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

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.

the opening chapter of UBIK

iirc a significant chunk of this chapter is descriptions of people's ridiculous clothes, which, tbh I always find hilarious

i like reading technical stuff for some reason. even though i'm dumb. i like reading really long interviews with audio engineers and stuff like that as well. even though i'm dumb. i find it soothing. i figure i'll get the gist of it. i am the least math and science-oriented person you will ever meet.

i like that too, it's like I'm resting on a thick comfortable mattress of science which I do not understand at all but feels good on my back

JnJ otm!

this blish story ("this earth of ours") from 1959 mentions "lysergic acid grenades"? Who was hip to LSD back then?

Blish worked for Pfizer after WWII, maybe that's how he heard about it. I wonder if that phrase gave Brian Aldiss the idea for Barefoot in the Head.

yeah I made that connection to

too

Whereas the opening chapter of UBIK has always struck me as quite an clunky beginning,

Interesting! Given how much I'm enjoying Ubik I will probably go back and try MITHC again. The first chapter of Ubik is entertaining, though! It's full of exposition but I like how the PKD narrator keeps including jaded phrases like "of course" and "as usual" as if everything happening is just the same old same old - it's quite a nifty way of doing world-building without being square about it. (I'm guessing this is a typical PKD trope?)

iirc a significant chunk of this chapter is descriptions of people's ridiculous clothes, which, tbh I always find hilarious

Yeah lol I read this description and was, like, I have no fucking idea how to picture this but it's funny and gets the vibe across:

He wore a varicolored Dacron wash-and-wear suit, knit cummerbund and dip-dyed cheese-cloth cravat. His head, massive like a tomcat’s, thrust forward as he peered through slightly protruding, round and warm and highly alert eyes.

(I'm guessing this is a typical PKD trope?)

this is def a thing he does a lot. The off-the-wall descriptions in the opening chapter stuck out to me though, in that it seems like a sustained riff that I don't remember him really leaning on much in other books. (He does generally have a tendency to throw in silly/cheap elements into any given scene but he really lays it on thick in the beginning of Ubik)

got this for father's day, looks fantastic. Pic of him on the jacket is great, sad that he died when he was only 34

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fd.gr-assets.com%2Fbooks%2F1376407621l%2F41605.jpg&f=1

that looks great

iirc he had abominable oral hygiene (where did i read that)

aw the lovable scamp
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nndb.com%2Fpeople%2F218%2F000077984%2Fcmk-2.gif&f=1

iirc he had abominable oral hygiene (where did i read that)

Damon Knight, The Futurians.

Kornbluth said there was a story in his family that one day when a passerby cooed at him in his baby carriage, he announced, "Madam, I am not the child you think me." His parents, like Wollheim's, were nonreligious Jews; Kornbluth didn't find out about dietary laws until one summer at Grossinger's, a famous Jewish resort in the Catskills, when he innocently asked the waitress for ham and eggs.

He had a deep voice, Tartar eyes and a sullen expression. He rarely smiled, and when he did, did not expose his teeth. The reason for this may have been that he never brushed them, and they were green.

That first sentence quoted there caused genuine lols

Books i find on the street pt. 973 pic.twitter.com/r6bL235Gsu

— Chief Rocketeer (@JoshuaBizabcock) June 20, 2017

that cover fucking ROCKS

1955!

Silverbob's first published book

trying to remember what paperback that kornbluth cover is from...i know i have it at home.

looks like a Richard M. Powers

yeah, he was so awesome. the painting was for sale!

http://www.artnet.com/artists/richard-powers/man-on-earth-paperback-cover-b4rsyQCyN6t4VOT32cZGUA2

best covers:

https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&biw=1366&bih=662&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=richard+powers+paperback+cover&oq=richard+powers+paperback+cover&gs_l=img.3...34350.43905.0.44353.68.42.5.0.0.0.171.3778.28j12.40.0....0...1.1.64.img..33.14.1319...0j35i39k1j0i67k1j0i7i30k1j0i7i5i30k1j0i8i7i10i30k1j0i8i7i30k1.nSUULVYWjAU#imgrc=_

Andy Partridge agrees: http://chalkhills.org/reelbyreal/a_Powers.html

Just read the first two stories (the second almost a novelette, developmentally as well as length-wise) in Kelly Link's Get In Trouble: immediately tasty bits but positively 0 spoon-feeding the reader. Respect!