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

was at the book store and they had all three trade paper volumes of neal asher's The Owner trilogy.

should i buy them? anyone read them? they looked kinda cool. have read good/bad things online via goodreads and the like.

also, they had some stuff by Paolo Bacigalupi. do i need to read those? they had The Windup Girl, The Water Knife, and Pump Six and other stories.

Read a bit of PB in anthologies, and might have enjoyed the "Look What I Can Do!" in the midst of space opera, say---like the kind of "technical" prog-etc metal that can be fun when you're in the mood--but he applies the roiling bravura to serious themes, eco-trastrophe and genetic engineering, $cience Gone Too Far---which could work as a *principled* comic book, dammit--but, at least in the few stories I read, more like an Alfred Bester-wannabee---Bester, with Something To Say, also made the best of his comics background---kinda glib and half-assed.
Although! Maybe I just didn't read the right stories, or maybe he's one of those relatively rare writers who are better in longform, because they just really need the room. So SF Encyclopedia, though they have some mixed reactions about the Hugo and Locus-award-winning Wind-Up Girl, do think it eventually works out OK: technically overcomplicated and perhaps underpowered, does in the end provide a series of linked angles of view, through the assembly of which a terrible new world, at the brink of further Disasters, can be almost literally tasted.
On the other hand, I read the first chapter of The Water Knife, and maybe he decided he did need to go more pop, but it's like this suave badass antihero water pirate raiding reserves indignantly defended by the heroic underdog nerd engineer----in near-future Southwest, with docudrama clarity transposed to Summer Blockbuster potential, but ehhh I dunno maybe I'll read it
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/bacigalupi_paolo

PB "glib and half-assed," that is, not Alfie Bester!

windup girl was fine, if not seemingly award-winning. it definitely had eco-trastrophe and genetic engineering and $cience Gone Too Far tho

the only mieville i've read was perdido street station -- i recall him spending a lot of time describing the environment as moist and fecund and worst of all, organic; there's a bit of that in the windup girl too

I haven't been able to bring myself to read PB, just the descriptions on the back of his books struck me as deeply irritating, just another update on the noir-ish protagonist confronting shadowy corporate powers with some ecological decline window-dressing, feel like the genre's been awash in that kind of crap since the 80s.

The Windup Girl seems like the one to start with; I'll definitely give it another look when I get back to the library. The only Mieville I've read is The City and The City, which gets off to a bumpy start with a narrator who seems to be speaking in an East Euro accent, but distracts from the noir-Kafka urban and urbam tour with what sometimes looks like a transcription of Triumph The Insult Comic dogpuppet, without the jokes. But what he's actually talking about becomse engrossing enough to get me way past this conceit (though there's at least one, penultimate wobbler in passing). Helps that this is very imaginative police procedural---I keep getting pulled into those:Asmimov's robot detective stories, going way back, and much more recently Lock In, The Yiddish Policeman's Union---also Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, in a way, though this is less disturbing than PKD (most things are).

"urban and urban", "Asimov's", sorry.

I tried reading Perdido Street Station once, couldn't finish it

i have a bunch of mieville at home and still haven't read any. i think maria read one. i bought them cuzza ilx. ilx also made me buy dizzee rascal albums once upon a time...

Me three. I think Martin S recommended and I usually trusted him but just couldn't get into.

<i>also, they had some stuff by Paolo Bacigalupi. do i need to read those? they had The Windup Girl, The Water Knife, and Pump Six and other stories.</i>

i think 'water knife' is pretty good - its kinda like woke tom clancy more than anything - i liked the characters and the pacing was really good. i think hes a strong narrative writer even if he doesnt have great ~ideas about the future~ partic since the future is now or w/e in his work

hmm, okay, maybe i'll hold off on Paolo. might go for the other guy's trilogy though.

Asher has 14 books all set in the same universe. The Owner Trilogy is not a part of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Asher

although some people definitely loved his earlier stuff and hated this trilogy. hmmmm....

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10648878-the-departure

they do look cool though...

on the other hand, i've got LOTS to read at home...

SF Encyclopedia On-Line is pretty helpful, although I don't always agree with 'em.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_INLtZF1lBQ/V4O7_4Rr4oI/AAAAAAAAA9c/6KEGKBZ-dQMm0xh5j0R52qyyo_FKXMrrgCLcB/s1600/Hartmann.jpg

Bio tending to ripping yarn, appropriately:
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2016/07/douglas-fawcett-fantast-mountaineer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

paolo bacigalupi is really creepy about women in 'the windup girl' but his YA novel was pretty good /:

Neal asher is mostly smart action movie sf, nothing much deeper on the whole. Fun, bombastic, some big ideas, thin thin characters

> paolo bacigalupi is really creepy about women in 'the windup girl'

I though this too, and there was one violent episode that went *way* beyond creepy.

okay, yeah, i'll skip paolo.

smart action movie sf i can hang with though.

