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

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.

I've got a book of Campbell stories somewhere, incl. several he wrote as Don A. Stuart (which may incl. "Who Goes There?"--don't remember, although it's in there). Agree that he was one mighty worm, tunnelling through pulp conventions and his own limitations--can see how that made him such an effective editor of younger, better writers--"Fine, you did that much, now consider this--can also see how it drove some away, and others simply outgrew him. Welp, we all gotta leave the nest some time.
gruesome, paranoid, and cosmic Him and L. Ron, bros 4 life (after life)

Lol, good description of Campbell.

Came to post that John Crowley has good essay in the current Harper's that discusses not finishing books.

Not finishing reading them or not finishing writing them

Ha, reading them, although he at makes at least one joke about this kind of misunderstanding.

The magnetic fields and serum tests in "Who Goes There?" sit oddly next to straight-faced acceptance of telepathy ("Dr. Rhine of Duke University has shown that it exists") ... it's weird but somehow not surprising that Campbell's determination to harden science fiction could coexist with eager interest in Dianetics ... under both impulses, perhaps, was the same sort of worship of mind power.

Didn't abandon Nicola Griffith's Ammonite but I did skim read the last 100 pages. Got a bit fed up with the all female colony who revert to the soil after being abandoned for a few dozen generations following the male destroying plague, apparently forgetting about or not seeing the need for either money or reading and writing. Instead they have a system of bartering that is so culturally entrenched you can't do anyone a simple favour without them becoming beholden to you, plus some tokens of exchange that are easily forged and impossible to authenticate without destroying. Communication is accomplished via storytellers, and a language of knots which fascinates our off-world anthropologist protagonist but is obviously error prone enough to precipitate a major plot point.

I also had trouble with the strange mix of science and mysticism, on one page the main character trances into her partner's ovaries and manages to literally manipulate the chromosomes of her egg as it emerges, then we're hit with this: "chromosomes began their stately dance, pairing and parting, chromatids joining and breaking again at their chiasmata, each with slightly rearranged genetic material. But the chromatids did not then separate again and migrate to the cellular poles in a second anaphase; instead they replicated." Add to this a fascination with telling us the colour of the sky and clouds (usually unsurprising shades of blue and grey) and giving the characters transparently symbolic dreams, and I felt like she was in dire need of an editor.

starting this today. will finish that year's best collection later. can't remember the last time i bought a new fancy book. they ain't cheap! i am a musty dusty buyer by nature. but this sure is a pretty thing.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10978620_10153712605357137_3799620630155046843_n.jpg?oh=d9ec648f420ba0c9169b5874b1fafac1&oe=555857D1&__gda__=1431915956_5aebc2f192190e39da345c6634c3a346

Okay, I give up---whut the hell is it

Jeff Vandermeer's Area X Southern Reach trilogy

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.)

Just finally read Zelazny's "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" in The Good Old Stuff. Wondering if I should read collection of this same title, or The Dream Master or the original story that grew into the latter, "He Who Shapes."

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame is v good and has some v inspired segments, but it feels more like a formal exercise next to Schwartz, which has a compelling narrator and some real emotional weight. Both stories are close cousins of Dying Inside, which should surprise no one.

I gotta dig into zelazny myself

iirc that Doors of His Face collection is really good

Only read a couple of these, but they were good: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/01/some-of-the-best-from-torcom-2014-is-free-to-download-now (a free ebook anthology)

hey guys: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/18/michael-moorcock-new-novel-the-whispering-swarm

Thank heavens! I was worried that the well had finally run dry.

part of me wants to collect all these just for the covers.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2lXpzxluQF0/TwNuoc6gfJI/AAAAAAAAEBY/b9lZGYaLBYk/s1600/Count_Brass_Mayflower_01.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pFZzH5z1yLU/TjmYsytRWhI/AAAAAAAADqo/UIQnJ2gdvEU/s1600/Phoenix_In_Obsidian_Granada_1976.jpg

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/moorcock_citadel.jpg

his 70's covers in general are great. after that elric goes to the dogs cover-wise.

Tor collection looks good, will check that out.

Halfway through The Greatship and am a little bit disappointed. Was expecting a kind of haunted house (shades of rendezvous with rama I guess), instead it's very much a galactic menagerie, the ship itself mere backdrop. Not that that isn't legit, and the obvious way to spin it out into multiple stories, I'm just not that into invented interspecies social mores of the 221st century. Also very strong theme of sibling rivalry, not my cup of tea either.

That Phoenix in Obsidian cover looks so familiar I'm sure I must have owned it but the plot summary is ringing no bells. It does confirm my belief that Moorcock is best avoided, though.

There was a shop I went to that recently closed that had loads of those paperbacks. I resisted because a lot of those are series novels that are now in corrected omnibuses. But for old anthologies I feel different because a lot of the story selections will be unique.

So many wonderful 70s moorcock covers.

