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

Because the old one got too long and Shakey couldn't load it. A sequel to rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

Hoping to report on Report On Probability A in the near future.

Gregory Benford: Artifact --- archaeologists uncover lethal alien thingy in Mycenean burial ground. Not brilliantly written, but interesting enough to continue with. Entertainingly, for a book written in 1985, it contains early 21st-century Greece falling apart because of a worldwide economic depression/recession

lol @ thread title

Report on Probability A - was idly thinking of re-reading that recently, I remember being p underwhelmed by its central formal conceit. I expected it to be much loopier and disorienting. In general, Aldiss is v hit or miss for me (something I've read Moorcock attribute to his needing a good editor/manager, someone to set goals/targets for him). Cryptozoic is undreadable, for example, but I consider Barefoot in the Head from just a year or two later a masterpiece.

undreadable
Brian W. "Crazy Baldhead" Aldiss

Read rep on prob a at least twice a long time ago, didn't know anything about last year at marienbad but enjoyed the formal conceit and the last few pages made me want to high five him.

thread title capitalisation and constant reminder of that dunderheaded heinlein story is gonna make me rmde to eternity.

agonising as it may be for ledge, this restart is v handy for me, as I meant to start following the previous thread after the initial poll that prompted it, and then i didn't and then it got so long that my approach of 'I must read all of it before participating' turned into hiding from the thread and not ever talking about some of my favourite strands of writing :/

Sorry for thread title, ledge, I did it to annoy Shakey, not you.

You are not the only one who couldn't read prior thread, Fizzles. Was constantly using the search feature or wondering where something was only to learn it was further upthread.

Still slogging through the last of Atwood's Maddadam trilogy. The third book is piss-weak, slow going and uninteresting, and her stylistic flaws seem to show through more and more. Because it's sci-fi there's an attempt to be, I dunno, edgy or hardboiled or something and it's about as convincing as one of your parents trying on an ill-fitting leather jacket. Bit of a shame really, becaus eI enjoyed the first two books (Oryx & Crake / Year of the Flood) immensely.

I think I forgotten to say on the previous thread that another one of the best features on fantasticfiction site is it shows you the blurbs writers have done for other people's books.

Cool I'll just keep pasting in stuff from prev thread everytime somebody mentions something already discussed thoroughly, as I kept etc on prev thread its own self. Speaking of blurbs, here's a good 'un from a recent library shop score, Wandering Stars, An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Jack Dann, Introduction by Isaac Asimov:
I loved Wandering Stars, and why not? Two of the thirteen stories are from Orbit, and I would have bought seven of the rest if I had got my hands on them first. If the book had nothing else going for it, it would still be a triumph to get William Tenn to write the great story he was talking about in the fifties.--Damon Knight
(Also a blurb from Leo Rosten, who wrote The Education of Hyman Kaplan, about an immigrant who tends to take over English classes with his own versions and visions of language and lit.)

Contents (some of these titles are corny, but the few stories I kinda remember from mags etc were good):

Introduction:
"Why Me?" by Isaac Asimov

William Tenn: "On Venus, Have We Got A Rabbi"

Avram Davidson: "The Golem"

Isaac Asimov: "Unto the Fourth Generation"

Carol Carr: "Look, You Think You've Got Troubles"

Avram Davidson: "Goslin Day"

Robert Silverberg: "The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV"

Horace L. Gold: "Trouble With Water"

Pamela Sargent: "Gather Blue Roses"

Bernard Malamud: "The Jewbird"

Geo. Alec Effinger: "Paradise Lost"

Robert Sheckley: "Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay"

Isaac Bashevis Singer: Jachid and Jechidah"

Harlan Ellison: "I'm Looking For Kadah"

I just looked at a full schedule of all the books on SF Gateway (presumably this is the ebook titles). It's 2599 books!
Cant remember where I found the document.

UK or US or other?

Probably UK

Considerably fewer in US

Mark Sinker makes some connections (for inst., between Gothic and Futurist lit) new to me, after viewing the National Gallery's William Morris exhibition: http://dubdobdee.co.uk/2014/11/02/the-wood-beyond-the-world-or-this-bus-has-a-new-destination/

Thanks. Surely the friend mentioned there is an ILB poster.

RMDE at that this thread title too, as well as the terrible screenname I had at the time. Don't know why I did it. I guess the door dilated and I just had to go through it.

before I forget: this Brazilian writer recently died and Clute tweeted link to very appealing SFE overview of his work:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/carneiro_andre

Ooh! I mean RIP but yknow

Thanks. Often hard to find something like that in translation or even not in translation. Wonder if he had anything in that Cosmos Latinos anthology? Don't seem to recognize the name.

(xp, obv)

okay, "Brain Transplant."

I've only read Brain Transplant but would def read more provided stuff gets translated

Hey James, tried to reply to yr kind email, but it won't let us reply directly, and the webmail form has the worst captcha evah, I refreshed it a half-dozen times, got rejected over and over and over and over and over and over. So I'll reply here: thanks, you keep up the good posts too!

has this been posted already?
http://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/

Laird Barron wrote a parody of the horror/weird scene, it included jabs at Mark Samuels in particular (however serious they were intended, nobody knows), there was some discussion of this at the Ligotti forum and eventually that resulted in Justin Isis writing hilarious rap battle lyrics.
Several spread across this page
http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=6815&page=9

The xpost link to Mark Sinker's William Morris exhibit etc is back online this afternoon. Read that before reading further, for max headroom:
When his fellow visitor/ILXor xyzzz (sic?) said it was down this morning, I told Mark, and we had this email exchange:

Mark:oh cheers, yes, the guy who hosts it (on a laptop in his spare room) sometimes has to reboot :)

me: OK, will keep in mind. I fairly recently got into Morris and those Kipling stories (if you meant "As Easy As A-B-C" and "With The Night Mail," for inst), but hadn't made the connection. Now I'm also thinking of Blade Runner's Earth, a mostly abandoned First World-as-Third World backstreet, where it rains all night in perpetual eco-ruins; also PKD's original setting, more like a slightly-future-to-us Beijing, with workers scuttling between buildings, hoping not to be singed/cancer-seeded by the invisible sun. Some later Tiptree stories too, and Mary Shelley's The Last Man, for me amazing as Frankenstein.
Probably some of Kim Stanley Robinson's later novels too, though they've gotten so long I may never know (early The Wild Shore was fine, best I recall). But I recently saw a mention of "cli-fi" as emerging trend, so we may get sick of the whole thing even before it all comes true.

Mark: Yes, Kipling’s mum was related to a famous Pre-Raphaelite in the Morris circle — his dad of course ran the Lucknow museum — and when he was boarded in England as kid (not the notorious time that became Baa Baa Black Sheep) he stayed with the De Morgans, who were also minor slebs in Arts&Crafts terms: William DM a high-end potter and tile designer (he did the fireplaces for the Titanic iirc!)

Yrs partly (Kipling's)sic-fi stories, but also the stories about ships and trains and cars — esp.the ones from the perspective of the train or ship. The ones abt cars are really intriguing: he was totally an early adopter.

me: Didn't know any of that, thanks! Will def have to read more Kipling----recently found one of his I mentioned in an anth w HG's "The Land Ironclads"---getting back into Wells, and suspect the Eloi and Morlocks might have gotten Morris (and Tolkien) going. Finally read The Lord Of The Rings, and feel like I totally/mostly get it! Specific associations re the "not allegorical, dammit!" Ring/magic can shift, but lately I think of fossil fuels as thee ancient source of modern marvels, source which must now be sacrificed to/for any chance of future lives, bearable legacy But once that ship sails off into the autumn sea, it sails, buddy. So the book is a tragedy, but fairly often experienced as a comedy, in a commedia sense: fascination of the vivid details, robustly acted out, with some mortal meat joy, and other meat conditions.

William DM a high-end potter and tile designer (he did the fireplaces for the Titanic iirc!

De Morgan Centre looking for a foothold. (Those are Tolkien's ships, right there)

Love you ursula:

http://parkerhiggins.net/2014/11/will-need-writers-can-remember-freedom-ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards/

Just heard "Dream Weaver" on the radio. Wasn't there an sf writer named Gary Wright who had a much anthologized story about some futuristic luge called something like "Ice Slide"? "Ice Capades"? "Ice Rink" ? "Ice Mutants"? and then was never heard from again? I'll guess I'll see what Clute & Co have to say.

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/games_and_sports
"Mirror of Ice"

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.sf.written/tF2gWUrE_fY

Looks like some Canadian teacher assigned it to his students to adapt as a short film. Don't think it was clemenza, though.

Can anyone tell me what on earth Science Fiction Poetry is? Poems of fantasy and horror just uses tropes of those genres but how do you achieve the conceptual framework of SF in poetry? Because without that, the tropes by themselves would just be fantasy poems or poems about radical change.

If you have to ask you'll never know.

Tom Disch might have had something to tell you about it, but he is sadly no longer with us.

Oh gosh, now that you mention it, I've seen poetry in science fiction mags as far back as I can remember, though I don't remember any specific poem, at least in part because I haven't read any sf mags in a long time. I do remember there being quite a range, from short light verse (limericks, even)to much more ambitious testimonials and mini-sagas(never got much space in the page sense).
I'll have to dig up some of those zines; meanwhile this looks like a good place to start:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/poetry

Also notable were the infusion of a quantity of poetry into the text of Brian W Aldiss's novel Barefoot in the Head (1969)

There are some poems in the anthology Sense of Wonder.

Just came across a 1962 American printing of The Long Afternoon of Earth, AKA Hothouse; unabridged edition didn't come out in the US 'til 76.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/915UUZNX5hL._SL1500_.jpg

Did you buy it? It is currently out of print. I loved the story/extract in the Silverberg SF 101 book, as mentioned on prior thread.

This is the abridged version I got (for 25 cents)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518xgA8aO7L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

in terms of thematic vibe, this cover may be more appropriate, but the UK is awesome o coures

In your favorite online sf reference work I believe that book has the tag ***SEMISPOILER ALERT** "Space Elevator" **END OF SEMISPOILER ALERT

Vandermeer has come back to one he still thinks is underappreciated. The title and author seem vaguely familiar; anybody read it? http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2007/08/19/smile-on-the-void-by-stuart-gordon/

New Yorker won't let me link, but check out Laura Miller's "Fresh Hell" for clear lens view of profuse YA dystopias, and how the lit varies from Classic adult-aimed (later school-assigned). TNY's Amy Davidson later agrees with much but not all of Miller's take.

been reading LeGuin's "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" (they had it at the library). I took Disch to task in "The Dreams Our Stuff is Made of" for his attacks on her, and while I won't recant on that count (he was unnecessarily harsh and dismissive), she really can let her didacticism get in the way. I can think of few fiction writers that have a more keenly developed political agenda that is so readily apparent in their work. Ayn Rand obviously (lol) and Heinlein and Scott Card I suppose. But LeGuin's well to the left of those boorish blowhards, and arguably more audacious conceptually. I wonder if I should go back and re-read the Kestrel books for any political subtext I may have missed in jr high, I always liked those...

I don't think I'll read her for a very long time unless I come across her work in anthologies. Because once Moorcock said her work was self-consciously literary and left him cold. But he was very fond of her as a person.

That really put me off and what you say here adds to that. But Wizard Of Earthsea is an attractive name so I'm not totally discouraged.

Moorcock doesn't always make the right choices...

Even people I know who don't usually like her (or science fiction in general) tend to like this

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81dSlqYK3SL.jpg

And this

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SCqzNF1eL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Suspect that she may have said it all and/or best with these two, judging by the others that I've read, but I haven't come close to reading them all.

http://chomupress.com/wp-content/uploads/Jane-Front-Cover.jpg

I so love this cover art. PF Jeffery is another writer I see on the horror forums and every time I see descriptions of her work it sounds fascinating. I love the idea of very British girly fantasy.

Thousands of years in the future, the division between the sexes is entrenched, turning to warfare. Many technologies are lost and much history forgotten, but gynogenesis (by which two women may have a child) is becoming the scientific foundation for the Empire of Her Majesty, Berenice I. Amidst the haunted marshes of outlying Essex, the routine and romance of homes and offices in the Surrey heartland, and the crumbling feudal heritage of Lundin town, the action unfolds like the panorama from a stagecoach window.
Jane is a sixteen-year-old civil servant under Her Majesty. Sent to audit the spoils of battle, she falls for Captain Modesty Clay, precipitating a maelstrom of events that force her to grow up fast, and in which she catches the eye of the Empress herself.
The first novel in the Warriors of Love series, a projected twelve volumes of intertwined stories told by three female narrators, Jane is a beguiling evocation of a memory-haunted future, combining erotic picaresque, breathless narrative in the best tradition of British adventure yarns, and poetic delineament of place and person.

