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

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.

my wife used to have a bunch of his Star Trek novels. idk for some reason I just never felt compelled to investigate, just assumed he was kinda a mainstream hack-y writer/decent editor until I read "Surface Tension".

cities in flight one of the biggies of sf. and influential.

What about "A Work of Art"?

Found a rave review by Crowley of the Paul Park book Shakey is reading, as well as various used/antiquarian bookstores selling Tom Disch's personal, inscribed copies of Park's books, some with Disch's letter of blurbage inside, in his own hand or from his own typewriter.

Actually I remember trying to read a YA book he wrote that came with a lot of stellar recommendations and being underwhelmed by the writing.

enjoying Gridlinked by Neal Asher. his first book from 2001 and he's written a novel a year since then. and they are all mostly set in the same universe with some of the same characters/worlds popping up. would definitely read more. his wiki describes his stuff as post-cyberpunk space opera and that about sums it up. gritty and violent and vast. he's inventive too. lots of cool science stuff.

Omg @ Blish's "Work of Art", what a story. A bit of Flowers for Algernon now that I think about it.

Hadn't seen this Sheckley collection before----part of NYRB Father's Day sale:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0726/9203/products/store-of-the-worlds_1024x1024.jpg?v=1428420074

Also wondering about these Priest and Wyndham books at bottom of same page:
https://www.nyrb.com/collections/fathers-day-sale/products/store-of-the-worlds?variant=1094931409

Have you read Priest's 'Inverted World'? It's brilliant, and mind-boggling in the best way.

― James Morrison, Monday, January 26, 2009 5:47 PM (eight years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is there anyone left on this borad who hasn't read Inverted World?

― Jesperson, I think we're lost (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, March 10, 2016 10:34 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Inverted World is a masterpiece, I should really own a copy

Chocky isnt bad

Wyndham?

Oh, sorry just scrolled up. Get the Sheckley too, Don.