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

A list of philosophically inclined SF, if that floats anyone's boat. A few more interesting choices amongst the obvious.
http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/forty-new-philosophical-sf.html

Wait, here's a whole load more:
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/SF-MasterList-150813-byrecommender.htm

(putting this on fantasy/science fiction/speculative thread and the 2016 race thread)

https://medium.com/fireside-fiction-company/blackspecfic-571c00033717
https://storify.com/Charley_Locke/n-k-jemisin-on?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=email&utm_medium=email

I've spent quite a lot of time this year reading about diversity and discrimination in speculative fiction, it's truly labyrinthine with all the blogs, social media lists and semi-regular shitstorms. I've been reading these articles for a few days now and I fear all the links are going to keep me reading for days more.

A list of philosophically inclined SF, if that floats anyone's boat. A few more interesting choices amongst the obvious.
http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/forty-new-philosophical-sf.html🔗

no problem with acknowledging the lack of diversity in the field (seems self-evident) but really not interested in half-assed statistical analyses (with tons of assumptions) of incomplete data

People were complaining about the stats, but I think the articles and links are still interesting, particularly about how editors and publishers should seek to fix things and some minority authors being so reluctant to even submit their work to certain publications.

Thanks for the lists---surprised at all the mentions of Greg Egan! Clearly I need to catch up. Ditto w Fredric Jameson's studies of SF, though don't think he's mentioned here (seems to be almost all fiction, except for inst. the shout-out to SF Encyclopedia On Line).

Still can't get into Greg Egan, although none other than the ever reliable James Morrison has recommended those same short stories in Axiomatic more than once.

was talking w a coworker about that adaptation of Chiang's "Story of Your Life" - still kinda believe it got made. Is being released as "Arrival" with a blurb that makes it sound like yr typical alien invasion silliness w/the world at stake etc. I've never seen any of Villeneuve's films so idk what to expect but seems like someone like Malick might've been better suited...?

still kinda CAN'T believe

I meant

Yeah. Chiang comes up with these killer premises then is somehow able to plumb their emotional depths with seeming to set a foot wrong, interesting to see what happens when someone else gets their hands on the material.

https://electricliterature.com/the-legendary-ted-chiang-on-seeing-his-stories-adapted-for-the-screen-and-the-ever-expanding-916a9530e598#.r9gy5ydtb
Good interview, he mentions Egan.

Nice. He mentions Edward Bryant too, a topic for further research.

Come to think of it, I do kind of like at least one Greg Egan story, that being "The Infinite Assassin," the first story in Axiomatic.

Which story and collection are both mentioned in one of those links ledge provided, as well as being recommended by James M.

Sorry that two of my recent posts say almost exactly the same thing- must have come from two different multiverse doppelgängers.

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/nancy-springer/prom-night.htm

Weirdest concept for an anthology I've ever seen.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/?p=2592

About five classic early fantasy books.

The Kai Lung stories I remember as fun--haven't read them in years.

http://raphordo.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/charles-saunders-and-imaro.html

A piece about the Imaro series by Charles Saunders

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/42004377?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1

http://justinelarbalestier.com/books/battle/reviews/

Read a couple of novellas by Guy Haley, who usually seems to write Games Workshop spiky bits nonsense, but these novellas, 'The Emperor's Railroad' and 'The Ghoul king' were rather good science-fantasy (all rationalised, but not always in ways yet clear to the reader) adventure things set in a 1000+ years-into-the-future post-disaster balkanised Virginia ruled over by mysterious tech-suppressing "angels". Not making any vast claims for them, other than that they were well-written and thoroughly enjoyable. Warning, they also contain zombies, so your own tolerance for that may not be high.

Regarding RAG's post above, this was a good anthology: https://www.amazon.com/Feminine-Future-Science-Fiction-Editions/dp/0486790231

Mike Ashley has done quite a lot of women speculative fiction anthologies. Richard Dalby has done a bunch too but with ghost stories only.

Also there's Pamela Sargent's Women Of Wonder series.

Caitlin Kiernan's short stories in the latest Strange Horizons
The first volume of the collected short stories is out of print and asking very high prices for used copies, so much so that it belongs on the $900 Grandmothers thread.

― Dharmagideon Time (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, August 4, 2016 3:52 AM (three weeks ago)

A lot of her short fiction floats in and out of print on small presses, which is frustrating because she probably works best in short forms, but most of her novels are relatively easy to find (including The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl, imo her most memorable novels).

I have a copy of Two Worlds And In Between on hold at the library. Any particular stories you recommend I start with?

"Onion" or "Andromeda among the Stones" would probably be the best introduction to her work. I like many of the early stories in part 1 of the collection (1993-1999), especially "Estate" and "Salmagundi", but I might not begin with them: Kiernan's work starts out by being very bleak and floridly written and gradually grows less florid.

What's that a lyric from? Two worlds and in between?

Ha xpost. Lucretia, my reflection...

