stunned i tell you!

i mean some books just hit you where you live, you know?

yeah, it kicked my ass in many different ways

you could make a case for it being SF or horror or fantasy, and you'd be right whichever you chose ... I'll say SF because the bureaucrat/scientists in the second volume felt more real to me than any other scientists I've encountered in SF

has anyone ever seen the weird fiction anthology he edited with his wife? over a thousand pages apparently.

i would start a thread for area x but i don't even know what i would say about it.

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

does anyone remember The Cipher by Kathe Koja? where the punk kids find a Lovecraftian hole in a closet? i was reminded of it reading Area X. i loved those Abyss paperbacks. trying to keep the new wave of Books of Blood going. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/07/summer-of-sleaze-kathe-koja

(also, i did kinda love how he set up a possible second trilogy of books at the end of area x. or at least another book. i was kinda hoping he would...)

anyway, everyone read those books! and then talk about them here. get them from the library if you have to.

Koja is editing the newest Year's Best Weird Fiction.

Oddly enough the only Vandermeer book I've read so far is his essay book Monstrous Creatures. It's good but I don't know why I jumped for that one so quick when I have so much sitting around waiting. It has one story called "The Third Bear" which feels like an essay and is quite cute.
Your enthusiasm is duly noted.

scott, were you satisfied by the ending of area x? it seemed to me to get very vague and poetic, and i wasn't entirely sure what *happened* in a verifiable way vs. what convoluted version of reality the narrator was relating to us.

Also, I *do* have 'the weird' and it is a good collection. The editors vandermeer seem to favor very very dense prose, and there are a lot of stories that are probably good but also too turgid to hold my attention.

koja cipher downloaded. Thanks!

well, i'll tell you, i had like 20 pages left of the last book of area x and i had no clue how he was gonna pull it off. and when he kept returning to the director's story it did make me want to scream "bbbbbbut there's no time for her flashback!!!". so, i kinda knew i was going to have to take a literary leap of faith with him. was it completely satisfying? i don't know. i followed along as best i could and i think i was clear about most things. but he really did have to cram a lot into a short space. the last page almost made me cry. but i'm so mean and old now it's hard for me to cry. i definitely had questions about some things that happened at the end.

i read most of the abyss paperbacks as they came out. i think it was Death Grip that had cool arty photographs in the book which, at the time, seemed REALLY new wave for mass market horror:

http://toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.com/2011/02/dellabyss-books-paperback-covers.html

i would totally read the cipher again. haven't read it since it came out. sold my copy at Redrum, my appropriately-named book/record store in philly way back when.

I've never read any of that Abyss line but people often say it went to shit later on.

has anyone ever seen the weird fiction anthology he edited with his wife? over a thousand pages apparently.

it's totally great! can't remember if i blabbed about it before or not but it's much better than their time travel one.

guess i'll have to take a look at this area x thing.

Yeah I really want to read the Southern Reach Trilogy; also drooling over contents of The Weird. which would go well with my story-a-day diet (currently thrust aside by novels, but this book may lure it ba-ack...)

THE WEIRD: A Compendium of Dark & Strange Stories
Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Foreword: Michael Moorcock
Introduction by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Afterword: China Mieville

Over one hundred years of weird fiction collected in a single volume of 750,000 words. Over 20 nationalities are represented and seven new translations were commissioned for the book, most notably definitive translations of Julio Cortazar’s “Axolotl” and Michel Bernanos’ short novel “The Other Side of the Mountain” (the first translations of these classics in many decades). Other highlights include the short novels / long novellas “The Beak Doctor” by Eric Basso, “Tainaron” by Leena Krohn, and “The Brotherhood of Mutilation” by Brian Evenson. This is among the largest collections of weird fiction ever housed between the covers of one book.

Strands of The Weird represented include classic and mainstream weird tales, weird SF, weird ritual, international weird, and offshoots of the weird influenced by Surrealism, Symbolism, the Gothic, and the Decadent movement. (A discussion of weird modes of fiction can be found in the introduction.)

A compendium is neither as complete as an encyclopedia nor as baggy as a treasury. Although the backbone of the book reflects the immense influence of both Kafka and Lovecraft, we have ventured out from that basic focus to provide different traditions of weird fiction and outliers that are perhaps open to debate. The anthology is meant to be both an interrogation of weird fiction and a conversation with it. We hope that readers will be delighted by the classics included and by the unexpected discoveries found within its pages.