So that new omnibus...

Quite possibly the GREATEST science-fiction collection of ALL TIME—past, present, and FUTURE!

Funny I don't remember it being mentioned in "The Roads Must Roll," "Life-Line," or in anything else in that collection- what was it called?- The Past Through Tomorrow.

Love the titles of Chuck Tingle's books.

Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving The European Union

Slammed By The Substantial Amount Of Press Generated By My Book "Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving The European Union"

Slammed In The Butt By My Hugo Award Nomination

Turned Gay By The Existential Dread That I May Actually Be A Character In A Chuck Tingle Book

Living Inside My Own Butt For Eight Years, Starting A Business And Turning A Profit Through Common Sense Reinvestment And Strategic Targeted Marketing

His Twitter feed is also a national treasure

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnOM7J7WcAA7v0s.jpg

so true. we all know this CLASSIC hospital at the edge of the void and the man who comes when you think of him

finished KRS "Aurora" - good stuff and always an engaging read even if the limitations of his hard science approach occasionally peak through. While the ending is satisfying a more poetic or metaphysically inclined writer would have done something more interesting with the ship AI in the final stretch but eh whatever

moved on to recent Gene Wolfe ("The Borrowed Man") which is awesome only 20 pages in. Also picked up some LeGuin compendium of three Hainish Cycle novellas.

saw that new mammoth vandermeer collection at barnes & noble today and did not buy it. too big! the print is really small.

Yeah, saw people on the intranetz complaining baout that.

a more poetic or metaphysically inclined writer would have done something more interesting with the ship AI in the final stretch but eh whatever It may be that his poetic or poetically-inclined side and his POV on science and technology don't mesh---Green Earth seemed wobbly sometimes, but the strongest passages (by far) are those where he goes for what he knows, as an outdoors guy, and in related love for Thoreau and Emerson (incl. the tension between them, which he surely feels as an outdoors/indoors guy, ingesting info and pounding out all those books), and some for Tibetan Buddhism too.

Also, he's observed the lives of scientists, in Southern Cali and DC, so that helps, even if he still doesn't pull it all together (at least in this one-volume mix-down of the original trilogy, which I still haven't read).

he is great at describing natural phenomenon and environments (although I do routinely have to look up some of his terminology, dude is so specific!), and I agree that's where his poetic side shines through. what I was getting at though is something that has to do with more basic plotting and conceptualizing in his work - he's very much bound by a commitment to scientifically-based realism, there's no real room for the fantastic or mystical or metaphysical, even in instances where it might improve the story. So where someone like, say, Arthur C. Clarke could thread the needle and employ both where appropriate, KSR doesn't let anything even remotely "unrealistic" creep in, everything is restricted by cold hard facts. I feel like the few instances where he breaks this rule are when he finds some way to artificially extend the lives of his characters, but maybe he just thinks that is more plausible than interdimensional hyper-aliens or whatever.

Reminds me, I should read some more Clarke, maybe incl. the late collabs w Baxter, can see how they might be compatible.

Some more evidence that Piers Anthony has some good work, a review by Rhys Hughes
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1617479396
Yet still contains a flaw he's notorious for

I haven't read a lot of Clarke myself, just 2001 and Rendezvous with Rama which are obviously both classics

The baxter collabs are very baxter, would be amazed if clarke did any more than provide his name and a few ideas

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/39/3a/98/393a98b26a2bd06a57238be3baa7d48b.jpg

i was gonna start a thread once of just art/illustrations/portraits of sci-fi writers. but then i didn't.

i think it mostly had to do with finding this painting of heinlein online. but i just stared at it for a while and forgot to share it.

http://ljdopp.com/famous_authors/images/03Heinlein_jpg.jpg

Dynamic drapery on those lapels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5F0wq2xtwk

I think there is a special issue of F&SF dedicated to Poul Anderson that someone should post the cover of.

This one, which may already been posted up thread:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/70/cb/a7/70cba75cae2b968ffd4c94db97b10061.jpg

A couple of Delanys:

http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/delany-cover.jpg

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1414559383l/23398398.jpg

Harlan Ellison as a character in his own comic:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/aa/f0/e8/aaf0e8d7cf1f84bb860cd29cdbd3f146.jpg

Fritz Leiber:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fa/FSF_0769.jpg/220px-FSF_0769.jpg

pronounced LYE-buhr, fact fans

Also an act-or

https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/covers/cov0306lg-250.jpg

take your pick:

http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me3ms62w5e1qc8b0ao2_1280.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4113/5093655322_2a3796f7f5.jpg

kinda prefer rocket fingers myself...