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

Now I'm debating whether to binge on the rest of John Crowley or savour it at a much slower pace.

Is L'Engle any worse than CS Lewis in that respect? I read A Wrinkle in Time in fifth grade and didn't feel beaten over the head by the Jesusisms, but maybe I'd feel differently if I revisited it today. I have this idea of L'Engle as a tolerant liberal Christian, mostly due to her association with the Trees Community (a '70s hippie cult / musical collective)

one of my favorite sff novels is The Book of the Dun Cow (and its follow-up, The Book of Sorrows) by the Lutheran pastor Walter Wangerin. he uses a standard 'talking farm animals band together to slay the cockatrice' narrative to work through his issues of crippling self-doubt as a minister. it's funny but kinda disturbing with all its metaphorical handwringing about cutting off your hand or poking out your eyes if they offend Christ. I can imagine being awed/traumatized by it if I read it as a kid. a religious sff thread might be interesting but I don't know if I should be the one to start it.

I like CS Lewis' space trilogy a lot (with some quibbles over theology here and there), never been able to make it through a L'Engle book. Maybe Lewis is just a better/weirder writer.

i loved both lewis and l'engle as a kid (although 'wrinkle in time' was maybe my least favorite of her books -- preferred the first two sequels/the austin series/others tangentially related)

while i *realized* aslan = jesus etc i don't recall it being overbearing. maybe it's more so as an adult, although i suspect modern readers are more put-off by things like the dismissal of susan than the religion. if anything, i'd say l'engle was less obviously christian.

read the space trilogy when i was older and yeah the allegories are there but i'm okay with that

the Lewis as sinister Christian indoctrinator thing is way overplayed these days

yeah that stuff is there, and The Last Battle is pretty loopy, but I didn't notice or GAF about that stuff as a kid

yeah I didn't get aslan=jesus as a kid - unsurprising perhaps as I wasn't brought up a believer. I was just a bit bewildered by the ending (of wardrobe). why did he let them kill them? how did he come back to life? wtf?

I read Book of the Dun Cow maybe 20 years ago. I don't think I had the toolkit to enjoy it at the time.

Contents for the new Swords Against Darkness anthology. There was five volumes in the 70s.
http://paulaguran.com/swords-against-darkness-toc-cover-reveal/

i remember going to see empire strikes back with my friend pat and his dad when it came out and on the ride home his dad started talking about christian holy trinity parallels and it kinda blew my mind. but i was 12.

reading Tower Of Glass by Robert Silverberg and enjoying it. great android theology.

That's a p good one. Doesn't end v satisfactorily iirc but whatever.

lol there's a used mass market paperback copy of Tau Zero going for $3k on amazon

Take it over to the $900 Grandmothers thread

like I'm gonna look that up when the search function is broken

It's right there on ILB New Answers, bro.

ok fine

/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=55&threadid=102012

(googling with "site:ilxor.com" usually works)

I was put off by Wrinkle's gushy Granny kisses incl. angels etc. upthread, but got how she was (as advertised) one of the pioneers of what was later called young adult, re some plausible tensions in and among family members, and somebody, maybe mookieproof, advised then that her later books could be much better, so maybe I'll check them out.
Once came across some ancient issues of think it was Amazing Stories, with a series of author profiles---by Sam L. Moskowitz?---prob: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/25/arts/sam-moskowitz-76-learned-devotee-of-science-fiction-dies.html---mostly mild-mannered, but slamming Lewis for heavy-handed proselytizing via clumsy use of symbolism. No idea if this was a widely shared opinion in the fantasy-and/or-science-fiction community, but considering how middle-of-the-road the other profiles and the magazine seemed, doubt that it was a very controversial view. Of course this was back in the early 60s (hey-hey-hey!), when most of the best (and maybe the rest) of fantasy and science fiction seemed to be written "by some smart-ass Noo Yawk Joo," as one of Randy Newman's good old boys put it (re many/most thangs). I haven't read the novels, but have come across a few anthologized stories sporting Earthman superiority incl. over women, reminding me of some of Gene Wolfe's earlier, pushier, smellier (shorter) efforts.

