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

Not sure I knew that this paper was available on line, don't think it was linked to before, found it pretty interesting when I took the book it was in out of the library several years ago: http://elms.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/98/2014/07/2000-Painwise-in-Space-single-space.pdf

still on STJoshi-watch: read The Hound last night and was afterwards amused that STJ faithfully noted the borrowings from conan doyle, poe and beirce, while c/p-ing dull explanations of the symbolists, the decadents, the pre-raphs and baudelaire from wikipedia or similar -- and entirely omitted to note that it's basically an eldritched up and very overwritten* remake of COUNT MAGNUS (with sprinklings of A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS) -- tomb-robbing substituted for amateur archeology, the sense of the futility of trying to flee or to return a stolen item, and of course the playful and learned attitude quoting legendary but often actually existing texts from the deep past (except with lovecraft they are all clumsily made up instead: i have always fkn HATED the "mad arab abdul alhazred" as a device)

*(USE FEWER ADJECTIVES HPL!)

also: mildly amazing anecdote involving MRJ, HPL, JMBarrie and PETER PAN'S ACTUAL REAL BROTHER NICO: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveMRJLetter.html

He uses the word cosmic about 24 times.

LOL.

I was hoping that MRJ would comment on the ghost stories of his namesake Henry, but alas no.

I've read that MRJ response to HPL before but not the Nico thing. If I remember correctly the essay places importance on cosmicism.

Amazing that MRJ actually read "Supernatural Horror in Literature" ... one wonders what he would have made of HPL's fiction but perhaps "He uses the word cosmic about 24 times" says it all.

Unless i'm misreading it, James is making a nice distinction between "horrid" (which he likes) and "nasty" (which he doesn't).

"But the moderns are apt to be either woolly or too nasty for me." I choose on next-to-no-evidence to assume this means Lovecraft and Machen ("rather a foul mind") respectively,

M.R. James will always remember old Mr Whatsisname

In Big Sick there's a copy of Supernatural Horror in Literature in Kumail's bedroom.

Algernon Blackwood thought Lovecraft's work had too much rotting flesh.

So, Simak - "City" really is some kind of oddball masterpiece, I can't think of anything like it. "Foundation", maybe, matches it in scope and content in terms of a future history although that is very different in tone and is way more ponderous and poorly written than the compact, lyrical style Simak has. Heinlein did the future history thing too, but Simak's weird combination of folksiness and pastoral nostalgia and tragedy is infinitely more appealing, both funnier and more somber and more human. It's also interesting that it is totally devoid of any kind of villain or good/evil conflict, the characters generally do wrestle with moral quandaries and but there's none of the conventional opposing forces fighting each other stuff, everything is in the context of these larger, uncontrollable forces at work on society (and different types of societies). The farther I go into it (I'm on the 7th story) the more I like it.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/11/top-10-modern-nordic-books

what would you add to this list?

Interesting post. Was it meant for this particular thread though?

simak is the best - just this slightly skewed, odd worldview. "3 body problem" recalled his story-style for me.

Subterranean Press print editions can be pretty expensive, but they've got some nice-priced ebooks, from their site or Amazon etc.; this is one is $2.99:

Robert Silverberg, The Emperor and the Maula

Dust jacket illustration by Jim Burns.(Not so hot, though)

Robert Silverberg’s The Emperor and the Maula was written in 1992 for an aborted publishing project and has been printed only once, in a radically abbreviated version. This deluxe new edition restores more than 15,000 words of missing text, allowing us to see, for the first time, the author’s original intent. The result is both a genuine publishing event and an unexpected gift for Silverberg’s legion of readers.

The Emperor and the Maula is Silverberg’s Scheherazade tale, the story of a woman telling a story in order to extend—and ultimately preserve—her life. The Scheherazade of this striking story is Laylah Walis, denizen of a far-future Earth which has been invaded and conquered by a star-faring race known as the Ansaarans. Laylah is a “maula,” a barbarian forbidden, under pain of death, to set foot on the sacred home worlds of the imperial conquerors. Knowing the risks, Laylah travels to Haraar, home of the galactic emperor himself. Once there, she delays her execution by telling the emperor a story—and telling it well.