Michael Moorcock: "a man who excels at saga-making in a timeless magic world" or like the movie Yellow Submarine w/o any of the good bits

www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=55&threadid=1374

Sorry, works better as pre-"2001" space travel psychodramas - SLUGS IN SPACE and donald malcolm, I think. Because I'm thinking of sinka.

Was looking for the thread where he said something like: "lol at Michael Moorcock saying someone doesn't know how to write."

Maybe I imagined. Closest I came was this: James Tiptree Jr. vs Robert Silverberg

Dow is right to call out her two best books upthread. They are classics imo.

Been meaning to read those forever. LIked the old PBS adaptation of Lathe of Heaven so meaning to read that as well.

I am glad to see even a big Moorcock fan like Οὖτις takes such opinions with a grain of salt.

Haha moorcock has all kinds of baffling opinions. Only makes him all the more lovable imo.

dont agree w sinkah at all of course. I readily agree that he has plenty of boring books to his credit, but his pulpy peaks are some of the best, most audacious in the genre.

Lathe of Heaven is excellent.

Earthsea saga is excellent, dips a bit in the middle but the way she turns it all around when she revisits it 20 and then 30 years on is without equal. "Self consciously literary" wtf a) no; ii) fuck off; 3) her work is some of the most generous and compassionate I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

Didactic maybe a better criticism for *some* of her work, couldn't really get behind Always Coming Home.

i haven't read a ton of le guin but some of what i have read is some of my very favorite sf. she can be completely amazing to read. Four Ways to Forgiveness blew me away! i still think about it. and that came out in 1995, long after her glory years, i never wanted it to end. 4 stories that make up a book. same mythology as her earlier most famous books.

I should probably post the source so I don't misrepresent his meaning.

I wasn’t rejecting the pulps. I loved the pulps. They were the thing that I got all of my stuff from. The other stuff – frankly Ursula LeGuin, though a nice person left me completely cold. All the writers who were literary in their ambitions didn’t particularly interest me.

http://www.harikunzru.com/archive/interview-michael-moorcock-2010

It's a really good interview.

i've never read Moorcock. i like Hawkwind.

I've read his New Wave stuff. Can't bear it.

i liked the covers of the elric books when i was a kid.

I've got a whole bunch of his stuff but Behold The Man is the only fiction I've read so far and I really liked it.
Yes, it is a bit hard to swallow how Karl manages to be in the right place at the right time for some parts of the book. Some people think that even if Karl had studied the language of Jerusalem of that period you wouldn't be able to go back in time and speak to them so easily. But I thought Moorcock did a great job of portraying their lives and believes.
Some people complain it's childishly provocative to Christians but I wasn't so sure it was supposed to be offensive. It made sense to have Karl's hopes for Jesus tarnished in a demoralizing way, but I suppose you might say Moorcock didn't need to go that far.

I rank moorcock's ouevre thusly:

dancers at the end of time books
oswald bastable/nomad of the time streams books
Pyat quartet
behold the man/breakfast in the ruins
jerry cornelius books (with the latter entries better to the earlier ones)
elric books
count brass books

dont bother w the rest, aside from a couple random novels

What about Gloriana? I'm looking forward to that one.

I love his fantasy overview book Wizardry And Wild Romance (get the updated one with the Mieville and Vandermeer foreward and afterward, Moorcock adds new reviews and some new retrospective views). I was sceptical of quite a few of his opinions but it's a lot of fun.
It also has this great bit...

If the bulk of American sf could be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits, and for rabbits.

Actually I havent read gloriana

I bought loads of books again, not sure if it was a good idea.

3 romantic poetry anthologies (Penguin, Norton and a Dover one about German poets).
2 collections by Reggie Oliver (a recent-ish highly acclaimed writer of ghost stories)
2 collections by Quentin S Crisp (a weird fiction writer, note the "S" in the middle of his name)
A collection by Justin Isis
Jane by PF Jeffery
Dadaoism (an anthology of writers of the Chomu group)
2 Brendan Connell books (Life Of Polycrates and Miss Homicide Plays The Flute; I'm intrigued by all the praise, his work sounds bizzare)
Dark Domain by Grabinski
2 collections of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (a poet who CA Smith and Lovecraft greatly admired)
Strange Tale Of Panorama Island by Edogawa Ranpo
The Golem by Meyrink
North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud
Chateau D'Argol (Castle Of Argol) by Julien Gracq
Glass Coffin Girls by Paul Jessup
Kaiki: Uncanny Tales Of Japan 3
Against Nature by Huysmans
Portraits Of Ruin by Joseph Pulver
Gaki And Other Hungry Spirits by Stephen Mark Rainey
Klarkash-Ton Cycle by Clark Ashton Smith
Master Of The Day Of Judgement by Leo Perutz
Other Side Of The Mountain by Bernanos
Distorture by Rob Hardin

2 omnibuses (Lords of Darkness and Night's Daughter) collecting Tanith Lee's Flat Earth series. The series can be bought individually on e-book now but it really sucks that there hasn't been an omnibus since the 80s. Quite a few short tales in the mythos don't seem to have been collected and I've heard she is planning two more books in the series.
Seen an interview (which actually might have been quite a few years ago but I couldn't find a date) with her saying she is having trouble selling some of her books. Hope that lifetime achievement award comes in handy.

Encyclopedia Of Fantasy by David Pringle

Asian Horror Encyclopedia by Laurence Bush (supposed to be full of errors but still holds extensive information)

Wanted to buy some collections by Caitlin R Kiernan but most of them are pretty expensive. Wanted some DP Watt, RB Russell, Simon Stranzas, Laird Barron and a bunch of others but I should probably read their work in the anthologies I've got first.

Master Of The Day Of Judgement by Leo Perutz

Went on a big Perutz binge a couple of years ago--like him a lot. His 'Saint Peter's Snow' is also a good borderline SF/fantasy novel, based on a mind-altering drug developed from a white mould.

Cool, are a lot of his books in translation? I'm finding a lot of these writers only have a few books in translation and often the quality of translation is in question.

More Grabinski books are coming out. Passion just came out this week I think.

I really wanted some Marcel Bealu but old copies of Experience Of The Night are pricey. Water Spider is in an e-book anthology called Unstuck 2 but I'm still a bit reluctant to buy an e-book if I think a print version my come out. There are a bunch of his tales across the internet but I'm hoping a new collection will surface.

I think it's weird there's never been a complete short story collection for Angela Carter.

I thought Burning Your Boats had all of Carter's shorts? It's almost 600p long, in any case.

There are about 6 Perutzes in translation, though mostly out of print, i think. Harvill in the UK released them all in the 1990s.

Reminds me I need to check out more back-catalogues of the older writers in that huge vandermeer The Weird anthology.

Shit, you're right about Burning Your Boats, it includes all the collections and a bit more. Cool, I gotta have this.
But Wikipedia says a story called "The Bridegroom" hasn't been collected in any of her own books. Maybe there's a good reason for that.
But it's here in this anthology Lands Of Never
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?19927

I think for a lot of these European writers it's good to go through the Dedalus catalogue. I read that they were going to go out of business then they got a big grant.

Going through loads of lists and catalogues I'm also attracted to lots of trashy looking books. Because so many great authors get godawful cliched fantasy covers. It probably does mean I'll end up reading lots of trash to find a few gems. You might say that's just like anything else but I think books are an even bigger gamble because trailers for films, glances across comic pages and clips of music is usually more reliable than reading the opening paragraphs of a book.
But even a lot of those trashy covers have an appeal (the ones that aren't completely ugly) that tantalizes me. Even though they're cliched they still suggest qualities I don't read often enough.

Cheesy photoshop covers have replaced cheesy airbrushed covers.

Dedalus publish some great books, but their covers are often hideous. Full of JPG artifacts and really insensitively chosen and placed type.

Haven't gave most of the covers a good look, but there is a few different covers for different editions of Grabinski's Dark Domain.
My copy of Nodier's Smarra & Trilby has a really nice Gustave Moreau painting.

I'm not really one to splash out on expensive editions of books but some publishers are really raising the standard.

Sourdough by Angela Slatter
http://sheneverslept.com/newsandreviews/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/sourdough-under.jpg
I think this sold out fast and no wonder, it's beautiful.

The Phantasmagorical Imperative & Other Fabrications by DP Watt
http://www.egaeuspress.com/Phantasmagorical_Imperative.html

Sometimes I think about posting the lists of Other Titles You Might Enjoy from the back pages of old SF paperbacks and see how many of them people have read, how many have become classics and how many have been forgotten. Either on a separate thread or even just on this thread. But then I think this kind of thing is really skot's domain and I should leave it to him.

Definitely keep it on this thread if you're going to do it.

Gary K. Wolfe on xpost The Three-Body Problem and The Blood of Angels, mainly:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-science-fiction-roundup-20141120-story.html

The paywall didn't dilate

Sometimes I think about posting the lists of Other Titles You Might Enjoy from the back pages of old SF paperbacks and see how many of them people have read, how many have become classics and how many have been forgotten.

haha I think about this all the time as well

hey guys can I get a lol about the wikipedia entry for "cyberpunk"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

I mean:
Cyberpunk is often falsely credited as a subgenre of science fiction in a near-future setting. Cyberpunk is grounded in reality and not an imaginative far-future like science fiction.

I've been looking at loads of publisher catalogues, particularly forgotten classic style lines and it seems even these get forgotten very quickly and need to be reassessed.

Quite similar to Dedalus is Atlas Anti-Classics, but they focus more on surrealism and Dada-ism.

It's driving me crazy looking through all the small press horror stuff wondering what's worth reading. There's just so much constantly coming out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballantine_Adult_Fantasy_series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_Forgotten_Fantasy_Library

xp lol, i fixed that 4 u.

Could anyone a bit more knowledgeable than I am maybe point me to examples of fiction that is completely unrelated or disconnected to the physical human world? I'm thinking stories where none of the characters are humanoid and/or the territory and setting is completely unlike Earth or habitable planets. Possibly the universe could adhere to a different physical model or the characters could be rabbits and spongiforms living on a floating grid or some shit? The closest thing I can think of is Flatland, but there must be other examples?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_the_Walls_of_the_World and http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves both have considerable sections devoted to just such things, although humans feature too.

Sorry for mobilised links.

brilliant, cheers ledge.

Looking at these, they still seem to take the science fiction format of being grounded in human reality, as in even though these entities inhabit alternative world's or universes, their consequences still relate to human life and interests in some way. I guess what I'm interested in is a former of extreme surealist fantasy. I thought maybe it would be cool to have a go at writing something like this - to see if it was indeed possible. And I had the idea of a green, rabbit-like creature, sitting on a Q-Bertish 3d grid floating in a soupy vacuum, waiting and contemplating its life and thoughts and surroundings before maybe some other equally surreal events took place. The challenge would hinge on keeping a human audience interested despite there being very little familiar to relate to. The other challenge would be to describe things in indirect, non-human terms. So this rabbit-like creature would never describe itself as 'a green rabbit' because in its world rabbits don't exist - that's simply how a human would describe it, and humans as far as we know do not exist in this universe either.

Sorry about the poor grammar in that post - I'm on my phone.

the fleeble vorted in the mallifrome

wait i got one: Lesabendio by Paul Scheerbart.

