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

half price sale at the musty dusty around the corner. bought:

alastair reynolds - the prefect, chasm city

pamela sargent - the shore of women

james white - the watch below

john c. wright - count to a trillion

charles stross - singularity sky

greg bear - quantico

diann thornley - ganwold's child

jacob transue - twilight of the basilisks

charles sheffield - aftermath

robert charles wilson - spin, axis

jack mcdevitt - chindi, omega, odyssey, seeker, deepsix, the devil's eye, polaris, cauldron

stephen baxter - moonseed

i guess i'm hoping i'm a jack mcdevitt fan. they just had so many and they all looked kinda fun.

you don't have to worry about order with alastair reynolds books do you? they are all in the same future, right?

one of the reasons i still haven't read the banks culture books is because i feel like i should own them all before i read them. but maybe i really don't.

also have another big bag at home that i got on Thursday from the musty dusty.

also got 4-disc blade runner, children of men, and cabin boy for $1.75 each. strangely, i've been thinking lately about how i wanted to see children of men AND cabin boy again.

john c. wright - count to a trillion

― scott seward, Thursday, 4 May 2017 16:26

I'm kind of fascinated by Wright. Haven't read his work but I like his influences and some of the approach he seems to be going for and some of his work is supposed to be good. But he's one of the maddest people in fantasy, he has some really bigoty opinions, he has the most pompous online persona I've ever seen, he's one of the main figures of the puppy movement (the speculative fiction version of gamergate) and his main editor/publisher is one of the main alt-right guys. Last time I read his blog he was complaining about witches casting spells on Trump.

George RR Martin arguing with him.
http://grrm.livejournal.com/485124.html

I'm not reading anything by this guy
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/John_C_Wright.jpg/160px-John_C_Wright.jpg

One of his fellow puppies seems to believe left wing people are literally possessed by demons.

Some more recent buys

Rhys Hughes - The Percolated Stars
Rhys Hughes - Bone Idle In The Charnel House
Anna Tambour - Crandolin
Sofia Samatar - A Stranger In Olondria
Caledonia Dreamin (anthology based on Scottish words and slang)

Some I'm still waiting for in the mail

AE Van Vogt - Transfinite: Essential
Avalon Brantley - House Of Silence (she died weeks after this book was announced, it's based on Hodgson's stories)

i read john c wright's hugo-nominated story "The Parliament of Beasts and Birds" and it was awful. not linking it because it's posted on a fascist blog.

i don't know anything about Wright. i just went by cover/blurbs.

feel bad that half the paperbacks i read are blurbed by spider robinson and i don't think i've ever bought a spider robinson book. he is blurb king.

> alastair reynolds - the prefect, chasm city

> you don't have to worry about order with alastair reynolds books do you? they are all in the same future, right?

not those two, no. there is a trilogy and chasm city is set in the same universe (and was released just before/after/during it) but isn't part of the trilogy so...

the prefect is a bit of a romp, reminds me of rendezvous with rama. outside of revelation space it might be the one i'd recommend to curious people.

Robert Charles Wilson's Spin is pretty good

still making my way through Ramsey Campbell - The Darkest Part of the Woods. Really great, my first thing by him, I'm taking my time and savoring it.

At his best he's great, I love "The Brood" and "The Fit". There's a fairly clear consensus that his short stories are better but I haven't read any of his novels yet.

Never read a bad Ramsey Campbell story but there's quite a lot that didn't do much for me.

okay, the other bag of books i got from the sale. i actually got myself nice barely-read U.K. Mandarin paperbacks of the Gormenghast trilogy which i've never read. they are nice. will read!

