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

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.

https://o.twimg.com/2/proxy.jpg?t=HBhIaHR0cHM6Ly9taWFtaXRucy5maWxlcy53b3JkcHJlc3MuY29tLzIwMTUvMDUvc29ic2YtY29uLXByb21vLTIuanBnP3c9NjQwFMAHFIwIABYAEgA&s=CHiI0UsTGNQPPmYI6qPS20cGeD0IUbb2P0umkHLDELc

more info here:
http://linkis.com/wordpress.com/t6OjY

Steamfunk!

Speaking of which, Nalo Hopkinson just sent this along ( brief intro is a bit stilted, but the books---science fiction etc---are worth reading about)
http://theculture.forharriet.com/2015/05/5-lesser-known-black-women-authors.html#axzz3aSOES7Hz

And courtesy of The Nitrate Diva, a pre-Code science fiction musical I'd never heard of, Just Imagine---great description:

https://nitratediva.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/just-imagine-1930/

https://nitratediva.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/justimagineposter.jpg?w=584

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2015/03/16/affection-for-writers-and-their-stories-drives-easthampton-small-beer-press/9CYwm0MV73oJxpNuFXTJfP/story.html

Found that whilst wondering what Liz Hand was up to and looking at her twitter feed.

Yeah, I need to check out some Small Beer Press books, thanks. Also maybe some of these:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-best-sci-fi-and-fantasy-books-for-may/2015/05/19/24ba47d6-fa63-11e4-9ef4-1bb7ce3b3fb7_story.html

Good links recently. I've got a few unread Small Beer books.

finished Centauri Device, find Harrison's dissatisfaction with it understandable, it's both less fully realized and narratively clumsier than Light/Nova Swing/Empty Space even though it seems to take place in a very similar universe. in retrospect it reads like a dry run for the trilogy. what it does have going for it is that 70s drug hangover thread of exhaustion and resignation, it oozes the ennui of the era.

still working through Zelazny's "Lord of Light" which, apart from the fight scenes, is very enjoyable. (For some reason I find narrative descriptions of physical combat - sword fights, wrestling matches, etc. - interminably boring, always feels like padding to me when these scenes pop up in novels)

and then on deck I have a couple Lafferty books a coworker loaned me (turns out he is a big fan) - Past Master and Iron Tears.

At Waterstones today I saw a big display for Kirsty Logan's Gracekeepers, making a lot of her being Scottish. Enthusiastic quote from Le Guin. Something about a circus on water. Anyone read her?

Saw Vance's Night Lamp as a new SF Masterwork.

Amazon seems to be the best way to keep track of the Masterworks series. Here's the newest additions (some may be reissues with new designs).

(Fantasy)
Patricia A. McKillip - Ombria In Shadow
Sheri S. Tepper - Beauty
Tim Powers - Expiration Date
Patricia A. McKillip - The Forgotten Beasts Of Eld
Robert Holdstock - Lavondyss (11 Jun 2015)
Ellen Kushner - Thomas The Rhymer (9 Jul 2015)
John Gardner - Grendel (9 Jul 2015)
Michael Scott Rohan - The Anvil Of Ice (10 Sep 2015)
Ursula K. Le Guin - Orsinia: Malafrena, Orsinian Tales (15 Oct 2015)
Tim Powers - Earthquake Weather (12 Nov 2015)
Jerry Yulsman - Elleander Morning (10 Dec 2015)
Charles G. Finney -The Circus of Dr Lao (7 Jan 2016)

(Science Fiction)
Hal Clement - Mission Of Gravity
Robert Silverberg - Downward To The Earth
Arkady Strugatsky/Boris Strugatsky - Hard To Be A God
Jack Vance - Night Lamp
Lucius Shepard - Life During Wartime (11 Jun 2015)
Walter M. Miller - Dark Benediction (13 Aug 2015)
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (13 Aug 2015)
George R.R. Martin - Dying Of The Light (10 Sep 2015)
Arkady Strugatsky/Boris Strugatsky - Monday Starts On Saturday (10 Sep 2015)
Ursula K. Le Guin - Always Coming Home (8 Oct 2015)
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon The Deep (7 Jan 2016)
Cordwainer Smith - Norstrilia (11 Feb 2016)

Yay circus of dr lao!!!

Love that fucking book

Shakey idk if you already know laffertys stuff but if this is your first dip I strongly recommend starting with one of the story collections not the novels

I miraculously came across a collection of his awhile ago ("Strange Doings") so I have some inkling of what I'm in for. But yeah I do not have high hopes for his first novel.

The novels of his that I thought really worked were reefs of earth and annals of klepsis

man the masterworks stuff is just the weirdest selection these days

Fantasy selections always far more unfamiliar. Never heard of Ellen Kushner, Michael Scott Rohan or Jerry Yulsman.

Appealing take on Kushner's work here; haven't looked up Rohan or Yulsman yet (this Encyclopedia of Fantasy site stops in 1997):
http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=kushner_ellen I already knew I needed to check Tepper and def more McKillip.

man the masterworks stuff is just the weirdest selection these days

yeah there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it

Just looked up these writers. Yulsman is a pretty famous photographer and this book is about Hitler being killed and WW2 never happening.

Recent SF Gateway Omnibus additions. Plenty of them are fantasy.

Robert Holdstiock - Berserker: The Shadow of the Wolf/The Bull Chief/The Horned Warrior
Damon Knight - Far Out/In Deep/Off Centre/Turning On
Charles Sheffield - Sight Of Proteus/Summertide/Cold As Ice
Richard Cowper - The Road to Corlay/A Dream of Kinship/A Tapestry of Time/The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Michael G Coney - Mirror Image/Charisma/Brontomek
Jack L. Chalker - MIDNIGHT AT THE WELL OF SOULS/SPIRITS OF FLUX AND ANCHOR/THE IDENTITY MATRIX
Patricia McKillip Volume One - In the Forests of Serre/Alphabet of Thorn/The Bell at Sealey Head
Edgar Pangborn - Davy/Mirror for Observers/Good Neighbors and Other Strangers
Patricia McKillip Volume Two - Song for the Basilisk/The Tower at Stony Wood/Od Magic
Lucius Shepard - Green Eyes/The Jaguar Hunter/Vacancy
E.E. 'Doc' Smith - The Skylark of Space/Skylark Three/Skylark of Valeron/Skylark Duquesne (31 Dec 2015)
Mack Reynolds (TBC 31 Dec 2015)
John W. Campbell (TBC 31 Dec 2015)
Fredric Brown (TBC 31 Dec 2015)