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

first one is the forge of god (hammer of the gods is different)

those mcmullen books look cool. though there is "steam power" involved which are kind of trigger words for me...

xp ah yes, oops. Forge is what I read.

You saw a pini at the bookstore?

yes. mister. he's around sometimes. he's very nice.

Forge of god is very good

that book The Narrows is about the Ford Motor Company building golems in the bowels of its factory in Detroit to defeat Hitler...

More from Subterranean Press newsletter

Centipede Press has kicked off a new series, Masters of Science Fiction, with a hefty tome by Fritz Leiber. We can only assume that, like the other Centipede books, the prouction values will be just so. The contents, well, are beyond compare. This one will go fast.

About the Book:

Poet, actor, playwright, chess expert, master of fantastic fiction. Fritz Leiber was a true Renaissance Man. His writing crossed all boundaries, from horror to sword and sorcery. This book goes deep into Leiber's underrated science fiction oeuvre. It's a comprehensive, page-turning cache that captures Leiber's thoroughly original style - altogether mystical, beautiful, and sometimes disturbing.

"The Foxholes of Mars" is a literary assault: a frightening, nitro-fueled tale of war on Mars, with one soldier questioning the futility and purpose of the battle against bug-eyed aliens - a distant mirror-image of our own times. "Space-Time for Springers" is told through the glaring eyes of Gummitch, a cat who happens to possess a genius IQ and a voracious appetite for scientific knowledge. "Night Passage" takes us on a dark journey into a Las Vegas where Earthlings and extra-terrestrials mingle and gamble - and where one man takes a moonlit ride with a mystery woman from Mercury, tailed by some very scary pursuers. "The Mutant's Brother" is a malevolent mix of horror and SF, a tale of identical twins who each carry a frightful chromosome. One of them is also a monstrous serial killer. The literally chilling "A Pail of Air" takes place in an underground nest, where a family fights to survive in a sunless, moonless, post-apocalyptic world where even helium and carbon dioxide become crawling, shapeless threats.

Fritz Leiber was a storyteller and prophet for the ages. His work will never be dated or irrelevant. Treat this book like a crystal ball. These pages chronicle the world to come. You've been warned.

Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy. He excelled in all fields of speculative fiction, writing award-winning work in fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

Edition Information:
Over 700 pages of Fritz Leiber's best science fiction.
Afterword by John Pelan.
Limited to 500 signed and numbered copies.
Signed by John Pelan and cover artists Jim & Ruth Keegan.
Fully cloth bound, gorgeous dustjacket, ribbon marker, head and tail bands.

Sorry, should have checked Centipede Press's own site, source of all the above hype, but also where I had to go for contents, which it won't let me paste, but they're listed at bottom of this page:

http://centipedepress.com/sf/msfleiber.html

Some of his stuff is, um, better written than some of his other stuff.

written

Another Centipede doorstop, this one by James Patrick Kelly, whose stuff I remember liking in 80s-90s issues of Asimov's, though couldn't tell you much about it now, but at least he's not one of our much discussed names:

What you're holding in your hands is part of a science fiction revolution. James Patrick Kelly is much more than an award-winning author. He's an SF visionary. His writing has redefined the cyberpunk genre, with a uniquely edgy, outré style. This book is a literal treasure trove of Kelly's most memorable stories and novellas. Here you'll see classic science fiction blended with New Age technology - and an unparalleled understanding of human psychology.

"Think Like a Dinosaur" takes us on a troubling, sometimes terrifying interstellar journey, as we track a young woman's transformation into an alien life-form, with some unexpected results. "The Last Judgment" is a startlingly original meld of noir and cyberpunk, as a tough private eye gets embroiled in a world dominated by a race of robots. Kelly also adds some murderous extra-terrestrials to the mix. In "Ten To The Sixteenth To One," it's 1962, and a young science fiction fan is shoring up his mundane world with comic books and pulp magazines - until he's visited by a creature that will alter the fate of the human race. "Daemon" is a piece of first-person fiction, in which Kelly himself is the lead character, attending a book signing and confronted by a fan from Hell. In "Going Deep," Kelly explores teen-age rebellion in outer space, with a compelling, complex, and cloned heroine whose talent for mind-melds makes texting look antiquated. "Mr. Boy" is Peter Cage, who's been surgically altered to remain forever young. Ever wish you were twelve years old again? Eternal youth isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Unplug your mobile devices and plug into James Patrick Kelly's vision of our future. Your head will never be the same again.

James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards; his fiction has been translated into twenty-two languages. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.

Edition Information:
Over 700 pages of James Patrick Kelly's best science fiction.
Introduction by Robert Reed.
Afterword by John Pelan.
Limited to 500 signed and numbered copies.
Signed by James Patrick Kelly, Robert Reed, John Pelan and cover artists Jim & Ruth Keegan.
Fully cloth bound, gorgeous dustjacket, ribbon marker, head and tail bands.