Ha, I'd forgotten that that was a Sisters of Mercy lyric, but her early fiction is pretty steeped in 80s/90s goth signifiers.

http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/1151526.html

Yesterday, I received my comp copies of the new edition of A is for Alien, which has been published by PS Publishing's Drugstore Indian Press imprint. It's a very handsome trade paperback, with a new cover by Richard Kirk. Note that the second edition has been expanded to include four stories not in the original, "The Steam Dancer (1896)," "Tidal Forces," "Galápagos," and "Hydrarguros." Each story is accompanied by a Vince Locke illustration. DIP will also be releasing new trade paperback editions of The Ammonite Violin & Others, To Charles Fort, With Love, and Tales of Pain and Wonder.

I finished two 2015 sf books recently.

Stephenson - Seveneves. Moon blows up, almost everyone dies. First two thirds are quite good. Final third tries to be connected -- I see how a lot of it was set up, how many things are a reflection of things that have happened before -- but it doesn't work. For starters, the final third is founded on current pop science bullshit readings of epigenetics and DNA manipulation, which gets around one paragraph in the first 2/3rds. Then there's the amount of time spent on describing tech that's mostly far-future fantasy. The first 2/3rds also spend a lot of time describing tech, but I found that more interesting since it was grounded in things that actually exist today.

Also it ends in a big action scene which Stephenson seems to have a thing for. Hated the one in Snow Crash and this one doesn't work either.

Novik - Uprooted. A wizard takes a teenage girl for 10 years, they fight the evil forest. I didn't expect so many YA tropes in a Nebula winner. The opening chapters spend a lot of space on how clumsy the main character is, but also how skilled at deadly magic. There's even a pointless Sorting Hat equivalent that doesn't work on the hero. Highlights are a musical magic system and a mage war battle scene. Low point is a city section around 2/3rds in that feels rushed, like half of it has been edited out.

Also, Uprooted has a nice propulsive narrative. A few times I thought I knew what the book would be doing for its "second act", then that resolved around 20 pages later and it went on to something more interesting.

Been a long time, but I thought Stephenson's The Diamond Agebecame struggle between cyberpunk-libertarian-skatr-gloss reflex and something more searching, call it a sense of artistic integrity: mixed results, but fairly engrossing. Was glad I read it.
Read Uprooted fairly soon after McKillip's Winter Rose, which is a tough act to follow, but Novik gets that the well-tymed build to rush of realization-imagery-sensation ("O shit!" x new clues already swirling), can't be blurred, out of character or rehashed, despite, as you say, "so many YA tropes", indeed. Propulsive, right, and a wider scope than Winter Rose, before bringing it all back home to thee forest.

Just checked and the Kiernan reissues out so far are A Is For Alien and Tales Of Pain And Wonder

http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/a-is-for-alien-trade-paperback-by-caitlin-r-kiernan-2623-p.asp

http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/tales-of-pain-and-wonder-trade-paperback-by-caitlin-r-kiernan-3962-p.asp

So I was reading on Ian SAles's blog about his experiences of self-publishing, during which he com;lains of hardly selling any copies of his recent collection of short stories, a collection I had never heard of despite being a regular reader of his blog. Anyway, I got it -- 'Dreams of the Space Age' -- and it's very good indeed, short stories that fit alongside his Apollo Quartet. Best was probably one about the astronaut on an alternative-universe manned Voyager mission who has been on his own for 40 years and is about the exit the Solar System.

I have that book, thought I might have mentioned, maybe not. Liked what I read, particularly the one about the boxer, which read like a Rod Serling plot line, but didn't get around to finishing.

Interesting to read his blog post though.

Yes, the boxer taking the historical place of Laika. He has a number of other stories that seem as though they would have fit the collection too, not sure why he didn't include them.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrSIBOnWcAY-G7S.jpg:small

Raymond Chandler owning all science fiction writers and casually inventing Google in a letter from 1953

That's better than some of his gumshoe twaddle, like the self-conscious b-movie cliches filling the middle of "Red Wind" (despite classic opening, strong finish)

Wish he'd written a whole SF story like that, looks like a SJ Perelman superparody!

Didn't he published a fantasy story in Unknown?

I've said it before but after years of looking at Baen book covers I'm still baffled by how bad they look.

Wish he'd written a whole SF story like that, looks like a SJ Perelman superparody!

Baen publish the ugliest shit

These aren't even nearly the worst examples but these are ones I want to read.

Compare this
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/ae/a8/9221124128a05adeb1c9a010.L.jpg
To this
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GxVFyox-L.jpg
Hodgell was unhappy about the latter.

Or this Whelan coolness
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/35/99/e6009330dca0520524316010.L.jpg
To this boring thing
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/b8/55/bb848bacd7a0bdaa5bc28110.L.jpg

And this wildly inappropriate one, though inguess she does pook cold
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d4/fa/65/d4fa65812bdd5213f9dad9b84592f3ac.jpg

I guess she does look cold, i meant to type