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

Scott, I haven't seen Arrival yet. I'm a film score junkie so I downloaded the film mix of Johansson's score from a nerd site. Might be my score of the year (as a standalone listen)

I read a bust of the cumberbatch codebreaker movie re supposedly totally playing down crucial contributions of other codebreakers, especially females, and misrepresenting his relationship with one of the women, also other aspects of the historical Turing's life---all of which can be easily referenced in bios---but that wouldn't suit the glory of slick screen overselling (according to this piece, like in London Review of Books I think---whatever it was, I crosschecked online and the movie-hatah's assertions about Turing and the other codebreakers seemed to be right, although I dunno about the movie itself, still haven't seen it)(just as a Cumberbatch movie, not taken too seriously, might be okay to watch though)

New York Review Of Books is reprinting David R Bunch's Moderan

The turing film also portrays him committing treason to avoid being outed as gay, which is a massive lie. He was gay, and suffered tremendously for it, but he was never a traitor.

ugh fuck that

~~spoilers for Imitation Game~~

dumbest bit in IG is when they CRACK THE CODE just in time to save a ship of UK civilians but Turingbatch decides the right thing to do is to let the ship sink because otherwise the Germans know they broke the code - like that's a call he would have been allowed to make

then the young wide-eyed junior scientist pipes up with "my BROTHER is on that ship!"

something like that happened, ie the bombing of coventry, but it was hardly turing's call--the british govt decided to let the civilians get bombed to avoid letting the secret loose

grew up in coventry and this is a major part of local lore but it is fairly conclusive that they didn't know it was specifically coventry that was being bombed.

yeah, I'm not saying that such a decision isn't credible - I'm saying it would be the military's call to make (probably decided before they even start the project, really). Turing making the decision on the spot is what's dumb about it. And the brother thing.

wow Silverberg's "Stochastic Man" is pretty incredible, Malzberg might've been right in calling it the "greatest of science fiction novels about politics". Sort of disconcerting to read in current political climate.

Ebook of that has some serious problems.

man, Lafferty. I really don't know what to make of this guy. He's clearly unique and has a very distinct style, but I literally do not understand maybe 50% of what he writes - the jarring shifts in tone, the seemingly never-ending stream of odd and obscure references, the idiosyncratic terminology, it's all kind of bewildering. I don't dislike it necessarily, but reading "Arrive at Earlywine" I feel like tons of stuff is just flying by me and I have no idea what's going on or what is being conveyed. I have a basic understanding of the characters and certain plot points, but everything is couched or enshrouded in this apparently ridiculous quasi-mystical/philosophical language and none of the characters talk or act like recognizable people, it's bizarre.

it's like all the characters operate with secret knowledge of (I presume) Christian metaphysics that is just never explained or spelled out, like there's some kind of analogy being made but I have no idea what to.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FeministFantasy

Found this quite interesting, the literature section in particular. Not sure a strong heroine should be enough to qualify these days.

gave up on the Lafferty, went back to the library and got Silverbob's "Thorns" and Gene Wolfe's "The Land Across". As far as the latter goes - is there any other author so totally infatuated with the unreliable narrator device? I mean, he's a master at it but it's sort of his default setting.

Lots of Lafferty takes upthread, where I luck up with my first by him, "Encased In Rind" and "The Narrow Valley", the latter seeming like it might have influenced young Rudy Rucker. Both with glints of other agendas, but nothing off-putting (although "TNV" incl. some 50s-early 60s SF stereotypical plastic suburbanites, but does the Author have some heady surprises for them, and for the Reader)

from a Rolling Stone interview w Phil Lesh (published last summer but I just now saw it):

What was your favorite book as a child?
I was a space nut. In elementary school, I checked out Destination Moon, by Robert A. Heinlein, about 3,000 times from the library. I've always loved sci-fi. More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon, is the one, in my mind, that helped define the Dead.

Still need to read MTH!