Lesabendio takes place on the asteroid Pallas—referred to as a “star” throughout the book—which is barrel-shaped, with an interior shaped like two funnels, oriented north and south, which face one another so the narrow ends join in the middle. This unlikely celestial object measures 40 miles across and is populated by an even more unlikely array of creatures, of whom the titular Lesabendio is one. Our introduction to him in the very first paragraphs of the novel make clear just how strikingly different this world, and its attendant species, is going to be: “Lesabendio made his suction-foot very wide and stuck it firmly against the jagged stone cliff… He then stretched his body, which consisted of nothing but a rubbery tube-leg with a suction-cup foot at one end, more than fifty meters high into the violet atmosphere.”
http://www.popmatters.com/review/167918-lesbendio-by-paul-scheerbart-trans.-by-christina-svendsen/

i couldn't finish it.

xpost hah, well it would have to be legible, of course. using this as a model though, would it be possible to get people to empathise with an entity that looks, acts, and inhabits a world completely different from human beings? many have trouble enough relating to people in different countries but sci-fi and fantasy still have their fair share of allegories all the same.

xpost - crikey, you could be close with that one.

it surprises me, though, that there aren't more examples. how much music is there out there that tries to describe auditory dream-like or even drug-like hallucinations? many of my stranger dreams - especially when i was very young - had very little to do with real life.

“Lesabendio’s head rose into the air and the rubbery skin of his head began to unfurl like an umbrella. Then it slowly shut itself up again, hiding his face, and his scalp began to turn into a pipe, open at the front. His face appeared on its back-surface, from which two long telescopic eyes protruded, eyes which Lesabendio could use to effortlessly gaze at the green stars, just as if he were near them.”

Jesus...

did you tell anyone about your weird dreams? were they interested?

well exactly. but this is where the challenge would have to come into it. it couldn't just be random crap, could it? that would be very self indulgent and really very boring. But y'know, something like the Little Prince would almost fall into this category. Some kids' cartoons might possibly fall into it too. Adult fiction, maybe not?

That said, I'm interested in these inhibitors that we grow as adults. These days my dreams are actually quite mundane and grounded in daily life. I haven't tried hallucinogens for a while, but last time I did, I found it was harder to let go and not be 'cynical' about the experience. Still, I think that in many ways everyone has dis-reality inside themselves and that many kinds of non-literal art (such as instrumental music - I'm especially thinking of things like Autechre or even more so, Rashad Becker) is an attempt to unlock that trans-humanist trans-global tradition in a way. Surrealism, to me, isn't just about melting stopwatches, but something ultimately indescribable - that feeling you sometimes get when you're about to nod off and you're not sure where your arm is in relation to the rest of your body, or even if you ever had an arm, or even WTF IS an arm in the first place?

Diaspora by Greg Egan springs to mind also, especially the later bits in the higher dimensions. (spoiler)

is there a cthulu story without a human protagonist?

I can think of near-examples in graphic novels - for example the psychic realms visited in things like Sandman and Prometheus (while both have scenes set in the real world) do well to convey the idea of universes outside the physical dimension - arguably something you might not be able to do so effectively with writing.

"Could anyone a bit more knowledgeable than I am maybe point me to examples of fiction that is completely unrelated or disconnected to the physical human world? I'm thinking stories where none of the characters are humanoid and/or the territory and setting is completely unlike Earth or habitable planets."

i started a thread like this a long time ago! but about movies...

When Is Someone Gonna Make A Sci-Fi Show Or Movie Without Any People In Them?

Somebody somewhere mentioned a Brunner story with an all-*alien*-alien cast---not seeing it on the old Rolling F etc., maybe another thread/site

one of my fave books that i have read in the last couple of years was The Companions by Sheri Tepper and that book had SO many awesome non-human life forms in it and i wanted the whole book to be about them. i think she could write a great non-human SF book.

i know i have definitely read sf short stories with no humans in them. but i can't think of titles.

I was going to say Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement and someone said it on that thread just linked by Scott. Isn't that book fairly famous?

I think Lesabendio sounds pretty cool.

would totally read a book about microbes. in theory...

kinda can't believe nobody as written epic microbes hurtling through space on an asteroid and landing on uninhabited planet and creating life kinda thing. come to think of it.

kim stanley robinson should get on that...it's trilogy time...

"Common Time" by James Blish is a trippy short story about contact with a thoroughly non-human race, and the inability to communicate the experience.

I also think by the point you're writing about creatures detached from human concerns, many would not consider it SF, but just pure fantasy or surrealism.

Verner Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" and Pohl's "Jem" spring to mind - although both (eventually) bring humans into it. But the conception of a totally alien life told from the alien's perspective is a central narrative conceit of both, and they do it really well.

idk how interesting it would be to read something totally divorced from human experience though. I mean, to really achieve that would result in something that's total gibberish (nothing more human than language amirite)

I thought if Vinge and his creatures are pretty odd but they're still planet dwelling, warmongering, empire building, and basically mammalian with one albeit major quirk of physiology/psychology.

? spiders aren't mammals

planet dwelling and war mongering don't seem v species-specific to me

My mistake, I was thinking of the dog things from "A Fire upon the Deep", I haven't read Deepness yet.

Xp no, but they're arguably a mark of a certain kind of intelligence or way of experiencing and reacting to the world, which is maybe what dog latin wants to get away from.

Nothing to see here (speaking of dogs):
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/188296828X.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

stories where none of the characters are humanoid and/or the territory and setting is completely unlike Earth or habitable planets.

the more I think about it, yeah on some level any story operating under these conditions would be totally incomprehensible and uninteresting to the human reader. Without anything analogous to human experience, no identifiable frame of reference, it would just be gibberish. Even "Flatland" - which is probably closest to this - uses the prospect of human (3D space) interaction to drive the plot and uses a human conceptual framework (math) to convey its ideas.

Also the flatlanders as characters are quite recognisable, and awful, iirc.

Feel like there a few short stories with a similar gag where a non-humanoid, spacefaring race come upon a planet which upon examination, for the good of the galaxy and its diverse occupants, they decide to quarantine or destroy which turns out to be *SURPRISE* (SPOILER WITHHELD)

in The Companions book by Tepper there is a planet where most of the action takes place and all the plants and trees are the sentient life-forms there. they think and learn and end up communicating with the humans. they are cool things! i highly recommend that book if you like weird life. weird creatures. very cool. it's filled with politics and sexual stuff too in a radical eco-feminist kinda way too, but in a good way. one group of aliens puts all these humanoid sex slaves onto earth and earth falls in love with them and becomes addicted. and there are genetically modified dogs and humans that can turn into dogs and also nighmare dog-like creatures. and one lizard-like alien race that is war-like and kinda insane and they kill all their women and breed in an insane way. oh, it's loaded with weirdness.

my favorite sf books are the ones where every chapter could be someone else's epic novel or series of novels. just a million ideas. how she threads it all together is some sort of feat.

sounds good, xp

picked up a few cheap early 60s things:
Kornbluth/Pohl - Wolfbane (just started this, the premise is bizarre)
Damon Knight - Hell's Pavement
Damon Knight - Beyond the Barrier

Didn't know Damon Knight was also a translator. Been looking through Black Coat Press catalogue (talked about them in the previous thread, the Aloysius Bertrand and Villiers De L'Ilse-Adam books), they mostly translate French SF, fantasy, horror and mystery, with a big focus on pulp heroes in a large part of their books. Brian Stableford seems to do most of the translations.

Unfortunately the site is not very well designed and some of the author pages don't include all the books containing their work. It's not easy to tell which books are novels, collections or anthologies until you see the table of contents.

I read about Nathalie Henneberg recently, she's known for lush fantasy and Green Gods is a collection translated by Damon Knight and CJ Cherryh.
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/greengods.htm
The One really good thing about this site is that it shows you the original French cover art.

the handful of Knight's short stories that I've read have been great. Started Beyond the Barrier last night and loved it so far - sort of a bridge between Van Vogt and PKD (which is ironic given Knight's legendary pillorying of Van Vogt), with this paranoid "everyone's out to get me!/ohmigod what is REALITY!" underpinning.

Just saw that those Damon Knight translations of Henneberg are from his book Thirteen French Science Fiction Stories.

I raved about DK's Rule Golden and Other Stories on the old Rolling F thread; be sure you get the 1979 five-novella edition (with the suthor's intro, specifying that several were written with "FU, John W. Campbell Jr. and fascist pals" in mind). So, they're all from the early Cold War, I think, and a couple are a bit dated in spots, but ultimately pretty strong. And more intense, inventive, imagistic, speculative, than satirical or village (or Village, maybe) liberal.
Currently, Amazon prices start at $0.01 ( there's also a Kindle, James). No good cover art, apparently, so I chose the dumbest I could find (for this edition).
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GsmOFKyzL.jpg

And of course scarf up any Orbit (his very picky anthology series) you can find; hit those yard sales, son!

lol @ that cover

yeah that's on my list to get

Just pasting something I said on another forum:

There's so much poor cover art on so many genre books that I despair.

I sometimes think of ripping the front cover off but that might leave the pages too vulnerable.
If I cover the front cover in India ink, it might rub off on other books even after it is dry.

But if I do either, I can't give the book away if I don't like it. Hmmm. Wonder if I could paper over it without damaging it?

I really hate those covers with CG models. I'm ruling out that technique completely but the way most of them look, they'd do a disservice to most writers.

I meant I'm NOT ruling out that technique completely. Fuck, of all the words to skip over.

Could anyone a bit more knowledgeable than I am maybe point me to examples of fiction that is completely unrelated or disconnected to the physical human world?

Greg Egan's most recent trilogy (The Clockwork Rocket, The Eternal Flame, The Arrows of Time) is set in another universe with different physics and very non-human characters. unfortunately it's also boring and quite heavy-going, a sort of thinly-fictionalised physics/maths thought experiment

Philip Jose Farmer's Love Song is on ebook, I've heard it was a rarity for a long time.

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

This guy has one of the most insanely huge outputs of any SF/fantasy writer I've heard of, including novels, short stories, editing, translation and non-fiction.

I've mostly been interested in his translations but the Dies Irae series is supposed to be a sort of classic.

Any Stableford experiences?

Read a few short stories and a novel, blanking on the title, which is typical of my experiences with him: no lasting (or even initial) impressions. Maybe it's just a matter of taste, but I look for writers to pull me from my usual limits.
Just finished Old Mars, George RR Martin & Gardner Dozois-edited anthology of new stories, "For Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, Catherine Moore, Ray Bradbury, and Roger Zelazny, who inspired this book, and Robert Silverberg, who should have been in it." Guess he didn't file copy, but may be just as well at this point. Authors are popular, but most (incl. Martin/Dozois regulars) are best known and/or cared about by their mass niche fans----not meant in a snobbish way, just how it is on a well-populated planet.
Moorcock is the only Grand Master type, and his "The Lost Canal" combines classic action-suspense with our currrent trends: for instance, as individuals, anarcho-syndicalist Earthlings may present existentially justified privateer/pirate swagger and swag, but they also tend to swarm like insatiable eco-junkies, running through planets, moons and others like doubloons and ampules and candy bars. Tremendous build-up, then quick glib pulp resolution. Oh well, like several others, it does make for good promo, and i wanna check the new series he's working on now (having moved from London to a small Texas town, according to editors.
One (of the most) that def works all the way through is Ian McDonald's "The Queen of the Night's Aria," which takes the Martians beyond this anthology's usual Egyptiod/Native American nexus to a species and civilization inspired by HG Wells and HP Lovecraft, but also with McDonald's own rueful humor and lyricism.
A few stories don't sufficiently deal with the familiarity of red sands, exploited natives, canals, weathered remnants, secret depths, but then, you get something such as
"A Man Without Honor," by James S. A. Corey:
Imagine if you will, Your Grace, the vast Martian sky, as purple as a lilac, with the same sun that shines on Westminster and London here taking on a wholly foreign aspect, with wide tendrils of rainbow snaking from its centrally glowing orb. See, if you will. the vast ruins that had once been the pride of seven races with their crystal hearts laid bare by storms and war; the massive, dying river, slow as an old man's blood; the bleeding and desperate crew handing the hope of survival on a half-shattered cart that struggled and failed to rise from the ground like a wounded moth. The air was thin and held the scent of metal and spent gunpowder. The heat of the sun oppressed as powerfully as a tropical noontime.
Now hear the familiar cry of Quohog--awch loy---smoke ahoy. Picture a storm of dragonflies, each as large as a man's arm. They rose in the East, thick as the billows of a vast conflagration, and spread out across the sky. I heard Carina Meer's cry when she caught sight of them and saw the blood drain from her tawny face.
"We must hurry," she said. "The central hive has discovered us...." Must say," Master Darrow said, "I'm beginning to dislike these buggers."

in McDonald's story, the Martian species (and its cyborgs) seem more evocative of HP; the human species and both sides' war-based civilizations seem Wellsian, def incl. his POV in WWI--foreseeing "The Land Ironclads."

having moved from London to a small Texas town, according to editors

I thought he'd moved back and forth between Texas and London for decades now

Stableford has some good ideas but a sort of workmanlike style. I've read a book of his short stories about genetic meddling, 'Sexual Chemistry', and a novel about scientifically rationalised vampires that google is failing to call up.

