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

(I'm guessing this is a typical PKD trope?)

this is def a thing he does a lot. The off-the-wall descriptions in the opening chapter stuck out to me though, in that it seems like a sustained riff that I don't remember him really leaning on much in other books. (He does generally have a tendency to throw in silly/cheap elements into any given scene but he really lays it on thick in the beginning of Ubik)

got this for father's day, looks fantastic. Pic of him on the jacket is great, sad that he died when he was only 34

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fd.gr-assets.com%2Fbooks%2F1376407621l%2F41605.jpg&f=1

that looks great

iirc he had abominable oral hygiene (where did i read that)

aw the lovable scamp
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nndb.com%2Fpeople%2F218%2F000077984%2Fcmk-2.gif&f=1

iirc he had abominable oral hygiene (where did i read that)

Damon Knight, The Futurians.

Kornbluth said there was a story in his family that one day when a passerby cooed at him in his baby carriage, he announced, "Madam, I am not the child you think me." His parents, like Wollheim's, were nonreligious Jews; Kornbluth didn't find out about dietary laws until one summer at Grossinger's, a famous Jewish resort in the Catskills, when he innocently asked the waitress for ham and eggs.

He had a deep voice, Tartar eyes and a sullen expression. He rarely smiled, and when he did, did not expose his teeth. The reason for this may have been that he never brushed them, and they were green.

That first sentence quoted there caused genuine lols

Books i find on the street pt. 973 pic.twitter.com/r6bL235Gsu

— Chief Rocketeer (@JoshuaBizabcock) June 20, 2017

that cover fucking ROCKS

1955!

Silverbob's first published book

trying to remember what paperback that kornbluth cover is from...i know i have it at home.

looks like a Richard M. Powers

yeah, he was so awesome. the painting was for sale!

http://www.artnet.com/artists/richard-powers/man-on-earth-paperback-cover-b4rsyQCyN6t4VOT32cZGUA2

best covers:

https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&biw=1366&bih=662&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=richard+powers+paperback+cover&oq=richard+powers+paperback+cover&gs_l=img.3...34350.43905.0.44353.68.42.5.0.0.0.171.3778.28j12.40.0....0...1.1.64.img..33.14.1319...0j35i39k1j0i67k1j0i7i30k1j0i7i5i30k1j0i8i7i10i30k1j0i8i7i30k1.nSUULVYWjAU#imgrc=_

Andy Partridge agrees: http://chalkhills.org/reelbyreal/a_Powers.html

Just read the first two stories (the second almost a novelette, developmentally as well as length-wise) in Kelly Link's Get In Trouble: immediately tasty bits but positively 0 spoon-feeding the reader. Respect!

Anybody else getting mostly links instead of images? Seems to be a general ILX thing these days.

Links work, but still.

ooh thx for the heads up on new Link, will get

An intriguing translation wishlist

http://thebedlamfiles.com/commentary/foreign-novels-in-translation-my-twelve-most-wanted/

huh curious about the Hungarian, never heard of him before

Been reading BLACK WATER, an anthology by Alberto Manguel from 30 years ago: 1000 pages of Fantastic short stories, obv, inspired by Calvino's similar anthology, and with enormous amounts of good stuff in.

Ooh I've never even heard of that

It's great. There's a second volume, WHITE FIRE, which I have ordered.
http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1258848406l/1329251.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Y%2BtLPON3L._AC_UL320_SR204,320_.jpg

ah, found it. that was bugging me that i couldn't think of what book it was and meanwhile duh the painting is called man on earth in that auction listing. which is close enough.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51dmYBvfhbL._SX296_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

UBIK was a total blast, so I'm looking for further PDK recommendations. What sez anyone?

Things I loved:

- I was expecting something colder, like Pynchon or Twilight Zone, but was surprised/pleased by how moving and affecting Dick's writing is - the rapid-ageing set pieces and genuinely sad and nerve-wracking.
- The characters are kinda stock and silly but I enjoyed being in their company and rooted for them. (I'm not sure I "rooted" for, say, Oedipa Maas.) There is a LOT of plot but the characters don't act like clockwork pieces who solely for PDK to move the story forward - they have their own motivations and idiosyncrasies
- Was gradually won over by PDK's kooky overwriting, dad jokes, weird under-explaining, and silly poetry. I tried to imagine a more plotcentric version of Ubik, with terse Dashiell Hammett sentences and more straightforward plot momentum - and realised I wouldn't want to read that book.
- An ambiguous twist ending that actually works, thematically and structurally! Good job there PDK
- You know that "all-knowing" character in science fiction, like Ben in Lost, or Anthony Hopkins in Westworld, who could save everyone a lot of hassle and explain the whole mystery in the first episode, but doesn't because there's several seasons/episodes/chapters left to fill? I like that there *isn't* one of those characters in Ubik - everyone's as confused as each other.

Anyway, I probably don't need to PDKsplain to a sci-thread - but really enjoyed this.

Or PKD, even.

PDK, What Does It Mean?

Phillip Dick K.

Philip Dick mmKay

UBIK was a total blast, so I'm looking for further PDK recommendations. What sez anyone?

A Maze of Death is the closest in feel to Ubik.