That column on the Internet was very helpful early on: he kept a cool head, with none of the expected "Oh wow, SF meets the actual Cyberverse!"

And finally this, which I wouldn't consider if it weren't by Blaylock (of course I'll consider it more like for real when find a nice-price mass market or used copy of this edition)

https://d3pdrxb6g9axe3.cloudfront.net/uploads/9781596067820.jpg

Publishers Weekly has been kind enough to review James P. Blaylock's novella collection, The Further Adventures of Langdon St. Ives, and we couldn't be happier.

Here's a bit from the review:
Blaylock is a master of the period piece, easily capturing a Doyle-esque voice that serves his Holmes-adjacent hero well... this collection is a concise introduction to St. Ives and a handsome volume for any steampunk fan.

About the Book:

Subterranean Press is proud to present The Further Adventures of Langdon St. Ives, which includes three classic adventures, a new novella and novelette, and more than forty illustrations by J. K. Potter.

Langdon St. Ives, explorer, scientist, naturalist, and family man rarely has a restful day: adventure befalls him and a colorful cast of characters around every seemingly innocent turn.

In this chronicle, St. Ives descends beneath the quicksand of Morecambe Bay into a dark, unknown corner of the ocean littered with human bones and the castaway detritus of humanity in search of a strange, possible alien machine.

Madness at the Explorers Club in London and the disappearance of St. Ives's wife Alice leads him to the underground lair of evil genius Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, who has undertaken to set the entirety of London into a lunatic frenzy.

A simple excursion to the West Indies is interrupted by bloodthirsty pirates whose depredations pale before the fury of the pagan god that erupts from beneath the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea.

An inexplicable cataract of water falling from a cloudless sky sets into motion a ballooning adventure in which St. Ives disappears through a hole in the sky.

And on a holiday in London, St. Ives investigates the insidious patent medicine salesman Diogenes, whose pills awaken strange longings and eons-old memories of man's ascent from the fishes.

Limited: 200 signed numbered copies, bound in leather: $60

Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover edition: $40

i could never read anything with that cover in a million years.

don, you can just give the link. if you want. no offense. love you.

(like i should talk. hey, here's 400 huge pictures of every book i ever bought...)

started in on the free copy of John Scalzi's Old Man's War that I found ... not sure I'm gonna finish this tbh. the narrator's "dry cool wit" is v Heinlein.

Those of us who prize JPB's peerless prose will have to reconcile ourselves to horrible cover images from here on out, since he is now marketable as a 'godfather of steampunk'

Jean-Paul Belmondo?

if i saw that in a store it would an instant avoid. even for a dollar. looks like wild wild west fanfic.

Lol

I really don't get the appeal of steampunk/how it is such a big subculture

I mean I like some HG Wells/Jules Verne stuff and am fine with homages to that period but it's weird to me that it's so huge.

JK Potter is frequently awkward but I'm a fan and he's amazing at his best.

Some examples..
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41tAUeNsOYL.jpg
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1597800007.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/7/79/VNSPRSRVD2005.jpg
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0972948511.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/b/b7/THMPRRFDRM2002.jpg
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/6e/2d/fe9192c008a0946bde1c2010.L.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/b/bc/SMKNDMRRRS2001.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BiMdpn7tL.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/a/aa/JKPTTRFNTS1995.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51346YtzT7L.jpg
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/087054165X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/9/90/THYRRSXV341989.jpg
http://www.philsp.com/data/images/w/weird_tales_1989fal.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/6/62/NNTKT1989.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/5/58/SCSMVSMGCL1988.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/a/ab/BKTG04646.jpg
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/00/87/6f4b228348a087410ebb7110.L.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/a/a1/TLSFTHWRWL1979.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/f/f2/RDDRMS0A1984.jpg
http://www.philsp.com/data/images/n/night_cry_1986win.jpg

Another Blaylock
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/a/a4/LRDKLVNS1992.jpg

This one genuinely creeps me out
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/7/76/THFCTHTMST1983.jpg

Super odd one
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61dOcoEXVuL.jpg

NSFW
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/c/c7/BKTG02824.jpg

This page incl. fairly concise comments on a lot of books, followed by an extremely rare Machen piece:

http://www.fanac.org/fanzines/IGOTS/igotsnew1.htm

I've been reading about harassment, prejudice and political controversies in the speculative fiction community for the past 3 weeks. The shitstorms seem to keep getting bigger and its annoyingly addictive to read about.

Here's Brandon Sanderson on the current Hugos
http://brandonsanderson.com/hugo-awards-2016/

Alyssa Wong on dealing with racist trolls
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lightspeedmagazine/people-of-colour-destroy-science-fiction/posts/1468533
http://crashwong.net/post/143533874133/toe-the-line-on-being-a-2016-john-w-campbell

M Sereno on her experience of bullying that was going on years ago
http://awitin.likhain.net/2015/04/out-of-fracture/
Some of the context will be fuzzy for this unless you already know but it's a good piece regardless and it has a bunch of recommendations linked to the actual works.
The situation she was a part of is difficult to summarize. I've read several long pieces on it (all of which seemed quite flawed to me but covering the clusterfuck accurately seems impossible) and there's just so many sides to it, vanished and inaccessible evidence that it's impossible to know who did exactly what and precisely how bad it was.