I used to think Octavia Butler, Norman Spinrad, Janny Wurts and Owl Goingback were odd names but Gwendolyn Ranger Wormser takes the biscuit.

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/arthur-machen-collection-at-risk.html
If you like Arthur Machen please read this short piece and there is a super easy super quick way to protest the closure of the collection to scholars and public.
It'll barely take a few minutes.

Will do, thanks for the word. Also signed up for newsletter (I see that one of the main contributors is Tolkien expert Douglas A. Anderson, whose anthology Tales Before Tolkien was extolled by me on the previous Rolling F)

Done. Oh yeah, think I didn't quite indicate the range of Old Mars. For instance, Allen M. Steele's "Martian Blood" is introduced in a way that makes it seem like it'll be Heinlein homage--but while the narrator does rail against the tasteless rabble, he's also alienated by the results (and even worse potential) of capitalist-colonial exploitation. And his isolation doesn't make him One Man Rising against tasteless rabble, like Campbell's crew and other problem-solving writers valorized, it makes him slow-thinking and otherwise ineffectual. So it's really more like one of those xpost Damon Knight critiques of 50s capitalist-colonialist-Campbellian crapola.
Also, Howard Waldrop has one about an ancient diary of an august Martian making a pilgrimage, and along the way he experiences meiosis, then trains his Bud to help him steer the sandcraft, and notes with satisfaction how new Bud is "flourishing in a twilight world" (diary ends soon after). I found it very relatable, as the kids say (spellcheck doesn't agree, but then it doesn't like its own name either).

Oh Robert, speaking of newsletters etc, do you know Subterranean Press? Lush special editions, some lush list prices too, but they have sales, also interviews and profiles of authors and illustrators, other good stuff. Mostly science fiction, fantasy, horror, some noir. Can check 'em out and sigh up here:
http://subterraneanpress.com/

Yeah, I've been checking them out recently. I've been interested in the Caitlin R Kiernan books in particular.

Was looking for ETA Hoffmann in the shops yesterday, both the Penguin and Oxford editions had a surprisingly small group of stories. I thought everything would be collected in big complete editions but there are 7 recent-ish collections with very different contents.
There are quite a lot of stories that don't seem to have been in English since Victorian Times.

did anyone see this baffling document: http://atseajournal.com/mjh-study/

Over the next ~25,000 words we will try and figure out how to get some of that rigor in our own work. No thanks. At least he got me to look up "zeugma."

finished Knight's "Beyond the Barrier" (moving on to "Hell's Pavement", which seems more promising). Some bizarre digressions in "Beyond the Barrier"; it is not really clear what is going on for maybe 90% of the novel, the protagonist just bounces from one incomprehensible scene to another with no knowledge of his motivations or context for what is happening to him. Which gets a little tiresome, but the big reveal at the end is quite clever and bring it's underlying themes into focus. I wouldn't say it's great by any stretch but it's not bad. "Hell's Pavement" seems to have a more concentrated dark satire of mind controlled consumerism at it's heart but I'm not v far into it.

also on deck - Haldeman's "Forever War"

Robert, I've found this article on Hoffman to be useful in turning the stories of most interest (to me, at least). Only thing is, unlike SF Encyclopedia, which gets updated often, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy is a dreaming jewel, mostly undisturbed since being uploaded in 1997, so nothing about collections published since:

http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=hoffmann_e_t_a

Also there was one I was marveling at on old Rolling F: blanking on title, but think it was in Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder, edited by Hartwell & Cramer, which has a lot of stories I think you might enjoy. Ditto Douglas A. Anderson's Tales Before Tolkien, though you're prob familiar with those two.

The ETA story in that anth turns out to be mentioned by me only in passing, but it's great---here's an earlier post, and the link still works:
re xpost the early stuff, I gotta re-read ETA Hoffman. Good All Things Considered on him this afternoon--audio: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167732828/no-sugar-plums-here-the-dark-romantic-roots-of-the-nutcracker

― dow, Tuesday, December 25, 2012 4:47 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xp Shakey, the only DK fiction I can recall is in the Rule Golden collection, so can't comment on the ones you're reading. Hope "Hell's Pavement" turned out OK.

The Rough Guide To Psychedelic India
Various

Rough Guide, RGNET1332DD, 26 January 2015

Indian music was hugely influential on Western psychedelia and the feeling was mutual. On this mind-expanding Rough Guide, hallucinatory sounds drift in and out of drones and ragas, ranging from the lysergic sitar of Ananda Shankar and trippy Bollywood vibes of the 1970s to more recent concoctions by Sunday Driver and The Bombay Royale.

Compiled by: DJ Ritu

he first musical whispers of India’s burgeoning influence on Western popular music were heard in 1965 when The Beatles’ George Harrison added the sounds of a sitar to the Rubber Soul album track ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’. Soon everybody from The Yardbirds and The Rolling Stones to Sergio Mendes and The Byrds was reflecting an Indian influence. During these years in India, drug culture wasn’t flooding its shores, but the country was undergoing its own transformation – the 1960s saw the advent of a DIY garage band scene.

When compiling this Rough Guide, DJ Ritu cast her psychedelic net wide into the diaspora and the modern day. This album pays homage to the swinging 1960s history whilst forging the journey onwards into psychedelia’s present-day incarnations.

Beginning the mix was easy; Ritu knew instinctively Ananda Shankar’s ‘Dancing Drums’ was first on her list, the LP was a rare find, hotly desired on the Asian Underground scene. Other vintage finds on this album include R.D Burman’s Bollywood hit ‘Dum Maro Dum’ from the film Hare Rama Hare Krishna. In the film the protagonist, sung here by the inimitable Asha Bhosle, takes deep drags on a large chillum before dancing floppy limbed amidst a throng of her beatnik friends. ‘Dance Music’ is another throwback Bollywood number by brother composer duo Kalyanji & Anandji.

Other tracks on the album root the listener firmly back in the present day and launches into the music of India’s vast diaspora. Sunday Driver set out their Indian shades of influence against a backdrop of Sgt. Pepper-ish Victoriana. The Bombay Royale are an eleven-piece Australian band inspired by old school Bollywood soundtracks.
More introspective expressions come from Ray Spiegel Ensemble with their low tempo track ‘Moksha’. Paban Das Baul performs music of the Bauls, the wandering spiritual musicians of Bengal and is heard on ‘Kaliya’.

Lose yourself in this collection of far out sounds – soaring sitars, tremulous tabla, distorted deep-set drones and unbound improvisations, all twisted through a rock and roll edge.
https://soundcloud.com/world-music-network

Track List

01 Kalyanji & Anandji: Dance Music (Instrumental)
02 Ananda Shankar: Dancing Drums
03 Sunday Driver: Satyam Shivam sund4ram
04 The Bombay Royale: Bombay Twist
05 Simon Thacker's Svara-Kanti: Rakshasa
06 Tiger Blossom: Brishtir Pani
07 Asha Bhosle: Dum Maro Dum
08 Paban Das Baul: Kaliya
09 Jazz Thali: Chamber Of Dreams
10 Jyotsna Srikanth: Thillana
11 Ray Spiegel Ensemble: Moksha
12 Debashish Bhattacharya Feat. John McLaughlin: A Mystical Morning

Total Playing Time: 67:45

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBw2Y-K1lg

Damn! Wrong thread, wrong board even!

lol

Thank you Dow. I always wondered why the Michael Powell film Tales Of Hoffmann was so light, because previously I'd heard Hoffmann referenced as dark and even grotesque.

Hope "Hell's Pavement" turned out OK

I am liking it a lot so far. the premise involves this technology that basically permits mind control - you can place an "analogue" in someone's consciousness that directs their behavior towards specific ends (ie "don't murder people" etc.) Of course this technology totally warps society, gets into the hands of corporations who use it to create compliant populations of consumers dedicated solely to their products, and after a couple hundred years human society is pretty fucked up. BUT of course there are some mutant exceptions who are apparently immune to the technology...

Don't know where else to post this because it's fantastiscal/surreal/visionary art but if you like fantasy, you can hardly get a whole lot better than Albin Brunovsky. There was almost none of his paintings online before and I scanned a few.
http://eatenbyducks.blogspot.com/2014/12/albin-brunovsky-paintings.html

Looks like Malzberg's The Men Inside is about two ILX0rs.

The second volume of Silverberg's Collected Short Stories seems to be the one to get.

Holy Moly, those Brunovsky images are amazing. Think I like the ones in yr linked 2009 post even more. Did he ever illustrate fantasy, sf etc.?

He illustrated some classic literature and a lot of old fairy tales but I don't know if he ever did any contemporary fantasy.

Was Fritz Leiber's birthday Christmas Eve. Check out this guy's photostream of Leiber book covers- front, back and inside- along with some other stuff, including a few Robert Bloch: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cthulhuwho1/with/5054182811

I discovered recently that Leiber has a son who wrote science fiction a few decades ago.

Son's main gig is that he is a philosophy professor who studies the nature of consciousness, which is kind of fitting given the premise of "You're All Alone."

xpost Wow, that Leiber-Bloch dude's blog: gateways within gateways http://cthulhuwho1.com/

i bought like a hundred of these today...

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10698484_10153582953242137_8922190107959297129_n.jpg?oh=40595014060e61a7243d1bc56fcb969a&oe=552B3E18&__gda__=1428663143_6beecf1a6a3c90db4646feacaa906ad1

https://scontent-a-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/11606_10153582950632137_1867966490689516516_n.jpg?oh=90f6700729ebb1500f96998bace24521&oe=552A2CFC

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/10849871_10153582950377137_5687703609412094790_n.jpg?oh=913855e8a4139324b102114eb35f53d3&oe=54FF019D&__gda__=1429927465_7da94698ea0a276b0f031700e4b4d58f

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10885065_10153582949997137_269310761726854527_n.jpg?oh=3ba2edb6f3a4b2aec327d9efd692fa07&oe=5539808E&__gda__=1430303927_f05af73955b3eaf90f6438d8c6322ff1

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/1798822_10153582949617137_6184979953075229391_n.jpg?oh=ffdcd5ca5ce1173d30c8803358d2f708&oe=54FA7E02&__gda__=1428839093_e9eb154e8f387c1d970220c4154e1ec7

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10891871_10153582949272137_2901018892931385716_n.jpg?oh=70fd34ec7681a190e03d0dabc85b92ec&oe=5541BED2&__gda__=1429352388_8ad480a811fec1083c46e3284df28f99

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/1779954_10153582948912137_5323193485398680586_n.jpg?oh=30e3fbaeb60898bdcc16f7e5c2a918af&oe=55388A42&__gda__=1430285352_1d4c8ebe95aed90a661c598c6141e130

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10647048_10153582948852137_1363957967480087765_n.jpg?oh=1e9e296f02290d6ea7ff685818ffce66&oe=54FE51BE&__gda__=1430423464_6e83043a54b63b4e64d2a1bd1874b4af

https://scontent-b-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10897864_10153582948207137_7110955268728397172_n.jpg?oh=b5639106ae313fc4c03f357171caaba5&oe=5546A775

Damn, good get. Gotta road trip to your store sometime.

Was there some special offer or something? Did you pay a big chunk for it?

Sweet gahan Wilson cover!!!

like all those covers. and speaking of that era of pulps, can anyone identify a story/author i remember reading in one years ago? sort of a last man scenario with a guy floating around in space deejaying into the void... definitely remember he was spinning the velvet underground and maybe the grateful dead, so would have been late sixties/early seventies...

lol at Poul Anderson cover.

Cats! A fat guy! Poul!

Read Absolution Gap, and then wrote too much about it:

I think I'm over Alistair Reynolds. I initially got swept along with AG's usual space opera stylings: the behemoth space ships, vast ditances, technology like magic; the switching between three or four different points of view, offering tantalising glimpses of what's to come. But I soon started to tire of the constant pov switching and drip feeding of info, and the planet bound plot which loses the interstellar excitement. But mostly I tired of his truly awful characters and societies. I think you could describe 80% of his characters - not just the ones in this book - as bitter. They hold lifelong, often murderous grudges. At one point in AG someone comes right out and says that forgiving and forgetting is bullshit, and that's one of the nicer characters. It's a philosophy so common in the books that I can't help but think it must be Reynolds' own.

