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

I don't know how far I'll get without having to take a break (especially if somebody else places a library hold between re-checks) and the huge floppy trade paper original is a strong argument for ebooks.

I can see how Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" shook up the star trope troopers back in the day. The narrator--rescued by and telling a ripping yarn to his boys, spoiling the usual hard-breathing "suspense"---had an ongoing partnership of adaptation on the fly with his cute alien colleague of happenstance (if that's the true circumstance; I'm still reading)--adaptation to each other as well as the Martian outback (Critter Friday seems a stranger here himself). Linguistics, semiotics, biology, kinesiology, some other stuff: all necessarily closely observed, in a handy, working man's way, never into the weeds (no weeds).
They encounter something like crystalline floating tennis balls: break into one, get nothing but a bad smell. They follow gradually more continuous piles and then pyramids, made of silica bricks--worn down, which means they're very, very old, even in this thin atmosphere. The pyramids gradually get bigger--and then they finally come upon the latest one, being finished by its maker.
"The beast was silica! There must have been pure silicon in the sand, and it lived on that...Anyhow, there the thing was, alive and yet not alive, moving every ten minutes, and then only to remove a brick. Those bricks are its waste matter...and it builds itself in, and when it is covered, it moves to a fresh place to start over. No wonder it creaked! A living creature half a million years old!"
"But he reproduces, or tries to. Before the third brick came out, there was a little rustle and out popped a whole stream of those little crystal balls. They're his spores, or eggs, or seeds...I think the crystal shell of silica is no more than a protective covering, like an eggshell, and the active principal is the smell inside. It's some sort of gas that attracts silicon, and if the shell is broken near a supply of that element, some reaction starts that ultimately develops into a beast like that one."

"You should try! exclaimed the little Frenchman. "We must break one to see!"
"Yeah? Well I did. I smashed a couple against the sand. Would you like to come back in about ten thousand years to see if I planted some pyramid monsters? You'd most likely be able to tell by that time!" Jarvis paused and took a deep breath. "Lord! That queer creature! Do you picture it? Blind, deaf, nerveless, brainless---just a mechanism, and yet---immortal! Bound to go on making bricks, building pyramids, as long as silicon and oxygen exist, and even afterwards it'll just stop. it won't be dead. If the accidents of a million years bring its food again, there it'll be, ready to run again, while brains and civilizations are part of the past--yet I met a stranger one!"

That would the dream beast, for one stranger one: it appears in the guise of your most fervent desire (long before those stories by Bradbury and Lem, for instance).

Thanks for the tip. I've never read any weinbaum. Just downloaded a best-of.

(Past the aliens mentioned, some others really are Other as hell, though beyond xenophobia, or anything but "omg, wtf!?") Yeah, I def wanna read more of his, though says in the intro (based on entry in Science Fiction Encyclopedia Online, that the sequel to this particular story was "less successful"; dunno if that mainly means less popular, considered a relative letdown then, or if the Encyclopedist considers it not as good now. But W. wrote several more adventures of intense speculation before dying young in '35, and posthumous publications continued for at least the next 15 years.

As presented by tour guide Borges, the 11th volume of The Encyclopedia of Tlon, generated by worker bee worldbuilders, super-science fictionists, funded by a radical reactionary, who pledged all his possessions, incl. his slaves---slaveowners seeded several institutions of higher learning that endure to this day, after all---is much more attractive and repellent, much more of a fabulous idealist freak show than the antiquarian reactionary coterie utopia of the preceding selection, A. Merritt's (nevertheless entertaining)"The Last Poet and The Robots."
When the *forty* volumes are discovered or "discovered," with some of the less convenient features of the orig. Vol.11 smoothed over, it proves hugely popular. "Almost immediately, reality 'caved in.' The truth is, it wanted to cave in. Ten years ago, any symmetry, any system with an appearance of order---dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazism--could spellbind and hypnotize mankind." Yadda-yadda, makes a lot of good points, and this way he gets to do his own worldbuilding while tsk-tsking its perilous appeal.

