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

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."

I had put the domesday book aside for a minute and having picked it up again I encountered, on p89, the third muffler of the book. I don't know how I'm going to keep them all distinct.

About a year ago I posted upthread, asking for recommendations for a scifi/fantasy newbie - thanks again! - and then I basically disliked everything I tried, and forgot about it.

I couldn't get into Glen Cook, Iain Banks or Erikson at all - perhaps they're more advanced level reading? But mostly I couldn't hack like their sentence-writing style - I kept struggling to visualise what was actually happening. Erikson especially. That shit is crazy. People read ten volumes of that?

Dune and Anubis Gates I liked a lot, at least the opening chapters, and I've banked them as future beach holiday reads. M John Harrison's Light was good, too, but I'm waiting for a secondhand copy to turn up.

The one I really liked was Name of the Wind, which I'm a hundred pages into right now. Please tell me it's worth the effort? It's less trope-y than I was expecting. And he's a solid writer - kind of reminds me of Peter David, actually.

I admit, I kind of enjoyed the setup with the ZOMBIE SPIDERS more than the autobiographical chapters, which might not bode well. And it is really fucking long. But so far so good.

M. John Harrison writes beautiful sentences

never read Banks Cook or Erikson myself

Yeah, Harrison was good. Had a sort of "coldly efficient" kind of Kubrick vibe

I haven't read his Viriconium stuff, and his pre-80s novels aren't quite up to par, but all the Kefahuchi Tract books (Light, Nova Swing, and Empty Space) are great. Some good short fiction too.

Erikson sucks for real. What makes an awesome rpg campaign does not necessarily make an awesome fantasy novel. Glen cook is miles better than him.

I love Banks, but it's fucking hard to read. Feel like I need to read all of them again to really grok all of the details. I love the universe he created, though.

couple days late to this but wanted to defend the erikson series. i thought not only did he make a really compelling world, he created a sense of time and history for it that was vivid and substantial and populated the world with the legend/archaeology of it in a way that was total catnip to me. i guess the first book was written a long time before the rest and it shows but the series gets strong quickly before getting a little bogged down right at the end. it is a lot of pages to get that far tho.

also, banks does not need defending but he is awesome and while his non-genre stuff did go off the boil pretty badly his middle initial books were amazing to the end.

accidentally posted this in the old thread:

I'm probably going to get ripped to shreds for this but... did anyone else find The Dispossessed a bit of a slog? I've been forcing myself to finish it (it's not even a very long book) and it just feels endless. Love the premise and the overall idea, but there's something about the deployment of language that isn't working out for me. I'd have thought that by now I'd have a clearer idea of the various characters, but the majority of them feel like empty vessels fulfilling roles. Even Shevek - I mean, I get that maybe the Anarresti are supposed to be a stoic, no-nonsense bunch - but he seems to have very little personality. The only characters who I seem to have any sort of interesting faculties are secondary roles like Sabul and Vea. The distinct lack of action would be fine. I don't need space battles in my sci-fi, but the Dispossessed reads to me like a very thinly-veiled allegory and not much more.

I really liked the Dispossessed but yes it is v dry and heavy-handed w the allegories, it's more of an exercise than a novel

i still have never read the Culture books. i kinda want to get nice copies of all of them before i do. so, might take me a while. still have only read wasp factory/walking on glass/the bridge/complicity. liked all those except complicity. wasp factory one of those bombshells i read in the 80's.

Erikson especially. That shit is crazy. People read ten volumes of that?

i don't really want to have to know the numbers and nicknames of military units in my fiction, and that goes for cook too

the only banks i've read was 'the business', which was legit awful. is his straight-up sci-fi actually good?

i would also like to defend erikson, to some extent -- i also had the feeling, reading the first one, that i'd be better off reading the sourcebook. but a couple books in he figures out how forward motion works in this hyuuge narrative he's doing, and he's probably the best subcreator in the modern fantasy biz? like, coherent systems worked out in detail presented not too schematically and w/sufficient ellipsis that (after that first book ...) the reader's not being led around too much by the nose, nor left completely adrift

otoh his sentences never really improved (though his banter does, a little) and i'm not sure he doesn't hate women

Re banks, all his mainstream fiction from complicity on is pretty much going through the motions; his heart stayed in his sf for much longer

http://greydogtales.com/blog/?p=1891

An enjoyable list of fantasy books from 70s-80s.