Even though all the main characters are awful the poor plebs in their care suffer from collective Stockholm Syndrome. Happy to be under a dictatorship for 20 years they panic when the dictator looks like abdicating, casting about desperately for an alternative - "someone strong, someone prepared to think the unthinkable". For all his writing about collective consciousness and neural implants enabling direct democracy, Reynolds seems in thrall to the Great Man theory of history.

Then there's the religion at the centre of AG. Utterly, preposterously mediaeval. Ok it's all the work of a neurological virus and maybe this is Reynolds' gag at the expense of religion, but it doesn't matter, it's not plausible and it's not pleasant to read about. And that's the overall problem with this book, and his others. His worlds seem utterly devoid of the best human emotions and characteristics - joy, generosity, compassion, sympathy, forgiveness, thoughtfulness. And love. The only loving relationships he writes about, aside from a few enduring manly friendships born in the heat of battle, have long ago come to a tragic end (usually at the hands of another character, begetting one of those lifelong murderous grudges).

you're welcome! 8)

it struck me as a slight detour from the first two books and i liked the religion as a virus thing and the whole caravan thing. yes, grotesque, but that's ok. didn't think you'd like the suit of armour. mediaeval sci-fi religion is a trope though, isn't it? banks, stephenson spring to mind.

can't really remember much about the other thread, the women's part, other than the, yes, long grudgeful exile.

i also seem to remember him throwing 3 or 4 new races of aliens into the last chapter which made it all a bit messy. (or maybe that was the second book)

this, btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap

Century Rain, is, i think, probably different enough from the rest of his books to may be worth reading - more like a hard boiled 50s detective thing, at least to start with. bit grim though in places.

the rev space universe seems to have been left behind though and he's now 2 books into his 11 books eon spanning series. early days yet, i think (the first seemed to have a near contemporary setting iirc, the second ends up in generational ships)

i also seem to remember him throwing 3 or 4 new races of aliens into the last chapter which made it all a bit messy. (or maybe that was the second book)

Oh yes I forgot to whinge about the end, all pulled punches and a last minute bait and switch rendering the central macguffin entirely pointless. ok ok a macguffin is pointless by definition... well even more pointless than that.

i think i need to step away from whizz bang sf, for a while at least, and spend more time down the thoughtful end. still plenty of le guin to investigate.

Always wondered what you saw in that guy anyway, ledge.

Ginnungagap
This is a story by what's-his-name, Michael Swanwick, no?

xpost drool (scott's mags). Would very much like to know Samuel Delany and Ed Emshwiller's takes on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Have you read that, Scott??
Only read a couple A. Reynolds in annual anthologies; seemed okay, but ledge's delving reminds me of the TV Game of Thrones. It does have some sensitive interludes, but hard to see where these come from, other than the need for contrast. Don't see a source in the "culture" of Westeros, as depicted here. How are the books?

Oh, I shouldn't put culture in quotes: it's a culture of power plays, reveling (with whores, swords & grog, also in yer one-ups-manship), also--well, that's about it, unless you among the teeming troops or civilians, incl. a few fugitives: then you get to slog, run and die (maybe kill first).

xp Scott scores! Great covers.

Thought for a second dow was referring to Culture in the Iain Banks sense.

No thread roll for the new year, but a new screenname at least.

Not quite right

xpost speaking of Moorcock, profile in new New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/anti-tolkien

he has essentially written the other style guide for modern fantasy

Moorcock and his peers had become tired of the dominant science-fiction landscape: vast fields of time travel, machismo, and spaceships, as well as the beefcake heroes of the fantasy subgenre “Sword and Sorcery.” The Golden Age of Science Fiction, held aloft by authors like Frederik Phol, John W. Campbell, and Robert Heinlein had, by the nineteen-sixties, sputtered out into a recycling of the same ideas.

Was looking at Malzberg's bibliography and seen that he's written erotica under several different names (why so many names?), including a book called "My Stepmother, My Desire".

read peter f. hamilton's night's dawn trilogy over the course of several months

what a ridiculous piece of crap

So one really can judge a book by its cover?

mooks those books are buried somewhere deep within my to read list, why are they so bad and hated?

Hurray for that New Yorker profile

got Silverberg's collected stories vol. 4 yesterday. Havent started yet, beyond the introduction, which contains the first reference I know of to his temporary retirement being driven by bitterness over the commercial failure of his new wave-influenced stuff.

Fwiw I dont think its really fair to lump pohl in with reactionary rightwing nutjobs like heinlein and campbell. Pohl was old school, certainly from a formal and historical perspective, but he was not conservative.

Xps

That was exactly I was thinking. In addition to misspelling his name.

Did you read the earlier Silverberg collections?

I got 3 from the library awhile ago, altho I already had a bunch of the stories in that one. Might work my way backwards if the library has them all (these are not cheap at $40 a pop, but I sprang for 4 cuz I've wanted it for a long time and I love this period of his writing)

Please don't tell me you like "Sailing To Byzantium."

That's post-comeback so of course not. 4 only goes up to his "sabbatical"

I did read a bunch of those majipoor books in high school. Dont remember a thing about them, no desire to revisit

why are they so bad and hated?

at the end, one of the characters is (temporarily!) given god-like powers to magically fix all the problems that built up over 3000 pages

i am comfortable with a fair bit of ridiculousness in my sf, but come on

ah ok. even tho i feel like i am inured to bullshit resolutions to long ass books and series by this point, knowing ahead of time has got to be a dealbreaker.

How far did you guys get in Riverworld?

The first four. I've been thinking about going back and rereading those.

I never got to the end. Read the first two and part of the third. Plus the original story with Tom Mix.

David Langford ‏@ansiblemag
Mourning my mother Kit Langford and struggling (with brother Jon) with endless paperwork and funeral preparations. http://kit.ansible.uk/
So the Jan. issue of Ansible may take a while,
but Dec. issue is especially rich, esp.toward end hee:
http://news.ansible.uk/a329.html

Haven't read any of this yet but: http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/swanwick/sleep_of_reason.html

Will probably end up getting that Silverberg Vol 4. Meanwhile working through Volume 2, which seems to have the most acknowledged and anthologized stories, such as this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj6gp8i_aQo

Hey check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfmp6DviZEI

Full list here: http://otrarchive.blogspot.com/2011/02/sci-fi-radio-npr.html

Also here: https://archive.org/details/Sci-fiRadio

Just listened to "Vintage Season." The character of the protagonist landlord is a little amped up, but basically faithful to the text and well done.

(Still annoyed at the author of that Moorcock article calling the author of "The Tunnel Under The World" and The Space Merchants a Campbell disciple)

I looked up the author of that article and he wrote a book about occult themes in music, looked interesting, especially that I didn't know there was much hiphop with occult themes.

I don't know a whole lot about that old school vs new wave thing other than what Moorcock has said. But it doesn't seem like a simple divide where everyone chosen sides, because so many of these authors liked each other (like Moorcock loves Poul Anderson, Ellison loved most of the big old school writers).
Reminds me a little bit of the way people oversimplify all rock music before punk and that whole relationship sometimes.

Wonder how Moorcock feels about still being called post-Tolkien or anti-Tolkien, sometimes even on his books. I wouldn't want to constantly be associated with an author I didn't care for even if the association was rejection/rebellion against them.

I wonder if the Pre-Raphaelites were happy with that name?

Elric is much more obviously an anti-Conan. I have little doubt that moorcock is still reviled byvtolkein's basic conservatism, politically speakinf.

Fucking phone

New year, new thread so will have another go at this: Basically, as editor of Astounding (later Analog) Campbell and his favorite writers Heinlein and Asimov cleaned up the and professionalized the genre, distancing it from its pulpy, Gernsbackian origins, creating well-constructed stories about problem solving engineers, written in a clear, efficient, logical if often inelegant or unadventurous style. The New Wave positioned themselves in opposition to this dominant form of sf. However this was somewhat of a simplification, since some of the suppressed elements of less straight-jawed, weird or more expressionistic or simpler better writing had already survived in the pulpier mags such as Planet Stories, or in the two main rival publications of Astounding, Horace Gold's (w/ help from Fred Pohl) Galaxy, which was way more welcoming of satirical material, a safe haven for such stuff in the Red Scare 50s, and Tony Boucher's Fantasy & Science Fiction, which placed a much higher premium on prose quality, or even through some of Campbell's other writers- "Vintage Season" first appeared in Astounding.

I was surprised that Unknown was another Campbell magazine, since it has a really great reputation for some of the best fantasy coming out at the time and seems to be similar to Weird Tales.

In Wizardry And Wild Romance, Moorcock mostly recommended RE Howard but taken issue with his imitators and the writers who written Conan books later on. Also that a lot of Howard's unfinished work got published and it spoiled his reputation to some extent. But I've heard some of his best work was posthumous stories that he might have polished up a bit more if he had lived.

I dont think Moorcock had anything against Howard per se, just that Elric is a pretty obvious inversion of Conan (similar to how Jerry Cornelius is an inversion of James Bond, altho in that case I imagine Moorcock really did have serious issues w Flwming and his ridiculous sexism, racism, imperialism etc.) I only brought up the Conan comparisob cuz Tolkien was not really referenced in the Elric books, I think its a mistake to categorize them as a reaction or response to LOTR.

I wonder if the Pre-Raphaelites were happy with that name?

They chose it themselves!

Browsing through the Borderlands stacks I was kinda bummed by how uninterested I am in so much of the modern sci-fi market - just tons of derivative looking steampunk and cyberpunk stuff, smart aleck-y dystopianism. I am judging by covers, blurbs, and bios here tbf. It bums me out that my favorite new guys just don't write that much, and the market appears to be otherwise dominated by interminable series' of recycled ideas. Of course if anyone's been totally blown away by some recently emerging writers I'm all ears...

Do you read the "Year's Best" type anthologies?

not habitually

Seems to me that is the last thing you want to read if you don't like current stuff.

as well documented here, my favorite recent/newish dudes are Jon Armstrong and Charles Yu, but both seem like outliers and neither are particularly prolific. Post-90s I seem to be drawn to the types of guys who write a couple books and then disappear (see also: Matthew Derby). Steve Aylett I like but can only take in limited doses. Jeff Noon appears to have given up on publishing novels in the US (and there was a bit of a decline in quality post-Automated Alice anyway).

this is supposed to be great!

http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-First-Century-Science-Fiction-Hartwell/dp/0765326000

Still working through the Twentieth Century one!

the names I do recognize (Doctorow, Scalzi, Bacigalupi) don't fill me with confidence but the rest is all unfamiliar to me so will see if I can get that at the library

I think Aliette de Bodard and E. Lily Yu are both doing interesting things in short forms, but I don't really keep up with SF all that well.

Did you try Ted Chiang yet?

not yet - so many short stories/novelettes, not sure about the easiest way to acquire a lot of them

used to be some you could read free online.

library has one of his books, most of his other stuff seems to be in random anthologies...?

Doesn't he only have one book so far?

I guess? I can't really tell from the wikipedia entry, which just lists titles and not formats

Stories of Your Life and Others. Give it a try. Even if you don't like it, plenty of others have read it so you will be able to have a meaningful discussion, at least in theory.

library has The Lifecycle of Software Objects but looks like it would be awhile before I can get it

That is a novella. I read it online. Believe you can too: http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2010/fiction_the_lifecycle_of_software_objects_by_ted_chiang

ah cool thx

You can also find The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate somewhere, it is a thing of beauty.

Read that in one of those F&SF anthologies which had other good stuff iirc

For a while I thought these Ramble House books were genuine but they have to be parodies a bit similar to Steve Aylett. Makes me wonder how much else of their catalogue is pastiche by new writers under a pseudonym.

http://www.ramblehouse.com/kats.htm
http://www.ramblehouse.com/marceaucase.htm
http://www.ramblehouse.com/owlofdarkness.htm
http://www.ramblehouse.com/twostrangeladies.htm
http://www.ramblehouse.com/woodenspectacles.htm

There's a Jacques Sternberg story called Univers Zero. I guess that's where the band got their name?

I had a search around and came up light, apologies if this ground has been covered elsewhere.