Also, in support of both the anthology and weird fiction, we will be launching http://www.weirdfictionreview.com in October 2011.

Table of Contents

Story order is chronological except for a couple of exceptions transposed for thematic reasons. Stories translated into English are largely positioned by date of first publication in their original language. Authors are North American or from the United Kingdom unless otherwise indicated.

Alfred Kubin, “The Other Side” (excerpt), 1908 (translation, Austria)

F. Marion Crawford, “The Screaming Skull,” 1908

Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows,” 1907

Saki, “Sredni Vashtar,” 1910

M.R. James, “Casting the Runes,” 1911

Lord Dunsany, “How Nuth Would Have Practiced his Art,” 1912

Gustav Meyrink, “The Man in the Bottle,” 1912 (translation, Austria)

Georg Heym, “The Dissection,” 1913 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Germany)

Hanns Heinz Ewers, “The Spider,” 1915 (translation, Germany)

Rabindranath Tagore, “The Hungry Stones,” 1916 (India)

Luigi Ugolini, “The Vegetable Man,” 1917 (new translation by Anna and Brendan Connell, Italy; first-ever translation into English)

A. Merritt, “The People of the Pit,” 1918

Ryunosuke Akutagawa, “The Hell Screen,” 1918 (new translation, Japan)

Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett), “Unseen—Unfeared,” 1919

Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony,” 1919 (translation, German/Czech)

Stefan Grabinski, “The White Weyrak,” 1921 (translation, Poland)

H.F. Arnold, “The Night Wire,” 1926

H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror,” 1929

Margaret Irwin, “The Book,” 1930

Jean Ray, “The Mainz Psalter,” 1930 (translation, Belgium)

Jean Ray, “The Shadowy Street,” 1931 (translation, Belgium)

Clark Ashton Smith, “Genius Loci,” 1933

Hagiwara Sakutoro, “The Town of Cats,” 1935 (translation, Japan)

Hugh Walpole, “The Tarn,” 1936

Bruno Schulz, “Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass,” 1937 (translation, Poland)

Robert Barbour Johnson, “Far Below,” 1939

Fritz Leiber, “Smoke Ghost,” 1941

Leonora Carrington, “White Rabbits,” 1941

Donald Wollheim, “Mimic,” 1942

Ray Bradbury, “The Crowd,” 1943

William Sansom, “The Long Sheet,” 1944

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Aleph,” 1945 (translation, Argentina)

Olympe Bhely-Quenum, “A Child in the Bush of Ghosts,” 1949 (Benin)

Shirley Jackson, “The Summer People,” 1950

Margaret St. Clair, “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles,” 1951

Robert Bloch, “The Hungry House,” 1951

Augusto Monterroso, “Mister Taylor,” 1952 (new translation by Larry Nolen, Guatemala)

Amos Tutuola, “The Complete Gentleman,” 1952 (Nigeria)

Jerome Bixby, “It’s a Good Life,” 1953

Julio Cortazar, “Axolotl,” 1956 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Argentina)

William Sansom, “A Woman Seldom Found,” 1956

Charles Beaumont, “The Howling Man,” 1959

Mervyn Peake, “Same Time, Same Place,” 1963

Dino Buzzati, “The Colomber,” 1966 (new translation by Gio Clairval, Italy)

Michel Bernanos, “The Other Side of the Mountain,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)

Merce Rodoreda, “The Salamander,” 1967 (translation, Catalan)

Claude Seignolle, “The Ghoulbird,” 1967 (new translation by Gio Clairval, France)

Gahan Wilson, “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be,” 1967

Daphne Du Maurier, “Don’t Look Now,” 1971

Robert Aickman, “The Hospice,” 1975

Dennis Etchison, “It Only Comes Out at Night,” 1976

James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Terrible Things to Rats,” 1976

Eric Basso, “The Beak Doctor,” 1977

Jamaica Kincaid, “Mother,” 1978 (Antigua and Barbuda/US)

George R.R. Martin, “Sandkings,” 1979

Bob Leman, “Window,” 1980

Ramsey Campbell, “The Brood,” 1980

Michael Shea, “The Autopsy,” 1980

William Gibson/John Shirley, “The Belonging Kind,” 1981

M. John Harrison, “Egnaro,” 1981

Joanna Russ, “The Little Dirty Girl,” 1982

M. John Harrison, “The New Rays,” 1982

Premendra Mitra, “The Discovery of Telenapota,” 1984 (translation, India)

