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

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.

*that he was

Centipede published two collections in 2013 and January this year but as with most of their books, they were crazy expensive.

Of Lafferty that is.

Re: Zelazny. I usually just get the most complete omnibus of anything. Chronicles Of Amber has the first 5 books but Great Book Of Amber has 10 books. But many reviewers say the latter five are very poor and kind of a different story from the first five.

I previously quite enjoyed Walter De La Mare's "Seaton's Aunt", it had an interesting strangeness but found "Out Of The Deep" to be a real pain in the ass. It was only written (or published at least) a year later but it's a totally different style. That sort of Henry James thing where the teensiest things are obsessed over. I'm going to be wary of this guy now.

Fizzles touted him in another thread once. I have his novel Henry Brocken on my reader and am still looking forward to checking it out

He's supposed to be a very good poet.

sumatra reader is v. lightweight and will open epub/mobi (for windows)

calibre is pretty awesome but it's way overkill if you're just looking at one ebook

There is a Zelazny collection called The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth which seems to have a good selection of some of his most famous stories, including the title one and "A Rose For Ecclesiastes." Available as an ebook pretty cheap.

In theory would read the first of those Amber books to see what they are all about, but don't want to contend with doorstop omnibus of diminishing returns and limited portability.

Thanks guys, sumatra's doing fine, and these pages look nice, not some crude scan; I'll try Calibre too, now that I'm finally inclined to try downloads from the local library.

Hey, just was starting a book by Gene Wolfe, who I have resisted for years, and noticed a reference to that Zelazny story. Prior to that I read something else by GW, "Seven American Nights," which I find interesting but slightly incomprehensible until I turned to the intranetz for explication.

I'm rereading Farmer's Riverworld series, about 35 years after the first time. I still love the central concept, but god, PJF could be a dull prose stylist. Some of this stuff reads like an episode of Dragnet, people expositioning at each other for dozens of pages at a time.

http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/the-story-as-database

what up nerds, is this any good

I dunno but the quote fails the random read test: ten ways of splaining how "she was herself, but different"---oh wowwwww man. And the description seems as deja vu as her lives, and I spend enough time dealing with computers, don't want no book with cyber-garble and error messages.

Nebula Awards presentations livestream---some people are still having trouble with it, but I'm getting it on Chrome (I just now checked back in, after delay):
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nebulaawards

third imperial radish book, Ancillary Mercy, keeps popping up in my recommendations. she doesn't hang about. not out until october though.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0356502422

i'm about 130 pages into the third of Reynolds' Poseidon's Children series but i'm not sure i'm enjoying it, mostly because i can't really remember what happened in part 2. (it also bugs me that the first 3 covers are all in different styles)

he (Reynolds) also has another book out, Slow Bullets, but it seemed expensive for the length so i haven't bought it (yet)

first Poseidon's Children was really boring. I guess it doesn't pick up

it's more that there was a 18 month gap and about 60 other books between the 2nd and 3rd.

the second had more spaceships in it than the first.

Finished Cixin Lui's The Three Body Problem. Starts off as a decently compelling whodunnit (and whodunwhat) but gets bogged down with infodumps in the second half and ends with a ridiculous and ridiculously rushed conclusion. Can't say I'll be looking forward to the sequels.

Now I need to get on with the list of ten I promised to read this year. Only managed three so far.

Let's have the list now please.

i enjoyed three body, i liked the oddness of it. i don't know if it was conceived as part 1 of a trilogy but i liked where it ended and i am not sure i want any more of a resolution.

shaggy hipster almost 70s Marvel tone

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

Zelazny was a big deal in SF/fantasy at one point, wasn't he? Can easily imagine his slangy style striking a chord with young comic book writers of the late 60s/early 70s. I know Neil Gaiman is a big Zelazny stan, and the Amber books definitely feel like the biggest influence on Sandman - some of the points of similarity are p striking.

Yeah, I always figured that zelazny and moorcock were real influences on the second wave of marvel writers.

Yes and leave us not forget the comics background of Alfie Bester.
Now reading God Emperor of Dune. After figuring out how to keep a lid on the helpful and torturous voices of ancestral memories and prescient options, times at least a couple of galaxies, for 3,500 years, the GE is understandably getting bored out of his skull. He doesn't really have a skull anymore, but it's becoming a throbbing phantom part, like some other parts, when He greets the unpretentious, gracefully sincere young Ambassador of the IXians. The IXians make all the implements He's becoming dependent on---including, lately, the de facto computers, officially still banned in the wake of the ancient Butlerian Jihad ("Thou Shalt Make No Machine In The Image of Man"). Now He realizes that the comely Ambassador is bred to be the most exquisite, diabolical IXian creation yet. Yet, so bored is He,that He welcomes the unexpectedly fresh bit of torture, adding something new to the cat and mouse game he always plays with opponents.
Still awaiting that list, ledge.

i enjoyed three body, i liked the oddness of it.

It was indeed odd. it started off like a hardboiled thriller, then became a history textbook, and finished off like flatland or the even weirder lesabendio. but i hated flatland and couldn't finish lesabendio.

for those keen on tracking my reading ambitions

is second imperial radish book worth reading. enjoyed the first but didn't love it

Question cosigned.

Thinking about the three body problem, I did enjoy the videogame sections. Although for a fictional game it seemed strangely lacking in any kind of actual gameplay, it did provide some memorable images - e.g. a mediaeval knight on horseback and on fire, galloping in from the horizon shouting "dehydrate! dehydrate!" as an enormous burning sun rises in the sky behind him.

Have just actually properly finished the book - author's and translator's notes... and a brief preview of the second instalment. I couldn't help but be slightly intrigued.

what do u guys think of ramez naam?

the second radish book is more like a mystery (albeit not a terribly mysterious one) set in said universe

it's okay, but weirdly low-stakes compared to the first and doesn't seem to move the larger plot forward much at all iirc

xp: Kade activates the Bruce Lee program and also fights the ERD soldiers. Wats, watching the entire scene on the roof, also breaks through the ceiling to join the fight. Wats is killed. The ERD detonate explosions in the skulls of the soldiers. Sam and Kade escape.

idk doesn't really sound like my cup of tea.

yeah that sounds kinda wack. i heard good things about it though, might check it out

http://www.avclub.com/article/bradley-cooper-adapting-dan-simmons-epic-hyperion--220725

show for syfy

Cooper will be executive producing the series, along with Graham King and his Hangover director Todd Phillips. Itamar Moses (Boardwalk Empire) will write the screenplay.

this seems moderate to high on the wtf scale

talk of Cooper directing a Hyperion movie has been around for a few years

I guess he just really likes it

wow!

We don't get syfy in australia, but the impression i get is that it's usually pretty low-rent stuff, right?

Anyone see that Penguin box set of 100 postcards of old SF cover art? Not sure if this was mentioned already.

no, i hadn't.

a few pictures here. only 4, but that's 3 more than on penguin's site
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1405920734/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl

ooh!

did PKD write the game-players of titan in 24 hours? just a guess. man, i gotta find some of that speed stuff.

when worlds don't collide---SF fans,LGB(and maybe proto-T?)activists in the 50s:http://www.laassubject.org/index.php/monomania/kepner

fascinating

btw:
In September 1923, Kepner was found wrapped in newspaper under an oleander bush in Galveston, Texas

Since I'd totally forgotten the good ol thread you reposted that on or to, I'll recip as note to self:
Science Fiction and Teh Gays