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

Rufus's painting is great!

the only Jo Walton book I've read (many xposts) is Among Others, which is a sort of nostalgic companion piece to her tor.com essays: it's a semi-autobiographical diary of a 15-year-old book nerd, containing lots of capsule reviews/impressions of '70s sf novels + some fantasy elements. It's not bad, but as I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of old-school sf, most of the references went over my head. the 'novels mentioned' list is enormous, and I'm not even sure if it's complete.

Jeff Vandermeer thinking out loud about challenges of writing (and reading) fiction, def. incl SF, in the present and coming up (heating up) era. Really want to read this book he's reading, The Geological Imagination
http://electricliterature.com/the-slow-apocalypse-and-fiction/#.VTm2ejO284s.twitter
Re what he says about the wheel of life and what we may now understand better about other critters' understanding, got me thinking again about human x chimpanzee characters in Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, mentioned upthread.

The Geologic Imagination, that is.

John Crowley's 'Beasts' did a very good job at looking at the world from some non-human (esp. canine) viewpoints

gene wolfe invented pringles? i did not know that.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficult-genius

Whoa Wolfe profile in the nyer?

Godwhale by TJ Bass is a sequel but does it stand alone too?

His books contain all of the nasty genre tropes—space travel, robots, even dragons

oh fuck you

"On the other hand—suspended in this slow apocalypse as we are, neither raw nor fully cooked—we may soon not accept these things in novels set in the present-day, either. We may begin to see novels of the mundane and modern that seem like they could be written thirty years ago, give or take a smart phone or two, as symptomatic of a failure. The only form of nostalgia not seen as grotesque may be a yearning for that moment in time before we had set upon a course that would ultimately require radical change to ensure human survival or the survival of the planetary biosphere. Who, sane, ethical, would wish for a time like ours of unrelenting animal carnage, for example? For the dead wreckage of our systems being sold to us as the height of technological evolution?"

from the vandermeer thing. which is filled with things i have been obsessing about. like, at what point does our entertainment become beside the point. or just perverse. probably have to have actual hellfire raining down on people before that happens, i guess. resilient little buggers that we are.

Dang Scott THANKING U for that piece which is enormously impressive and has me converted to wanting to read some fucking van der meer asap. He has articulated some twistings and horrors which, in me unarticulated, have been pushing me in certain directions without my even realizing it

don posted that piece! i am thanking don. so much to think about reading that thing.

i wish people would here would read area x/southern reach cuz i would still like to have a discussion thread. maybe i'll just start a thread/

gonna post his reddit thing here so i remember to read it:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o2jsx/i_am_jeff_vandermeer_nytimes_best_selling_author/

wherein i learn that alex garland is gonna direct the first southern reach movie...

read these recently on skot's enthusiasm -- liked them a lot. not a fully satisfying ending, but not bad given the expectations raised

i'm having a hard time picturing a movie? i dunno

it was cuet how all three books were dedicated to his wife

i started a thread.

xpost You're welcome, Scott, and thanks for the reddit. I wanna read Area X too, soon as I find a nicely priced copy (I'm a cheapskate).

library!

Heh, yeah, when I have the nerve to request another purchase...

Ursula Le Guin's Threshold (aka The Beginning Place), definitely one of her lesser novels. Beaten down american youngsters find solace in a fantasy land where time moves at a different pace, so far so Narnia, but the book spends as much time in the real world as in the fantasy realm, which is really a very thinly sketched and transparent proxy for their real life struggles. She's not interested in building up a detailed fantasy world (despite a lot of laborious and hard to follow geographical description) - ok no dwarves or elves or fucking mannered fauns is fine, but there's nothing else to keep you engaged, let alone enchanted.

Camp Concentration, a masterpiece - relatively speaking - of writing and ideas, but don't think it's entirely successful. Louis is a great character but it feels like the story is just a thin frame to hang him on. Most of the other characters are barely there, the main plot is hardly taken seriously. And a reverse Flowers for Algernon is a near impossible conceit to pull off but Louis starts off so clever there's virtually no sense of progression. Still it's very smart (but no heart) and amusing.