F. Paul Wilson, “Soft,” 1984

Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild,” 1984

Clive Barker, “In the Hills, the Cities,” 1984

Leena Krohn, “Tainaron,” 1985 (translation, Finland)

Garry Kilworth, “Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands,” 1987

Lucius Shepard, “Shades,” 1987

Harlan Ellison, “The Function of Dream Sleep,” 1988

Ben Okri, “Worlds That Flourish,” 1988 (Nigeria)

Elizabeth Hand, “The Boy in the Tree,” 1989

Joyce Carol Oates, “Family,” 1989

Poppy Z Brite, “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood,” 1990

Michal Ajvaz, “The End of the Garden,” 1991 (translation, Czech)

Karen Joy Fowler, “The Dark,” 1991

Kathe Koja, “Angels in Love,” 1991

Haruki Murakami, “The Ice Man,” 1991 (translation, Japan)

Lisa Tuttle, “Replacements,” 1992

Marc Laidlaw, “The Diane Arbus Suicide Portfolio,” 1993

Steven Utley, “The Country Doctor,” 1993

William Browning Spenser, “The Ocean and All Its Devices,” 1994

Jeffrey Ford, “The Delicate,” 1994

Martin Simpson, “Last Rites and Resurrections,” 1994

Stephen King, “The Man in the Black Suit,” 1994

Angela Carter, “The Snow Pavilion,” 1995

Craig Padawer, “The Meat Garden,” 1996

Stepan Chapman, “The Stiff and the Stile,” 1997

Tanith Lee, “Yellow and Red,” 1998

Kelly Link, “The Specialist’s Hat,” 1998

Caitlin R. Kiernan, “A Redress for Andromeda,” 2000

Michael Chabon, “The God of Dark Laughter,” 2001

China Mieville, “Details,” 2002

Michael Cisco, “The Genius of Assassins,” 2002

Neil Gaiman, “Feeders and Eaters,” 2002

Jeff VanderMeer, “The Cage,” 2002

Jeffrey Ford, “The Beautiful Gelreesh,” 2003

Thomas Ligotti, “The Town Manager,” 2003

Brian Evenson, “The Brotherhood of Mutilation,” 2003

Mark Samuels, “The White Hands,” 2003

Daniel Abraham, “Flat Diana,” 2004

Margo Lanagan, “Singing My Sister Down,” 2005 (Australia)

T.M. Wright, “The People on the Island,” 2005

Laird Barron, “The Forest,” 2007

Liz Williams, “The Hide,” 2007

Reza Negarestani, “The Dust Enforcer,” 2008 (Iran)

Micaela Morrissette, “The Familiars,” 2009

Steve Duffy, “In the Lion’s Den,” 2009

Stephen Graham Jones, “Little Lambs,” 2009

K.J. Bishop, “Saving the Gleeful Horse,” 2010 (Australia)

Not seeing Table of Contents (other than Amazon's exclusive Look Inside thingie) for their previous The New Weird, but this blurb is appealing (and speaking of Kathe Koja):
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The VanderMeers (Best American Fantasy) ably demonstrate the sheer breadth of the New Weird fantasy subgenre in this powerful anthology of short fiction and critical essays. Highlights include strong fiction by authors such as M. John Harrison, Clive Barker, Kathe Koja and Michael Moorcock whose work pointed the way to such definitive New Weird tales as Jeffrey Ford's At Reparata and K.J. Bishop's The Art of Dying. Lingering somewhere between dark fantasy and supernatural horror, New Weird authors often seek to create unease rather than full-fledged terror. The subgenre's roots in the British New Wave of the 1960s and the Victorian Decadents can lend a self-consciously literary and experimental aura, as illustrated by the laboratory, where more mainstream fantasy and horror authors, including Sarah Monette and Conrad Williams, try their hands at creating New Weird stories. This extremely ambitious anthology will define the New Weird much as Bruce Sterling's landmark Mirrorshades anthology defined cyberpunk. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

re-linked in sfe's Twitter feed, Happy Birthday Rudy Rucker (doesn't mention his online frolics, but almost everything else)(wonder if any of these collections incl. the epochal Forced Exposure interview):
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/rucker_rudy

One thing that entry should have made clearer, I think: his thought experiment stories, the ones I've read anyway, incl. modica of gamey character development ("gamey" as in math rock x "christ you can practically smell him/her")

ha. Court of the Crimson King is playing on the radio and i just spotted in the lyrics the phrase 'Pattern Juggler'. which was one of the alien races in Revelation Space.

