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

Funny I don't remember it being mentioned in "The Roads Must Roll," "Life-Line," or in anything else in that collection- what was it called?- The Past Through Tomorrow.

Love the titles of Chuck Tingle's books.

Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving The European Union

Slammed By The Substantial Amount Of Press Generated By My Book "Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving The European Union"

Slammed In The Butt By My Hugo Award Nomination

Turned Gay By The Existential Dread That I May Actually Be A Character In A Chuck Tingle Book

Living Inside My Own Butt For Eight Years, Starting A Business And Turning A Profit Through Common Sense Reinvestment And Strategic Targeted Marketing

His Twitter feed is also a national treasure

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnOM7J7WcAA7v0s.jpg

so true. we all know this CLASSIC hospital at the edge of the void and the man who comes when you think of him

finished KRS "Aurora" - good stuff and always an engaging read even if the limitations of his hard science approach occasionally peak through. While the ending is satisfying a more poetic or metaphysically inclined writer would have done something more interesting with the ship AI in the final stretch but eh whatever

moved on to recent Gene Wolfe ("The Borrowed Man") which is awesome only 20 pages in. Also picked up some LeGuin compendium of three Hainish Cycle novellas.

saw that new mammoth vandermeer collection at barnes & noble today and did not buy it. too big! the print is really small.

Yeah, saw people on the intranetz complaining baout that.

a more poetic or metaphysically inclined writer would have done something more interesting with the ship AI in the final stretch but eh whatever It may be that his poetic or poetically-inclined side and his POV on science and technology don't mesh---Green Earth seemed wobbly sometimes, but the strongest passages (by far) are those where he goes for what he knows, as an outdoors guy, and in related love for Thoreau and Emerson (incl. the tension between them, which he surely feels as an outdoors/indoors guy, ingesting info and pounding out all those books), and some for Tibetan Buddhism too.

Also, he's observed the lives of scientists, in Southern Cali and DC, so that helps, even if he still doesn't pull it all together (at least in this one-volume mix-down of the original trilogy, which I still haven't read).

he is great at describing natural phenomenon and environments (although I do routinely have to look up some of his terminology, dude is so specific!), and I agree that's where his poetic side shines through. what I was getting at though is something that has to do with more basic plotting and conceptualizing in his work - he's very much bound by a commitment to scientifically-based realism, there's no real room for the fantastic or mystical or metaphysical, even in instances where it might improve the story. So where someone like, say, Arthur C. Clarke could thread the needle and employ both where appropriate, KSR doesn't let anything even remotely "unrealistic" creep in, everything is restricted by cold hard facts. I feel like the few instances where he breaks this rule are when he finds some way to artificially extend the lives of his characters, but maybe he just thinks that is more plausible than interdimensional hyper-aliens or whatever.

Reminds me, I should read some more Clarke, maybe incl. the late collabs w Baxter, can see how they might be compatible.

Some more evidence that Piers Anthony has some good work, a review by Rhys Hughes
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1617479396
Yet still contains a flaw he's notorious for

I haven't read a lot of Clarke myself, just 2001 and Rendezvous with Rama which are obviously both classics

The baxter collabs are very baxter, would be amazed if clarke did any more than provide his name and a few ideas

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/39/3a/98/393a98b26a2bd06a57238be3baa7d48b.jpg

i was gonna start a thread once of just art/illustrations/portraits of sci-fi writers. but then i didn't.

i think it mostly had to do with finding this painting of heinlein online. but i just stared at it for a while and forgot to share it.

http://ljdopp.com/famous_authors/images/03Heinlein_jpg.jpg

Dynamic drapery on those lapels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5F0wq2xtwk

I think there is a special issue of F&SF dedicated to Poul Anderson that someone should post the cover of.

This one, which may already been posted up thread:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/70/cb/a7/70cba75cae2b968ffd4c94db97b10061.jpg

A couple of Delanys:

http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/delany-cover.jpg

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1414559383l/23398398.jpg

Harlan Ellison as a character in his own comic:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/aa/f0/e8/aaf0e8d7cf1f84bb860cd29cdbd3f146.jpg

Fritz Leiber:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fa/FSF_0769.jpg/220px-FSF_0769.jpg

pronounced LYE-buhr, fact fans

Also an act-or

https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/covers/cov0306lg-250.jpg

take your pick:

http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me3ms62w5e1qc8b0ao2_1280.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4113/5093655322_2a3796f7f5.jpg

kinda prefer rocket fingers myself...

The latter

Have to admit I can't figure out who a lot of people on that Malzberg cover are supposed to be.

Definitely Vonnegut there but maybe Asimov and Bloch at either side.

Up from the lower left is it:
Asimov, Silverberg, Heinlein, Dave Marsh, Michael Palin...

bearded dude in the hat is Emerson, no?

could be Moorcock I suppose, depending on the year that's from

I'm guessing the lower hatted figure is Whitman, but I'm not sure about the cloudborne near-Whitman above: Tolstoy?

Whitman! right that's who I meant, not Emerson duh

really curious about who the dude in the ranger outfit is supposed to be

Pretty sure that's supposed to be Hemingway.

Ah, yes. Then the guy in the lower right is Orwell.

And guy behind Papa is Faulkner.

p sure I've read that Malzberg piece (which is not specifically about sci-fi writers, but about his time at the Scott Meredith publishing agency)

Asimov, Silverberg, Heinlein, Dave Marsh, Michael Palin...

palin = aldous huxley (i'm pretty sure)

Sounds reasonable.

Resisting temptation to spam other ILB picture threads with that cover.

never forget

http://subterraneanpress.com/uploads/9781596067820.jpg

Those books are great, put a paper bag around the damn thing and read IMO

Oh I def wanna read it (Blaylock!), but hope to find something more affordable than Subterranean's initial price (also it's now marked SOLD OUT).

Speaking of Subterranean writers, I like this essay by Roz Kaveney on Caitlin Kiernan's short stories in the latest Strange Horizons:

Kiernan is far bleaker than most writers partly because she takes the long view—she knows that this is a universe dominated by entropy and extinction and that human stupidity is helping universal death along. One of the reasons—it sometimes seems—why she sets so much of her work in the present or the past is that there probably is not much in the way of a future; the universe is a fool-killer to those beings who wreck their own nest. Lovecraftian beings can do nothing to us that we are not doing to ourselves anyway. And that is without the contingent personal tragedies that might strike us at any time . . .

What consolations are there in this vividly evoked bleak world? Moments of sexual fulfilment; the celebration of art and ecstasy; a revelling in metamorphosis for its own sake, changing towards the rich and strange, and sloughing off what is mundane and second-rate. Kiernan's slow progress from conventional elements and standard tropes, however well done, to meditation on what story is and what it is for and why we seek it out is one of the most radical things that is going on in the fiction of the fantastic right now.

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2016/07/two_worlds_and_.shtml

‏@SFEncyclopedia 14 hours ago
Born on this day in 1904, Clifford D Simak: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/simak_clifford_d

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Co7MHL4WYAAHOmR.jpg:large

read a really good story ("The Night Copernicus Died") by Kathryn Kulpa in one of these random issues of Asimov's from 1999 that I found on the street. Never heard of her, doesn't seem like she's published much beyond short pieces here and there. Even so, this is the kind of discovery that makes me appreciate these kinds of genre periodicals, always some diamonds among the dross.

Seems like she's mostly a young adult and children's author. But that story is in her collection Pleasant Drugs.