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

q.: when did "an original magic system" become part of the accepted freight of epic fantasy?

well if you are reading sanderson you are towards one extreme of that spectrum. what is at the other end though, what is the unoriginal magic system? magic wands? vague vs specific magic is a creative choice (a favourite topic of sanderson's) and if you choose to explain how your magic works at all you are signing up to deliver "an original magic system"

I was really impressed by Sanderson's novella "Shadows For Silence In The Forests of Hell," despite the title--Silence is a woman, an innkeeper involved in shady moonlighting, who has to undertake a dangerous-as-fuck journey into the forests of her boondock land, the whole of which is called Hell because the shades of the dead float through the trees (they don't mind a little innocent bloodshed, like Silence getting her period, but violence and any use of fire brings them instantly to---). The the movements of the shades scared the shit out of me, which never happens in reading this kind of thing, or most others. And the overall tautness, despite the length, kept me involved---not like those boring-ass 50s movies where there's all this blah-blah among cops and scientists, while you're rooting for the monster to show up again and blast 'em all away.
I read it in the mostly good, sometimes amazing multi-genre/subgenre anthology of new stories, Dangerous Women; it's since become available as a singleton ebook/estory, whatever.

well if you are reading sanderson you are towards one extreme of that spectrum. what is at the other end though, what is the unoriginal magic system? magic wands? vague vs specific magic is a creative choice (a favourite topic of sanderson's) and if you choose to explain how your magic works at all you are signing up to deliver "an original magic system"

idk, i think there is implicitly a 'system' to magic in e.g. jack vance

but no appendices as far as i know

i've not read that much of this stuff at least of like the post-dragonlance and post george rrrr martin versions of this stuff; but steven erikson has a lot of 'system' going on. sanderson's rules are way more specific tho? or way more explicitly delimited?

i think its something to do with the rise of STEM fields

or possibly d&d

i should also point out that there is a robin hobb quote on this book i am reading which is something like 'a ripping yarn with a tremendously original magic system'

Did he ever write anything great?

the only books of his I've kept are the aforementioned Barefoot and Report on Probability A, both of which I would describe as successful formal exercises, the former being the-novel-as-acid-trip (altho tbf Silverberg's Son of Man is probably better) and the latter being narrative-as-surveillance. But I haven't found much to like beyond that. iirc Moorcock's take was that Aldiss required a good editor/someone to set goals for him.

There's also a contrast with Silence and the people around her xoutpost, who are no angels, and the smartypants cityfolk, exploitative, predatory, parasitical---bastards! Kind of an 18th Century setting, though Hell is on (or is?) another world. The kind of class relationship that never really goes away.

reading the 2nd book in the coyote trilogy by allen steele. i really enjoy it. he's a good old-fashioned storyteller. the first book in the coyote trilogy was made up entirely of short stories/novellas so you got that whole recap thing going on in each section which can be annoying. telling you stuff you already know. i know you guys were talking about fix-up novels upthread.

is it about coyotes

i am reading 'the well of ascension' and sanderson is actively bothering me now

"It’s rare for a fiction writer to have much understanding of how leadership works, how communities form, and how love really takes root in the human heart. Sanderson is astonishingly wise."

(orson scott card.) let it be known that i don't think sanderson is astonishingly wise.

this and the lois bujold book i was reading upthread both try to do 'look at these people having a normal human relationship in the midst of all this chaos' in a way that makes everyone involved (characters, authors) seem like they are from mars.

http://static1.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/4246199+_977e5845f8cdf1c94b97b25f60049017.jpg

one of the main characters has just invented the separation of the executive from the legislative branch. i wish this had been done with some sense of its own ridiculousness. i'd be all for it if that were the case.

another character just informed the lead that no-one, no matter what their superhero powers, can survive on 'three or four hours of sleep a night.' beg 2 fucken differ mate

no, no coyotes in coyote. man-eating flightless birds though.