Can anyone recommend a decent hard SF read, maybe along similar lines to Anderson's 'Tau Zero" perhaps?

Just finished Greg Bear's 'The Forge of God' and it was much too touchy feely and I feel a bit icky.

I haven't read this, but heard and read much praise--review from booklist gives the gist:

The Martian---Andy Weir
Remember Man Plus, Frederik Pohl’s award-winning 1976 novel about a cyborg astronaut who’s sent, alone, to Mars? Imagine, instead, that the astronaut was just a regular guy, part of a team sent to the red planet, and that, through a series of tragic events, he’s left behind, stranded and facing certain death. That’s the premise of this gripping and (given its subject matter) startlingly plausible novel. The story is told mostly through the log entries of astronaut Mark Watney, chronicling his efforts to survive: making the prefab habitat livable and finding a way to grow food, make water, and get himself off the planet. Interspersed among the log entries are sections told from the point of view of the NASA specialists, back on Earth, who discover that Watney is not dead (as everyone assumed) and scramble together a rescue plan. There are some inevitable similarities between the book and the 1964 movie Robinson Crusoe on Mars, but where the movie was a broad sci-fi adventure, the novel is a tightly constructed and completely believable story of a man’s ingenuity and strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Riveting. --David Pitt

The author breaks down the basics of Watney's situation:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir/dp/product-description/0804139024/ref=dp_proddesc_0/180-1509918-2958424?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

I'd like to check Pohl's novel too, never heard of that.

It (Pohl's) is a candidate for the most hilarious ending in SF history.

hilarious good or bad?

that andy weir book was in my local supermarket this morning.

amazon's been pitching it at me for what seems like months but crossing over into hammersmith tescos is quite a jump.

xp good, but unintentionally so.

This guy pops in anthologies and looks intriguing but haven't read word one so far: http://www.sfwa.org/2014/01/geoffrey-landis-receive-2014-robert-heinlein-award/

Man Plus does have a ridiculous ending. It's okay, not his best novel (which, not counting Kornbluth collabs, would be JEM imo)

finished the Forever War. was not expecting the happy ending tbh. Very good, deserving of its plaudits, a few lol 70s bits but on the whole a great mix of hard sci-fi, some socio-political commentary, and a romantic subplot that I found unexpectedly moving.

xp good, but unintentionally so.

― ledge, Thursday, 8 January 2015 15:55 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is probably misleading. It's a good book, definitely worth reading if you like yr hard sf. But the ending is pretty ridiculous and (unintentionally) lulz-worthy.

Can anyone recommend a decent hard SF read, maybe along similar lines to Anderson's 'Tau Zero" perhaps?

Rendezvous with Rama?
Alastair Reynold's Pushing Ice? A lot of what I complained about upthread re:Reynolds work is there, but in tolerably smaller doses, and it captures a lot of the excitement and peril of TZ.
Lem's His Master's Voice. Not really similar, not much excitement, pretty philosophical and political. Very intelligent though, and definitely not touchy-feely.

Internet says If you like Tau Zero, try Timescape by Gregory Benford and The Haertel Scholium by James Blish, I haven't tried them.

oddly i'd've said Rama too but would probably have chosen Revelation Space over Pushing Ice (PI probably closer to Tau Zero in theme, i just prefer RS as a book)

Greg Egan's Diaspora too, although it's nothing like those two.

i read Forever War immediately after / before Tau Zero and the similarities were startling.

Diaspora if you like books by, for, and about mathematicians.

On a whim went back to the all-time speculative fiction poll to decide a reading list for this year, came up with the following (pending further investigation):

091 Thomas Disch - Camp Concentration
087 Octavia Butler - Lilith's Brood
085 Gene Wolfe - Book of the Long Sun
084 Flann O'Brien - At Swim-Two-Birds
083 Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
082 Russell Hobon - Riddley Walker
074 John Crowley - Engine Summer
071 Ursula K. Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
064 James Tiptree - Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
062 Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others
047 Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Have read all but 11 of the top 50, mostly missing some fantasy and a bit of dick.

085 Gene Wolfe - Book of the Long Sun aargh how did this get in here I am not good with computer

+ 045 Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time. Damnit.

Had mixed feelings about that on old Rolling F thread, can paste them if you're curious. But gist of it: could see how this influenced the early 60s configuration of what's now called YA fiction, for transitional, middle school/high school, mercurial readers, but, as with some traditional complaints about CS Lewis's allegories, I (sometimes) felt like the religious bits were in my face, like yet another helping of sweets. Overall, the author came off like an intelligent, observant, imaginative, occasionally carried-away granny.
Still, glad I checked it out, and was told (on old thread, I think) that subsequent books in series were stronger (also apparently books in later series, judging by article about her in Science Fiction Encyclopedia online).This is the L'Engle to start with, pretty sure.

subsequent books in series were stronger

ah the old harry potter defence, always great to hear especially when each installment in the series can stop a heavier door than the last.

yeah this one's more of a maybe as i'm not crazy about YA type stuff, for the most part, mentioning CS Lewis doesn't strengthen the case. still, i won't rule it out in case i find myself in the mood or stumble across a copy.

It's very short and fast, but with no sense of skimpiness or hastiness---impulsiveness, maybe, re idealism. Which reminds me just a bit of Tiptree, now that I think of it, and don't sleep on xpostHer Smoke Rose Up For Ever, or any of her other stuff, though it does get even more reckless toward the end.

mentioning CS Lewis doesn't strengthen the case

I'm not a huge Lewis dude (never could make it through any of the Narnia books, even as a YA) but I will stan for the sci-fi trilogy, which, while def heavy handed with the Xtian allegories, is still pretty strange and batshit. The first one is like an HG Wells homage, the second one is the dumbest, and the third is the best fwiw

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever is incredible. true master shit there.

and Riddley Walker! omg what a book. had to stop myself from buying it the other day when I saw it in a shop, even though I've already read it. the terrible sleeve design prevented me.

Outic what do you think of the third inkling, Charles Williams?

haven't read. is he worth it?

the ending of 'the forever war' is really great. the other novel that had an ending of similarly 'unexpected emotion', for me at least, was 'house of suns' by alastair reynolds.

Xpost I haven't read him yet either, he has an interesting rep though, sounds like insane xtian based SF-fantasy. His stuff is on one of the non-US Gutenberg services

yeah sounds like an odd duck

one of the things I like about the Lewis sf trilogy is that what little science he attempts to inject into the narrative is hilariously wrong (for ex. traveling between planets is unbearably hot! uhm ok). To be fair I don't think he fares much better with the theology (the Xtian protagonist in the second book must overcome his adversary by... murdering him? Yes, that's what Jesus would have done, sure). The whole thing is ridiculous from start to finish, in a very odd and charming way.

Can anyone recommend a decent hard SF read, maybe along similar lines to Anderson's 'Tau Zero" perhaps?

Rendezvous with Rama?
Alastair Reynold's Pushing Ice? A lot of what I complained about upthread re:Reynolds work is there, but in tolerably smaller doses, and it captures a lot of the excitement and peril of TZ.
Lem's His Master's Voice. Not really similar, not much excitement, pretty philosophical and political. Very intelligent though, and definitely not touchy-feely.

Internet says If you like Tau Zero, try Timescape by Gregory Benford and The Haertel Scholium by James Blish, I haven't tried them.

Thanks folks, I love Rama, have never tried Reynold(s) or Lem

Yesterday I found an old paperback (with an oddly thick, laminated cover) of Silverberg's 'Son of Man' which looks like it might be a bit of a mindblow, so when I am done with that I shall investigate.

Somebody here heavily recommended Son Of Man and I bought it on the strength of that. A lot of people don't like it but some others call it a classic stoner book. Looking forward to it someday.

I just got the newish Ian Miller art book and its totally stunning. You guys have probably seen lots of his art on book covers. It's totally packed with detail and cool landscapes. I kinda wish they had put in more covers though, like his great Swamp Thing covers.

Cool, I know him mostly from his quite traditional fantasy art style fighting fantasy book covers, and some really distinctive etched pieces in a Tolkien bestiary I have - all angles, close hatching, and almost mechanistic forms.

Here's his Swamp Thing covers
http://www.comicvine.com/swamp-thing/4050-3465/object-appearances/4040-28255/

I think a lot of his best work is around Lovecraft and his Peake inspired castles.

Oops it was ian macaig's ff covers I was thinking of. Not so keen on miller's, tolkien stuff still great though.

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/b4/7a/a0/b47aa008e609b601656ec0ae70c6846f.jpg
This is one of my favourite Miller ones.

Son Of Man, I don't know if I would call it great but it is probably the most psychedelic sf book I've ever read, in that it really reads like one long phantasmagoric trip

I can't think of anything quite like it honestly. Starmaker maybe. Even Barefoot in the Head is more grounded in a contemporary reality than Son of Man.

Thanks. Me, I still have to read Dying Inside and those short story collections first.

Interesting that Silverbob basically considered himself to be a kind of hack until Pohl told him: I'll make you a deal. Write something you really mean and I'll buy it for Galaxy, no strings attached. In the end, after he returned to sf following his crisis, he ended up turning himself into a hack again, albeit a slicker and smoother one.

Meanwhile, speaking of Pohl, rereading Gateway today for the first time since it came out. Enjoying it, but just got to the exact middle at which point he finally goes out and his first mission, and felt it started to drag a little with all the sf trappings of which star system they were in. But I know it's headed towards a boffo ending, even if I can't remember what it is.

Guy right here hates it, apparently:http://io9.com/5659500/gateway-by-frederik-pohl-the-most-dreadful-of-hugo-winners

My wife re-read those recently and felt they were not as great as she remembered. I remember them being okay, but not my favorite.

That io9 review is pretty positive...?

not at all

Dammit, this is a good book.

Haven't actually read that review yet because spoilers, maybe? The title made me think it was negative, maybe it is just some sort of rhetorical move?

Okay, I see. Dictionary definition trick.

It's funny how almost all the words we use to say something sucks go back to a quite different meaning
Dreadful
Awful
Terrible
Horrible

Ha, yes, exactly.

Okay. Finished. Time to read that blog post to the end. Book holds up well, although ebook is riddled with horrible typos which grow worse towards the end, to the extend that the denouement actually appears inside one of the sidebars! Although one could attribute this to gravity shear, I guess. Have very little desire to read the rest of the Heechee Saga, as it were. Dimly remember not liking or not finishing Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, although eventually I did dig the song that title is based on.

Does anyone have any recommendations for great sci-fi that is either very feminist or phenomenologically-aware?

Also, here is Roberto Bolaño's (very) short and amazing contribution to speculative fiction: http://eyeshot.net/bolanobeach.html

Massively worth reading if you've a spare ten minutes this afternoon.

Joanna Russ (the Female Man in particular), LeGuin, Tiptree

Butler? (I've never read her)

Bolano is in that cosmos latinos anthology discussed awhile back. Definitely recommended.

I havent been able to get into butler myself but I imagine she might fit the bill

That Bolano piece linked is newly translated/not in the anthology. Thx for the heads up!

Thanks for recommendations! Will forward my impressions at some point in the future...

Came across that Bolaño piece in the 'Aliens' issue of Granta magazine a few years back, but that translation is subscription only online. Actually the whole anthology is well worth reading if you can get hold of it: http://www.granta.com/Archive/114

M.R James "Casting The Runes" and "Oh Whistle And I'll Come To You, My Lad".

Both often considered his best work but I thought the former was really underwhelming (I don't care much for Night Of The Demon film either) but the latter was brilliant and quite scary, some great visual descriptions.

I think there's a good sense of mounting tension towards the end in CtR, but yeah the lead up and denoument a bit thin, Count Magnus and A Warning to the Curious do the stalked by ghoulies thing better. The Treasure of Abbot Thomas and Mr Humphreys both have terrific - in both senses of course - visual descriptions towards the end, the latter is quite hallucinatory although it may try your patience on the way. There's a couple of shorter ones which have some of the nastiest imagery he came up with, A School Story and Wailing Well.

Oops, short changed Mr Humphreys out of His Inheritance.

I love "Count Magnus" but haven't read the others you mention, yet. I'm a fan of "The Ash Tree" too.

http://www.wildsidepress.com/Science-Fiction-Fantasy_c_3142.html
http://www.wildsidepress.com/Horror_c_3191.html

Can't believe how cheap and numerous these Wildside Megapacks are. 17 Oz books for the price of a bottle of juice!
Hope these are well formatted.

