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

just looked at the RP1 wiki and ... I can't get with that, I don't think. and of course now Spielberg is making a movie of it.

Still-Life

One of my favorite stories, by anyone, ever.

I dunno if it's better than the v similar and much longer "Beyond Apollo" but it's certainly more concise

Seems like most of his novels have a corresponding short story version.

from the fix-up school of noveling

B-b-but does he stitch together multiple stories or just expand them one at a time?

ha that's hard to say given how much he re-used certain themes and situations (JFK assassination, inscrutable but near-omniscient aliens interfering with schmoes, crazed astronauts, etc.). He had a bunch of stories about disturbed astronauts and the futility of the space program, for example, which varied in certain ways but it would probably not have been hard for him to just string a bunch of them together and change some minor details here and there to keep them consistent.

I love fixup novels

We should do a greatest fixup novel poll

not exactly on topic but cool: https://twitter.com/videodrew/status/622205026316984320

I love fixup novels

We should do a greatest fixup novel poll

Dying earth bro

That too, but haven't finished reading the first time

Looks like that is the case with a lot of the great fix ups, actually

"The 2014 Shirley Jackson Awards winners were announced on July 12, 2015 at Readercon 22 in Burlington MA."

damn, i didn't even know about this thing. it's up the road a piece from me. i've done record shows in burlington. i could hang out with chip delany.

burlington is kinda like an interdimensional void in some ways. if you aren't from there you probably don't know its there and there is nothing there and nothing near there.

Seems like WeirdFictionReview is dying down quite a bit. I hope it's going to stick around because in previous years it was amazing.

At the omphalos of steampunk right now- the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

http://www.clickhole.com/quiz/how-many-these-classic-sci-fi-novels-have-you-read-2734

No Solar Shoe Salesman, no credibility

poll

Her Smoke Rose up Forever: a heady cocktail of love and misery, sex and death. Stellar stuff, pretty much, a couple of misfires aside; not necessarily recommended for those trying to avoid encouraging their natural tendencies towards misanthropy, misandry and a keen sense of futility.

Kim Stanley Robinson's new one, Aurora, which was very entertaining: slightly odd authorial voice explained by the book being written by an AI learning to to be conscious and to write -- I really liked it, but if you don't like KSR this one won't change your mind

Louisa Hall: Speak -- a David-Mitchell-nested-narratives story about the creation of AI, which had lots of good bits, but didn't entirely work for me; the 5 layers of story are too carefully, literarily intertwined and cross-referential, and some stuff atributed to Alan Turing is a bit on the nose (such as when talking about social mores, he talks about how awful it is to "break codes", or the way one shortish made-up letter will just happen to reference machine intelligence, Snow White, his homosexuality, code-breaking, and more)

Reading the grauniad sf round up and we have 'a masterpiece', a 'tour de force', 'a gripping read', a book with a 'brilliant creation' of a character and a 'brilliant twist', 'a stunning double finale', and one superlative free review. Maybe things are that great in current sf but i somehow doubt that if I were to enthusiastically pick all these up I wouldn't be disappointed two or three or four times over. Tempted to give at least one a go though, maybe the tour de force.

(In order: Chrid Beckett, Mother of Eden; Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet; Stephen Palmer, Beautiful Intelligence; Ian Sales, All That Outer Space Allows; SL Grey, Under Ground; and Alex Lamb, Roboteer. I'd discount the first, third and last for genre considerations, and the last for not being superlative.)

Been reading a lot of the awards/puppy controversy on Black Gate blog. Initially I wanted to avoid it because I find most outrages really boring and annoying but I've really enjoyed reading about this one, though I still don't completely understand the whole situation. Very refreshing to see different sides of the argument discussing things civilly in the comments thread.
But really taken aback by some of the views of the most conservative "puppy" writers, like "is this a joke, are you really saying these things that would have sounded nuts to many people several decades ago and definitely sound nuts to most conservatives today?", I had no idea there were still fairly popular writers quite like that.

James, a friend of mine recommended the KSR just last night. I have read a few short stories that I liked but haven't made it through any of his big novels yet, daunted by the length, perhaps will try this one.

ledge, that grauniad roundup is little too conspicuously upbeat, a classic 'win-win' situation. Hope springs eternal though. As you may know that Ian Sales book is the fourth in a series which is probably best read in order.

Thanks for that blog reference, Robert, although I too have steered clear of these controversies thus far,

You neglected to pull this cherce nugget from the graunaid, ledge;

It’s JG Ballard meets Agatha Christie, with a soupcon of Patricia Highsmith thrown in.

Well that Guardian reviewer is an SF writer so might not be that reliable. It's not unheard of for them to be totally honest but more often they are very complimentary.

You think?

Related subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXUKjn40l6Q

Tbh was afraid to click on that but I am now glad I did, it was kind of awesome.

Internet has actually made this situation far worse. With genre forums of mostly writers and some authors attacking negative reviewers. The horror forums I have frequented are always 90% writers/editors/illustrators and someday when I finally read a lot of these guys I'd be hesitant to write a negative or even lukewarm review, so probably wouldn't write a review at all.