Some smirky, self-impressed sanctimony just under the floorboards in both (Lewis and Wolfe) cases.

But later for that smelly old stuff---in the previously mentioned Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (Karen Joy Fowler, editor/John Joseph Adams, series ed.), I was struck by what I mentioned somewhere else as the "initial snappy patter shifting to different tones and levels", very hard to do, and it's a cosmic-but-plausible story about cancer, by Adam Johnson---countered by S.L. Huang's cancer story, where there's no out-of-body-experience, no revelation, no transcendence, just adaptation, getting through it and going on with life. Huang says it's autobiographical---shifted into near-future treatments, and the character only has cancer once, so far, unlike the author (both are now "cured", or in remission). Also unlike this author, Johnson doesn't provide a comment on his story, but the female narrator has a seemingly Johnson-like husband---I hope his story is not based on his actual wife's experience; it does seem more imagined---in a way that seems almost foolish right after first reading Huang's story, but no, they're just---two ways of looking at it, writing about it. I think. Anyway, can't recall coming across such a juxtaposition in an anthology before.

Not that Johnson's story is Inspirational, it's about moving between past, present, future, commuting.

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/twenty-questions-ursula-le-guin/

Ha, good! I disagree re Ferrante, but from what I've read of Knausgaard, suspect she isn't missing that much. Wish there were more questions re science fiction, but good to know about the pickles (lodged in my mind now, so they did find a home after all).

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/8/86/STRWTRSTRN2005.jpg

Just finished the audiobook, which I enjoyed, of the book recommended here: I Am Reading A Novel That Seems To Be Something That Elvis Telecom Would Like

Maybe I should say "mentioned" rather than "recommended." Not sf per se, but the protagonist is an sf writer and many real sf writers are mentioned or appear as characters, along with various figures mentioned on Eden Ahbez, Jack Parsons, and other LA kooks...

i started reading vernor vinge's a fire upon the deep. dig it so far. love those incomprehensible first chapters/prologues where you have no idea what's going on. which would be in about 50% or more of the SF i read. surreal and mock-poetic. i love the ones that start like that ("Colors...drifting...nexus floating...") and then half the book is mundanity about some scientist trying to have space sex with his secretary. it's tradition, i guess.

Both of the Deep Vinge books are great. He seems kind of hit and miss tho. (Also a Singularity believer iirc). Him and Bear and KSR make for a v odd San Diego sf triumvirate.

Have yet to read a thing by him, not even that "Fast Times" story that is always anthologized.

x-post to currently reading thread:

Powers of Darkness: Valdimar Asmundsson -- in 1900 the Icelandic translator of Stoker's Dracula got bored partway through and completely changed the story, cutting out almost all the non-Transylvanian bits and adding ape-men, naked ladies, human sacrifice, Dracula fomenting some sort of European political revolution, etc. And nobbody noticed until a few years ago, and now they've translated that version back into English.

I've heard that some of the story is based on Stoker's earlier drafts. Is that true?

There seems to be uncertainty over whether it was that or coincidence

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51lu3jcnGFL._AA300_.jpg

Speaking of Subterranean writers, I like this essay by Roz Kaveney on Caitlin Kiernan's short stories in the latest Strange Horizons:

Recently read The Dry Salvages and enjoyed the latest one, Agents of Dreamland, so interested to get around to reading more.

Inspired by thread, I just this morning finished reading my first kiernan, The Red Tree. Pretty impressed.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/29/norse-myths-by-neil-gaiman-review

Le Guin writes a fairly negative review of Gaiman but I enjoyed her description of the dialogue in modern animation and comics.

Fucking hell--just discovered that a Ted Chiang novella I paid a normal price for several years ago is now selling for hundreds of dollars. Almost makes up for the hundreds of books I've sold to second-hand shops for 50c/given away free.

