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

"awake in a way I wasn't expected"? Well--that too.

Geoffrey Maloney is Australian, and "Remmants of the Virago Crypto-System" seems to take place way out in the boondocks, as the narrator discovers that his (?) girlfriend's proposed weekend getaway is really a search for or scheduled reunion with her own girlfriend, an alien who didn't leave with the rest of her kind. The remnants incl. a venerable, alien-renovated church left with equipment for native use, at least as artifacts. But we can still type on the ancient typewriter, next to a cupboard full of yellowed sheets with faded script---some, maybe all of which the narrator finds to consist of "more statistics, more figures", of which seem to add up to the question, "why do they kill children?"
The narrator thinks the aliens have left because of this question---answered (by them) or not---left in the mess in the cupboard--but their legacy is also this little old church-station-watering-hole, where tourists can get drunk and party with othr strangers as long as they want, or drink as couples in limbo, or nurse drinks and grievances alone. But the question, once asked, once read anyway, can't be forgotten, not by the narrator and his or her girlfriend, or the alien girlfriend, probably.
The question and the other artifacts seem to fit with eroded Enlightenment methods and ideals, in this dusty (granular) playground of moments from earthly second childhood.

It is much of a mood tone pome, occasionally reminding me of off-key moments in a Nicholas Roeg film, but/and does pull me back in, like the films; I keep finding myself thinking about it, between blocs of other stories.

Reminded that Borges eventually makes an appearance on this thread

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention one last thing, that there is an audiobook out there of The Knights of the Limits which is on spotify.

poo, sadly not in Australia, out here in the boondocks

On that note, the other day I came across something called Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand. Are you familiar with it?

My take is that Barry Bayley was using the standard sf situations as grist for the mill of his own vision

I just didn't get the impression that his vision was very far advanced from or orthogonal to any of his inspirations. Not that that would stop him from being fun, necessarily, but Ballard or Borges he ain't. And he has a very 1950s attitude to the opposite sex - not that Ballard is a standard bearer for gender-subverting post feminism either, but I don't recall him casually throwing in rapes just for a bit of local colour.

Okay, fair enough, there is some pretty crepey stuff in there, you are right.

BB's Big Book offering, "Sporting With The Chid", didn't make me think of Ballard or Borges, although they might or might not enjoy the gory details of the Chid's creative exobiology as advanced medical folk art, in contrast to the sweaty yet stiff upper lips and pith space helmets of the Earthmen.
Speaking of Moorcock, "The Frozeo Cardinal" seems like another mood tone pome, even a song---re xpost howling along w Ballard's "Voices of Time"---but this is much moreso, no hardsciencefictionsplainers need appy, which is maybe why "he was asked for a rewrite", apparently by Judith Merril, who commissioned it for Playboy in 1966. Wonder what her objection was?? She was a bold, wide-ranging, very particular editor, like Damon Knight---anyway Moorcock withdrew it, put it away 'til the late 80s.

huh, had not heard about that nz sf poetry anthology. some (relatively) well-known names in there. even has peter bland in it who made an appearance in this...

Interesting.

Wonder what I should dig into next vis-à-vis this thread, the Bob Shaw omnibus maybe.

I remain curious about shaw

Have you read his greatest hit yet, "Light of Other Days"?

Nope. Which anthos is it in?

Silverberg's Science Fiction 101 aka Worlds of Wonder is where I finally found it.

Which is an excellent collection across the board, pretty much all aces. Plus useful commentary by Silverbob.

Or look here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41206

Aha I have The Ascent of Wonder on my kindle somewhere.

lol at "somewhere."

Recently I have been training myself not to use the Search functionality too much but rather go through by author or title so I force myself to see what I have on there since at this point it is a ton of stuff.

Anyway, the usually reliable and interesting Matthew "Mumpsimus" Cheney is a fan of that anthology I mentioned: https://www.sfsite.com/06a/ww201.htm

Ascent of Wonder, which I went through way up this thread or on the previous Rolling Speculative etc., refuses to settle for any received definition of hard science fiction---got & deserved mixed reviews, but it's well worth cherrypicking.

Meanwhile in the Big Book (also a mixed blessing, but aren't they all), I'm still wrapping my brain around Kojo Laing's "Vacancy For The Post of Jesus Christ", which seems like a madcap panorama of social satire, with deft use of zoom lens and appropriately omniscient narration, reporting from the scene of "alien" (actually smartypants galactic prodigal) contact---scenes which I relate to those of Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Elias Canetti's Crowds And Power. But Laing's leading me around some previously unencountered turns---also want to check out some other African writers mentioned in the intro, Ben Okri and Mia Couto.

The modern crowd as part of the hivemind of humanity, the folkness. is a very smelly gateway for an alien god, a jaded collector-destroyer, in Cixin Liu's "The Poetry Cloud", which is pro-folk-classicism, pro-acceptable portion of tradition, generating avant-art-pop pleasures as healthy exercise, in a way acceptable to authorities, apparently---judging by the acclaim and un-fucked-with best sellerdom of his publications, as described in the intro. It can be taken as something of a safety valve for certain social tensions, antagonisms, subliminal satire---but hey, even healthier.

Says here Han Song is also respected, has a career, but his writing tends to disappear rather quickly, though some of it gets republished in Japan etc. "Two Small Birds" seems Kafkaesque, with some dizzying anime-associated imagery, effectively conveying a personal mythology of time-travelling quest, rebellion, duty, guilt, new sense of the elusive next: implosion and aftermath, mutation and meybe continuity, coded but crackable and somewhat cracked folkness of a life, told pretty short and bittersweet.

