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

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

I seem to remember Aldiss being pretty complimentary about Le Guin in Billion/Trillion Year Spree?

https://www.blackgate.com/2015/10/14/future-treasures-the-complete-short-fiction-of-clifford-d-simak-volumes-1-3/

Clifford Simak getting a complete short fiction series.

love simak. i own a bunch of his collections.

started the 3rd book in the Coyote trilogy. so far so Coyote. i like the old-fashionedness of Steele, but i think after these i'm gonna go for something a little more newfangled.

only Simak I've read was "Huddling Place" which I remember being surprisingly strange. also how can you not love this face:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Clifford_Simak.jpg

Don't know how long the series will end up being but this is interesting

As a special treat the first volume, I Am Crying All Inside, includes the never-before-published “I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up in the Air,” originally written in 1973 for Harlan Ellison’s famously unpublished anthology Last Dangerous Visions, and finally pried out of Ellison’s unrelenting grip after 42 very long years.

finished old man's war. enders game meets starship troopers. i liked the tiny humans.

he has members in his squad called 'gaiman' and 'mckean'. such a clunky namedrop.

enders game meets starship troopers.

these seem like weird reference points for an avowed lefty

i did wonder. there's the whole military training thing for ender's game and then there's a lot of stomping of alien cultures without a lot of remorse for the troopers bit. (scalsi makes no bones about modelling his book on ST)

doesn't starship troopers have a 'hey, WE are the nazis' reveal? or is that only in the film? (wikipedia suggests yes)

did feel a bit ripped off by the 'old man' part of the title as the first thing they do, the whole point of signing up, was to get new bodies. (actually, i don't think they knew exactly what was going to happen)

it was an easy read and i liked the gung ho nature but the might = right stuff was a bit off.

or is that only in the film? (wikipedia suggests yes)

that was all Verhoeven, it is def not in Heinlein's book.

doogie howser!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VfyiHYOumYU/Vh-U3Vk5cWI/AAAAAAAAAss/v9wppLMxRbY/s320/Man%2Bin%2BA%2BBlack%2BHat.jpg

Valancourt Books have announced the publication of Temple Thurston's macabre Thirties thriller Man in A Black Hat, in which a sinister magician pursues an ancient grimoire offered for sale at a country house auction. This overlooked book should appeal strongly both to admirers of the Jamesian antiquarian supernatural story and those who enjoy the occult shockers of Charles Williams and Dion Fortune.

It was a book I discovered in my local library at about the same time I encountered the work of Arthur Machen, and although it was the latter's incantatory prose that most drew me in, Temple Thurston's novel also lingered in my imagination for many years....
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2015/10/man-in-black-hat-e-temple-thurston.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

Video included!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3271546/Have-researchers-alien-MEGASTRUCTURE-Researchers-reveal-bizarre-star-say-huge-unknown-object-blocking-light.html

Musk Dogs

top 10 from Ann Leckie

http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/68381-the-10-best-science-fiction-books.html

She has pretty good taste! And there are specific recommendations for starting points into Brackett, Norton and Cherryh, very helpful.

i did wonder. there's the whole military training thing for ender's game and then there's a lot of stomping of alien cultures without a lot of remorse for the troopers bit. (scalsi makes no bones about modelling his book on ST)

doesn't starship troopers have a 'hey, WE are the nazis' reveal? or is that only in the film? (wikipedia suggests yes)

did feel a bit ripped off by the 'old man' part of the title as the first thing they do, the whole point of signing up, was to get new bodies. (actually, i don't think they knew exactly what was going to happen)

it was an easy read and i liked the gung ho nature but the might = right stuff was a bit off.

― koogs, Thursday, October 15, 2015 10:13 PM (1 week ago)

Ghostly modernism even brushes MR James (further reading required of me):
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2015/10/wormwood-25-modernist-ghosts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

read the third radch/leckie book. it was fine and even funny at points. the ending wasn't all that, but hey that's SF. i guess it's better than an author harping on how the FATE of the UNIVERSE hangs on every plot point, but the whole thing felt pretty low-key and pleasant rather than exciting

i'll buy the third one. not in a hurry, but i liked the set-up at the end of the 2nd book for what was going to come next.

Ye Gods, today I read Sherwood Anderson's "Paper Pills" on my sunny lunch break: nightmare logic nailed a couple of breezy pages, true darkness at noon. Happy Halloween.

Stopped reading Baxter's Time in order to read something a bit more hallowe'eny. only i'd mangled MR James' The Thin Ghost when converting it to an epub, whole pages missing. oops. then switched to Edith Wharton's ghost stories but didn't realise until i was 20 pages in that i'd read them 2.5 years ago. so that was a bust.

anyway, just started Station Eleven, which seems highly readable. also bought the last of Charlie Higson's The Enemy series of YA zombie things, The End.

Wharton's ghost stories are quite good but I never thought they were special.

Am failing to be impressed by ligotti on my first extended exposure. :(

Read the first two of Max Gladstone's Craft sequence which were very enjoyable and reminded me somewhat of Mieville's New Crobuzon novels with their steampunk/urban fantasy setting.

ok, book i'm currently reading, which i won't name (again) because of spoilers.

end of the world, flu epidemic, 99.9% fatal. (which would still leave thousands of people in the london area, say...)

anyway, things start failing within a week, power, water, the internet, mobiles. i'd've thought it would take longer than that. electricity is the weak point, i guess. how autonomous is it?

Louise welsh?

no. i mentioned it about 5 posts ago if you're curious.

Oh, mandel, duh. I enjoyed that a lot.

The higsons i gave up on... They seemed to be becoming increasingly nasty in lieu of having any really good new ideas worth pursuing.

higson was on the radio the other day saying that he'd planned 3, but they kinda got away from him. i started getting confused when the books would start 'this took place during the same timeframe as (two books ago, during which time i'd read 50 other things)'. timeline was v confused by the end of it. i guess because of the lack of real planning.

new one, the 7th, is another 450 pages but it'll take me about 3 days to read.

it did seem to evolve in book 4 or 5, a chapter about falling from the stars, hinting at the cause of the (incredibly specific) virus, but the next book just seemed to ignore that.

good lord, charlie higson has written seven novels about zombies

someone just should be in charge of making sure this sort of thing didn't happen

Any opinions on Lin Carter? When I first read about him it was Moorcock giving him a beating in Wizardry And Wild Romance. But recently I've seen a lot of his supporters say that his contribution as editor/curator (with the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series and anthologies) is so enormous that you could say he had a large hand in creating fantasy as we know it now and saving lots of important books from obscurity. But even his biggest fans seem to agree that most of his own fiction was derivative pap.

Definitely major props as an editor. His own fiction - yeah I haven't. Looks like it might be better than sprague de camp's anyway.

you are better off with farmer and leiber. for sf AND fantasy.

i would totally read some de camp 50's SF. probably wouldn't read his fantasy stuff though.

farmer and leiber
Both these guys have their high points, but can be hit or miss, esp. farmer.