That's about it for the science fiction, though the rest of this is good too, short but sweet:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-last-word-phil-lesh-on-jerry-garcia-memories-sci-fi-w434812

This is from "20 Things You Didn't Know About Jerry Garcia"(thanks, vh1.com):
10. Sci-fi fanatic Jerry especially loved the work of authors Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

11. Vonnegut sold Jerry the film rights to his classic novel, The Sirens of Titan. Between 1983 and ’85, Garcia worked on a screenplay adaptation with Saturday Night Live writer Tom Davis. Health complications and other matters delayed Jerry from seeing the movie through to fruition, and it remained one of his (few) unfulfilled dreams when he died in 1995.

12. One science fiction film that Jerry did get to participate in was Philip Kaufman’s acclaimed 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He plays the music that emanates from a banjo being plucked on screen by a homeless beggar. Fans have often erroneously believed that it’s Garcia himself who appears in the part.
Gee, why would they think that?

13. Another soundtrack to which Garcia contributed was Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 psychedelic cult freak-out, Zabriskie Point. He composed and performs the music during the film’s orgiastic outdoor love scene which was one succinctly summed up by Jerry thusly: “It’s a whole lot of people balling in Death Valley… A friend of mine, in fact, is in that scene somewhere. The guy that painted the album cover for our second album. Nice tie-in, you know!”
Also, for the first Twilight Zone revival ('85-'89), wiki sez, New theme music was composed by Jerry Garcia and performed by The Grateful Dead.[2]

Interesting.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/changing-playing-field-hl-gold-galaxy-science-fict/

way up this thread or the previous, we discussed the downside of Gold (also discussed in the intro to a Galaxy comp, published past his tenure): he would change endings and other things, as writers might learn only when they read the published versions. One regular said in the intro that Gold called him up, figuring he was working away at something, as indeed he was, but the writer was so desperate to get free that he improvised a whole spiel about how he couldn't make his wife come anymore---and, though of course the writer could tell from the sounds Gold was making that he wasn't satisfied, maybe sensed he was being given the run-around, nevertheless he (Gold) couldn't resist, so of course they had an editorial conference, critiquing the writer's performance.

Not to say the stories couldn't turn out pretty well (still got some of the Galaxy Reader collections edited by Gold).

I just wish John Cage would have said more about the poker game. Or Martin Gardner, or anybody.

has anyone read ancillary mercy yet?? was a bit underwhelmed by the second one.

Sorry, Tracer, I was too underwhelmed to even finish the first one.

aw dude i LOVED the first one.

Just a little bit of Christmas Eve role play fun: my Ebenezer Blecch to your Tiny Tracer.

Enjoyed the first, left it a while before starting the second, could not remember enough to reorient myself and gave up

i liked all three ancillary books.

I would like to read the second but have forgotten all about the first. Someone come up with a Wikipedia summary eh.

But don't post here without *SPOILER BORDERS* since I may have a change of heart and want to read

mercy was a pretty satisfactory conclusion imo. it did not really do much to make the 2nd feel less like a tangent tho.

i did like the first one best though. it was suitably immersive. and there was a lot going on but it didn't feel overstuffed to me. lots of ideas. changes of scenery. i mean, you could probably live a fine, rich life if you only read the first one and decided not to go any further. lots of people just read dune and leave it at that.

Well that certainly would be a sensible life choice. Although I read the next two iirc.

Nonfiction, with link to backstory, seems kinda Ballardian (reminds me somehow of "The Drowned Giant"); anyway, I enjoyed it:
http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-fall-of-tower-of-moab.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Wormwoodiana+%28Wormwoodiana%29

Has anyone read The War against the Newts by Karel Capek? Saw someone with it on the train, piqued my interest.

It's on my kobo, but no.

Someone hothead mentioned it iirc

Upthread...

It's been too many years to recall much of anything about it, but I did read War With the Newts long ago. IIRC it was more of a social satire than otherwise, but because it's been ages, I'll defer to anyone who's read it more recently.