Hmm thanks! Might try one and report back. Leaning toward occult detective or weird fic. Or WH Hodgson.

Some of the Pulp Megapack stories have the most amazing titles but unfortunately like a lot of old movies and comics, an evocative title is no assurance of quality.

Silverbob really killin it in vol. 4, I must say. The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame are him in top form.

Oh yeah reminds me I still need to read this:
Cool I'll just keep pasting in stuff from prev thread everytime somebody mentions something already discussed thoroughly, as I kept etc on prev thread its own self. Speaking of blurbs, here's a good 'un from a recent library shop score, Wandering Stars, An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Jack Dann, Introduction by Isaac Asimov:
I loved Wandering Stars, and why not? Two of the thirteen stories are from Orbit, and I would have bought seven of the rest if I had got my hands on them first. If the book had nothing else going for it, it would still be a triumph to get William Tenn to write the great story he was talking about in the fifties.--Damon Knight
(Also a blurb from Leo Rosten, who wrote The Education of Hyman Kaplan, about an immigrant who tends to take over English classes with his own versions and visions of language and lit.)

― dow, Friday, November 14, 2014 9:47 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Contents (some of these titles are corny, but the few stories I kinda remember from mags etc were good):

Introduction:
"Why Me?" by Isaac Asimov

William Tenn: "On Venus, Have We Got A Rabbi"

Avram Davidson: "The Golem"

Isaac Asimov: "Unto the Fourth Generation"

Carol Carr: "Look, You Think You've Got Troubles"

Avram Davidson: "Goslin Day"

Robert Silverberg: "The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV"

Horace L. Gold: "Trouble With Water"

Pamela Sargent: "Gather Blue Roses"

Bernard Malamud: "The Jewbird"

Geo. Alec Effinger: "Paradise Lost"

Robert Sheckley: "Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay"

Isaac Bashevis Singer: Jachid and Jechidah"

Harlan Ellison: "I'm Looking For Kadah"

― dow, Friday, November 14, 2014 10:00 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

started tau zero last night; the writing is pretty brutal

Dow I think all those stories were specifically written for that anthology

Well not the isaac singer one obviously. Silverbob's was tho

Also maybe not the Malamud, unless he was desperate for lunch money, and in the xpost blurb, Damon Knight sez: I loved Wandering Stars, and why not? Two of the thirteen stories are from Orbit...

Hm right. Ok well what do I know

finished the Forever War. was not expecting the happy ending tbh. Very good, deserving of its plaudits, a few lol 70s bits but on the whole a great mix of hard sci-fi, some socio-political commentary, and a romantic subplot that I found unexpectedly moving.

DO NOT READ THE SEQUEL, FOREVER FREE. It has the worst ending in literature, although it is kind of audacious in the sheer scale of the cop-out it uses.

Can't believe how cheap and numerous these Wildside Megapacks are. 17 Oz books for the price of a bottle of juice! Hope these are well formatted.

I believe these are just glommed-together stuff available at Project Gutenberg: have a look there (https://www.gutenberg.org/) under specific author names. The magazine stories there usually have the original artwork, too

Yup. Although I think now and then they mix it up and actually pay for a few stories though.

started tau zero last night; the writing is pretty brutal

― mookieproof, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 5:41 PM (3 hours ago)

Also still want to read The Three-Body Problem. and other Chinese SF.

http://io9.com/author-cixin-liu-is-answering-questions-about-the-three-1679328080

I believe these are just glommed-together stuff available at Project Gutenberg: have a look there (https://www.gutenberg.org/) under specific author names. The magazine stories there usually have the original artwork, too

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, 15 January 2015

There's quite a few modern writers and even a few megapacks devoted to them, like Darrell Schweitzer.

I can't stop lol'ing at this illo for the Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/001/117/588/c5fdf7f804544f69b0b7b550cb824020_large.jpg?1381638358

for one thing, it's central to the plot that the dybbuk is not a hasid, but I guess that's the only way the artist could think of to draw a Jew

Thomas Ligotti is getting a Penguin Classics collection. This is a pretty big deal, especially considering that for most of his career he has been published by small press (Virgin put out some of his more recent work) and that he is said to be pretty much a word of mouth success.
A lot of serious weird/horror fans consider him the most important author since Lovecraft (Robert Aickman and Ramsey Campbell are polarizing for too many, Clive Barker probably seen as too inconsistent).

Cool. The early story collections Devilock recommended seem hard to find.

Oh wow, great news. And it looks like I have a new thread to bookmark, ha. For some reason it never occurred to me to dip into the books subforum here.

I'd been avoiding ligotti.net, and Ligotti's work generally, because reading his stuff during the holidays can be, er, kind of trying, but I've sort of fallen back into Teatro Grottesco again over the last week or so.

jmm: unless you're patient enough to wait for the Penguin, you can get TG on Amazon. It's a really good blend of his newer and mid-period styles, and might actually be a better lure into the Ligotti world than his older work.

I would love it if this Penguin thing is comprehensive (there go my hopes, getting away from me already); my copy of The Nightmare Factory is at the point where I'm nervous when reading it -- and not for the usual Ligottian reasons. Still kicking myself for not buying a backup copy when I saw one at Borders sometime in the early 00s.

Double wow, I just got to the post in the thread about this at ligotti.net where JVM is quoted as saying that Songs of a Dead Dreamer is included.

On the prev. Rolling F etc thread, I posted news from Subterranean Press re Ligotti editions, but their stuff is pricey (ltd. ed., so may not can find affordable second-hand; interesting that the press release incl. seeming candor his career arc-of-sorts)

Great great news. My copy of nightmare factory is also precarious. That simply was not an edition/binding meant to passed down through the ages.

What is ligotti's state of being these days? Is he writing? Functional? I've really worried about that guy at times...

Not long ago he talked of a horrible ordeal at the hospital.

I think the situation is that on rare occasions feels good enough to write but never actually expects it. Every new work gets treated as possibly being his last.

Some of those guys at the previously mentioned ligotti.net forums have corresponded with him over the years. There may be some more personal stuff buried in there somewhere. That's the only link I know of between Ligotti and the world the rest of us inhabit.

Also I need to correct something I said in the metal thread when recommending TG. I forgot that the stories are not arranged chronologically so the "later stories in Teatro Grottesco" (quoting me) are not in fact representative of a style or era of Ligotti. They're all jumbled around in that collection. All in all they are, however, of his middle and late (at that time) period (though he'd not written any fiction since then, until The Spectral Link last year). The title of the book goes back to the final section of The Nightmare Factory, the first Ligotti compilation, but the stories that first appeared under that "TG" heading are for some reason shuffled throughout the Teatro comp. Whew.

Oh and it has "The Shadow, the Darkness," which is pretty much his masterpiece -- and his sprawling epic at just under 40 pages.

http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=8726

Most recent interview, pretty grim in places.

they were giving away free copies of Loaded(*) outside the tube last month. Ligotti was their "Philosopher of the year".

(*) British Lad's mag, historically tits– and booze-led

Man. i'm digesting that interview in pieces between other things. not to get all me-time about it but this shit is close to home (though I toil in the chronic depression dept, have never been truly manic and don't envy it)

xpost lol huh????

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that a good portion of Ligotti's fanbase exists because of a familiarity with some of his mental and physical health issues. Not far into the first story of his I ever read, I was like, am I imagining this or is this writer perfectly recreating that sense of cosmic unease that comes with panic disorder/depression?

Still not having read the copy of The Spectral Link perched raven-like atop my nightstand, I only checked out the parts of that interview not detailing its contents, and yeah -- the hospital anecdote gave me the ol' chest tightening, sick-n-dizzy feeling. I didn't realize how out of the Ligotti loop I'd been; this was all news to me.

me too

Ah – 'thinker', not 'philosopher'.

http://i.imgur.com/w6E1OE4.jpg

Wow he had two-stage intestinal resection surgery just like I had when I was 20. Never thought id be reading one of my favorite living authors reflecting on the unforgettable experience of spending a few months sporting a colostomy bag.

African science fiction "always existed...the use of futurism in teaching codes of conduct...I'm curious about that..."--brief, intriguing:
http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/01/15/this-kenyan-writer-might-blow-your-mind-about-the-origin-of-science-fiction-stories/

I asked Nalo Hopkinson, who tweeted that link, about the "Kenyan Writer." Her reply:
Wanuri Kahiu, director of Pumzi, 1st Kenyan science fiction film.

I still need to check that xpost Bolano story! Thanks for the link. Really liked the wild Russian SF writer in 2666, pushing his luck over the Stalin event horizon.

Doesn't Mike Resnick write about Africa, esp. Kenya?

Maybe, but he's not African, is he? This is re African artists etc

D'oh! Sorry

I am enjoying the seventh of those finder's fee Sci-Fi Megapacks, chosen at random. Clarke, Silverberg, Anderson, Zimmer Bradley, pretty enjoyable, except for a really lousy Simak.

Makes a good palette cleanser while I try and deal with the craziness of Son Of Man.

African science fiction "always existed...the use of futurism in teaching codes of conduct...I'm curious about that..."--brief, intriguing

I don't find this v convincing tbh, she's p vague.

A well-read lit degree-holding friend of mine is bumming me out w his enthusiasm for atwood's oryx and crake :(

people enjoying things is the worst

don't they know they should be enjoying this other thing instead

Do They Know It's Almost Valentine's Day At All

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32041

http://www.adweek.com/galleycat/jimi-hendrix-and-his-science-fiction-bookshelf/13597

Re the only actual book they specify, Damon Knight blurb makes me want to check it out, despite Farmer's later rep for beardo cheese:
http://www.adweek.com/galleycat/files/original/nightoflight.jpg

That's pretty cool, I've still never checked out Hendrix but that talk of where his imagination was at is encouraging.

What is beardo cheese?

http://www.valancourtbooks.com/on-an-odd-note-1958.html

Valancourt has been reprinting Gerald Kersh books. There's more if you scroll down a bit.

Been meaning to post about Valancourt myself. Got some stuff from them and interested in more.

What is beardo cheese? Hopefully not this particular book---must admit, the following appeals to me, as a launching pad premise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_Light

Assumed "beardo cheese" meant stuff that was overwritten and overlarded with puns and pulp characters of yore, wrapped up in 60s excess experimentation.

Valancourt recently republished Christopher Priest's The Affirmation, his first book to utilize his celebrated "trap door effect."

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/real-mr-difficult-cthulhu-threatens-destroy-canon-self-interested-literary-essayists-universe-finally
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/11/guest-post-nick-mamatas-asks-why-write-lovecraftian-fiction/

Two articles about Lovecraft by Nick Mamatas. I'm a bit tired of Lovecraft discussion but he's quite good and funny about it even if I'm sceptical about some claims. But I still haven't finished all my Lovecraft collections yet so I haven't formed a proper opinion.

Penguin Classics Thomas Ligotti book is revealed to be Songs Of A Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe.

Beardo cheese or o/wise, Farmer's first Riverworld novel, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, is flamboyant fun (it won the Hugo fwiw); his crazy 60s freeform novella contribution to Ellison's first DangerVis collection is a great artefact,and also won a Hugo. I like that he mixed up kinky alien sex, religion and lots of pulp archetypes along w/ yr regulation far-out sf concepts - A Feast Unknown (basically, Tarzan and Doc Savage as the sons of Jack the Ripper)is esp insane in this regard. Heh, looking at his wiki, Leslie Fiedler apparently called him, "the greatest science fiction writer ever", which is going it some, but he sure is a pretty unique flavour of SF, and he's not a hack - it all feels personal.

A Feast Unknown (basically, Tarzan and Doc Savage as the sons of Jack the Ripper)

haha waht

double waht

I've never bothered with him but maybe I have been thumbing through the wrong stuff (ie Riverworld books) at the bookstore

*checks the wiki*
Huh, I had forgotten the Jack the Ripper element.

I've heard he has lots of hack work. I think lots of good creators have hack work, sometimes to the extent of dwarfing their good work in quantity.

What do you know? Charles Beaumont is getting his own Penguin Classics book too.