Got Riddley Walker on the shelves but might get Area X too...

Disch is so frustrating to me - an obviously really sharp guy, often with compelling ideas etc. but p much everything I've read of his is flawed in some basic, fundamental way (with the possible exception of 334, easily his best). I agree that Camp Concentration feels like some extended Twilight Zone episode that all hinges on the twist/reveal at the end, and without that there's not a whole lot. The entire novel is all perfunctory artifice hung around that central conceit. 334 succeeds because of the disconnected and episodic nature, I think. When it comes to novels, he tends to let whatever the central premise is become this oppressive thing that squeezes out all the other stuff that makes novels interesting - Echo Round His Bones and the Genocides are prime examples.

Riddley Walker otoh is incredible, that's a real masterpiece.

Saki "The Open Window". Funny little story.

Both Saki repressive read have been "all in their head" type affairs (something I normally don't like but it's good in these ones) but I'm curious if his horror stories would ever be as monstery as a title like Beasts And Superbeasts suggests.

http://blackcoatpress.com/murdererworld.htm

Mervyn Peake's centennial: new illustrated edition of Gormenghast Trilogy, with intro by Moorcock, plus sep publication of long-lost final volume; Guardian has essays by Moorcock and Mieville, plus other commentary I think, haven't had time to read yet--Cory Doctorow comments and links here, with excerpt of Mieville:

http://boingboing.net/2011/07/02/mervyn-peakes-centen.html

Oh well, Volume 4---based on a fragment and his outline, otherwise written by his wife---was already published in 2011:
http://www.amazon.com/Titus-Awakes-Novel-Mervyn-Peake/dp/159020428X/ref=pd_sim_b_4/184-9175235-8027269?ie=UTF8&refRID=02CEMYZ539SK0Z2H1NHV

intriguing overview from SF Encyclopedia's sister Encyclopedia of Fantasy, which stopped publishing in '97, so nothing about the fourth book:
http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=peake_mervyn

I bought the ebook of that edition of Gormenghast back in December, but now it says it is unavailable.

I haven't heard anything good about the fourth book sadly.

Oops---that was all via Doctorow's (or somebody's?) new Tweet, but I finally just now noticed that the linked boingboing post is from 2011! Sorree! Anyway, still news to me, duh.

eBook unavailable. Print version is still available, I think.

finished Robert Reed's "The Cuckoo's Boys" - thx for whoever recommended that, I will keep my eye on this guy. Nothing totally blew me away but stories are all very well crafted and he's fueled by good ideas.

have moved on to Zelazny's "Lord of Light" (which is ridiculous and remarkably cynical but in a fun way) and Harrison's "The Centauri Device" which, despite being written 25+ years prior to Light/Nova Swing, is incredibly similar in style and tone.

Read a couple of SF plays (Pioneer by Curious Directive, Another Place by DC Moore), both of which were good but flawed. Doesn't seem to be much stage SF around, sadly.

Re Black Coat Press, a lot of their French stuff looks interesting, but the speed with which it's translated by Stableford (and always described as "adapted by") makes me wonder how abridged/bowdlerised it is.

Harrison seems to have pretty much disowned "The Centauri Device"

Yes, but is he over going to own it again, is it kind of an I'm Not Spock thing?

I've heard that Stableford's translations a very good from a few sources. Even that his Baudelaire is particularly good.

http://www.diseasedgardens.com/MyNewBlog/strange-fiction-in-translation-2/

Stableford is given to describing his translations as ‘adaptations’; it isn’t clear how much license this gives him. There is discussion of this point, particularly regarding his Paul Féval translations – here:http://www.gothic.stir.ac.uk/blog/paul-fevals-la-ville-vampire/. The conclusion seems to be that Stableford has on the whole provided reliable translations. But the sheer industrial quantity of his translating activity over a relatively short period of time inevitably raises suspicions, perhaps unfounded ones. For a full list see his Wiki page. He’s certainly to be congratulated for exploring some of the most obscure byways of 19th/early 20-century French ‘strange’ and feuilletonesque literature.

http://www.broadstreetreview.com/books-movies/two_french_symbolists_in_new_translation

There isn't an overwhelming number of opinions on his translation but the praise I can find is very encouraging.