One example of Tlon's faithful pull on our(?) world: Tlon is built around time, more than space, or so its inhabitants mostly believe (the outre allure of materialism is gradually filtered in and normalized, to an extent), and the dominant language is built around verbs---"nouns" are "impersonal verbs, modified by monosyllabic prefixes or suffixes functioning as adverbs. For example...there is a verb which in English would be 'to moonate' or 'to enmoon.' 'The moon rose over the river' is...'Upward, behind the onstreaming, it mooned.'" Of course, as this world will have become the post-physical, the digital, "it journaled." "journalled"? Bastards!

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/one-of-the-earliest-science-fiction-books-was-written-in-the-1600s-by-a-duchess

so that's where Moore got it from

Did he reference her in one of his works?

Oof at that scientist society not allowing women for a few centuries after she attended.

"The Blazing World" in LOEG

yeah, they visit the Blazing World at the end of one of the text pieces, from memory

It appears in 3D in the Black Dossier

New Reynolds hardback out, Revenger. 50 pages in and it's like Revelation Space crossed with Treasure Island. Not an elephant in sight, which is good.

Reading hardbacks is a workout after my kobo mini.

Previous to that I read a couple more MRJames stories, the one with the haunted wardrobe and the one with the haunted curtains...

so that's where Moore got it from

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, September 20, 2016 3:09 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Did he reference her in one of his works?

Oof at that scientist society not allowing women for a few centuries after she attended.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, September 20, 2016 3:18 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"The Blazing World" in LOEG

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, September 20, 2016 3:21 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, they visit the Blazing World at the end of one of the text pieces, from memory

― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison)
I read the linked profile of Cavendish---great stuff, thanks---but who is Moore, whut is LOEG, which is text pieces etc.?

also Black Dossier?

Alan Moore, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Black Dossier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_League_of_Extraordinary_Gentlemen:_Black_Dossier

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

Another one from xpost The Big Book of Science Fiction, following Simak's taut "Desertion", James Blish's "Surface Tension" is a longer, denser epochal tale of "pantrophy", the adaptation of species to alien environment, rather than terraforming (yo Kim Stanley Robinson). Lost explorers, a team of gifted, versatile scientists, of course, leave a modified genetic legacy and then some, on the mostly aquatic planet where they know they'll soon die. Generations/iterations of the same tiny human-descendant characters gradually become dominant in their universe under the sea, and, influenced by semi-deciphered, mysteriously indestructible texts (engraved plates) left by their creators, times their own human drives, natch, very eventually aspire to break on through to the other side of the sky (which is surface of the planet's ocean).
We get vivid, sometimes almost synesthetic layers of info-laden imagery, re lives under the sea, incl. periodic hibernation and its effects, also battles of humans and allies vs. predator rotifers, and beetle-browned problem-solving, the personal and group politics/relationships facilitating and resulting from all this, but psychological development, though carefully traced, does seem a bit simplified, a bit squeezed (and/or contrasted) by all the sophisticated, textured layers of hard science fiction (intro assures us that Blish's characters could be more "nuanced", and that, despite New Wave complaints, he could even get "avant garde"; I'd like to check some of that).
Between Simak and Blish is Ray Bradbury's "September 2005: The Martian", with pantrophy twisted and tortured and insatiably wished inside out.
Next: "Beyond Lies The Wub", PKD's first published story. Onward!

Simak's story introduces the use of pantrophy, that is.

I kept thinking "hibernation", but do the *characters* (just)think of it as "birth-rebirth", with memories of previous "generations" retained and accumulating, accruing, rather than (basically)the same guys waking up refreshed (albeit from a clearly arduous experience, which may well feel like death and birth)? Which would explain some of the simplified characterization, but still it's a bit tedious sometimes (in contrast, as I said).

Surface Tension is an incredible story, very vivid

"beetle-*browed* problem-solving", that is.

And yeah, it is incredible, no prob going back and re-reading passages during first read-through, parsing and marveling.

I think I came across it in one of those Greatest Science Fiction Stories Ever collections edited by Silverberg...? have to check

ah yep: "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time" Volume 1 and deservedly so

B-b-but then why did you not vote for it in the poll? Oh, I see, you read afterwards.

yeah I didn't vote in that poll - even so I wouldn't say it's the best in that book! stiff competition.

