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

Zimmer Bradley, maybe? Before she died and turned out to be a paedophile.
Tedious old Stephen Donaldson?
The endless Shannara bollocks?

Mythadventures

Piers Anthony

david eddings

Oof yeah

Oh man those Piers Anthony books were so goofy, but I ate them up (as a kid)!

I feel like a lot of the 80s vibe was one of "humorous deconstruction" - fantasy tropes were well established by that time and people were either goofing on them or making them "darker"/"edgier"

Or else they were endless Anne McCaffrey special precious snowflake Pern novels

https://sfmistressworks.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/moreta.jpg

Ha yes.

Tedious old Stephen Donaldson?
The endless Shannara bollocks?
Hated this stuff too.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to read Piers as an adult. Probably horrible

What about Andre Norton?

I somehow sidestepped both of those.

I once lent a girlfriend a Banks Culture novel, and she lent me an Anthony Xanth book, and then dumped me before we could swap back. The Xanth was worse than the dumping.

i have a friend who estimates he's read at least 80 piers anthony books

Anthony Xanth is a great name. We should adopt that as a convention like the Smash Hits tradition of referring to, like, Matty 1979

I just reread 'Pawn of Prophecy'. I also looked at the Thomas Covenant books but I just couldn't bring myself to go there again. I also picked up a Terry Shannara, who even as a teen I couldn't bear.

Thanks for the idea re MZB--I'd never learnt about her at all, it mink? so that might be interesting.

*i think

oo'tis:

"I feel like a lot of the 80s vibe was one of "humorous deconstruction" - fantasy tropes were well established by that time and people were either goofing on them or making them "darker"/"edgier" "

like its interesting to think of yer robert asprins and yer Michael swanwicks existing in the same continuum but I feel like both these tendencies lay outside the terrible slick mainstream of the 80s fantasy machine (which was trying I think to replicate eddings-style 70s successes perhaps? I realise my ideas of sales figures for this stuff are basically entirely spurious)

does SF have a matching uptick in space opera do we think. I guess cyberpunk was busy happening

When did the boring "military" SF book still carried on by Baen and their horrible covers kick in? The 80s might be too early, though I guess the (much better) book they sort of spawn from, The Forever War, is 1970s.

boring "military" SF BOOM I mean

The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe also made into the p good film Deathwatch by Bertrand Tavernier, w/ Harvey Kietel and Romy Schneider - parts of it filmed in Glasgow, so of local interest to me, but is now seen as being prophetic in some ways of 'reality TV' (tho Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary got there first)

This is the book that screams FANTASY IN THE EIGHTIES to me (and this edition in partic)

http://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/photo.goodreads.com/books/1432756104i/12164830._UY200_.jpg

From what I hear, the first two Pern books are good and Piers Anthony did some good stuff (this coming from people who generally don't like their work)

unrelated to my recent enquiries, tho also a fantasy novel of the 80s, i suppose, i've been reading diana wynne jones' 'witch week', which was advertised as a knockabout fantasy but turns out to be equal parts a satire on british schoolmasters and a masterful essay in pre-adolescent psychology

I love Diane Wynne Jones, and will always be a little bummed that she didn't get more props from Jo Rowling.

the first two Pern books are good

my wife is a huge Anne McCaffrey fan and was a completist at one point but even she can't bear the later cash-in/endless series of telepathicats and space unicorn girls or whatever. McCaffrey did have some good novels scattered across her different series' but she was not shy about banging crap out for quick $$$

(granted she's hardly unusual in that respect)

like its interesting to think of yer robert asprins and yer Michael swanwicks existing in the same continuum but I feel like both these tendencies lay outside the terrible slick mainstream of the 80s fantasy machine

this could v well be the case, I'm just spitballing based on personal memories of what was popular w my peers at the time

some friends of mine have an excuse to drink that they call an SF book club and i never go because i never read the books they are reading and i drink alone but they are reading The Name Of The Wind and they swear its good and that i should read it. but i don't really read straight fantasy ever.

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

lol @ entire first paragraph being about the different cover editions

I think somebody here recommended it a month ago.

And neither cover referred to is the Chesty McPecs one shown there

the name of the wind is sort of enjoyable, the second one totally awful. lamp compared it to harem anime which was p accurate

harem anime where you're continually expecting the lead to turn to camera and explain why polyamory is the only morally justifiable position but they never quite do

Thanks for the tip on xpost K Martenhoe and Deathwatch, Ward. Yeah, been wondering about DW Jones since Robert posted that list and descriptions of female fantasty writers (also I asked about her xpost Howl trilogy).

The only McCafferty I've read was a very early Pern story in a science fiction anthology, which seemed to fit, at least in terms of Dunean planetary romance, as they say @ SF Encyclopedia Online: no description of dragonic endocrine system etc., but the setting adds to dynamics of characters and plot, though mainly the family dynamics and intrigue make me think of a Mother-of-Dragons spinoff from Game of Thrones (I'd prob enjoy it more than the parent show).
Think this was a Hartwell anth, and he introduced it by saying she was one of the later, if not last, younger writers carefully guided by John C. Campbell Jr., who, whatever his Big Ideas, did know something about how to tell a story. But maybe that wore off later, when she was really cranking 'em out.