Reynolds is a fiend for the musical references. And for Crimson in particular

He also named a gas giant Tangerine Dream

yes, see also Diamond Dogs / Turquoise Days

but all those are a lot less cryptic than something buried deep in King Crimson lyrics.

he's definitely an extremely high-level nerd

from upperrubberboot.com

How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens explores the immigrant experience in a science fiction setting, with exciting fiction and poetry from some of the genre’s best writers.

In these pages, you’ll find Sturgeon winner Sarah Pinsker’s robot grandmother, James Tiptree, Jr., Award winner Nisi Shawl’s prison planet and Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award winner Ken Liu’s space- and time-spanning story of different kinds of ghosts. You’ll find Bryan Thao Worra’s Cthulhic poetry, and Pinckney Benedict’s sad, whimsical tale of genocide. You’ll travel to Frankfurt, to the moon, to Mars, to the underworld, to unnamed alien planets, under the ocean, through clusters of asteroids. You’ll land on the fourth planet from the star Deneb, and an alternate universe version of Earth, and a world of Jesuses.

This is not a textbook. You will not find here polemics on immigration policy or colonialism. The most compelling fiction articulates the unsaid, the unbearable, and the incomprehensible; these stories say things about the immigration experience that a lecture never could. The purpose of this book is, first and foremost, to entertain the casual and the sophisticated reader, but its genesis is a response to the question: Who do we become when we live with the unfamiliar?

The one Justina Robson novel I read was, while otherwise pretty good, nearly ruined by one character interminably quoting from the interminably boring 'American Pie', and done in such a way that it was plain Robson thinks that song is both excellent and deep, which made me pretty suss about her in general.

Holy Shit indeed:

Jeff VanderMeer ‏@jeffvandermeer

Holy sh*t "But by July, all rabbits are gone, real-life plot twist lifted from the Southern Reach trilogy" http://tinyurl.com/prjq579 @fsgbooks

Somewhere in Wolf In White Van: Catnip for Clute, hope he knows it, but I won't check the SFE site 'til I've finished it (finished the first time that is, suspect there will be replays). The narrator soaked up fantasy and science fiction from early childhood on, from when he started building on stray images especially, from covers of comic books, for his own purposes ( back of the park becomes the underworld throne room of Conan, recast as blood drinker: narrator tot pissed because family has to keep moving, father seeking new job and cheaper digs, I think--that's part of it). Cover of Leiber's Swords of Death becomes a point of intersection with another mysteriously purposeful loner in middle school; also its spine--the apparently purposeful and otherwise maybe accidental effects of design elements are big/handy influences on his invention of fantasy games.
The most important game is Trace Italian, title derived from the name of a medieval fortress, with rows layers f outer walls based around right angles, AKA "star fortress." This is also his life, or anyway his narrative, and certainly his livelihood, as subscribers (even or especially despite the Web) still send him their snail mail moves, and he responds with bits of scenario written decades, maybe a generation ago. The center of the fortress is just an empty, quiet place, very appealing, but they'll never get all the way in, or if they do---well, more relevant is that something has happened. A second thing, long after the disfiguring accident in high school. He approaches connection, while some incidents bleed through the old tapes he finds himself reviewing.

blah!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/books/review/t-c-boyle-by-the-book.html?rref=collection/column/by-the-book&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=By%20the%20Book&pgtype=article

"I have never been a fan of genre writing of any kind, because generally speaking it provides only one element I look for when I open a book of fiction: story. All right. Fine. Story is primary. But what I want — the richness of language, beauty that sweeps you away — is often missing in genre writing."

It's often missing in literary writing too! Also TC Boyle get one Vance!

God I can't wait to read that xp

Wolf notes cont. :"approaches connection," yeah, and always along the lines and at the angles he's established, but there were always connections to be made, and the second thing that's happened, the latest shake-up of his grid, leads to a wave-particle present-tense timeline, the accrual of old and even new faces, new social events either way. (the Mountain Goats thing for dimensions of geography, def. incl. crate digging.) Self-disfigured Sean ("it's like tire tread," decides a teen he meets [outside the liquor-video store, a favorite in Sean's own long-gone teen years], and Sean concurs) is charming-disarming and subtly manipulative, never overselling, unlike so many other first-person narrators. Always connections re-made, the web repaired, even/especially after the first great shake-out.