I like this guy's blog. Way too much to read on it but I dip in occasionally. Quite charming with all the pictures and articles about his dogs.

Looks very helpful, thanks! Hadn't heard of Patricia Wrightson, will def. check out her use of Aboriginal elements. And, among many others here, I still need to read McKillip's Riddlemaster trilogy (carried on about herWinter Rose upthread).

makes me curious about the non-kid stuff by wrightson. a lot of it probably didn't make it here from down under.

i have those dark is rising books at home. will get to them eventually. i think i started to read one to my youngest kid and he wasn't into it.

although looking around online it seems like most of wrightson's stuff was for kids.

loved the susan cooper books when i was a kid -- i'd suggest reading 'the dark is rising' (the book) first, tho, as it's much more immediately grabbing than 'over sea, under stone' and the order doesn't really matter for those two

re-read the riddlemaster books this past winter, actually -- they are awesome

Yeah I read Over Sea last year and it's charming but didn't entice me to read the next one - maybe should have just skipped it

From Small Beer Press:

We are looking forward to publishing one of the most beautiful and unexpected books we've ever come across: The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosencreutz: A Romance in Eight Days by Johann Valentin Andreae in a New Version by John Crowley, illustrated by Theo Fadel, and designed by Jacob McMurray.
More details, also links to Guardian etc., and the Small Beer site also has a podcast discussion w Crowley:
(Kickstarter goal done, son)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2142694884/the-chemical-wedding-by-john-crowley?ref=card

have long wanted to read that, but their attempt to position it as a work of sf... i dunno? at least it will be more readily available, i guess.

Some Small Beer stuff looks great, but so expensive

Actually, I may be confusing them with Subterranean Press

I got that info from links in the latest Subterranean e-newsletter, cos ST is involved with the initial ltd. ed., but they just get licenses etc. for a lot of stuff, apparently, so a more affordable version may turn up eventually (as with some of the other titles ST has introduced).

It's mainly a way to get splashy publicity for a new or reissued title, as far as most readers are concerned, but also getssome collectors tingling, like sinfully expensive vinyl etc.

hmmm, checking amazon there's a translation by josceyln godwin from the nineties which suits my budget better... no pretty pictures though.

http://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Christian-Rosenkreutz-Hermetic-Sourceworks/dp/0933999356

I see there was some chat abt Ursula K LeGuin upthread - have just finished A Wizard of Earthsea for the first time. My initial reaction - this stuff is for kids??? The writing seems so slow and serious and sombre (LeGuin doesn't really do humour, does she?) But there's often a great, almost biblical beauty to the prose (the main character is in some ways a Christ-like figure), and always an incredibly powerful imagination at work - she creates a whole world and mythology in less than 200 pages, and throughout there are hints of a bigger narrative, a greater world still to be explored. She may not be the flashiest, the most pyrotechnic of SF/Fantasy authors, but there's something admirable about her high seriousness - if I'd read this as a child, I would've appreciated the way that doesn't ever talk down to the reader. And this isn't an especially didactic work, though it has humanist things to say about the corrosive desire for power and mastery.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/?p=1891

An enjoyable list of fantasy books from 70s-80s.

THIS LIST IS MY LIFE. The Susan Cooper cover art is amazing and at least 300% better than any other version I've ever seen.

Skip Cherryh skip Nargun skip skip...skip...