Watching Ex Machina: Kid won a contest to run/experience Turing Tests for his employer, who wrote the code for Bluebook, which now handles 98% of all searches, when he was 13; the wetware ("structured gel") brain of Bluebook Dude's AI babe is informed by data hacked from all cellphones, re believable conversations, yadda-yadda, but mainly by Bluebook itself: "Those other search engine developers just wanted to monetize people's responses---what they didn't understand was that a search engine reveals more than what people think, it's how they think...patterns and chaos." The AI babe is exquisite cheese, Swiss gift shop here, rubberfuck plenitude there, and there's an anime-looking slave, "She doesn't speak English, it's a great firewall": all from "the mind of an asshole," as the break-in employees of Horrible Bosses once put it, and Oscar Isaac is immaculately obnoxious, in a low-key, confident way (but can tell this NewBoss is never fucking satisfied).

Yeah I liked it a bunch, I know a few posters were very underwhelmed. That line about Ghostbusters is funny.

"Name me one sentient lifeform that doesn't have a sex drive."

Not bad---even the ending seemed to fit, atmospherically, kind of a Vernor Vinge vibe(?)

https://www.blackgate.com/2015/09/30/john-w-campbell-jr-and-the-knack-for-being-wrong-about-everything/

Not very long but kind of funny.

Been reading a lot about people in the sff community that are basically lefties but have all the tactics and behaviour of death threat troll bigots. Pretty scary stuff.

What if *your* mind was based on a search engine (or what if it wasn't, is a better question at this point)?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/915UUZNX5hL._SL1500_.jpg

Feel like some of you are downplaying Aldiss a little. He has a good ideas and can write well, although since he has written so much I imagine he had his share of misfires. Truth be told I haven't really read so much of his stuff yet, mainly some of the canonical short stories, as I probably posted upthread or in the other thread, such as "A Kind of Artistry," "Poor Little Warrior!," "Man in his Time," "Outside," his award-winning Wells tribute, "The Saliva Tree." Only novel I've read of his is the one mentioned in the original post of this thread, but loved the original short story version of "Hothouse" so interested to read the long version. Either that or Non-Stop.

Speaking of "Poor Little Warrior!", it is also one of several time travel stories to furnish a chapter title in John Varley's Millennium.

Aldiss: I enjoyed 'Non-Stop', and 'Frankenstein Unbound' and 'moreau's Other Island' had their moments. 'Dracula Unbound' had moments too, but they were all AWFUL.

Secretly have to admit my most enjoyed Aldiss is his 'The Brightfount Diaries', a non-SF book about being young and working in a bookshop, which I read when I was young and working in a bookshop

I recall a fun interview with him re: Kubrick and A.I., how he was so opposed to the Pinocchio direction the story was taking that he eventually wrote a version where the blue fairy gets annihilated in a nuclear explosion!

another fun example of sanderson's sense of scale: his heroine's magic-induced superpowers allowing her to cover, in a few hours of running, the distance one could walk in a day. well: yes.

is there a good collection of Aldiss' short fiction out there?

xp

I think I've only read a couple things that were printed in New Worlds

ah, in the uk there are a bunch of kindle versions of his short story collections like this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00ALKTXCK?keywords=aldiss%201950&qid=1443719284&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=8-1

the 50s one is twice the size and a quarter of the price of the others, strangely.

amazon.com has none of these, just the paperbacks going for collectors' prices.

The best of called Man in his Time is good. I had copy of the US version, think the UK one has more stories. Seems like US/UK versions always have different stuff, like the old US/UK Beatles albums.

Machen's "The Shining Pyramid". I'm starting to feel that Machen's main flaw was having far too much long winded dialogue. I didn't find the story very engaging but the descriptions of the place are great and there's a satisfyingly chilling night scene to make up for it.

He has a good ideas and can write well, although since he has written so much I imagine he had his share of misfires.

