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

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

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

Varies tremendously. At one end of the scale you have Battlestar Galactica, at the other Olympus.

They're also producing a series based on Corey's Expanse novels which lands later this year.

The final Apollo Quartet book, All That Outer Space Allows really delivered, successfully tying together the various, um, microworlds, he was investigating in a meaningful way. Thanks to James Morrison for alerting me to its existence.

Will have to check that, haven't come across the AQ books. Haven't read the xpost Expanse series either, but Daniel Abraham, who is 1/2 of James SA Corey, wrote a really good, unusual story I talked about upthread; it's in the Rogues anthology. There's a Corey story in another Dozois & Martin collection I mentioned, Old Mars.

Got pulled into an unexpectedly sustained final reading of God Emperor of Dune. As taught by Children of, I made like a sandworm and tunneled past the GE's manipulative philosophical bullshit, to the part(s) of the Golden Path made of plot twists (incl. turns of POV and character development). Good enough (for this Dune junkie) that way, but I'm worried that dingleberry pearls of wisdumb will be taken at face value in Heretics of Dune, by radical reactionaries vs. the post-GE establishment (though if that happens, I'm sure the author will demonstrate error of their ways, at some length).

By Jove---
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2015/06/soliloquy-for-pan_13.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

Quite by chance I took At Swim-Two-Birds (don't really know what it was doing on the all time spec fic poll. but there it was) and the free Lafferty omnibus mentioned upthread away for the weekend. Disconcertingly un-disconcerting switching between them - O'Brien prefers to hypnotise you with interminable blarney where Lafferty is happier to wrap things up with the corniest of punchlines, but otherwise they are more than comfortable bedfellows. This from Lafferty I thought particularly Flannish:

The basement room smelled of apples and ink. The editor was there as always, filling the room with his presence. He was a heavy man-image, full of left-handed wisdom and piquant expression. The editor always had time for a like-minded visitor, and George Florin came in as to a room in his own home and sat down in a deep chair in front of the "cracker barrel." "It's been a rough day," Florin said. "That makes it doubly good to see you."

"Except that you do not see me at all," the editor said. "But it is quite a presence that I project -- all the kindly cliches rolled into one. All the prime comments commented so perfectly once again. The man I took for a model was Don Marquis, though he was a columnist and not an editor in that earlier century. He kept, as you might not recall, a typewriting cockroach in his desk drawer. I keep a homunculus, a tiny manthing who comes out at night and dances over the machinery inserting his comments. He is one of our most popular characters, and I give him some good lines."

finished game-players of titan. i didn't like that book at all. so dumb. reading this now:

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/v/t1.0-9/17670_10154003985842137_1963265635912919803_n.jpg?oh=8f3187c8e11301baf927219f5547b735&oe=55EFB74D

also, saw Tomorrowland with Cyrus yesterday and really enjoyed that. it looked so nice and had such great detail. also, that speech at the end by House M.D. hit pretty close to home. about how people just want to watch end of the world movies and zombie shows instead of trying to make the world better because they have given up and figure there is nothing they can do because we are doomed. he was speeching at ME! oh well.

Richard Middleton's "The Ghost Ship" was quite fun. A short little whimsical tale of a ghost ship landing on a farm and all the local ghosts go on the ship to get drunk.

Lovecraft's "Dunwich Horror" starts out very well but I found the second half very boring, going through the motions and far longer than it needed to be. I think the intent was to make it similar to a detailed report (as he often does) but there was just too many inessential details and repetitions. All the dialogue with the heavy accents didn't help either.
The desciprtions of Wilbur Whateley and the countryside were probably the best things in the story.

So that finishes Great Tales Of Terror & Supernatural (after way too long of not touching it). I think that much like Dark Descent, only one third of the stories are good enough to be in a big doorstopper book like this. The rest are decent, okay or just kinda interesting. One or two I thought were actually pretty bad.

in the middle of "the goblin emperor" and enjoying it a lot. riyl court intrigue

reread 'this is the way the world ends'; still good

Ooh that looks cool. Never heard of her (in her own name or her pen name). Thanks!

Xpost

https://www.blackgate.com/2014/03/25/i-invoke-the-voidal-oblivion-hand-by-adrian-cole/

This Voidal series by Adrian Cole sounds nutty and right up my street.