That story, the tale within a tale that dominates this book, is, in fact, Laylah’s own story. It is also the story of the beleaguered planet Earth, of people struggling, often futilely, to oppose their alien masters and restore their lost independence. Colorful, seamlessly written, and always powerfully imagined, The Emperor and the Maula shows us Grandmaster Silverberg at his representative best. This is science fiction as it should be written, but all too seldom is. No one does it better than Robert Silverberg. No one ever has.

Also:
What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlín R. Kiernan's fourteenth collection of short fiction, comprised of twenty-eight uncollected and impossible-to-find stories.

Treading the grim places where desire and destruction, longing and horror intersect, the author rises once again to meet the high expectations she set with such celebrated collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, To Charles Fort, With Love, and the World Fantasy Award-winning The Ape's Wife and Other Stories. In these pages you'll meet a dragon's lover, a drowned vampire cursed always to ride the tides, a wardrobe that grants wishes, and a lunatic artist's marriage of the Black Dahlia and the Beast of Gévaudan. You'll visit a ruined post-industrial Faerie, travel back to tropical Paleozoic seas and ahead to the far-flung future, and you'll meet a desperate writer forced to sell her memories for new ideas. Here are twenty-eight tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant—or worse.

The stories in Dear Sweet Filthy World were first published in the subscription-only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlín for her most devoted readers. This publication marks the first availability to the general public for most of these rare tales.

From Publishers Weekly:

“The 28 stories (most previously available only in her e-zine, Sirenia Digest) in Kiernan’s newest collection of dark fiction (after Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea) explore the human and inhuman conditions in all their filthy glory, and bravely wallow in the effluvia of mythology, murder, and depravity…her many fans will be overjoyed to have these works collected.”

From Kirkus Reviews:

“Horror blends with love, obsession, transformed bodies, and terrifying mysteries in this collection of stories. Kiernan's surreal and often unsettling fiction derives much of its power from the way it causes characters and readers alike to question reality via a shroud of narrative ambiguity… At their best, these stories are sinister and beguiling in equal measure, tracing the border between fear and obsession and asking powerful questions about desire along the way.”

From Locus Online:

“Although Kiernan has produced three fine novels, I think it’s safe to say that most of her fans think of her as one our finest and most productive writers of short stories. And so this new collection, her fourteenth, will certainly be received with much delight and acclaim. Containing nearly thirty tales, this handsome volume incidentally proves once again that Subterranean Press continues to be one of the most generous, savvy, elegant and creative publishers around.”

From SFRevu:

“Any fan of dark fiction should be reading Kiernan, and if you haven't discovered her yet this collection is a chance to see what you have been missing.”

Table of Contents:

Werewolf Smile
Vicaria Draconis
Paleozoic Annunciation
Charcloth, Firesteel, and Flint
Shipwrecks Above
The Dissevered Hearts
Exuvium
Drawing from Life
The Eighth Veil
Three Months, Three Scenes, With Snow
Workprint
Tempest Witch
Fairy Tale of the Maritime
– 30 –
The Carnival is Dead and Gone
Scylla for Dummies
Figurehead
Down to Gehenna
The Granting Cabinet
Evensong
Latitude 41°21'45.89"N, Longitude 71°29'0.62"W
Another Tale of two Cities
Blast the Human Flower
Cammufare
Here Is No Why
Hauplatte/Gegenplatte
Sanderlings
Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)

$4.99! I'm gonna get this.

I love Silverbob but I really can't bring myself to care about anything post-1976. I read some of it in high school (Lord Valentine's Castle, iirc) and have dipped into some other short fiction from the 80s but it just doesn't grab me.

