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

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.

Didn't ledge compare him to Flann O'Brien a little bit upthread?

Some Lafferty discussion on the old thread too---here's where I got hooked, more or less:

I recently came across Lafferty's "Encased In Ancient Rind" in Quark/3, from 1971: A Quarterly of Speculative Fiction, edited by Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker. Thought I'd read this before, and that it was mostly terribly dated, but don't remember Lafferty at all, so I better check the whole thing, because Lafferty's tale seemed dated for a second, but quickly spun me through something lighthearted but not not lightheaded; too much commitment to deft detail; but not really lighthearted either (except he and his readers don't have to live through what his characters do, so hey!)(not yet anyway, so hey). Kind of an outlier inspiration to some New Wavers like Delany, according to this intriguing profile:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lafferty_r_a

― dow, Friday, September 6, 2013 2:11 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Guess you'd call that an eco-fable, but dude's get levels, shifty shell-game tectonics. Ditto in this other one:
I found another Lafferty: "Narrow Valley", in Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder, compiled by D. G. Hartwell, with some assistance from Kathryn Cramer. Haven't encountered any Masterpieces yet, but doesn't seem as erratic as other H-K compilations (yet). This one is def more open air than xpost "Encased In Rind", and the topographical capers around weightier matters (incl. munchies for turf, Injuns vs. Homesteaders, but in 1966) seem like they might've influenced/encouraged young Rudy Rucker. It's sandwiched between a good shadowy no-nonsense buffalo ballet presented by L. Frank Baum (also way out West, not Oz) and Tiptree's "Beyond the Dead Reef", which is eco-gothic in the Tropics (and private parts)--somewhat Conradian structurally, also unmistakably late-period Tiptree. More well-behaved than, say, xpost "The Man Who Wouldn't Do Horrible Things To Rats", but nasty where, when and how it counts.

― dow, Tuesday, October 1, 2013 5:17 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Looks like we discussed Lafferty quite a bit!

I do find him intriguing. In a funny way, despite all the Catholic details, I have yet to locate any real moral POV in his work

yeah in fact i remember some of his stuff, particularly the short Reefs of Earth novel, basically reveling in wickedness (the wickedness of children in that instance)

yeah a number of stories where there's evil shit going on and no judgment is rendered, just evil beings doin evil shit, like they do

ftr (dunno if I mentioned this upthread) I've been reading his first novel "Past Master" and a late collection of short stories called "Iron Tears". The former is a bit of a slog, the plot is just really rambling and aimless, so much so that I wonder if it's a paste-up job but who knows.

I had to look up who Thomas More was, after being baffled by characters in the book declaiming him as the greatest, most moral man in human history and the only candidate suitable to be transported from the past into the future to save society from its present day ills.

i'm surprised you didn't know abt him (t more). then again, i might only know about him because i read past master at a relatively young age

annals of klepsis and reefs of earth are the lafferty novels i fuck with. and the sindbad one, and okla hannali is enjoyably unlikely.

(keep getting reminded of the first of those lately because when I try to type 'jlewis' into ios it always guesses either 'klepsis' or 'jewish' lol)

The Wolf Hall craze obviously passed you by, Shakey.

hey if he had ref'd Henry VIII or Ann Boleyn or Anglicans vs. Catholics I would've got it, I just didn't recognize More's name - I mean listing the guy along with Plato, Caesar, Bismarck, Thomas Jefferson etc. is a little odd, no?

(lol I am aware that there is a book/tv series called Wolf Hall and that's about it!)

i dont think its odd, no. hes probably better known than bismarck!

a bismarck for all seasons

Didn't ledge compare him to Flann O'Brien a little bit upthread?

not just one crazy guy's opinion:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/aug/13/ra-lafferty-secret-sci-fi-genius-poised-for-comeback

http://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/8/11/1407759106767/RA-Lafferty-covers-006.jpg?w=700&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=0d569fc094adb197b81197ace8288193

Wow, thanks ledge! If that image goes away, incl. best blurb ever:
"Whom the gods would destroy, they should have first read FOURTH MANSIONS"---Roger Zelazny
(Speaking of RZ again, a science fiction magazine reviewer once opined that all of his best books had "of" in their titles.)

man for a second I thought that Space Chantey cover was by Vaughn Bode

Vaughan Wilkins---another xpost timeslipper

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mJruIXb7onA/VZOGQAJOwNI/AAAAAAAAAjs/JKoS1gxhTuY/s320/img101.jpg

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2015/07/vaughan-wilkins.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

Space chantey cover is by Vaughn Bode. I have that paperback in storage.