Just seen someone use the word "Slansplaining"

Lol

Watched a youtube video titled "Eurocon 2016 - Sala Auditori - Verne Versus Wells (ENG)" with Adam Roberts and Aliette De Bodard. It's quite fun. Quite curious about the SF history book Roberts has written, he clearly knows a lot.

There's a whole load of Eurocon panels on youtube and they have writers from a wide range of countries, mostly in English.

Speaking English that is, but their books aren't always in English.

Roberts is currently working his way through the entire output of Wells over at http://wellsattheworldsend.blogspot.com/

Woah, that's pretty in depth, as are his other blogs on other writers. Surely he intends to turn all these into books?

He's done a few Ted talks too.

Interesting. Btw wondering if anyone has read David Lodge's book about Wells.

Weird fiction author Mark Samuels is homeless now. There might be some sort of charity account set up eventually. A paperback version of Written In Darkness is coming soon, it's his fifth collection.

Subterranean editions of new Blaylock and prev. unpub.(as orig. intended, that is) Silverberg---both novellas, both expensive, duh:

http://subterraneanpress.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/r/i/rivers_edge_by_james_p_blaylock.jpg

We're pleased to announce River's Edge by James P. Blaylock, which, at over 40,000 words, is the longest Langdon St. Ives novella yet!

About the Book:

The body of a girl washes up on a mud bank along the edge of the River Medway amid a litter of poisoned fish and sea birds, casting an accusing shadow upon the deadly secrets of the Majestic Paper Mill and its wealthy owners. Simple answers to the mystery begin to suggest insidious secrets, and very quickly Langdon St. Ives and his wife Alice are drawn into a web of conspiracies involving murder, a suspicious suicide, and ritual sacrifice at a lonely and ancient cluster of standing stones. Abruptly St. Ives's life is complicated beyond the edge of human reason, and he finds himself battling to save Alice's life and the ruination of his friends, each step forward leading him further into the entanglement, a dark labyrinth from which there is no apparent exit.

Limited:1000 signed numbered hardcover copies: $40
******************************************************************************************
(no cover art provided for Silverbob)

Announcing The Emperor and the Maula by Robert Silverberg
We're thrilled to announce a new novella by Robert Silverberg. Read on for what makes this particular project unique.

About the Book:

Robert Silverberg's The Emperor and the Maula was written in 1992 for an aborted publishing project and has been printed only once, in a radically abbreviated version. This deluxe new edition restores more than 15,000 words of missing text, allowing us to see, for the first time, the author's original intent. The result is both a genuine publishing event and an unexpected gift for Silverberg's legion of readers.

The Emperor and the Maula is Silverberg's Scheherazade tale, the story of a woman telling a story in order to extend--and ultimately preserve--her life. The Scheherazade of this striking story is Laylah Walis, denizen of a far-future Earth which has been invaded and conquered by a star-faring race known as the Ansaarans. Laylah is a "maula," a barbarian forbidden, under pain of death, to set foot on the sacred home worlds of the imperial conquerors. Knowing the risks, Laylah travels to Haraar, home of the galactic emperor himself. Once there, she delays her execution by telling the emperor a story-and telling it well.

That story, the tale within a tale that dominates this book, is, in fact, Laylah's own story. It is also the story of the beleaguered planet Earth, of people struggling, often futilely, to oppose their alien masters and restore their lost independence. Colorful, seamlessly written, and always powerfully imagined, The Emperor and the Maula shows us Grandmaster Silverberg at his representative best. This is science fiction as it should be written, but all too seldom is. No one does it better than Robert Silverberg. No one ever has.

Limited: 250 signed numbered copies, bound in leather: $45
Trade: Fully clothbound hardcover edition: $25

huh, dunno that one, but I p much ignore his post-Majipoor output

i wish blaylock would write some more modern SoCal novels, i love homunculus as much as the next guy but the californian magic realism is what made him my favorite writer. I shouldn't carp, though-- at least he's writing. And he can move copies in this genre.

<3 U JPB