I remember that one as A. Christie's Ten Little Indians In Space (incl.cameo appearance of Jesus in airlock)---not meant as a compliment---but been a long time, so might be wrong. OPPKD. Given what you liked about Ubik, maybe try A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, Martian Time Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and maybe try a couple of his non-SF novels, Mary And The Giant and The Broken Bubble.

Oh yeah, and VALIS!

Then you could see if you might wanta go for the rest of the VALIS Trilogy...

I remember The Broken Bubble seeming very proto-James P Blaylock

Cosign on Maze of Death + dow's recs, would also add Dr. Bloodmoney

Dr Bloodmoney is nuuuuuts

Word. Welp, I just now finally watched Arrival, and quite agree with Scott's comments upthread re the vibe and pace---incl. shuddery anticipation-apprehension; even her hair gets involved in that during one passage, as extension of nervous system----and by "her" I mean of course everlovin' Amy Adams, who is Louise Banks, narrator of Chiang's original "Story of Your Life" (without getting too Method-y or otherwise showy about it). For a major studio/stars release, some simplification is to be expected, but---aside from a brief jolt of aliensplaining, Tonto-style---it isn't too problematic---well, the mother-daughter bits are certainly smoothed out, but just when they're getting too gauzy, the movie's over. Also the description of the alien language, and the detective work involved, are developed more in the story, duh, but good to have this certainly-stronger-and-sufficiently-different-from-the-usual-SF-flick too.

Now if only somebody would find the Tower of Babel story.

https://www.cabbagesandkings.audio/podcast/48-book-club

Two critics talk about a favourite book and they both sound fascinating, never heard of either. The host talks about Watership Down afterwards so if you're not interested you can stop there.

What books do they discuss besides WD

Sarah Tolmie's The Stone Boatmen (and a bit about her book NoFood)
Sun Yung Shin's Unbearable Splendor

Now if only somebody would find the Tower of Babel story.

First read this as "ralaffertycon", like Comicscon for raheads---not quite, but still:
http://ralafferty.com/

B-b-but the link says they do have an annual convention!

sweet!

About halfway through the Kornbluth collection - not arranged chronologically so hard to plot any particular growth or development, especially over such a short career. Pohl could be sardonic on his own, but it's clear from these stories that the more smartass material in their collaborations came from Kornbluth. The guy loved a knowing leer and bitterly ironic plot twists. If anything he relied too much on the former; a fair amount of the stories get their juice from protagonists unwittingly contributing to their own downfall, delivered with a tone similar to Bester. To his credit, the stories range *all* over the place. Space opera, alternate history, post-apocalypse, modern fable, character study, you name it. If anything it's the latter that have really stood out to me. "With These Hands", for example, is a totally simple set-up about a sculptor who can't accept the progress of technology and it's impact on his livelihood and the wider culture, but nothing much really happens in the story - there's no "twist" - it's just a carefully-rendered mini-tragedy. "The Goodly Creatures" reads eerily like an episode of Mad Men: an unhappy/unfulfilled ad exec hires an awkward and not entirely qualified young weirdo, who proceeds to write his own ticket to becoming a spaceman, to the consternation and confusion of his former boss. There are a handful of socio-political elements that haven't aged all that well. 1958's "Two Dooms", for instance, is an apologia for the US's atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima/Nagasaki framed by a "what if the Axis powers won the war" scenario. But the alternate history timeline alternates between being grimly amusing (the Nazis build a Teutonic castle deathcamp in the middle of Chicago, staffed entirely by "Germanized" Americans) to the baldly racist (west coast is a series of squalid overpopulated subsistence-level peasant farms where the Asianized population is starved and stupefied), and then concludes with a definitive "... and that's why we had to drop the bomb!" sort of ending.

That goes with some of Kelly Link's collection Get In Trouble, where, for instance a male character can say to his twin sister, "Mom was an exhibtionist. That's why I'm gay and you're not." Which mainly tells you about his attitude and btw he's the slightly younger twin, grown from sis's second shadow, which she still has and was born with because their mother didn't know, nobody did back then, that you shouldn't visit a pocket universe while pregnant (second shadows are kept under wraps, but one night a pickup undresses big ol' sis and their four shadows fall across their bed, oowee; when he's gone she finds he's used her razor to cut his shadow off, leaving it in the sink with some beard hairs[ she ditches her stinky damp towels). So it goes, with lots of (subliminally exuberant) freewheeling inventiveness, kind of Lynda Barry's indie comics x the jazziness of Bester, but also his (and Cyril's) bitterness and YOU'RE ALL ALONE, but she keeps things so lively and deadly, with self-and-other challenge of risky ( esp.forshort stories) use of disparate elements, unified finally by tone and overall effect and omg implication----especially in "Two Houses", but every time I re-read it, the traces, the links, are still there, still disappearing. Occasionally Some do you see but not heavy enough for DO YOU SEE, well maybe once or twice (more like, "Get the picture?" cos she's a tough broad see.) No room for datedness so far, though historical etc. context, the Barry thing and also especially the grand finale, "Light", with the pocket universes and warehouses and bungalows and weather and whatnot, remind me that she's a child of 80s-90s south Florida, like her peer and colleague Karen Russell (who also blurbs this).

I gotta pick that up, hope he library has it. Never read Karen Russell, what's her deal...?

Kelly Link's stuff is all on the (otherwise mostly terrible) Kindle Prime Library Whatnot service - I can't recommend it, but it's free for the first 30 days.