If this doesn't show, it's Golden Age and Other Stories by Naomi Novik

https://subterraneanpress.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/g/o/golden_age_ebook_cover_1.jpg

Naomi Novik ended her acclaimed, beloved nine-volume Temeraire series last year with a stunning finale, League of Dragons. Fans missing their favorite series can now rejoice: Novik returns with an original Temeraire collection as unique as the world she has created, with each tale inspired by an accompanying piece of fan art.
The Temeraire novels provide a window into an alternate nineteenth century populated with Novik’s own richly human and unforgettably draconic characters as they adventure alongside well-known historical figures. That tradition continues here. Readers will delight at appearances by fan-favorite characters from the series and historical figures like the famed explorer Matteo Ricci. In “Planting Season,” Novik shows us an early glimpse of American dragon John Wampanoag at Boston Harbor. “Golden Age” finds a dragon who believes he remembers being called Celeste hatch from a shipwreck-tossed crate onto an island where he meets others of his kind. But other famous fictional characters are to be discovered here as well. Readers will certainly recognize a certain Miss Bennet (here Captain Bennet) and her suitor, Mr. Darcy, in “Dragons and Decorum.”

Filled with the inventive world-building, rich detail, sparkling wit, and deep emotion that readers have come to expect from Novik’s work, Golden Age and Other Stories is a treasure at home on any Temeraire-lover’s bookshelf.

From Kirkus (Starred Review):

“So accomplished, absorbing, and wide-ranging is Novik's creation that the stories elicit enormous pleasure… a must-read for all fans of this outstanding series.”

From Publishers Weekly:

“Novik collaborates with her fans in this welcome return to the alternate 19th-century world of her Temeraire series, in which English naval captain William Laurence befriends the newly hatched Chinese dragon he names Temeraire and the two of them enjoy adventures around the globe. Perhaps the best story in the collection is 'Golden Age,' which tells an alternate version of the first meeting between Temeraire (here called Celeste) and Laurence and the formation of their unusual bond.”

From Library Journal:

“This illustrated collection, which can serve as a stand-alone or as a companion volume for readers of military fiction and dragon fiction, will bring joy to the series’ many admirers.”

Table of Contents:

Volly Gets a Cow
Planting Season
Dawn of Battle
Golden Age
Succession
Dragons and Decorum
(drabbles)
$5.99

James P. Blaylock, River's Edge

We’re pleased to present a new Langdon St. Ives adventure. At more than 40,000 words, this is by far the longest of the novellas!

The body of a girl washes up on a mud bank along the edge of the River Medway amid a litter of poisoned fish and sea birds, casting an accusing shadow upon the deadly secrets of the Majestic Paper Mill and its wealthy owners. Simple answers to the mystery begin to suggest insidious secrets, and very quickly Langdon St. Ives and his wife Alice are drawn into a web of conspiracies involving murder, a suspicious suicide, and ritual sacrifice at a lonely and ancient cluster of standing stones. Abruptly St. Ives’s life is complicated beyond the edge of human reason, and he finds himself battling to save Alice’s life and the ruination of his friends, each step forward leading him further into the entanglement, a dark labyrinth from which there is no apparent exit.
$4.99

*Think* I used to come across this guy's stories in Twilight Zone Magazine, back when the TV series was revived--was he good?
from Subterranean Press:

We've been working with David J. Schow for two freaking decades now, and it's high time we published DJStories: The Best of David J. Schow. Need further conivincing? Read on for the full details on this career-spanning collection.
About the Book:
(BONUS COVER FLAP STORY - ABSOLUTELY FREE!)
Once upon a time, there was a writer named David J. Schow.
One of his specialties was the tale of unsettlement, unease, looming fear, straight-up gross-out, unnerving spookiness, gallows-humor black satire, heart-rending loss, the conte cruel, the ironies of fate, and the seductive sorcery of the otherworldly-in a word, horror.
This was by no means his only specialty.
He wrote short stories, then novels, then TV, then movies, fiction and non. He won various awards for this pursuit, including the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the Twilight Zone Dimension Award, and the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award.
As you read this now, he's been engaged in this activity professionally for forty years.
Call him a modern fantasist, a black magic realist, an acerbic satirist, a splatterpunk, a caustic comic, an "urbanized Cormac McCarthy" (John Farris), "smart, scathing, and verbally inventive to an astonishing degree" (Peter Straub), a "literary gunslinger" (Richard Christian Matheson), "the Duke of the Dark" (Mick Garris), "deeply felt but truly chilling" (Weird Tales), "remarkably talented; edgy, insightful, and fearless" (Joe R. Lansdale), a "gifted storyteller" (Robert Bloch), a "cleverly metaphoric literary chameleon" (T.E.D. Klein) ... you get the general drift, right? As Michael Marshall Smith said, "Be prepared to be dragged to some very dark places, and to love every step of the way. Like being punched in the face by a poet."
DJStories is Schow's first "greatest hits" album, covering four decades of his efforts to shake you up, shock you awake, tweak your sensibilities and gun down your preconceptions. Thirty stories- count 'em, thirty!-that cover the entire spectrum of what you may find frightening.
Monsters. Lovers. Spirits. Allies. Killers. The earthly and unearthly. The insane and the too-sane. The dead, the living and the in-between. Fictional folks who just might have an impact on your real, waking life.
This story does not have a happy ending. Guaranteed.
Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies: $40 (Maybe they'll eventually do a cheapo ebook edition, like those in previous Subterranean post.)