Aren't most of them by the same guy? Bob Haberfield? His website is gone.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pulpcrush/sets/72157630414459302/

I cant authoritatively say. There's some by moll + others

Borderlands in SF turning to "sponsors" to stay open. http://borderlands-books.blogspot.com/2015/02/an-opportunity-for-borderlands-to-stay.html?m=1 I dunno, I could probably spare $100

http://www.locusmag.com/News/2015/02/2014-nebula-awards-ballot/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Always thought those film award sections were such a waste of time and usually shows there isn't enough relevant or worthy films for the category. Often same with comics category in genre book awards.

on the Moorcock covers tip (not sure about the credits for all these):

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lgep0jQwQc1qzsz6ro1_400.jpg
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkpcaaOQ5i1qii7l6o1_400.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTzHIjH4Sz1BgrsH_hQ4o-Xo-Zx5m5E5vNIfmEBzfKmLS0MPxWAMg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/7a/22/be/7a22be1d21a228a6b8c74973e45ca4e6.jpg
http://raggedclaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/bob-pepper_legends-from-the-end-of-time_ny-daw-books-1977_229.jpg
http://www.risingshadow.net/library_link/images/books/611.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jC-nd0tqjwk/T2TD7DVPPAI/AAAAAAAAELM/R19LCRBn6H0/s1600/dying+for+tomorrow.jpg

Yoshitaka Amano's covers for Moorcock are great too.

That legends for the end of time is fuckin frame worthy

http://www.nippon2007.us/GOH/Moorcock_tribute_to_amano.php
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?26000

i was aware of MM as a kid cuzza frazetta.

Rejected Rolling SF Thread Title: They pay brisk money for this Crap Nebula?

But what I really came to post is, just got library copy of 334, which has an incredible introduction by M. John Harrison. It is a Gregg Press photographic reproduction of an Avon paperback original, which put me off at first, but now I dig it.

Wow, Gregg Press reissued a lot of great stuff:

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/gregg_press
http://www.kathryncramer.com/gregg_update.html

Wikipedia seems to give conflicting information about whether there were dust jackets or not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Press

Feel like I should post an excerpt from the MJH intro to that book. Anyway I was reminded of some old post of mine about M. John Harrison using a lot of big words which I needed to look up at the beginning of Viriconium and one poster who I shall not name replied and implied I was some of naive reader before I could clarify. I think what I had intended to say until I lost momentum was that the passage read really well, nice and smooth, even when I didn't know what the words meant, which was good enough, but then when I looked them up, the fact that they turned out to be genuine, if obscure or archaic words that he we using very precisely, gave me double happiness. Because sometimes the use of ye olden ten-dollar words can be kind of jarring, like Mingus on too much coffee. And it is indeed a little disappointing if you look but can't find such a word in a good dictionary, and therefore may not be able to determine if it is a made up word, or something real but just too obscure. I remember reading one Evan S. Connell, Jr. book The Alchymist's Journals, and thinking that it was on the one hand an amazing attempt to capture an earlier mode of thinking, but that on the other hand it was just kind of too hard to get a grip on, there were just too many completely obscure, impenetrable words that I could not find definitions of. Maybe he was getting them from Latin and Anglicizing them? As a sop to such mundane readers as myself, later editions of the book, changed the title slightly to Alchymic Journals and added some brief biographical info about the pastiched alchemists along with a short glossary at the end.

James, think you were the one who posted about Silvina Ocampo on the old Rolling SF etc/ From Paris Review staff picks, here's a new collection (well maybe new reissue, since Borges drops in with a preface), also new Kelly Link collection I've been hearing good things about:

Reading Silvina Ocampo’s stories—--newly collected in Thus Were Their Faces http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781590177679—--feels like looting the keep of a decrepit, moldering castle and plucking jewels from the fingers of skeleton royals. Ocampo, a well-born Argentine who died in 1993, melded the gothic and the fabulist in her fiction, writing tales of such unflinching comic cruelty that Borges had no choice but to proclaim her a clairvoyant. She does seem to see everything, and seeing everything is terrifying. In her great novella “The Impostor,” a boy narrates his journey to a remote ranch, where he’s supposed to rescue a family friend from a life of madness; by the end the narrator’s very existence is called into question, and questions of insanity are moot. In its images—damp flagstones, roaring bonfires, a portrait of a jaguar, a dead dog covered in flies—she builds a sense of dread that rises to a disturbing anticlimax. When Ocampo departs from realism, she does so casually, almost misleadingly—not to exercise her imagination but to reckon with all that we’ll never know or understand. —Dan Piepenbring

When I saw Kelly Link in conversation with Emma Straub last week, Link was dubious about ghosts: “Maybe, probably they exist,” she said. Her newest story collection, Get in Trouble, hinges on this maybe/probably dichotomy, as her characters take the fantastic for granted but also question their own perceptions. Maybe, probably, your best friend’s animatronic Ghost Boyfriend is really possessed. Maybe, probably, your spaceship won’t disappear into a black hole. Get in Trouble is one of the strongest collections I’ve recently read; each story is finely calibrated, with Link’s surreal but utterly believable logic, suspense, and heart. —Catherine Carberry