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

RIP, bigtime R.A. Lafferty fan.

A superfan died?

Listening now to npr's Labor Day replay of excerpts from Studs Terkel's reel-to-reel interviews for the book Working (which became a musical, an unusual and good one, I'm told), I just remembered his and Calvin Trillin's "Nightcap" series, for the early 80s A&E Network: here they're talking with Asimov, Ellison, and Wolfe (some of whom appear elsewhere on this page)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZvcKB9vQO0

Working musical is good but really the book is where it's at.

no sci-fi for calvin trillin:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/books/review/calvin-trillin-by-the-book.html?_r=0

So James Atlas has a new book about being a biographer. Does this mean his excellent Delmore Schwartz bio will come back into print?

Ha, sorry, wrong ILB thread, was momentarily fooled by Calvin Trillin.

For some reason I need to tell someone this, and there is nowhere else appropriate: I have just (finally) remembered that my years-long-lost copy of Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, the pursuit of which has seen many a basement box ransacked and bookcase peeked behind, was in fact a library book, which I returned promptly and without fine after reading.

starting in on Lavar Tidhe's "Central Station" and Clifford Simak's "City":

second-tier Lem imo

xp

hi nerds :) i just finished Name of The Wind, and started Wise Man's Fear today. I forgot that he's still working on Bk 3 though so i might try for a more leisurely pace with this one

I really love the writing but Kvothe as a character is v frustrating though. Like for someone that smart he is a goddamn meathead. Also I did get kind of tired of "hey let me tell you how great I am at this thing" but it's still a really engaging story all the same.

Also I dont even know the full deal w Deanna yet but omg srsly this is like Raymond Chandler 101 and he is a lummox

I got halfway through the first book and got a bit tired of the main character, then put it away. It gets a bit "Mansplaining: The Fantasy Role Playing Game."

If the third book gets good reviews, I'll try again though. The writing is good - it reminds me of the trashy mainstream fantasy I read as a teenager, except with sentences that adult me wouldn't cluck at.

On recommendation, I just read the kids' book Holes, which has some magical realism whatnot. It's so good.

Those books are so weirdly overrated and the main character is one of the most irritating creations in the genre's history. The endless "Kovthe is really really good at sex" section in the second book is completely laughable

and yet I probably will still read the third one lol

I liked NotW well enough but it did not put enough... er, wind at my back to drive me into the second book. Robin Hobb is still champ of currently active doorstop fantasy writers IMO. VG I think you would like her.

*googles* whoa she has like 9000 books! where should i start?

Farseer trilogy seems to be her classic. Starts with Assassin's Apprentice.

thx!

Yes and it feeds into subsequent trilogies. The first three are
Farseer trilogy (the ones with assassin in the title)
Liveship trilogy (the ones with ship in the title)
Fool trilogy (the ones with fool in the title)

And it goes on from there. Iirc the only books she's written that don't fit into that world are the soldier son trilogy (which djp is always quick to tell us are super gross).

She just published the final book in this setting this year. I'm quite a ways back from that, in the fool trilogy.

Farseer/Liveship/Tawny Man series are all great. Stay far far far FAR away from the Soldier Son trilogy, which actively angered me to the point where I have refused to pick up any of her other books.

xp: lol hi dere, I am predictable

You're Dan Perry?

seriously though, I don't know what she was thinking re: Soldier Son aside from "how can I come up with a unique magic system" without completing the thought with "that people will want to read about without hurling"

xp: last time I checked

Why was it that bad, I thought it was just gross in a gross-out way?

I haven't read it.

Maybe it wasn't as terrible for anyone else, but for me the whole concept of stuffing yourself with food past the point of fullness causes me psychosomatic pain.

Sounds kind of funny, is it used for comedy?

Not in the slightest.

my bad, it's called the tawny man trilogy not the fool trilogy, thx djp

I've never read a John Wyndham book and kinda want to. Should I? What's a good one?

The Day of the Triffids is his most famous work for a reason

Chocky isn't bad

They're all good imo but yeah I would with Triffids. Kraken Wakes is more of the same, Chocky is classic YA.

Seen some really passionate for The Chrysalids.

What about Robin Hobb's books under the name Megan Lindholm? Her real name is Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden.

omg she's megan lindholm?

i've had wizard of pigeons on my list to read forever but it's out of print

ok def reading robin hobb then

Yeah IIRC she hit some sort of wall wrt writing and decided fuck it, pen name time, and had a renaissance.

I haven't read any OG lindholm stuff.

On recommendation, I just read the kids' book Holes, which has some magical realism whatnot. It's so good. Haven't read the book, but really liked the movie.

IT'S SO FUN READ IT NOW

WYNDHAM: The Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids are the pure good stuff.

Just read Dave hUTCHINSON'S SPACE OPERA NOVELLA aCADIE, WHICH WAS FUN AND CLEVER AND fuck I can't use caps lock properly

Been looking at hundreds of listings of small press magazines and buying a few here and there. It's just astonishing how many there were.
DF Lewis made a thread with cover scans of a lot of the magazines he appeared in. Cover art quality is all over the place.
http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/672/small-press-cover-ark?page=1

Lavie Tidhar's "Central Station" is okay so far - a lot of description (some of which gets p repetitive) and not much in the way of a plot or central conflict 100 pages in, he seems more preoccupied with detailing this exotic tableau he's come up with. idk, I'll probably finish it but I'm getting the impression this isn't going to amount to much more than a bunch of wacky concepts and ethnographic mash-ups.

That's about right for Central Station, I enjoyed it but it's more a collection of interlinked short stories (a lot of it is previously published in Interzone etc) than a novel that actually builds to something.

Sounds Vancian? I'm intrigued.

I actually liked the repetitiveness of the descriptive passages, kinda hypnotic.

His Gorel books are weird adventure stuff.

watched this yesterday. almost cried! i'm an old softy. sound/video is messed up but it doesn't matter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deuas-AuzbU

I haven't read a ton of Vance but I don't get a Vance vibe from Tidhar. As far as old-school references go, he does have one story in here that is an extended riff on CL Moore's first and best-known story, "Shambleau", and there's a number of other minor refs to other sci-fi works ("ubicked" is used as a verb, for ex.)

I've read first two earthseas in a sitting each and have really enjoyed the sparse simplicity of them tbh

VG, if you want even more robin Gibb advice, the liveship and rain wilder books are imo skippable

Essentially Fitz and the fool are great and there's none of those books to keep you going (though if you found kvothe a maddening meathead I dunno how frustrated some of the mcguffining will make you tbh)

That is an autocorrect

But it is a damn fine one

woudl read sci-fi books written by Robin Gibb. Sad mopey space operas about ships crashing into each other

i finally went back to reading The Mote In God's Eye. i was kinda limping through it. when does it become the greatest sci-fi novel ever written (according to heinlein)? it's okay. i've read about five books in the meantime. but i'll finish it. don't know if i'll get to the sequel though.

(sometimes my brain can't handle the idea of collaborations. it's a thing i have. it makes me nervous not knowing who wrote what. i tend to avoid them. which is irrational, but it's a brain thing...)