Misha Nogha's "Death Is Static Death Is Movement" (excerpt from Red Spider White Web) also seems anime-related, but her imagery would be hard or at least very expensive to convey in other media; here. it's just an amazing given, that she can do this just like this. Long-delayed revengefest, getting to be too much by the end, but turns out it's too much for the fest-quester too. Next on her list---?

One more quest, from Rachel Pollack's "Burning Sky":

Sometimes I think of my clitoris as a magnet, pulling me along to discover new deposits of ore in the fantasy mines. Or maybe a compass, the kind kids used to get in Woolworth's, with a blue-black needle in a plastic case, and flowery letters marking the direction.
Two years ago, more by accident than design, I left the City of Civilized Sex. I still remember its grand traditions: orgasms in the service of loving relationships, healthy recreation with knowledgeable partners, a pinch of perversion to bring out the flavor. I remember them with a curious nostalgia. I think of them as I march through the wilderness, with only my compass to guide me.

Partly putting this here to remind me to investigate it further later on: there's this new book which looks very interesting, 'Iraq +100', which is a collection of Iraqi science-fiction, each story set a century after the US invasion: http://www.sfintranslation.com/?p=1185

Also every now and then I hear about this allegedly amazing SF novel, 'Frankenstein in Baghdad', an Iraqi reinvisioning of Shelley's book, where the mad scientist stitches his monster together from bits of suicide bombers and their victims, and it's supposed to be being translated and coming out in English AT SOME POINT, who knows when.

Wow, just looked up Iraq + 100, looks good, thanks. Ditto The Madman of Freedom Square and The Iraqi Christ, collected short stories of this Iraqi writer---publisher says "allegorical", customer reviews: "magic realism", also "terse" and a variety of ideas and approaches:
https://www.amazon.com/Hassan-Blasim/e/B00ABMS8V0/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

Yeah, both those Hassan Blasim books were published together in the US as 'The Corpse Exhibition': they're daaark and brutal, but fascinating

http://www.egaeuspress.com/A_Midwinter_Entertainment.html

I may buy this on the strength of the wonderful presentation

It does look pretty! though even with the collapsing pound i cannot quite afford that price plus postage.

was heartened to catch Charles Yu's name in the story editor credits on HBO's Westworld, good for him

Any spec fiction out there dealing with the ennui of the singularity? Like, the AI gets so smart that it over takes humanity but rather than going full Skynet, realises that existence is futile and decides to sabotage itself?

sounds like a Douglas Adams plot

Um...

What's the story where a guy travels back in time, accidentally steps on a bug, and when he returns the ignorant right wing demagogue who was going to get crushed in the polls has won?

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

time to finally read "it can't happen here", i guess

me + al ewing + mark s talking about Sound of Thunder:

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/05/a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-6/

Almost revived sluglords thread instead

Come to think of it, did you guys not read "Track 12"?

We did!

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/09/a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-10/

I miss that podcast.

Are they all still up on Freaky Trigger?

They're linked right there ^

Ah, and they're all linked here: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/category/slugoftime-podcast/

Despite its cheesy cover, I got pulled into Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy by names with reps, starting with the editor, Ellen Datlow. She was fiction editor of Omni, and I've still got a good collection from that era (before it went all science fact, all UFO, all cattle mutilation, all meninblack, all the time). Also we get new (as of 2011) stories by John Crowley, Peter S. Beagle, Pat Cadigan, Lucius Shephard----but my fave faves are by writers I'd never heard of before. Elsewhere, the overall commitment to character development via action and vice-versa, while (usually) finding or at least seeking a way around or through cheesy tropes, yet keeping it entertaining in the moment, can get occasionally get a bit dense, though re-reading passages (usually) proves worthwhile---but vibemaster Matthew Kressel pulls me almost word by word through "The Bricks of Gelecek":

Always In fours we came to your cities. The sand blew us into flesh, and we walked like men through your iron gates and your tented marketplaces. Dust fell from our fingertips, our feet...We touched your fruits and your doorposts. We patted the heads of your children and shook the callused hands of your husbands. You smiled at us.
Within hours came the winds, the decay, the screams. Pits formed in the streets where we had stopped. Your statues rusted and blew away. Your houses fell to kindling. Your children vanished like whispers.
By dawn there was nothing left but a hole in the earth. And those who had carried thoughts of this vanquished city and its people found a blank spot in their minds, a void where once there were men. Well dang. What can follow that? But he's just getting started.

Also new to me is Nathan Ballingrud, whose "The Way Station" is about a guy who comes to a nice town in Florida, hoping to reconcile with his grown daughter. But she might not like the way New Orleans (Pre-Katrina, so hey, but then again it) is lodged in a hole in his chest.

I had heard about (even posted news about upthread) Caitlin R. Kiernan, but "The Colliers' Venus (1893)" is the first story of hers I've actually read, and it's a well-paced dazzler.

Nathan Ballingrud made some noise a few years ago with a collection called North American Lake Monsters.

An interview with Ted Chiang: https://medium.com/learning-for-life/stories-of-ted-chiangs-life-and-others-694cb3c80d13#.v3bas74m5

(which I confess I have not actually read much of and I'm mainly linking it here as a bookmark for myself, but it was these SF threads which first put me on to Chiang, so thank you)

I think that was posted earlier.

Hadn't seen it, thanks! "Story of Your Life" is in xpost The Big Book of Science Fiction and online, apparently, though don't know if it's the whole novella. Had a reservation, or a question anyway, but can't post it without getting spoilery. Looking fwd to the screen version, Arrival, a critical and commercial success.