robert j. sawyer - rollback, calculating god

leigh brackett - alpha centauri or die!, the nemesis from terra, the coming of the terrans

neal asher - gridlinked

zenna anderson - the anything box, holding wonder, the people: no different flesh, pilgrimage

roger zelazny - the last defender of camelot, isle of the dead

ace double: john rackham - treasure of tau ceti/k.m. o'donnell - final war and other fantasies

neal stephenson - snow crash

robert silverberg - the alien years

allen steele - lunar descent

jack williamson - seetee ship/seetee shock

ace double - lan wright - the pictures of pavanne/ellen wobig - the youth monopoly

nancy kress - yesterday's kin

Re Scott's haul pt 1:

greg bear - quantico : this is superior snear-future scf-gi crime/technothriller stuff: not winning any awards for prose (not that it's bad, just functional), but it does its thing with inventiveness and is pretty clever

robert charles wilson - spin, axis : these are excellent

jack mcdevitt - chindi, omega : these have some nice ideas, but dodgy prose, and dangers of space/intriguing alien life repeatedly undermined by inadvertent bathos

stephen baxter - moonseed : probably one of his better non-series books

have you ever heard of those zenna henderson books? i VERY MISTAKENLY wrote "Anderson" above. they look so cool. very much of their time. they've probably been in that store for years and i just never noticed them.

https://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/The-People-No-Different-Flesh-Zenna-Henderson.jpg

http://ofearna.us/books/henderson/anything.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51ODVReKSiL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

http://www.adherents.com/lit/images/aut_Hendeson_AboutAuthors.jpg

i haven't even read them and i already want to find the hardcovers...

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51q1tQlCJpL.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51zQUsn-e0L.jpg

Hmm. SF Encyclopedia gives her as a recommendation. plus we have a winner for least flattering author photo ever.

they made one of her People stories into a t.v. movie with william shatner that i vaguely remember.

list from January:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/5/13811144/sci-fi-fantasy-book-recommendations-2017

Those Zenna Henderson stories show up in some classy anthologies. Have yet to read one though.

hmm some interesting stuff there. along w the usual space opera and quest fantasy dross

xp

yeah, that list is a mixed bag.

is there one person making all the money with cover art like this or do people just rip off this style a lot.

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/w3bejbkhFL3x7SzeM_9qA-a1x24=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7709363/C0DanoDWIAAlaDe.jpg

haha yeah so many shitty giant font designs, kind of a bummer

no i mean the art. it might just be one person.

okay, its a john harris thing. i didn't know his name. he did the cover for ender's game even. he's been around the block.

hmm some interesting stuff there. along w the usual space opera and quest fantasy dross

xp

anyway, people really dig his current style these days. i see it on a ton of books.

http://scalzi.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/cropped-ao-john-harris-hi-res-cover1.jpg

So many Tor jack Vance paperbacks with those generic fuckin spaceships on them

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/rip-richard-dalby-1949-2017.html

Future people gotsta have some way to flee the Dying Earth, Jon not Jon

were you asking for which ones I thought were interesting or which ones I thought were generic dross

Tell us both.

Interesting

"Interesting" pile:
The Wanderers by Meg Howrey
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

I'm not gonna spend any energy slagging off stuff I haven't read but generally anything involving a "special" protagonist resolving some sort of epic conflict tends to bore me.

I do wish Ted Chiang and Charles Yu were more prolific. So many of my favorite recent-ish authors publish so little. Pelevin cranks 'em out at least, but I have to wait around for translations.

standin' on the corner. some pelevin in your hand. just waiting for your man.

haha

he's v underrated imo

"Pelevin's prose is usually devoid of dialogue between the author and the reader, whether through plot, character development, literary form or narrative language. This corresponds to his philosophy (both stated[where?] and unstated) that, for the most part, it is the reader who infuses the text with meaning."

no way, buddy, that's your job, i already have a job.

he's probably too smart for me.

"Pelevin's prose is usually devoid of dialogue between the author and the reader

what does this even mean

I don't think he's "difficult" at all, not compared to, say, Cordwainer Smith or Bolano or idk Alasdair Gray. His actual prose is p simple, even though the plots are often hallucinatory or metaphysical or satirical. It's very Russian. Better than Bulgakov.

he is no longer on speaking terms with us.

i think that's what it means.

yeah, on the other hand, if i can read van vogt, i can read anybody.