I read Capek's "R.U.R."(stands for Rossum's Universal Robots) in a very spacey, sometimes stilted, sometimes exhilarating anthology (blanking on title) translation, no clue how true to the original it might be, of course---it's a play, and picturing just how the hell it might have been or be staged (got directions, natch), is a big part of the fun. Extrapolations of early 20th Century corporate and other culture forcibly extrapolated by technological breakthroughs and new pressures---would go with some of the contemporaneous East European and Russian (and other) selections in xpost The Big Book of Science Fiction.

R.U.Ready to rock?

Newts is wonderful. Unfailingly polite genetically engineered newt servants to humanity politely revolt and politely set about destroying humanity.

I found it on Gutenberg, but found the style incredibly grating - e.g., sorry for huge chunk but that's sort of the point:

God it's beautiful here, so beautiful. It's a shame that Li can't see it. Mister Abe looked at her charming outline, and through some vague association began to thing about art. This was because his sweetheart, Li, was an artist. A film artist. True, she had never actually been in any films, but she was quite certain she would become the greatest film actress ever; and when Li was certain of something that was what happened. That was what Mamma Loeb couldn't understand; an artist is simply an artist, and she can't be like other girls. And anyway, other girls were no better than she was, Mister Abe decided; that Judy on the yacht, for instance, a rich girl like her--and Abe knew that Fred went into her cabin. Every night, in fact. Whereas Li and I...well Li just isn't like that. I want Baseball Fred to have the best, Abe thought generously, he's a friend from university, but every night...a rich girl like her oughtn't to do that. I think that a girl from a family like Judy's...and Judy isn't even an artist. (That's what these girls sometimes gossip about, Abe remembered; with their eyes shining, and giggling...I never talk about that sort of thing with Fred.) (Li oughtn't to drink so many cocktails, she never knows what she's talking about afterwards.) (This afternoon, for example, she didn't need to...) (I think she and Judy were arguing about who has nicer legs. Why, it clearly has to be Li. I know these things.) (And Fred didn't have to have that dumb idea about a beautiful legs contest. They might do that kind of thing on Palm Beach, but not in private company. And the girls didn't have to lift their skirts so high. That was more than just legs. At least, Li didn't have to. And right there in front of Fred! And a rich girl like Judy didn't have to do it either.) (Maybe I oughtn't to have called the captain over to be the judge. That was dumb of me. The captain went so red, and his mustache stuck out, and he excused himself and slammed the door. Awful. Just awful. The captain didn't have to be so coarse about it. And anyway, it's my yacht, isn't it?) (True, the captain doesn't have a sweetheart with him on board; so how's he going to look on that sort of thing, poor man? Seeing as he's got no choice but to be alone, I mean.) (And why did Li cry when Fred said Judy has nice legs? And then she said Fred was a brute, that he was spoiling the whole trip...Poor Li!) (And now the girls aren't talking to each other. And when I wanted to talk to Fred Judy called him over like a dog. Fred is my best friend after all. And if he's Judy's lover of course he's going to say she has nicer legs! True, he didn't have to be so emphatic about it. That wasn't very tactful towards poor Li; Li is right when she says Fred is a self centered brute. A heck of a brute.) (I really didn't think the trip was going to turn out like this. Devil take that Fred!)

Crappy old translation, do not judge by

Could use more parantheses

Xp I did think that, and would be interested to see an alternative, but if I'm reading a book called the War with the Newts then even if it's satire I want a goddamn war with some goddamn newts, not pages of colourful character development. I'm sure John Wyndham or HG Wells never made me work so hard.

Lol. New thread description or next thread throttle

Just got on goodreads and following lots of the most interesting reviewers I can find. Ian Sales is good and demanding, reviews loads of SF (though I sometimes suspect he's a robot more into hard science, politics and purely intellectual things), some from magazines he written for. I think someone was enjoying his work on here?

*raises hand*

What book was it again?

Four books, The Apollo Quartet. First one is called Adrift in the Sea of Rains or something like that.