Another rare 'un: the author of this piece found a novel by Algernon Blackwood (I didn't know he wrote any, did yall?)

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z3WvGRAdqho/Vyo_CagCjLI/AAAAAAAAA3U/jnxNdpFsdnUh6DzjuKUyLLv-Mvg_1hNUwCLcB/s1600/Julius%2BLe%2BVallon.jpg

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2016/05/julius-le-vallon-centenary.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

He wrote a good few but I haven't read any of them. Centaur is quite celebrated.

I only knew his short stories. Naked mountain climber there looks about ready to impale himself on that spire.

Very occasionally one of the lower freeview channels will show a bfi film of Algernon Blackwood telling one of his short stories. They might be on the BFI website if you look. They are TERRIBLE though, both in terms of story and his presentation, real Rowley Birkin stuff.

I just now went to the library and read "The Empty House," in The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, where it's sandwiched between MR James and Oliver Onions (heavies like Henry James in there too). I'd tell him to lose the first two or three grafs, excising their key points for later mentions on the way to the house. Also lose the few spoilerette bits indicating that the principals aren't actually gonna die of fright etc., but he knows that the whole thing depends on their individual and mutual reactions, incl. decision-making. Not so scary, but it held my attention pretty well, despite the competition on this collection.

(Mind you, I'm sated by having just finished the big new story Lucia Berlin collection, so maybe more tolerant than usual.)

Gave up on The Three Body Problem. It was just too...oblique? I want to read Uprooted basically forever.

xpost er, lose "story" in that

Uprooted is by who again--?

oh Naomi Novik yeah, that looks good!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/clark-ashton-smith-the-emperor-of-dreams#/

The crowd funding for a Clark Ashton Smith documentary began recently.

http://thebooksmugglers.com/2015/05/sff-in-conversation-on-diversity-round-table-with-m-sereno-aliette-de-bodard-zen-cho-bogi-takacs-and-jy-yang.html

This is a good group interview about Diversity, the positive intentions and drawbacks of the term; the expectations placed on marginalized writers; translation; harassment; creating more communities and decentralizing the west.
Two things I find particularly interesting is that there are more writers whose primary language is not English but they are primarily writing for an English/western market and that there are many foreign forms of English that are perfectly legitimate.

Those things are particularly interesting, thanks.
Also: would like to go to this, ditto M.R. James events----posted on Wormwoodia:

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yP-kBKIxo_E/VzIPMdegVuI/AAAAAAAAA3k/ibyra2q9WSYu3cO-CFKY0HJvP0WvW1BFACLcB/s1600/novel%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bwhite%2Bpowder.jpg

Reading The White Powder

Arthur Machen enthusiasts within easy reach of London or Cambridge may like to know of a rehearsed reading of 'The Novel of the White Powder' performed by celebrated M R James actor Robert Lloyd Parry, whose story narration is always superb. Details below:

"The Novel of the White Powder by Arthur Machen will be presented at
The Cambridge Brewhouse, Cambridge on Sunday 29th May, at 8pm.
The Deveruex, nr Temple Tube, London on Friday 10th June, at 8pm.

'The Novel of the White Powder' is a short horror story, which according to H P Lovecraft, "approaches the absolute culmination of loathsome fright." If you want to test this claim for yourself then just email roblloydparry[at]hotmail[dot]com stating which performance you'd like to attend, and how many tickets you'd like. Then it's pay-what-you-like at the end."
Posted by Mark V at 12:44 PM

not his best

so connie willis is p bad

If you got rid of the terrible comedy of the grotesque and the weird & badly researched anglophilia and the even weirder obsession with 'mufflers' then The Doomsday Book could be a half decent bit of mediaeval time travel. Fire Watch, which iirc was in the Vandermeer time travel anthology, is just bad (also muffler-obsessed).

Some people seem to think her stuff is funny, but yeah, not my cuppa.

haha ledge i was going to make the same complaint re mufflers

apparently her newish 1100 pageish extension of 'fire watch' has ppl paying for stuff in 40s London in cents

i liked the part of doomsday book that was actually in mediaeval times, but yeah her writing is unbearably precious

plus i really hate the whole genre of 'if only the protagonist had called five minutes later/taken a different cab/worn a muffler that day, it all would have turned out fine'

What is a muffler? Surely the people aren't wearing vehicle parts?

#steampunk

http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/310914778944-0-1/s-l1000.jpg

So it's just a really long multicolored scarf?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarf

Oh I thought you had typed "mufti."