One way of coping, anyway, is to stare at the ceiling. A hospital room ceiling, white, like an egg in a carton that's been in the refrigerator for several weeks, away from the light, is dull, completely uniform, revealing variations only when you stare at the same spot for some time, and then, very slowly, venture out...You could let your attention rest there for a while, you could imagine the future of the ceiling, the battles playing out up there, camps pitched when the building was new, back in unremembered time...either in your mind's eye or out there on the actual field of play if your vision spreads that far, the plaster underneath is learning to follow the cracks, the mildew forming on residues left by cleaning solutions beginning to breed, and colonies of microscopic life-forms, hostile to dull matter, developing their ruthless, mindless strategy: consume, reproduce, survive. You can see the hospital when the building has been emptied of patients but a few workers remain: administrators, janitors, members of the demolition crew. You can see the ceiling in the next room, following the splits of the ceiling in its neighbor, and the one of beyond that in turn, and then the greater canvas, the sky at night gone flat and painted white, the constellations in the cracking paint, the dust the cracks bring into being as they form, finding free land where none had been before their coming

There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die. But it's very hard to die, because all the turns pointing that way open up into new ones, and you have to make the wrong choice enough times to really mean it. You have to stay focused. Very few players train their focus on death. The path forward stops here and there as you go, each frame filled out by outlines and figures from the rich depths of my hospital ceiling, shaded by colors I'd reconstituted from the foggy memory of the the visions that had proceeded the event for sixteen years: all those blurred plains, now deleted down into an ideally endless landscape, its peaks judiciously spread out so as not use them all up at once. Saving some for last when there was no last. When there was no point in saving, when no one would ever see the very last. Although at one point he does run into his old high school buddy Teague, the one who dug that Swords of Death cover, and Teague mentions in passing that he'd "played through" one of Sean's games, without bothering to say which one. (Some are or were less popular, maybe simpler than Trace Italian; Sean hasn't bothered much with them himself, so far.)

now *melted* down. that is.

TC Boyle giving reading at NYPL today. Perhaps he will reveal that quote as April Fool's joke.

http://subterraneanpress.com/uploads/Voice_of_the_Fire_by_Alan_Moore.jpg

from Subterranean Press:

Announcing VOICE OF THE FIRE by Alan Moore -- already at the printer!

Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore

We're six steps past delighted to announce a surprise signed limited edition of Alan Moore's challenging, maddening, spectacular novel, The Voice of the Fire, which just went to the printer.

Voice will be an oversize hardcover, with a dust jacket and endsheets by Dave McKean, and a brand new introduction by Joe Hill. We expect demand for this title to exceed supply, and likely won't have copies for our large online retail and wholesale accounts.
About the Book:

Alan Moore is one of the true grand masters of the graphic novel. His signature works, which include Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell are cultural touchstones that have assumed the status of modern classics. But Moore's versatility extends to other forms as well, as his first (and thus far only published) novel, Voice of the Fire, amply demonstrates.

First published in 1996 as a paperback original, this extraordinary work ranges across 6,000 years of turbulent history and is set within the few square miles of rural England now known as Northampton. Its twelve largely independent narratives combine to form a cumulative portrait of the region's "secret soul," a soul that Moore illuminates with seemingly effortless mastery. The virtuoso opening section, "Hob's Hog," takes place in 4,000 BC and is related by a damaged and abandoned young man whose grasp of reality is as limited as his vocabulary. His story is one of loss, longing, and ultimate betrayal and that story, like others that will follow, finds its way into Northampton's gradually expanding pool of myth, legend, and dream. Subsequent narratives encompass a gallery of characters-saints and witches, murderers and mad men, artists and bureaucrats-whose personal histories reflect the larger history of one small corner of England.

Five years in the writing and told through an array of highly distinctive fictional voices, this visionary, unjustly neglected masterpiece remains one of Alan Moore's most astonishing creations. Mysterious, disturbing and always utterly original, Voice of the Fire is a work of permanent value, the rare sort of book that demands and rewards repeated readings. It is a brave, beautiful and adventurous achievement that no one but Alan Moore could have written.