Harrison seems to have pretty much disowned "The Centauri Device"

why?

I don't think it's a classic and it is *very* of it's time but it's hardly terrible

you guys ever just chill out with a youtube audiobook? cuz lord knows there's no end to them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqXFChGO1o8

finding vids with good audio is a feat though.

Shakey, MJH seems to be annoyed that that one was chosen to be an "SF Masterwork" and describes it as "the crappiest thing I ever wrote."

haha well yeah it isn't his best

MJH also on why he doesn't like Centauri Device: "It was like stealing the milk float then complaining it won’t corner like a Ducati. More important, if you argue in the other guy’s arena you are already accepting his definitions: 1973/4 was my time to walk away for a bit & do something else, but I didn’t see that until a couple of years later. Now I can offer space opera as essential MJH: offensive trash fun. & try to put the Saturday night back into it too."

He must not have totally hated it, he reused the Chambers Reaction Pistol in the Light trilogy. Or maybe that was just salvage from the wreckage.

Finished Riddley Walker, kinda of a bummer huh? Thought the language was a great device for obscuring the fact that the profundities within are the words of a 12 year old kid considered by his society to be a man. I was most troubled not by the warning that we might be in for a lot of trubba if we continue our lust for Power (that much is old news), more by the idea that it's Riddley's intellectually stunted and learning impaired society that might be meant to be a reflection of ours, rather than the one that came before and blew it all up.

maybe both?

Just finished Children of Dune, which got to be a slog toward the end, though the end saw & raised my sense of a necessarily torturous course--=as it is for the lead Child, so it must be for the reader, descending into thee hive of penultimate crises---leading to the verge of a great leap forward, which is also a great loop, as far as possible---or so it is said by the One within it.
So, while bullshit x casuistry presented as just that (characters running games on each other) seemed, for a while, to be overbalanced by cosmic twaddle we're supposed to take seriously, the balance of the first two volumes is restored and reinforced by the end (incl, in terms of implications and clues, via the *tone* of final speechifying: nice). Also, what one fictional commentator on and within these chronicles calls the "mystique" of power extends "even to nature," and we also get one character explicitly described as staggering "from paradox to paradox," paradox being as least as much the coin of the realm at the psychotropic and.or addictive melange (AKA spice). Somebody even comes up with "a purpose for evolution, " whoopee.
We'll see how this goes in the second trilogy, but I still have some misgivings, because some of the realpolitik in this volume still seems shakier than in the first two (female plotters seem dumber, and they do a lot of plotting).

Just hope the deadpan irony gets back more into the author's tensile plot-twists and less into the characters' now murkier scheming and woolgathering.

So what I look for is the creative tension between the author's own more idealistic/grandiose urges and his critical overview/insights, in the tension of his ambitious story arcs and character development.

just read gene wolfe's the sorcerer's house, twice of course. very good i thought, more pulpy than other stuff i have read by him but in a fun way. as usual i am overflowing with theories to mysteries that will never be solved. strongest urge since peace to write to him and ask him what the fuck actually happened.

Peace is def my fave Wolfe; not quite like anything else I've read, even by him, although there are familiar elements, sort of. In recent years, I've gotten put off by some of his short stories, old and newer, but he usually needs more room to develop. Anyway, will check The Sorcerer's House at some point.

Found a discarded twofer from the Looking Glass Library, a trade-size equivalent to the ancient Ace Double drugstore paperbacks: on one side, you get George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin; flip it over upside down, and read The Book of Dragons, by E. Nesbit. Advance Reader's Copy, so dunno if these were actually sold in one volume. Include drawings from the original editions, published in 1872 and 1901 respectively. I've read a few stories from each collection elsewhere: good, distinctive stuff---MacDonald's a weirdo beyond Hadrian's Wall and Nesbit's up to something in her English garden, with quite a view.