McKillip is the bomb, y'all. Skot, you should really hide out from the sun this summer with the Riddlemaster Trilogy. McKillip is subtle in a way that fantasy often isn't, kind of LeGuin-ish, now that I think of it. Beautifully haunting, so sensible, everything about them is just RIGHT. Her Forgotten Beasts of Eld is not to be missed, either. Although classed as YA (for a number of reasons, most of them not very good ones), it went waaaaay over my head until I was probably in my 30s. Also my given name was inspired by this book, so naturally I adore it.

Barbara Hambly--funny she's on here because I just re-read The Ladies of Mandrigyn, The Witches of Wenshar, and whatever the third one is. Very disappointing and misogynistic. The Ladies of Mandrigyn might be right there in the title, but they come second to the main hero character and are constantly described by their sexy or unsexy physical characteristics. Every old woman is also fat, pretty ones are thin (and only thin ones are pretty), women who aren't going to fall into bed with the hero are "disagreeable", and so on. And the poor witches of Wenshar are not only already dead and gone already at the time of the second book, they're EVIL, a sign of what women unchecked will become (naturally). It takes the hero figure AGAIN (who lacks any formal training in magic btw, he's just naturally more gifted than anyone else) to come along and expel them and put everything right again, saving the life of an attractive young woman from the spirits of her female ancestors who would have "twisted" and "corrupted" her if the man hadn't killed them all over again.

I got shit to do, I don't have time for misogyny in my recreational reading.

I definitely plan to read Cherryh someday, lots of people really rate her. She won some sort of lifetime achievement award at Nebulas recently.

When I was looking at old fantasy reader polls from the 80s and 90s, it seemed like McKillip was at God-tier with Tolkien, Peake, LeGuin and Wolfe.

as a teenager I was really into those Thieves' World books Cherryh had a hand in, but I've never gone back to them and sort of doubt they're actually good. I was very into the structure of interconnected stories written by different authors though (in retrospect something I would enjoy much later and in a different way with Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stuff)

Oh yeah, George RR Martin used to organize interconnected stories by various authors the Wild Cards and so on, but I haven't read any of that kind (by Cherryh etc either). I do like the Martin/Dozois themey anthologies of new stories I've mentioned on this and the previous Rolling SF etc, so maybe I'll get around to the interconnected someday.

Five Earthsea novels so far (1968-'01), right? I need to catch up on the shorter stories, incl the one pub. 2014.
Wiki:
As of mid-2015, Le Guin has published eight short stories of Earthsea. Seven appear in two collections of her work (and some have been reissued elsewhere). Two early stories were originally published in 1964 and were collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (Harper & Row, 1975). These helped to define the setting of Earthsea. Five much later stories were collected in Tales from Earthsea (Harcourt, 2001), where three were original.[4] In October 2014 a new novella set in Earthsea was published as a stand-alone, "The Daughter of Odren".[5][6]

Tales from Earthsea also includes about thirty pages of fictional reference material titled "A Description of Earthsea" (2001) and cataloged as short fiction by ISFDB.[4]

Listened to an interview with Martin a while ago and he named a whole load of shared universe book series from the 80s and 90s. Personally I don't like the sound of it because I've never enjoyed that approach in comics.

i don't even really like duo collabs in sci-fi novels. they make me nervous for some reason. who wrote what????

wait, what's the famous one now with a bunch of writers writing stories about one place/world? uhhhhh, i'll think of it...

(individual stories existing in the same world don't bother me as much as the duo thing. they make me less nervous...)

the Thieves' World books are restricted to a single city. It was the first time I can remember reading a convincing urban setting in a fantasy book. Different writers (there were usually about a dozen) would each write distinct stories set in the city, so there wasn't collaboration per se, although events in one story could impact events in another etc.

oh right this. that didn't take me long to remember.

https://www.amazon.com/Metatropolis-John-Scalzi/dp/0765335107?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

i remember the thieves world paperbacks VERY well.

that's how i knew the name robert asprin.