Limited: 750 signed numbered oversize hardcovers: $60

Lettered: 26 signed leatherbound copies, housed in a custom traycase: $350

Wormwoodiana

THE GHOST STORY AWARDS

Posted: 30 Mar 2015 11:20 AM PDT
We are pleased to announce the winners of the inaugural Ghost Story Awards, sponsored by the literary society A Ghostly Company, and the journals Ghosts & Scholars and Supernatural Tales. The awards are for the best ghost story and the best ghost story book published in English in 2014.

The winners are:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4nnGNQ4oxio/VRlJSKkPt-I/AAAAAAAAAf4/RvF063uGL3Y/s320/Mr%2BPunch.jpg

Story – "Shallabalah" by D.P. Watt, The Ghosts & Scholars Newsletter no 26, Haunted Library

Book – Dreams of Shadow and Smoke: Stories for J.S. Le Fanu edited by Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers, Swan River Press

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zIA-g6qpayc/VRlJdYw2kBI/AAAAAAAAAgA/LJZZsdEbdKQ/s320/Dreams%2Bof%2BShadow%2Band%2BSmoke.gif

Our warmest congratulations to the winners, who will each receive a specially commissioned statuette, and a year’s complimentary subscription from each of the three sponsors.

Mark Valentine
Secretary

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/stunning-street-art-tribute-to-terry-pratchett-appears-in-east-london-10153232.html

http://www.standard.co.uk/incoming/article10153215.ece/alternates/w620/Pratchett1.jpg
(Picture: Ella Finch)

What book hasn’t been written that you’d like to read?

The one in which the author explains the mysteries of the universe (in detail, with diagrams and full-color photos of the creatures inhabiting all those other planets). This would, of course, include a photo shoot with God and lavish pics of the celestial pad itself.

huh kinda sounds like an sf novel

finished the Ted Chiang - pretty good, maybe a little cold/stiff when it comes to characters and people, but the ideas are engaging. Struck me as very much concept-driven, with other elements subjugated to the exploration (usually via exposition) of a given story's central concept. The story that seemed to work best on multiple levels - formal, conceptual, emotional - was the titular "Story of Your Life" with the alien-speech translator intercutting reminiscences of her (currently deceased) daughter with a "first contact" narrative that also loops around to explain her daughter's conception. That one was genuinely moving. Would read more but man dude is slow!

On to Robert Reed. First story "The Children's Crusade" is great.

"Story of Your Life" is getting a movie adapt with Amy Adams

Hm i don't really see a decent film in there

Was thinking something similar

lol at this whole "controversy" btw: http://io9.com/the-hugo-awards-were-always-political-now-theyre-only-1695721604

this thing that i got at that book store sale is a great resource, by the way:

https://scontent-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/11001890_10153794774872137_810032581196226929_n.jpg?oh=f1ed9c5bf02bd15144d663a842dfb48a&oe=557C87F1

1984 Pynchon essay on Luddism: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html

nice to see some glowing enthusiasm for post-war sci-fi from the old master

I will check that, thanks.
Just finished Dune Messiah, though I may re-read/relive some parts of thee vision, appropriately enough, for "What is 'before,' little sister?" True space *opera*, with some lyrics even---also some soap opera, but never in the pot-boiler, placeholder sense; the momentum of plot x character development goes whipping though different points of view---but maybe with more of a sense of each moment than in Dune, which a previous poster found a little too fleet-footed--- as we're sometimes fed big sanctified visionary Scooby Snacks (and/or gamed-out evil plotters' points)of what will happen, but never how.
There's also a sense that busting out of the pattern can be part of the pattern working itself out, by means unforeseen, *maybe* even by the author. It does seem, in my def. sub-sub-etc.-Herbertian experierence, that sometimes you gotta let it go, to a certain extent. Which is a point he explicitly makes, re existence in the universe (not only his universe). Then again, the illusion of spontaneity is very much in the spirit of his creations, who do tend to be attracted to the long con and the deep game, as we say in the Golden Age of Television.

they must have some good weed where you live, don.

yeah, the sense of well-timed moments is there, incl. those in which the waiting is the hardest part (until the next "oh shit" penny drops, though actually it's always dropping through this story).

Kind of a Dune/Kim Stanley Robinson thing:
http://news.discovery.com/space/buried-mars-glaciers-are-brimming-with-water-150408.htm

Here is the Graphic Story that the sadpuppies members nominated for a Hugo: http://www.thezombienation.com/