Just found this sort of interesting attempt at observing what Lafferty's up to, e.g. 6. Lafferty uses the feeling of estrangement, of "I think I've forgotten something," as a mood to displace the narrative.

http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/RAL/MT/arcanum.html

re: Vaughn Bode cover - that is so odd, never seen any other sf paperback covers by him, seems p unusual

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?498

Looks like a done a good few covers, mostly magazines.

magazines don't surprise me re: Bode, it's the paperback novel

I wonder if book covers was a tough gig to break into, hard to get past the Vallejos and DiFates and Whelans. I only ever saw one by Richard Corben (the book was by Steve Englehart).

Corben did a whole bunch and still does the occasional one. Kaluta and Charles Vess have also done quite a lot.

The bode lafferty cover is before the age of the whelanvallejohildebrants, it's on an ace double

From the library shop: The Mabinogion, translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones. It's the 1978 edition, with revised text and notes, also an introduction by Jones. 11 tales, supposedly the whole thing, incl. "later Arthurian stories with abundant evidence of Norman-French influences"(also "the earliest Arthurian tale in Welsh"): romances, some humor---good? I've never read Arthurian lit.

Introduction by *Gwyn* Jones, that is.

I haven't read this, but heard and read much praise--review from booklist gives the gist:

The Martian---Andy Weir

Ugh, I hate the writing in this. It's like reading math problems written in the style of Livejournal.

Lol. Was just reading latest post here in which that very thing was briefly discussed.

It's like reading math problems written in the style of Livejournal.\

this is the first thing that has made me want to read this book

A friend described it as xkcd: the book

Wait isn't there actually such a thing, an xkcd book?

Wait isn't there actually such a thing, an xkcd book?

What If? Serious Scientific Answers to
Absurd Hypothetical Questions.

Wait, I thought it was supposed to prevent double posting?

A friend described it as xkcd: the book

that's a bad thing!

i've been rereading robert redick's 'chathrand voyage' quartet over the last couple of weeks and really enjoying it. a fair amount of recent epic fantasy has felt very tv-ready and its a genre thats already overlapped a fair amount with episodic tv. so its nice to read a series thats determinedly literary. i dont think it necessarily works, the epistolary section in particular are pretty weak, and i wish some of the plotting had been stronger. but its still worth reading imo

Transcript of interview with Louisa Hall, the author of Speak, a new novel about AI, if that's what this I is by the end. Have to let my PKD vet it:
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/04/419246275/if-robots-speak-will-we-listen-novel-imagines-a-future-changed-by-ai?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=books&utm_medium=social&utm_term=artsculture

man those redick books were a weird interesting mess

awaiting arrival via mail of:

- Malzberg "Out from Ganymede"
- Damon Knight "A for Anything"

man those redick books were a weird interesting mess

haha 'interesting mess' is... yeah. such a disappointing ending. did you ever read david bilsborough's 'annals of lindormyn'? was thinking about how bitter and incongruous an ending he gave that series when i was finishing this one. most fantasy series are like perpetual motion machines it was fun to read something that ended really well.

i haven't read anything Of That Sort for a while, apart from my current trawl through terry pratchett who probably doesn't count anyway. who else is good lately

yeah, i need a recap too. what recent books have people read that they really LOVED? because i forget names...

Station Eleven, By Emily St. John Mandel, a Standalone ILB Thread, but I haven't found any takers on ILX so far.

Or Ascent, by Jed Mercurio, as recommended by James Morrison here: DSKY-DSKY Him Sad: Official ILB Thread For The Heroic Age of Manned Spaceflight.

Although your taste and mine have never really overlapped too much, might cause a singularity in the fabric of ILX if it started to now.

i don't even know what my taste is anymore. i just make it up as i go along.

#nospaceships

i don't even know what my taste is anymore. i just make it up as i go along.

have bought the emily st john mandel in paperback, now i must actually read it

thomp have you checked scott's thread for Area 51? Still haven't read it, but thread makes it look appealing, and author just won Nebula. I did read first chapter of Paolo B's The Water Knife, about water wars of the near future. Cool antihero leads a black ops raid, vs. plucky underdog with pocket protector. Did;t have any trouble setting it aside after that, but this opening seemed like okay pilot episode of near-future.
Speaking of TV, checked Wayward Pines on scott's rec, and he's right. it's not Twin Peaks or, so far, *too* much anything else I've seen before. Kinda slow and murmur-y at times, so I'll spoil it a little for impatient thread regulars: what if The Prisoner was given several kinds of unexpected responsibilities, even powers (and/or "powers"). and what if the Village was not just for renegade or (any other kind of) govt. tools---maybe?
Some of the citizens seem one-dimensional so far, but with little bits of anxiety, Stepford Family Values with promising sparks. Hope Davis does her blonde Morticia (as headmistress) thing, but also the little bits; Melissa Leo is underemployed Big Nurse, bumping against the glass ceiling; there'a secretary who looks and acts like she was snatched from Mad Men, so seems like a wild card, to whatever degree.
Based on a series of novels, hmm. Hope it doesn't go on too long. I'm way past Under The Dome.
Also like early eps of Humans and Mr. Robot.