Video left me wanting more info about Harlan Ellison's haircut decisions.

Went back over a couple more grauniad round ups, all the reviews were positive but not quite as unreservedly enthusiastic as this month.

Not sure what KSR short stories I've read but I haven't read any long ones. Aurora seems like a good place to start... I think I said this this upthread already.

Intriguing review of Neal Stephenson's Seveneves and Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, with cogent, concise comments on their relationship to the present era:
http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/the-warm-equations

― dow, Sunday, June 28, 2015 2:31 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Only thing: the reviewer limits himself *so much* by abstention from all spoilers. But he says why.

― dow, Sunday, June 28, 2015 2:38 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also check the links below the review, like Matthew Snyder on Hieroglyph:
http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/saving-spaceship-earth

― dow, Sunday, June 28, 2015 3:07 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Writers can now send that youtube link to each other when they don't want to blurb each others weaker books.

Don't be like Bill Pronzini or Stephen King!

Only thing: the reviewer limits himself *so much* by abstention from all spoilers. But he says why.

He emphasised it so much that I wanted to read Aurora just to see what he was going on about. But looking upthread I think James has blown that one already and might just have saved me 500 pages.

Er, sorry about that... It comes early on in the book, about 30p in

There are a couple of other big surprises i didnt describe

oh 30pp in doesn't count! Damn, back on the pile

> about 30p in

i read that as pence. total number of pages divided by cost of book ie 10 pages into a £3 book.

i finished Algernon and then had a confusing conversation with someone who didn't know that it was a novel-length thing (me not knowing it was originally a short story).

Some free KSR stories here: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1597801844/1597801844_toc.htm allegedly his 'best' but I don't how how representative they are - I was expecting a few more bangs and whistles than there are in these short character sketches of alternate histories or near futures. Serves me right for being a cheapskate, maybe.

I think I liked most of his early stories in Asimov's etc., later collected for Down and Out In The Year 2000. The only ones I half-way remember at the moment: a scientist who is depressed about the accumulating evidence of eco-decline, and its already problematic effects, like drought, he keeps slogging along, duty-bound, periodically treated for depression via massive doses of electric light: sits in a room facing a sun of many bulbs--that was a thing then (sad irony of the enviro dosed by artificial light---do you see--I was impressed by the lower-case way he presented it, though). The other was about a homeless guy in DC---no science fiction content at all, other than it was maybe the title story, thus set in the future, but seemed very much of its time; as in the depressed scientist's accumulating narrative. Seemed like he'd learned from Orwell about uncrowded density of imagery; he earned the O-ref of Down and Out...(or so I thought in days of yore).
Also enjoyed The Wild Shore,concerning the travels of a post-eco-collapse Huck Finn in the Great Northwest. But I never did read the rest of that trilogy (involving different characters), Gold Coast and Pacific Rim.

pretty excited by that r.a. lafferty omnibus linked upthread. anyone familiar enough with his work to name some can't-miss stories in there? i'm kind of just reading them at random, mostly the late 60s/early 70s ones, my favorite one i've encountered so far is "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun"

it took me a long time to finish KSR's Mars trilogy but i'm glad i did it. it felt like an accomplishment. i have a bunch of his other books at home that i still haven't gotten around to. kinda hard to top the Mars books.

Kinda like this Shirley Jackson story--starts out just sub-Kafka, and ends resonantly, evocatively---sub-Kafka still, you might say, but that's less relevant than the folkoid ballad quality, and what I infer as social commentary, on a personal note I almost heard
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/28/the-man-in-the-woods

reading the review of the new shirley jackson collection and apparently tons of the stories in it have never been published before? i might have to splurge on it.

"As we approach the centenary of her birth comes this astonishing compilation of fifty-six pieces—more than forty of which have never been published before. Two of Jackson’s children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mother’s papers at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion."

40+ things!

yeah, i gotta get that.

like the space she leaves, and the breadcrumbs--in this one, but the other one on thenewyorker, "Paranoia," is not that hot. Yeah, I'd like to check the collection. Both stories were linked below this short non-fiction, also in the collection:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/memory-and-delusion?mbid=rss

Just watched Under The Skin, rec. to fans of Ballard, Roeg, and Cronenberg,though the long unblinking solemn alien gazes at toddlin' Scottish streetlife and wide open spaces give me time to nurture my own niggling degrees of detachment and doubts. A "distillation" of a much more elaborately spelled-out script, director Jonathan Glazer explains, and that does seem right, if a little generous with the flow---there's def no sense of being force-fed gobs of exposition and bright twirling objects while accountants time the whole thing, as with so many bigger-budgeted items (Wonder how the Michael Faber novel is.) Certainly committed to show-not-tell---though could have used more bursts of hellish imagery, the overall arc is no prob---and,since the alien gazer is Scarlett Johansson....
Not as good as Her, but they could make a satisfying SJ SF double feature (how's Lucy?)