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

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)

In 1924, Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Conan Doyle are among the authors responding to a query about what they consider to be their best books. Good comment from a reader, too:
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2015/05/best-books.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

Read Red Mars. I now know too much about Martian geology and weather.

Ha. Still have not read. Did just finish Station Eleven, which I will recommend.

The post-apocalyptic stuff is done well enough, but the stuff from life before and up through the pandemic and the way it all links together- the time frame jumps around from section to section- is grebt.

In his positive review on his website, Christopher Priest recommends another novel involving a post-pandemic planet, by this fellow http://www.georgerstewart.com/

Which seems to come highly recommended by ilx0rs James Morrison, Milton Parker and kingfish.

And Øystein as well.

Anyway, her post-apocalyptic world is kinder and gentler than some, hopefully not too kind and gentle, albeit with some gruffer or grislier stuff alluded to and elided.

Barry Pain's favourite of his own books hasn't been reprinted and isn't even listed in most databases.

The blog Marooned Off Vesta has been doing monthly roundups of science fiction short stories this year.
He's trying to read every SF story that gets published online each month and posts short assessments and links to his favorites.

http://maroonedoffvesta.blogspot.no/search/label/short%20fiction%20recommendations

This is making me consider buying an e-reader.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/business/media/science-fiction-writer-signs-a-3-4-million-deal.html

As noted in the obituary thread, Tanith Lee passed away.

There's a writer I'm really curious about and have no clue where to start.

I haven't read them yet (only a short story that impressed the hell out of me) but Secret Books Of Paradys (easy to find in an omnibus book) and the Flat Earth series (I got the two omnibuses of that but there's ebooks of it) are what she was best known for. There's a 2 volume Select Stories collection too.

Flat Earth was going to get another two books but I don't know if she had finished them. A few years ago she said she was having trouble selling a few finished books but I think Storm Constantine might have changed that because she seemed to be publishing as much Tanith as she could. But she did have loads of books recently and she was constantly featured in horror and fantasy anthologies.

Recently updated entry, lotta links down in here too:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lee_tanith
I read this and went straightaway to grab several that had been on my local library's shelves for years, but they had suddenly vanished. None left in catalog, in the sell-off shop, nada.

RIP

Dreams of Dark and Light seems to be the only comprehensive collection of Tanith Lee's early stories, but it's OOP and is selling for crazy money on Amazon. the only book I've read by her is The Book of the Damned, the first volume of her Secret books of Paradys — gothic novellas set in a fictionalized Paris, kind of similar to Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen in the way it uses multiple narratives set in various time periods to show how a city can impress itself on the human psyche (and vice versa). parts of it were too melodramatic and 'erotic' for my taste, but I'd recommend it. her Flat Earth stories might also be a good introduction, but idk.

uh xpost

Probably selling for high prices because it's an Arkham House book. But considering it's over 500 pages and the original price was $21.95 in the mid 80s, $35 aint bad at all for the cheapest copy.

anything that sells for more than $15 used is 'crazy money' by my own frugal standards. but apparently it was a limited edition of 3,957 copies (is that typical for Arkham House?) so yeah, I guess $35 isn't too bad considering.

Three volumes of Lord Dunsany's Lost Tales---intriguing; I really need to read more of his stuff:
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2015/05/dunsanys-lost-tales.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

ok, $175.00 for a chapbook is definitely crazy money. judging by some of the titles, a lot of these stories are probably non-fantastic. with all this revived interest in Dunsany, hopefully someone will publish an affordable collection of his late-career realistic fiction. I really enjoyed his novel The Curse of the Wise Woman (basically a memoir of his early life in Ireland, with some fantasy elements mixed in) and I'd like to read more Dunsany in that vein. I'm not really a fan of his early whimsical wonder tales, but his postwar novels The Charwoman's Shadow, The Curse of the Wise Woman, and of course The King of Elfland's Daughter are all excellent.

Obituaries with comments highlighting some of the favourite books.

Here, sorry
http://io9.com/tanith-lee-was-an-indispensible-fantasy-author-1707086691
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/26/fantasy-and-horror-writer-tanith-lee-dies-aged-67

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/02/exclusive-behold-the-table-of-contents-for-sisters-of-the-revolution-edited-by-ann-and-jeff-vandermeer/

Didn't realise this was out in two months.

Looking at the Vandermeers output there is also a pirate anthology.

tip: if you google hard enough, you can find an unauthorized, 3500-page-long, immaculately copy-edited etext of R.A. Lafferty's short stories. it claims to be a complete collection, and it includes about 50 uncollected stories as well as tables of contents corresponding to previously published anthologies (Nine Hundred Grandmothers, Strange Doings, etc.). given the general unavailability of Lafferty's work, I feel only a tiny bit guilty for downloading it.

heck, even wikipedia links to it, so why not:

https://sites.google.com/site/thebooksofsand/the-man-who-talled-tales---r-a-lafferty

Holy cats!

I actually got my first ereader years back because of lafferty -- because I couldn't find an affordable copy of nine hundred grandmothers anywhere but came across a pdf online.

B-b-but then you will deprive yourself of the fun of chasing down old library copies of such anthologies as In The Wake of Man, Four Futures and Universe 7, and aggravating your dust allergies therewith!

Forgot A Day In The Life, ed. by Gardner Dozois.

annoying ", and" up there should have used different word.

wow that Lafferty thing is nuts. what is the deal with his estate anyway? my coworker made some comment that he had idly looked into how much it would cost to purchase the entire estate.

finished "Lord of Light" - pretty good, what else should I check out by Zelazny? (only other thing I've read is Deus Irae). LoL kind of a rambling, disjointed series of battles and exchanges of brief dialogue with some mellifluous prose thrown in here or there to give it the proper religious/spiritual trappings. I can see why Gaiman (whose quotes are all over the edition I read) loves it, it has the same kind of adolescent-playing-with-cosmic-dolls approach that he so often likes to indulge in. "those wacky gods, they're just like US!" Didn't feel particularly profound or groundbreaking, just a solid yarn. But would read more if there's other/better stuff out there.

By chance I am also dipping my toe into zelazny right now-- the three novella fixup novel My Name Is Legion. Dug the first story, just started the second. Enjoying the sort of shaggy hipster almost 70s Marvel tone.

I don't have an ereader, what should I use to open this Lafferty in epub format? Windows did a search, came up with Free Editor and a couple of others.

Calibre, or there should be a free desktop version of the Nook app

shaggy hipster almost 70s Marvel tone

haha yeah Lord of Light reads like it could've been written by Englehart or Gerber

what is the deal with his estate anyway? my coworker made some comment that he had idly looked into how much it would cost to purchase the entire estate.

apparently the Locus Foundation bought his estate in 2011 for $70,000 and a profit-sharing agreement. a Lafferty fansite says this:

Today (2013), all of these books are unexplicably out of print, all over the world. Neil Gaiman and Locus Press, who recently have bought the rights to Lafferty's estate, have planned the launching of a bunch of new editions in 2014, the year of the centenial of the birth of 'the cranky old man from Tulsa'.

but obviously the anniversary came and went without any publications

I wonder what's going on with Robert Sheckley's estate, because it seems like a lot of his pre-1964 works have lapsed into the public domain (judging by their availability on project gutenberg et al.). though I guess it's possible that was a terrible Lovecraftian businessman and he simply didn't bother to renew the copyrights during his lifetime.