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

Hmm I don't have that one for some reason

Recommendation accepted.

Posted this in current reading thread, but belongs here:

Now I understand why I thought I'd made the above post already, but couldn't find it. In my defence I have a one year old child and am sleep deprived.

Been a long time since I read it, but seemed like Solaris was serious/substantial enough x deadpan-funny enough (going back and forth seamlessly enough).

Solaris maybe one of my least favorites of his tbh

mordantly funny was kinda his stock in trade

Been enjoying the criticism of Jonathan McCalmont. I'm sceptical of some of his claims but he's refreshingly honest and not afraid to criticize beloved figures.

Here's a positive review and some of the recent books he rates highly.
http://csff-anglia.co.uk/clarke-shadow-jury/the-many-selves-of-katherine-north-by-on-emma-geen-a-review-by-jonathan-mccalmont/

https://ruthlessculture.com/2017/02/17/genre-origin-stories/

Cultural commentators may choose to characterise 2015 as the year in which genre culture rejected the misogynistic white supremacy of the American right but the real message is far more nuanced. Though the institutions of genre culture have undoubtedly improved when it comes to reflecting the diversity not only of the field but also of society at large, this movement towards ethnic and sexual diversity has coincided with a broader movement of aesthetic conservatism as voices young and old find themselves corralled into a narrowing range of hyper-commercial forms.

In today’s diverse genre culture you can engage with the voices of people from all over the world as long as you are content to read multi-volume epic fantasy and military science fiction series. In today’s diverse genre culture, authors whose ideas and experiences demand that they write in unconventional or experimental ways are both ignored by the larger genre imprints and overlooked by popular awards. In today’s diverse genre culture you will write the same old rubbish as George R. R. Martin and John Scalzi or you will wind up getting paid six cents a word for stories that nobody will ever read.

https://ruthlessculture.com/2016/05/17/future-interrupted-harder-core-than-thou/

https://ruthlessculture.com/2017/01/17/future-interrupted-telling-people-what-they-want-to-be/
A very negative review

https://ruthlessculture.com/2015/05/21/future-interrupted-the-origins-of-science-fictional-inequality/

That is pretty incisive!

Oof. Sounds otm tho

https://dorisvsutherland.wordpress.com
http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/author/doris-v-sutherland/

Also Doris V Sutherland writes interesting reviews of Hugo nominated fiction (including the illegitimate nominations) and articles about racism in British horror.

And articles about that guy who believes leftists are possessed by evil spirits. Fascinating thing about him is that he pretends he's incredibly successful. Some of the other Puppy people pretend they're doing incredibly well, as if they're ready to eclipse the Hugo winners but the truth is that some of these guys are really struggling because their Puppy association has burned bridges.
There weren't enough gamergater types who're interested in buying their books and the sort of thing they're doing doesn't have the wide appeal they thought it did.

welcome to the world of jazz music.

x-post

but hasn't it always been that way kinda? crud makes money and the better stuff is in the margins and cracks and underground and whatever. not always, but a lot of the times. and that's true for a lot of art. is scalzi really rubbish, i was gonna read some of his one of these days.

i doubt that sf writers who actually sell a lot of books are rolling in money. they certainly don't dress like they are.

but i have always thought of jazz when thinking of genre writers. and why jazz people/sf writers make so many records/books. to pay the bills. its hard out there for a visionary.

I havent been able to finish the free copy of the only Scalzi book i have (old man's war). His prose is pretty eyeroll-y imo.

McCalmont argued with Scalzi on his blog.

I think he believes that things have went downhill from the days China Mieville and Ian Banks were really popular.

i'm glad i don't live in a real time SF universe. i just buy stuff at random kinda. sometimes i'll pick up one of those old best of anthologies i have at home and get engrossed in the long essays at the front about the state of 1993 SF.

One quite successful author McCalmont likes is Lavie Tidhar. He said Central Station was the best SF book of 2016.

Dunno any of these, anyone care to weigh in?