The Time of the Ghost is the most underrated Diana Wynne Jones novel, imho. it's a lot darker than her Howl's/Chrestomanci books — I like how even if you were to subtract all supernatural elements from the storyline, the children's behavior (making ritual offerings to invented gods, bribing their classmates to donate blood for a Homeric sacrifice) would still seem like a more-or-less reasonable reaction to the stresses of neglectful parents and bleak boarding school existence. much of it is apparently based on Jones's own difficult childhood.

I'd also recommend Fire & Hemlock, which is similar in tone. I haven't read much of her later work, but I'm not a fan of Dark Lord of Derkholm — it's meant to be a parody of po-faced heroic fantasy and a tie-in to her Tough Guide to Fantasyland, but it ends up being overly earnest in its own right (does she really expect me to empathize with her griffin-human hybrids?) when it would have worked better as pure over-the-top comedy.

has anyone read William Gilbert's The Wizard of the Mountain? I'm not sure if it's typical Victorian Gothic or proto Tanith Lee, but it seems interesting either way:

Brianza, Lombardy, 14th Century Italy. A mysterious and solitary astrologer inhabits a magnificent castle overlooking Lake Como. The Innominato (Nameless) is known to provide advice and assistance to those in need of 'special' favours. Rumoured to be an augur, wizard and necromancer possessing immense power of unknown origin, he is spoken of with fear and respect by locals and deep suspicion by the Church.

An array of spellbinding tales from a noted author at the height of his powers, this collection marks the eventual return of a lost classic to the ranks of Victorian horror and dark fiction. Compelling Gothic themes, exotic environs and engrossing plots are populated by a range of both pure and evil characters: decaying vampires, beautiful virgins, sinister phantoms, marauding bandits... These and more await in this collection of deliciously ghoulish and macabre stories as well as the Innominato himself: known to have made himself much beloved and yet also a man 'much dreaded for his sanguinary propensities.' Good or Evil? You decide.

(it's available for free on this Gilbert & Sullivan fansite)

'witch week' is nominally a chrestomanci thing, though who knows when he's going to show up. both of the others of those i've read have had moments when they tip into an extraordinary darkness tho -- the twist in charmed life, the punch and judy section in the caprona one ...

Gilbert book sounds cool.

man terry brooks is no david eddings

think it says that on the back of the books

Just might pre-order the VanderMeers' Big Book of Science Fiction, incl. stories never before translated into English, and some re-translations==Jeff V.'s crisp comments here:
http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2016/04/03/big-book-science-fiction-vintage-background-info/
Also check his link to the complete table of contents.

Tempted

Looking forward to some of those new translations, such as for "Day of Wrath."

posted on Twitter by Luc Sante

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CluYTmeWkAAlg_J.jpg:large

If gone from here, it's the pulp cover vision posted on June 24:
https://twitter.com/luxante

was at the book store and they had all three trade paper volumes of neal asher's The Owner trilogy.

should i buy them? anyone read them? they looked kinda cool. have read good/bad things online via goodreads and the like.

also, they had some stuff by Paolo Bacigalupi. do i need to read those? they had The Windup Girl, The Water Knife, and Pump Six and other stories.

Read a bit of PB in anthologies, and might have enjoyed the "Look What I Can Do!" in the midst of space opera, say---like the kind of "technical" prog-etc metal that can be fun when you're in the mood--but he applies the roiling bravura to serious themes, eco-trastrophe and genetic engineering, $cience Gone Too Far---which could work as a *principled* comic book, dammit--but, at least in the few stories I read, more like an Alfred Bester-wannabee---Bester, with Something To Say, also made the best of his comics background---kinda glib and half-assed.
Although! Maybe I just didn't read the right stories, or maybe he's one of those relatively rare writers who are better in longform, because they just really need the room. So SF Encyclopedia, though they have some mixed reactions about the Hugo and Locus-award-winning Wind-Up Girl, do think it eventually works out OK: technically overcomplicated and perhaps underpowered, does in the end provide a series of linked angles of view, through the assembly of which a terrible new world, at the brink of further Disasters, can be almost literally tasted.
On the other hand, I read the first chapter of The Water Knife, and maybe he decided he did need to go more pop, but it's like this suave badass antihero water pirate raiding reserves indignantly defended by the heroic underdog nerd engineer----in near-future Southwest, with docudrama clarity transposed to Summer Blockbuster potential, but ehhh I dunno maybe I'll read it
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/bacigalupi_paolo

PB "glib and half-assed," that is, not Alfie Bester!

windup girl was fine, if not seemingly award-winning. it definitely had eco-trastrophe and genetic engineering and $cience Gone Too Far tho

the only mieville i've read was perdido street station -- i recall him spending a lot of time describing the environment as moist and fecund and worst of all, organic; there's a bit of that in the windup girl too

I haven't been able to bring myself to read PB, just the descriptions on the back of his books struck me as deeply irritating, just another update on the noir-ish protagonist confronting shadowy corporate powers with some ecological decline window-dressing, feel like the genre's been awash in that kind of crap since the 80s.