About to read Women of Wonder---The Contemporary Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s, edited by Pamela Sargent, Harvest Original trade paperback published 1994.
Contributors:
Octavia E. Butler
Pat Cadigan
Jayge Carr
Angela Carter
Suzy McKee Charnas
C.J.Cherryh
Storm Constantine
Carol Emshwiller
Sheila Finch
Karen Joy Fowler
Mary Gentle
Lisa Goldstein
Nancy Kress
Tanith Lee
Rosaleen Love
Judith Moffett
Pat Murphy
Rebecca Ore
Pamela Sargent
Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Connie Willis

I've been meaning to get that series of anthologies someday.

Would like to read the first Women of Wonder, also edited by Sargent and published ib 1975 or '74:

"Introduction: Women in Science Fiction" – Pamela Sargent
"The Child Dreams" – Sonya Dorman
"That Only a Mother" – Judith Merril
"Contagion" – Katherine MacLean
"The Wind People" – Marion Zimmer Bradley
"The Ship Who Sang" – Anne McCaffrey
"When I Was Miss Dow" – Sonya Dorman
"The Food Farm" – Kit Reed
"Baby, You Were Great" – Kate Wilhelm
"Sex and/or Mr Morrison" – Carol Emshwiller
"Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" – Ursula K. Le Guin
"False Dawn" – Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
"Nobody’s Home" – Joanna Russ
"Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand" – Vonda N. McIntyre

hmm I've only read like half of those stories

bah local library copy is "in library use only"

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?12580

Three volumes in the 70s then the later two select from the 70s series.

couldn't finish Tidhar's "Osama". Very good with the descriptive turns of phrase, and a premise/setup that I was into but totally falls apart plot-wise, he seems to have completely missed that one of the most crucial elements of a noir story is forward motion, dangling enough clues to keep the reader guessing. You can't just throw in a femme fatale and some hired goons and expect the tropes to do all the work. What's left is a shapeless meditation on terrorism that has a lot pretty sentences + imagery but never goes anywhere. I skimmed the last 50 pages.

On to David Hutchinson's "Europe in Autumn"

Good move

"Introduction: Women in Science Fiction" – Pamela Sargent"

this is one of the best things ever by the way.

it's also longer than any of the stories in the collection but i totally could have read a whole book of it.

This just in: according to Wilum Pugmire, Joshi wanted to include "Great God Pan" in the Machen collection but Penguin wouldn't allow it, because it had been in a recent book. That's a dumb reason, Penguin.

Penguin Classics have done stupider things.

https://publishingperspectives.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Morrissey-cover.jpg

Fuck, sorry for huge Morrissey

Would like to read the first Women of Wonder, also edited by Sargent and published ib 1975 or '74

Review by Budrys here

Fuck, sorry for huge Morrissey

He's a classic, after all

I may have mentioned above that Joshi wanted the Clark Ashton Smith book to be mostly poetry but Penguin insisted on mostly stories. Reading CASmith stories recently, I think Penguin may have made a mistake. I find a lot of the stories very padded and often uninteresting, saved by a few powerful descriptions. I've read a few properly good stories so far.

I gather that he written stories to support his family but poetry was his true passion.

I am unconvinced that his poetry is any better:

At Sunrise
Clark Ashton Smith
The moon declines in lonely gold
Among the stars of ashen-grey—
Veiling the pallors of decay
With clouds and glories, fold on fold.

