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

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.

(James I just replied, but ilx bot still taunts me for trying to do it with a re:, so if don't see a new email w subject "Chiang", check spam)

(Saw it, as you know)

kinda surprised at Arrival's success myself. skeptical of its onscreen adaptability. I tend to hate when studios make movies about media that don't lend themselves to screen treatments (comics, language, math, etc.)

Yeah, exactly. Still curious to see (for) myself and compare with the story.

It is a good, not great, effort, which is thus significantly better than i expected

reading Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood. so far it is an hilarious portrait of an implausibly austere old upper-class scottish lady, as told by a convalescing teen. brilliant stuff

whoops posted this in the wrong thread

That's a great book, but are you sure this is the thread you wanted?

Sorry, xpost

It's a great book, post wherever you like!

Um...

Adam Roberts: Bethany -- thoughtful, vivid theological time travel story about man who decides to shoot Christ AFTER his resurrection but BEFORE his ascension, accidentally changes universe from being mechanical to relativistic

Just got hold of a Ligotti horror anthology. So far I like the guy's fatalistic style, but I've only read the first story - the Frolic, and now I'm onto Les Fleurs

How is "Mutation Planet"? They featured it on WeirdFictionReview.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, October 18, 2016 4:21 PM (one month ago)

Some ilxors linked to this the other day on FB but I don't think it has been posted here yet: http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2016/11/21/paradise-of-bachelors-science-fiction/