There are two other stories of his that come to mind which get anthologized a lot, "Common Time" and "A Work of Art."

Then there is A Case of Conscience, which is in one of the volumes of that Library of America omnibus. Still haven't read myself.

Enjoyed this interview with Hannu Rajaniemi. He's from Finland (doesn't live there anymore) and he talks about Finnish mythology and culture, a lot about social media that he uses in his work.

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

Anybody read any Mittelholzer? This one looks promising, in unusual ways:
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2016/09/my-bones-and-my-flute-edgar-mittelholzer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

further along in The Big Book of Science Fiction: William Tenn, Katherine MacLean, Chad Oliver are all strong, distinctive writers, basically, but I'm wondering about these particular selections---did they not write something that works all the way through, or are all their stories in need of cherrypicking/ a better edit? Mainly bothered by dated social critiques re plastic suburbia inhabited by fulish fuelish masses (Tenn actually writes "So humanity hung its collective head..."), in ways ultimately as contrived as anything Campbell's technofascists might come up with, despite tasty breadcrumbs along the trail to foregone conclusions. Margaret St. Clair and debuting PKD are cooler and seemingly more casual, trusting us to make our own connections, and their inferred critiques are much fresher (ditto the entertainment).
Will def check more by those first three, though--for inst., Chad Oliver, a cultural anthropologist in Cold War Texas, started the first TX SF fanzine, and can see how he attracted various Texas writers, such as Howard Waldrop and Bruce Sterling (p. various).

But Oliver's story might be okay in an *actually* casual way, despite its Serious critique; it was adapted for Rod Serling's Night Gallery (not tight enough for Twilight Zone).

Been loving night gallery lately and considering reading its orig stories

That one William Tenn short story pretty well-known, often anthologized, thought that would be the nature of your complaint.

Several are well-known, at least within fandom, others not so much: it seems meant for noobs and jaded vets, re ones just now in English, or with updated translations, also lesser known works by English language writers not commonly associated w SF, such as xpost Dubois etc., and especially lesser known Eng. language SF writers (xpost Katherine MacLean, and even the only-relatively-better-known xpost Margaret St. Clair).

Familiarity no prob so far

Maybe you should seek out Tenn's similar and perhaps even better "Brooklyn Project."

I got Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume One from SF Book Club a long time ago, and still need to give it a try, especially if Trump wins; I'll probably like Tenn better then.

i have that!! i have not gotten very far in it :(

I took it out of the library once and read around in it but didn't have time to finish.

But the Galaxy Project put out some ebooks of a bunch of his stories a little while back and I read most of those.

How were they?

Haha, have finally got a working eARC of the newest Dave Hutchinson, see you guys in a couple of days

How were they?

Seems like he's got both---what bothered me was he sometimes seemed like a def. sub-Twain curmudgeon, growling around his seegar about them damn masses--"Hey you kids, get off YOUR lawn!"-although he deftly scored points about the enduring tendencies of liberating invaders, and this story was later read aloud at antiwar rallies, according to the intro.

His going for the big effect can be reductive in one way, big and effective in another, as does tend to happen in science fiction and other things (appropriate that he writes about politics, war etc).

Yes. I don't mind that approach as much when it is from the 40s and 50s. At least he had the decency to start teaching and stop writing unlike, say, RAH. (Or IA for that matter)

In the notes to "Brooklyn Project" in Immodest Proposals he says it was turned down for publication everywhere until he finally reached the bottom of the barrel with Planet Stories and even then it just barely made it.

Really!? I wanna know more about Planet Stories---PKD has been quoted as saying that it was the most lurid thing on the newsstands, and when it published xpost "Beyond The Wub", he brought four copies into the record store where he worked---a customer: "Phil! You read that?" "I had to admit I not only read it, I wrote it."

Beyond The Wub is one of about a dozen pkd titles on Gutenberg

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28554

Best of those I've read is the skull

Always figured that one was anthologized a lot because it was public domain.

Really!? I wanna know more about Planet Stories