Much is being made of our moment of cultural renewal signalled by works of British SF like Nina Allan’s The Race, Marcel Theroux’s Strange Bodies, Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn and Simon Ings’ Wolves

Haven't read except for dipping into initial chapters which seemed promising but have heard good things about the last three from various ilxors and others whose opinions I trust.

i don't contribute to this thread really and i don't even read any (many) of the books you guys mention in it but i wish i did. basically i want to say this is maybe top 5 threads on ilx for me, consistently informative, enthusiastic - you guys rule

So do you, Tracer !!

Despite being a Progressive.

I'm a Tori (sp?).

okay that might have been the worst joke i ever made on ilx.

Nina Allan’s The Race, Marcel Theroux’s Strange Bodies, Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn and Simon Ings’ Wolves

Nina Allan’s The Race: not read this, because I read a really unimpressive short story by her, but everyone who HAS read this seems to love it

Marcel Theroux’s Strange Bodies: excellent downbeat mind-transferral philosophical thriller

Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn: also excellent, can't recommend highly enough -- should especially appeal to those wise people around here who like Alan Furst

Simon Ings’ Wolves: not an entire success, I thought, but intriguing and clever, and very good on the texture of how, in a "slow apocalypse" people still have to go to work, raise their families, buy the weekly shopping, etc

Thx! Duly noted

Actually what I should have said were those last three were recommended by some combination of M. John Harrison and ilxors James Morrison and Jordan, so probably all pretty good. Started reading another Ings book, The Weight of Numbers, which seems promising

For what it's worth, I've been hearing a lot of good about Nina Allan recently.

Yeah, I should note that the story by her I didn't like wasn't bad, per se, it just had all sorts of SF trappings and was future-set in a way that didn't advance or expand the story in any way, and in fact made it significantly less convincing than if it had been set now, which undercut it rather

Was it her Hugo nominated story?

Not sure: it was http://www.tor.com/2016/07/27/the-art-of-space-travel/

I think he believes that things have went downhill from the days China Mieville and Ian Banks were really popular.

Isn't Jeff VanDerMeer the popular name on that kind of wavelenght right now?

Not sure if he's quite as popular as they were.

James- yeah that's the one.

i was loving europe in autumn until...it went where it did. sort of abruptly? was there foreshadowing and i'm just an imbecile? i was kinda mad about it.

no, it was pretty abrupt

Reading Paul Park's "All Those Vanished Engines". First exposure to him. so far it's more like a Faulknerian alternate history, but apparently he's written some similarly odd sf/fantasy stuff that's well regarded? Gene Wolfe gives some enthusiastic endorsement quotes. I'm into it.

Think I have seen some other praise for him from the likes of Disch and Crowley, maybe.

Disch, Wolfe, and Park = all (lapsed/reformed?) Catholics lol

I thought Wolfe was full on

yeah I think he is...? Might be mixing him up w Lafferty

Lafferty a trinity unto himself

(Idk what I mean by that)

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, the 2016 hugo and nebula winner for best novella, is not good. It's sf not fantasy but the protagonist is basically magical, she has a mysterious artefact which is a pure deus ex machina, and the mud she uses for tribal body painting turns out to be magically beneficial to the alien antagonists. To have one magical plot resolving device in a 100 page novella might be regarded as misfortune, but to have three...

so this Paul Park book is p incredible, you guys should get on this

Thanks, will have a look see.

Lafferty a trinity unto himself

also taking my first dip into James Blish's short fiction. Seems to have a tendency toward glib or facile "twist" endings but there's great ideas and writing along the way. The collection I'm currently reading ("Galactic Cluster") is mostly early 50s stuff. Have yet to come across anything on the same level as "Surface Tension".

"Common Time"!

you read the cities in flight books already? everyone needs spindizzy in their life.

ha yeah I just finished "Common Time", which I really enjoyed apart from some of the psychobabble wrap-up at the end. haven't read any of his novels yet

don't know if you really need to read all four CiF books but the first two are very cool.