Yay! From the old Rolling Science Fiction etc A book on my shelf twenty years before I read it: The Howling Man, short stories by Charles Beaumont. Title tale (later a Twilight Zone script, like several of these, most even better in the original) is the one about a traveler in bad weather, who stops at a monastery. Very hospitable to him, but why is that poor gentle man locked away? The traveler is increasingly troubled--he's also the first-person narrator, a nice, humble guy himself, which often means trouble up ahead, when a oh-so-non-literary, nice li'l narrator also has to convey the anxious spoon-feeding exposition and underscoring of the "literary"-as-fuck author. But *this* narrator, tortured by his conscience and his fear, his certainty, has obsessively drawn himself into hard-learned, self-taught eloquence, right from the beginning. How often does this happen?!
Beaumont was Hollywood king of the killer opening, though some of these come off too slick. And his sardonic-to-macabre humor , though often agreeable, even empathetic, could shade into something more repellent--misogyny, for instance: slick and shallow and sincere. Seems, according to William F Nolan's intro, that he came from some kind of boondocks gothic situation (orig name: Charles Nutt, a prodigy with sev. false starts before he made it, still youing, as a writer). A bit like Saki, H.H. Munro, whose sister confirmed that the aunts who raised them could be sadisict. Dunno about Nutt/Beaumont's alibi, but in any case, you could say the last laugh was on him: he died of Alzheimer's at age 38.
As Nolan tells it, he was a complex person, mercurial, but close and considerate to his wife, kids, and friends, with great enthusiasm beyond or along with the facility. I'd even like to read his damn car books! Also need to check out some of the b-movies he scripted, fairly well-known but not to me.

― dow, Thursday, August 23, 2012 10:29 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nice

― the late great, Thursday, August 23, 2012 1:51 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was just listening to a long Harlan Ellison interview and he namechecked Beaumont a couple times. Need to investigate...
---Elvis Telecom Sorry Elvis, my first time doing cutnpaste on Mac, but he prob posted that during the same week of Aug '12. Thanks Ward, I will check out Farmer.

The aforementioned Valancourt Book published a Charles Beaumont collection a little while back, The Hunger and Other Stories, which I considered getting.

I'd expect any Beaumont collection to be a bit uneven, but worth reading (at the very least).

Reposting from Harlan E thread because sf. Harlan E, Isaac A and Gene W discuss sf with Stud T and Calvin T.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZvcKB9vQO0

Thanks! I remember seeing that, esp. Wolfe's "dropping Gandhi" bit," and Ellison's reaction. Didn't remember the discussion of SF stories about TV and moon-landings, and how nobody put the two together in a story (Wolfe says somebody may have, but editors didn't buy it...) Could have sworn Pohl was on there too: I remember him with wire-rims, shrewd expression, trim stash, wiry build, light-colored suit (of course I also "remembered" Wolfe on this show as having shaved head, goatee, slim). Not seeing it listed on YouTube, except maybe where Pohl's talking to Bradbury.

Might try to look for that Bradbury/Pogo video. Checked out The Classic Philip José Farmer: 1952-1964 from the library and the first two stories, "Sail On! Sail On!" and "Mother" are both very good. The writing has trace elements of the problematic pulpy punning, but the ideas and imagery and energy all come through loud and clear.

Back cover sez:

"Mr. Farmer's name guarantees brilliant science fiction."
Alfred Bester

I just read Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Justice. They're cool, I guess, kind of mid-PKD in that they're unevenly written and full of big ideas (that aren't too deeply explored).

I don't get why they're so lauded.

Bought a cheap copy of AJ, but style didn't grab me, so didn't make it too far.

PJF official web page has a lot of stuff including original reviews from way back when
http://www.pjfarmer.com/reviews.htm
and excellent photo album
http://www.pjfarmer.com/photoal.htm

One thing of his I remember as being grebt and a good use of his talents is the short story "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod," which is Tarzan as if it were written by William S. Burroughs instead of Edgar Rice. Worth searching out, and why not right now, since it would have been PJF's birthday last week and Burroughs would have been 101 this week.

probably answered elsewhere re: PJF, but where's an absolute virgin to begin? What's low commitment (short novel, say) but representative?

Tough to say, intimidated by his graphomania and other manias myself. Perhaps at this point I prefer his earlier work, based on partial reading of this collection.

I would go with the 2008 reissue of Strange Relations. The original 1953 collection was just five novelettes (including one of my favorite by him, "Mother,") but the new edition adds The Lovers and Flesh, two good early novels. Those seven stories hit most of his major themes and will definitely let you know if you want to dig deeper into his work. One of the novelettes, "Daughter," is a sequel to "Mother" and also a pretty funny retelling of the Three Little Pigs story iirc.

"Mother" definitely a good place to start.

agreed on the ancillary books

Flesh also a fun read for baseball fans, as it has turned into a blood sport in the far future.

Couldn't find anything with Pohl and Bradbury other than a very short clip. Did find this clip of Zelazny reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRQ4wKLfYbc

http://borderlands-books.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/borderlands-books-to-close-in-march.html

I confess in recent years I haven't frequented it as much as I used to (mostly cuz I can't spend as much money on books as I used to and spend a lot more time at the library), sad to see them go though. I made a point of getting that hardback copy of Silverbob's Vol. 3 Short Stories from them just a couple months ago.

Just finished Rogues, yet another xpost George RR Martin & Gardner Dozois-edited loosely thematic anthology of new short stories, novelettes and novellas (I think, though forget the word-limit for each category; some long-ass offerings for sure). I should say "finished with," since I won't bother with yet another Martin bog at the very end: yet another Game Of Thrones prequel, apparently intended to read like a modern-English version of an ancient chronicle (JRRT does it better, RR; sorry, since I gather from some of your dismissals of GOT critiques that you think you're improving on his work in some ways, at least). I know how this (with no dialogue, no scenes per se, just a lot of reference material for your TV writers and fans) will go from skimming and from the one in Dangerous Women. M&D the previous multi-genre entry in M&D's series of collections. That one was a lot richer and even deeper overall: maybe roguery is just too cute a linkage for so many stories at once? Or I can't handle lightening up, especially in transitioning from My Brilliant Friend and The Brothers Karamazov? Nah, it's the editors' fault!
But, of the stories most relevant to this thread (multi-genre, like I said with some good light mystery/caper yarns), Carrie Vaughn's "Roaring Twenties" (flappers who are actually witches on a mission, in an enchanted yet lobby-Fed-hacked speakeasy), has feminine narrative perspectives x interactions on the fly, ditto Lisa Tuttle's "The Curious Affair of The Dead Wives" (spooky late-Victorian love/sex quests, gender-self-image and other personal adjustments, plus power struggles, going bump in the night).
Scott Lynch is just a guy, but his witches are positively sassy with the resourceful responses in "A Year and A Day In Old Theradine." Think Leiber and Vance would approve. (They're both name dropped in Martin's intro, as is Howard, but I'll have to take RR's word for the roguery of Conan.)
Daniel Abraham's "The Meaning of Love" also moves right along with the lucid twists, but more bittersweet, in cycles of majors and minors, like a good who-knows-how-old robust folk ballad. Somewhat similar shading/realness but in a pastoral setting and different-enough voice: Patrick Rothfuss's "The Lightning Tree," whose central figure is like a more sensitive Tom Sawyer, albeit one who is evidently a fairy, the kind with an eye for human lasses (and vice-versa, though they may not be---well, you'll see).
The most surprising story is Paul Cornell's "A Better Way To Die," about a good subject of a bad (and/or mad? Or just superrealpolitik) king and regime and way of life, a subject and brave agent who truly believes in "the balance" when the king and some senior advisors shift between levels of cultural piety. integrity, sanity---can we really continue a sense of reality and power based on primogeniture when multiple realities are the seemingly do-able New World(s)? Somehow, this seems like a serious question here, as the cards and scenes are re-shuffled and played. The author has written Dr Who scripts. also for Batman & Robin and Wolverine comics (and a Superman graphic novel at my library), so maybe all that helped with roping me in, as it prob did re my early hero Alfred Bester.

"wobbly-Fed-hacked," the Fed hacker is wobbly, baby, geez what a small screen sorry all the fluffs here.

JRRT does it better, RR; sorry, since I gather from some of your dismissals of GOT critiques that you think you're improving on his work in some ways, at least

lol

"you know what Lord of the Rings is really missing? Quality rape scenes"

Yeah, his basic defense (vs all kinds of objections) is "I bring the realness to fantasy." But Westerns doesn't *realleee* have a culture: despite "let's put in some relationships" from time to time, activities, incl sexual (voluntary and otherwise) mine a narrow vein.

Westeros! Damn you small-screen autocorrect!

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.

hopefully it's newer stuff?? would love a women who sci-fi collection that is somewhat current. though i am all for new collections of old stuff too. especially if its been out of print for a long time. or forgotten never-anthologized stuff. (i ask a lot...)

MAMMOTH! always with the size...

It seems to be almost all post2000 stuff

Don, Damon Knight anthology, which has full title The Golden Road: Great Tales of Fantasy & the Supernatural, is pretty good, some very famous stuff that you might expect to find, such as Arthur Machen's The White People, Heinlein's Magic, Inc., a Lovecraft, an H. G. Wells, check by jowl with some lesser known things, such as an Alfred Bester story called "Will You Wait?" I mainly got a hold of it because it had C.M. Kornbluth's first story, "The Words of Guru," and an R.A. Lafferty I hadn't seen anywhere else, "Entire and Perfect Chrysolite." The latter is another sui generis Lafferty story, kind of hard to summarize, although it does feature quotations from his stalwarts Diogenes Pontifex and Audifax O'Hanlon. Knight explains in the intro that when he was a child he did believe in ghosts and magic, although after his dad got him a magic set and he learned some tricks he saw a different dimension to it. He decided at some point that most of the stuff he read in Weird Tales was poorly written, but he was never one to deny a well-written tale.

saw a ben bova-edited hard sci-fi collection called Carbide Tipped Pens today that looked interesting. but i bought paperbacks of perdido street station and 2312. also actually ORDERED the area x trilogy from an actual bookstore. can't remember the last time i did that. a long time ago. but i like to keep things local when i can.

Think the only Bova anthology I would get would be the Science Fiction Hall of Fame volume he edited.

Thanx, Scott & James, both those anthologies are intriguing. The Mammoth collections I've read around in---one of mysteries, the other short horror novels---were pretty darn good, need to finish those.

so far in the dozois collection i'm reading the robert reed story is one of my faves. i guess it kinda reminded me of ben bova or someone like that. it was pretty old-fashioned, but entertaining. makes me want to read more stories about his big ancient ship the size of a planet. also, i enjoyed the story by lavie tidhar who i had never heard of before. an old world future kinda thing. sci-fi tel aviv and a guy who sells rare books. he also writes about this world in lots of stories. the Central Station stories. and tidhar has apparently edited collections of world sci-fi:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Apex-Book-World-SF/dp/0982159633

there are three volumes. reviews seem mixed. and apparently the stories are a mix of sf and horror and fantasy. so, not strictly sf.

Good to know about Robert Reed's return to form---he's a lifer, and so darn prolific he's bound to have some dry spells. But, especially in novellas and novels, he combines bright, dark, mobile shiny objects with creative psychology---humans, humanoids and others have never been in this place before, let's see how they respond! Action and character develop each other, rollin' & tumblin'. Probably learned a thing or six from Alfred Bester. So prolific I haven't kept up very well, but dig Hormone Jungle, Down The Bright Way, and Beyond The Veil of Stars(thinking writers of the Battlestar Galactica reboot might've learned a thing or six from these), plus a bunch of stories in mags and anths, though I need to read my stockpile of his collections too.
SF Encyclopedia provides a good overview: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/reed_robert

Good to know about those world SF collections too; probably something so wide-ranging would be bound to get mixed reviews, if done right.

yeah, i'm not really familiar with Reed. i do love the idea of a world on a ship for some reason.

are you guys alastair reynolds fans? i forget. i know he's popular...

anyway, haven't read his story in this thing yet. but i've been meaning to read him. i have a big novel of his at home.

also, i liked the greg egan story in this but it was one of those cases where you kinda wished he had fleshed it out into something longer like a novella or novel. it was rushed at the length it was at. he probably has too many ideas and characters in his head. that's a question, actually, which greg egan novel should i read? if anyone here has read any. i'll bet you have!

we have. we mentioned it upthread. 8)

diaspora would be the pick of the three or four i've read. i should read more.

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.