I really liked some of the ideas in Galaxies Like Grains of Sand! Long Afternoon/Hothouse has some really interesting ideas but it kind of reads like fantastic fiction from the pre-sci fi era in terms of ideas. Like giant, wood-winged birds that evolved from plants or sand octopi. It's actually charming but the characters are pretty lacking in depth.

err, back on Aldiss, sorry

I kind of like that about Aldiss, and some other UK writers tbh, that he keeps that connection with Wells, draws on some older styles and steers well clear of Asimovian/Heinleinesque glibness. I suppose there are some bad British sf writers although none come to mind right now. Oh yeah, that one guy that Shakey likes. Think he can sometimes write about characters when he wants to, the wife in "Man in his Time" is pretty convincing, the details of what she might be thinking are well done.

I got through Theodore Sturgeon's 'Killdozer!' today, and I'm surprised it's considered one of his most enduring stories when it reads like an exercise in anticlimax: he takes the lofty/pulpy premise of "sentient electron cloud is the only survivor of an ancient civilization that nuked itself out of existence" and spends the next 100 pages skilfully deflating it. oh shit, it stewed in its own malevolence for billions of years! but all it does when it awakes is a terrorize a construction crew and smash a few rocks. and the story is padded out with tedious descriptions of exhaust stacks and workplace politics, which is not what I look for in sf. it's like he realized at that point in his career that *big ideas enacted on an intimate scale* was a solid formula but he wasn't a strong enough writer to carry it through. I wonder if the movie is more fun.

is there a strong career-spanning collection of Sturgeon stories on par with Tiptree's Her Smoke Rose Up Forever? E Pluribus Unicorn is mostly great, but I'd like to read more of his work from the '50s onwards. Selected Stories looks decent (notwithstanding its inclusion of 'Killdozer')

also is anyone here a devoted enough Sturgeon fan to spring for his 10-volume Complete Stories collection? (and is it true that 90% of his stories are crap?)

John Clute insists we need The Complete Stories to really get Sturgeon's range, but also gives a pretty fair overview of his strengths and limitations (TCS must be fairly uneven)http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sturgeon_theodore. Mentions several good shorter collections as well.

thanks for the link. I guess I could try one of the middle volumes of his complete stories (i.e. whichever one includes 'The World Well Lost') or one of those other '50s collections. it seems like his early work might not be much to my taste.

Surely you must have read a padded, novel version of "Killdozer" and not the short story. But yeah, been wondering myself which stories/collections of his to read.

I had a roommate back in the day who had most of those volumes, i read a few but yeah quality varied widely iirc. Some good stuff, and he did a decent paste-up novel now and again.

Looks like maybe there is only one version of "Killdozer!" Wikipedia sez:

This story represents Sturgeon's sole output between the years 1941 and 1945. Everything else that was published during this time had been written before. Sturgeon suffered from long bouts of writer's block, but was somehow able to produce this story in 9 days. It is one of his most famous stories, and was his most financially successful during the first decade of his career.

according to this page, he revised it slightly in 1959, 'with topical references to World War II removed'. I read the original (and most commonly anthologized?) version. as they say, one man's padding...

this looks potentially lulzy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r3y-SRsNPI

(1974 TV movie starring Clint Walker)

the ocean at the end of the lane. does that count as fantasy?

it switched dramatically from adult fiction into young adult fiction abruptly at the end of the first chapter and became that kind of magical fantasy stuff like stardust. was ok, but felt like the kind of thing gaiman could write in his sleep.

latest metallurgic superstrength power in sanderson: the ability to open tinned foods with sharp objects, rather than a tin opener

are you reading mistborn? it's pretty silly in parts

it's very silly throughout!

i just wish it knew that a little better

he's a mormon, huh

started Old Man's War, which for some reason i had down as older than 2005.

so far it's like Ender's Game for pensioners.

More Machen.

"The Great Return" is about a series of Christian miracles happening in a town. Aside from a few impressive visions it's a total slog to get through and makes me worry about the further Machen slots I might have to endure. Should have been a good 5 pages instead of 35 pages.

"The Happy Children" is a nice little ghost story with mainly idyllic village descriptions.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQnZ1EGWoAEauHW.jpg