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

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.

Unless you have already read all the stories in it

anyone read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky? it's the only vaguely sf thing that i haven't read in this month's cheap amazon monthly list.

I've been curious about him for awhile because of stuff ilxor lamp has posted about him

i enjoyed children of time. some interesting ideas that are maybe 70% thought through within the framework of an entertaining narrative. i remember the politics struck me as a lil suspect but possibly unintentionally so.

It's 99p, I'm not sure why I'm worried. (600pp though)

Is it me or is it remarkable that this blish story ("this earth of ours") from 1959 mentions "lysergic acid grenades"? Who was hip to LSD back then?

Also features an open and explicitly gay character, which also seems unusual

On both counts, maybe he was thinking of Allen Ginsberg? It was legal then and used in psychotherapy sometimes----Cary Grant said it really helped---Henry and Clair Booth Luce took it, dunno if it helped them, but Roger Sterling and one of his wives took it in marriage counseling, realized it was time to part amicably (although that was in the 60s, but it wasn't a Controlled Substance 'til 1965, I think?)---Ken Kesey volunteered to take part in a sanctioned experiment while working at the hospital which inspired One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and well you know---also:
https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_timeline.php

Is the open and explicitly gay character also evil? Otherwise, this was pretty unusual too!
Sturgeon wrote many stories during the Golden Age of Science Fiction that emphasised the importance of love, regardless of the current social norms. In his short story "The World Well Lost" (1953), first published in Universe magazine, homosexual alien fugitives and unrequited (and taboo) human homosexual love are portrayed. The tagline for the Universe cover was "His most daring story";[30] its sensitive treatment of homosexuality was unusual for science fiction published at that time, and it is now regarded as a milestone in science fiction's portrayal of homosexuality.[31] According to an anecdote related by Samuel R. Delany, when Sturgeon first submitted the story, the editor (John W. Campbell) not only rejected it but phoned every other editor he knew and urged them to reject it as well.[32][33] Sturgeon would later write Affair with a Green Monkey, which examined social stereotyping of homosexuals, and in 1960 published Venus Plus X, in which a single-gender society is depicted and the protagonist's homophobia portrayed unfavourably.[22] from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_themes_in_speculative_fiction
Wonder how he got Campbell to accept it after all? Universe was a pretty interesting mag, but didn't know about that story.

Blish's character is def a stereotype (a pouty, effeminate poet) but no he is not evil, he fits more of an "unexpectedly resourceful sidekick" role

The LSD ref is a one line throwaway that has no bearing on the plot, which makes it even more strange to me - like its just a ref to contemporary science stuff added for color.

He must have picked it up from some research paper or scientific journal

Best of Subterranean: will prob check out a used copy (pre-order for trade pb is $45, ouch)

http://subterraneanpress.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/b/e/best_of_sub_press-cvr_names.jpg

is it pretty fat?

30 stories, 700 pages. Oh wow, Amazon's takig pre-orders of the *hardback* for $27.21, free shipping (but still I'll prob wait for a nice used copy). More info here: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Subterranean-William-Schafer/dp/159606837X
and on the publisher's site ("not signing" refers to the autographed edition, I take it):

From Kirkus (Starred Review):

“Vampires and wizards and aliens, oh my! A splendid gathering, from the late lamented magazine, of modern science fiction and fantasy. Like the best of the 1950s pulps, Subterranean magazine did not cavil much about genre distinctions: if a sci-fi story strayed into horror or swords and sorcery, that was fine, so long as the story in question was good… Fans of every stripe of speculative fiction will want this on their shelves.”

Table of Contents:

Perfidia—Lewis Shiner
Game—Maria Dahvana Headley
The Last Log of the Lachrimosa—Alastair Reynolds
The Seventeenth Kind—Michael Marshall Smith
Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind—Rachel Swirsky
The Pile—Michael Bishop
The Bohemian Astrobleme—Kage Baker (not signing)
Tanglefoot—Cherie Priest
Hide and Horns—Joe R. Lansdale
Balfour and Meriwether in the Vampire of Kabul—Daniel Abraham
Last Breath—Joe Hill
Younger Women—Karen Joy Fowler
White Lines on a Green Field—Catherynne M. Valente
The Least of the Deathly Arts—Kat Howard
Water Can’t be Nervous—Jonathan Carroll
Valley of the Girls—Kelly Link
Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill!—Hal Duncan
Troublesolving—Tim Pratt
The Indelible Dark—William Browning Spencer
The Prayer of Ninety Cats—Caitlín R. Kiernan
The Crane Method—Ian R. MacLeod
The Tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn—Robert Silverberg (not signing)
The Toys of Caliban (script)—George R. R. Martin
The Secret History of the Lost Colony—John Scalzi
The Screams of Dragons—Kelley Armstrong
The Dry Spell—James P. Blaylock
He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes—Harlan Ellison® (not signing)
A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong—K. J. Parker
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling—Ted Chiang
A Long Walk Home—Jay Lake (not signing)

that's a p impressive list of authors

Would recommend Simn Morden: At the Speed of Light to anyone here like James Redd who enjoyed Carter Scholz, Ian Sales, etc

Will check out, thanks

Also he's Simon and i cannot type

Figured that out.

Started reading Jack McDevitt's Deepsix. McDevitt is apparently the heir to Asimov, Clarke, Anderson, Simak, AND Pohl. Hey, blurbs don't lie.

Is there a realist oil painting of a spaceship on the cover

it's actually not too realist. i like his covers. they make me want to read them.

http://www.sfreviews.com/graphics/Jack%20McDevitt_2001_Deepsix.jpg

i like the font on a lot of his paperbacks...

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/514mc6OXDTL._SX308_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Reading Ubik, my first PDK. It's good so far! Read eight pages. The writing is *way* more graceful than High Castle, which I found almost unreadable.

I mean, actually unreadable, because I couldn't finish it.

Ubik is amazing. Definitely in the top 5 of the 15 or so pkd i have read

yeah it's peak PKD

High Castle is overrated imo

Yeah, feel like there is too much, um, naturalism and not enough paranoia.

turns out the i ching is not really a great sf author

Ubik is maybe my favourite PKD

Tell it to the homeopape!

High Castle is not an especial PKD favourite of mine either, but I'm slightly puzzled by Chuck Tatum saying that it's the quality of the writing that put him off. Dick was never known to be an particularly elegant prose stylist - could be downright clumsy/ugly when he was really churning books out - but it's generally agreed that High Castle is his most 'polished' SF novel. He spent a comparatively long time writing it, it was a rare hardcover original for him, and it won him his only Hugo award. Whereas the opening chapter of UBIK has always struck me as quite an clunky beginning, before the whole thing hits that sweet PKD zone.

Oh, and I recently started Blood Music by Greg Bear, but the first twenty or so pages were so filled with science-speak - that I didn't understand a word of - I quickly set it aside. 'Hard SF' is just not for me, I guess.

I don't think I'd enjoy super Hard SF either but I value the existence of niche and obscure art more than ever, even if it makes me feel frustrated and insecure sometimes.
Anything that makes the "plot and relatable/likable characters are all that matters" crowd miserable is a good thing.