The cover art of Baen books are really perplexing. There's always been bad fantasy cover art but why do their books so often look like bad fantasy cover art from over 25 years ago?

tradition!

I keep looking and thinking "Does the audience really love this? Do the artists who paint this stuff even like their work that much?"

Intriguing description of a timeslip indeed:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kg0sA_ByZC8/VYU_gZlPAiI/AAAAAAAAAiM/PYmjTGfAwF8/s320/img097.jpg

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2015/06/fanfaronade-ivo-pakenham.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

And xpost speaking of art

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Zi2VJY0L79k/VYp86qOd3UI/AAAAAAAAAjE/pI-1HjC0EMU/s1600/Tessa%2BFarmer.jpg

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2015/06/in-fairy-land-tessa-farmer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

Never in the history of art

i'm enjoying Wayward Pines. 10-part series starring Matt Dillon. and based on a trilogy of books i'd never heard of. if you haven't seen it, don't read about it. sci-fi spoilers abound.

so that's not just some terrible Shamalayan Twin Peaks rip?

no, see, that's what makes it good. it's based on books that he didn't write. and it definitely belongs on a sci-fi thread. but i won't spoil.

Dillon makes me favorably disposed to it but the Shamster, I just can't get with him

yeah, but really you gotta just pretend that he isn't part of it. cuz it's entertaining. he's a producer of it and he directed one or two episodes.

actually i think he just directed the pilot. the guy who brought it to t.v. though is just some guy i've never heard of. made two t.v. shows previously: runaway & the playboy club. neither of which i have seen.

Cinderellas, the Rocket Post, other stamps beyond my ken---looks like I gave up philately way too soon:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8aoBByTWlHc/VY1O1aDcNAI/AAAAAAAAAjU/zeRoHnDQ5vQ/s1600/img100.jpg

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2015/06/alice-through-pillar-box-gerald-m-king.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

Just watched The Happening on the syfy channel. Rather unsatisfying.

Intriguing review of Neal Stephenson's Seveneves and Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, with cogent, concise comments on their relationship to the present era:http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/the-warm-equations

Only thing: the reviewer limits himself *so much* by abstention from all spoilers. But he says why.

Also check the links below the review, like Matthew Synder on Hieroglyph:
http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/saving-spaceship-earth

Snyder!

500 and 900 pages! My heart falls at such figures. But I know that if the narrative is compelling enough the pages can just fly by; I did really enjoy Anathem (other Stevenson not ~so~ much) and I have unintentionally avoided Robinson for too long, this might be as good a place to start as any.

tried abt 100 pages of quicksilver by n stephenson, life is too short etc

Quicksilver def not the place to start with him

Yeah, that trilogy picks up steam but it takes a long, long time to do it.

Huh never seen that doctorow quote re: cold equations before. Inclined to agree.

xp A lot of Stephenson's books take a good couple of hundred pages to get going. Anathem is great and worth checking out (but I also love The Baroque Cycle).

I didn't really get on with Seveneves as the last portion felt a bit too rushed/convenient. Think it would have benefited from being split into two or even three books.

the fact that Seveneves opens with a Mr. Show-ish moon explosion conceit just cracks me up

my wife asked me to describe the Lafferty stuff I've been reading to her and I couldn't do it. I just couldn't think of anything that really worked as a point of comparison. There's a lot of strange allegorical stuff - loads of historical, religious, folk/myth references - next to no exposition, a tendency to describe people in almost totemic/animist terms. He seems to enjoy repeating people's names or pat descriptions a lot in the text. There isn't really anything in the way of plot or character development, things are just set in motion and then come to almost comic (sometimes nastily so) Twilight-Zone style conclusions. Standard sci-fi and fantasy tropes don't figure into his writing except as occasional window-dressing (I kinda wonder if he bristled at being characterized as a scifi writer). The way say space/time travel or new technology or aliens are deployed is closer to magical realism than anything else, but only in the most superficial way - again he's not concerned with characters or realism as much as he is about funny little folk tales. I guess that (and his Catholicism, which is all over this material) puts him in the realm of Gene Wolfe, but Wolfe is a fundamentally different kind of storyteller, one with a better flair for sentence and plot construction. Lafferty's material seems to just spill out like a series of campfire story with a weird twists and silly names.

I dunno if he's great exactly but he's definitely unique.