Now, in a crystal interlude,
Stillness and twilight briefly rest,
Ere sudden gules illume the crest
Of peaks where solemn purples brood;

And from the low Favonian bourn
A sweet wind blows so lightly by
It seems the futile silver sigh
Breathed by the lingering moon forlorn.

I liked that fine until the futile sighing forlorn moon.

Here's Joel Lane...

I think Smith is at his best when delivering undiluted Gothic horror, whether it's set in our world or some other landscape. His bleak sensibility, his distaste for religion and his passion for strange imagery all point to his having been an influence on Ligotti.

I'm less enthusiastic about Smith's poetry, which strikes me as hollow, imitative and often quite banal. Stories gave him an opportunity to take a run at the macabre, striking it with force and intensity. Poems dropped him into a swamp of passive and faux-Romantic posturing, with little of the grim urgency that informs his best stories. I may be missing the point of course.

The problem with Smith's poetry is his conscious imitation of a poetic idiom from the early nineteenth century, which renders his poetry something of a static technical exercise rather than part of a living tradition. 'The Hashish Eater' is impressive, certainly, and benefits from being blank verse rather than formal verse – blank verse remains a potent approach within modern poetry, as the late Seamus Heaney demonstrated many times.

Listening to a panel where people try to define a current genre is boring as shit. "How does this genre speak to us about our times". Fuck off.

otm

Reading "Bloodchild" again in xpost Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years reminds me that I long ago had the impression that Butler was taking self-discipline too far in one of her Patternist novels (forget which one, but the Patternmaster *seemed* to be getting his comeuppance, so may or may not have been the finale). That is, she maybe didn't want to pander to the then-mighty cheesy horror boom, so maybe was a little too dry at times, way past effective undercutting of inherent melodrama--if you're gonna set up this kind of scene, c'mon, author---also impression of some arid stretches in the Xenogenesis trilogy---but all that reading really was a long time ago, and right or wrong, I recalled those takes in contrast to re-reading this, and finally realizing that what was always most mind-blowing about it was the compression, the containment, which is what the characters (or some of them) are determined (in more ways than one) to do: to contain the situation, the latest mainfestion of an ongoing precarious balancing act---call it symbiosis or parasitism, either way or both, it's a potential explosion made into something like an implosion---
I thought editor Pamela Sargeant's own story might find this a hard act to follow, but it's effective too--all selections so far are built around fraught, often combustible relationships, within as well as between genders, races, species.

I'd very much recommend the Butler episode of Geek's Guide To The Galaxy on youtube. The talk of her trying to write less fucked up books in the hopes of being a bestseller is fascinating. Also how much unfinished work she left behind.

I don't recall ever reading anything by her that seemed fucked-up in the least, but yeah there was (sometimes) a sense of muted conflict behind the words ---and at least part of that may well have been trying to find a way to make a living at it and live with herself. "Bloodchild" and Kindred and a number of others seem fully realized though, at least from this reader's POV (I mean wtf more could she ask of herself or her creations---but I've been there as a scribbler).

https://theslot.jezebel.com/trumps-wildly-unqualified-judicial-nominee-is-also-a-gh-1820431214/amp

I remember this guy being interviewed and saw a fair amount of middling to positive reviews of his books. I bet a shitload of people are going to delete those reviews and pretend they never liked him.

the shadow over innsmouth is bad not good

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gerryanderson/images/e/ee/Aquaphibians.png/revision/latest?cb=20170525172404

blank verse remains a potent approach within modern poetry, as the late Seamus Heaney demonstrated many times.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, November 1, 2017 2:28 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah no

Remember that's Joel Lane not me. I've never read Heaney.

yeah, i got that, sorry. its just an annoying sentence to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i tried with the penguin clark ashton smith but just couldn't. i think i felt more sympathetic to it when i had a bunch of it in a gollancz fantasy masterwork with a lord leighton on the cover or smth.

I'm sure the fantasy masterworks cover was JK Potter.

mark, if that is a screengrab of a Shadow Over Innsmouth adaptation I'd like to see it!

https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/67380/stingray-the-complete-series-50th-anniversary-edition/ ...