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

Oo, I had Peter Davison's Book of Alien Planets

And yes, i will be buying the spaceships book!

I guess this counts? It's a picture book about a cat that gets sucked into a video game and everything goes a bit Tron, except with dogs and cats. Apart from the pictures, it's just blank lined pages for you to write the story in.

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Outside of that my first apart from the usual Adams/Pratchett were probably the equally usual fantasy-scifi-comedy books that were popular at the time: Craig Shaw Gardner, Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat, Red Dwarf novels, Robert Rankin, Paranoia ERPG manuals. Also think I read the (non-PKD) novelisation of Total Recall by Piers Anthony (!).

https://clutterreport.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/total-recall.jpg

Oops italicked instead of imgd

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Actually quite recent. Read a bunch of stories straddling horror, fantasy and science fiction in the mid-00s by Hodgson and Lovecraft. Then I Am Legend by Matheson a bit after that, which is far more SF than horror in my view.
First proper science fiction I've read was probably Moorcock's Behold The Man in 2013.

Hmmmm https://www.scribd.com/doc/315390341/Terran-Trade-Authority-Handbook-SPACECRAFT-2000-to-2100AD#

"what was the first sci-fi people can remember being exposed to?"

http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327271903l/1697749.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3171/2614343341_5f9f4f0db9.jpg

and then probably the lotus caves by JC after i read the two above.

those were my era-appropriate covers...

Ooh, yeah, came to those via the unfinished BBC series: they never got to book 3

I'm pretty sure my first intro to sf was the Tom Swift Jr. series of books by Victor Appleton II.

This is kind of an interesting question

someone find the good bits in this lot and let us know, thanks

https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine

Wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't stay there long, other similar things have been removed before.

omg

lol so many Willy Ley lead stories, don't think I've ever read a word of his stuff

man I wish I wasn't at work I'd love to dig into some of those Damon Knight and William Tenn stories I've never gotten ahold of

reading Breaking Point by C.J. Box and it's even better than the C.J. Box book I just read. And that one was really good. Evil E.P.A. agents! Boooooooo!

also one of the grossest things i've read in a while was a scene - i'm gonna tell you the scene because you will never read this book - where this guy is stumbling through the forest with his hands tied and its night and he's dying of dehydration and he stumbles upon what he thinks is a small stream and starts drinking from it and it turns out its the inside of a huge mule deer carcass and he had been drinking rotten blood. EWWWWW!!! stephen king must have read that and smacked his forehead and said why didn't I think of that!?

oh shit meant that for general reading thread. ignore.

giant mule deer carcasses that can be mistaken for streams, you say? not for this thread, you say?

Am currently reading and enjoying (tho' not as much as I enjoyed The Alteration) Pavane by Keith Roberts. Knew almost nothing about Roberts before finding these gems published on David Langford's Ansible website shortly after Roberts' death:

Mike Moorcock: 'Never knew a bloke so determined to destroy himself. I expected this earlier, frankly. I think it's a mercy someone that miserable is dead. Put that in your newspaper, Mr Langford!' • Brian Aldiss: 'There was a time when Roberts' remarkable talent showed to best effect – in the days when he wrote Pavane and "Weihnachtsabend", a brilliant piece of work. Unfortunately, he became rather proud and quarrelsome. Literary agents and publishers (never mind his friends) did not care to deal with him. This is not the time to offer chapter and verse.... RIP.' • Malcolm Edwards has just reissued Pavane: 'With an irony somehow totally appropriate to Keith's life a finished copy arrived on my desk the morning I heard of his death. Speaking about Pavane to colleagues I said something to the effect that it was one of the finest sf novels ever written, by a man who at his best was a brilliant writer, but sadly also the most difficult human being I've ever had to work with.'

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?

oddly, I just came across a reference to lysergic acid being used to forcibly induce insanity on a subject in Kornbluth's "MS Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie" (a p funny meta/recursive sf story about writers) which is from even earlier: 1957.

Recently seen someone really praising Keith Roberts and I think they mentioned how he rubbed people the wrong way. Wish I could remember who.

You mean besides two posts up? I've seen Christopher Priest say the same thing and I imagine many others must have chimed in as well

Kind of amazed how many erotic horror anthologies there was in the 90s. A lot of them had cover art by Mel Odom. There was 13 volumes in the Hot Blood series! But I've read a few of the stories and those selections weren't even supposed to be erotic. Anyone expecting a wank from Ramsey Campbell's "Again" will be dismayed.

Re that Galaxy collection:

> Wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't stay there long, other similar things have been removed before.

"Note: The novelette "Horse Trader" by Poul Anderson has been removed from this online copy at the request of the estate of Poul Anderson."

and a couple of hours later there's been a massive take down of issues. from nearly complete runs of the first 5 or 6 years to about a third of that...

i started on a list of stories but it doesn't seem worth finishing that now.

http://lasfs.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=505&Itemid=281

<3 Sheckley

yeah! don't think I'd seen a pic of him before

Really? Not even this one: http://www.jgballard.ca/non_fiction/jgb_new_metaphor_future1973.html

More here: http://www.jgballard.ca/deep_ends/jgb_rio_convention.html

whoah!

Niven looks like a combo of Eric Bloom and Jeff Lynne

Now if only there existed a picture of Horace Gold's poker group.

Also want to reiterate that I believe Ballard said he was inspired to become an SF writer when he was sitting around leafing through Galaxy magazine during pilot training downtime in Moose Jaw or Medicine Hat, in which he must have been reading Sheckley.

kinda want to go back in time and punch harlan

Ha, he is the worst.

By he, I mean HE™

Lol

He's def not as great or important as he thinks he is

His shtick has gone on for so long am reluctant to go back and reread to see if any of his stuff holds up.

It does not

That simplifies things

Only read a handful of Ellison fictions. Some of it good, some forgettable. My brother tells me "The Function Of Dream Sleep" and the Glass Teat books are winners.

I love a lot of the interviews and stage talks. Many of the rants are bad and unconvincing and sometimes he goes really low to shock. His story about an old eccentric friend from SF fandom was so beautifully told. He's one of the few writers whose readings enhance his writing.

One of the rants I agreed with was his insistence that all the really old and important SF writers should just get lifetime achievement awards in one ceremony before going back to one per year.
The counterargument of the time was that it would demean an award to give out so many in such a short time. But Ellison thought since they're definitely going to get those awards eventually, you might as well do it when they're alive.

I understand people who don't care for awards but a lifetime achievement award is a lot less likely to be unearned. RL Stine won a horror lifetime achievement award once but that must have been for indoctrinating so many children.
I think these awards are good for writers who have gone out of fashion or were never really that popular but have enduring critical acclaim. Lifetime achievement awards might not sell many books but at least it helps secure a legacy and it might be a relief to see that happen when you're alive.

been awhile since I've re-read the only Ellison collection I own ("I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream") but I recall the title story and a few others as being solid. His self-satisfaction with himself and his concepts really does ooze off the page though, his ego upstages his talents and his ambition outpaced his capacity.

and oddly I've never read the original Dangerous Visions (never even seen a copy, but I have read most of what was included in other anthologies) but he deserves some credit there as an editor. But Moorcock or Gold or Pohl he was not.

i have no mouth and i must scream is deeply unpleasant.

dangerous Visions has some very good stories, but his intros are rubbish and his own contribution is shithouse

I once seen someone saying his intros were better than the stories, which seemed like an awful thing to say about an anthology.