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

Not quite "all male," def not incl C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett for inst.

Just the other day I picked up a nice cheap hardcover of this anthology, which has to be a key text for the "50s were the real Golden Age/To hell with the New Wave" critical position:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Age_of_Science_Fiction_(anthology)

These days I definitely have more time for golden age comics.

I'll take a random Golden Age comic over a random Silver Age one these days - the Silver Age obviously attained greater heights but its rank and file stuff is repetitive and formulaic as fuck while with a golden age comic you never know what's gonna happen.

Chuck Tatum, why did you regret reading that novel? As it's only 192pp long, it's a curious one to regret.

Seems like Golden Age (or even Silver) is an uncertain term. I just read an article about Robert Sheckley, who I had thought was Golden Age, saying something like 'Sheckley was one of those writers of that undefined and under-researched period in SF, the 1950s ...'

I can't remember what Golden and Silver mean with comics either.

Ward Fowler, that wiki link does not work -- which book did you have in mind? I have read one edited by K. Amis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Age_of_Science_Fiction_(anthology)

Apologies, yes, it's the Amis anthology. Includes quite a long introduction where Amis is highly critical of Ballard and Aldiss' flirtations with the New Wave - but he still includes stories by them both! He also draws a comparison with modern jazz and the New Wave.

Grr I can't work out why that bloody link isn't working here

Yes that is a very readable book - I learned a lot from it, although the intro is so partisan.

Ballard reviewed it and dedicated the review to a riposte to Amis! That's in his book of essays:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_User%27s_Guide_to_the_Millennium

(ilx eats the last ) and breaks the link. happily, the wikipedia error page you end up on has a link to the correct page on it - "Did you mean: The Golden Age of Science Fiction (anthology)?")

Yep, this is the anthology in question:

https://pictures.abebooks.com/ORLAN_DO/3967325261.jpg

The version I read:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61AhjH6ZYfL.SX316.SY316.jpg

What about New Maps of Hell, what was in that?

New Maps of Hell is a series of lectures that Amis gave on SF at the end of the 1950s, gathered together in a book - no fiction.

There are also the Spectrum series of anthologies that Amis co-edited w/ Robert Conquest, five in total. To be honest, I first thought that this Golden Age anthology was just a boil down of the Spectrums, but - credit to Amis - there are only a couple of stories in common (Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl being one of them - Amis REALLY liked Pohl!)

Great story.

still haven't been able to hunt that one down, kinda annoyed tbh

The book?

no, just "Tunnel Under the World". I actually have several Pohl short fiction collections and it's in none of them.

isfdb is good for this stuff

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?45822

in fact that points out that it's here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31979

oh I know it's been reprinted a bunch of places it's just one of those things where I'm like "am I really going to buy this collection for one story" (also I hate reading long-form stuff online)

I got the Platinum Pohl collection awhile ago and was surprised it was not included

I know Tunnel Under The World from the Aldiss' Penguin Science Fiction anthology, which I'm guessing is not quite so common in the US either.

The first Spectrum anthology leads off with another great Pohl story, The Midas Plague - just the kind of social satire that Amis was especially keen on.

I printed 'Tunnel under the World' out and read it on paper! I think it (link above) was a facsimile of the original magazine pages, which were interesting with illustrations.

better facsimile, actual scans of the pages of this and the rest of the Jan 1955 edition of Galaxy, here: https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1955-01

(and hundreds more here: https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine download the pdf or djvu, read on your tablet...)

some of this looks pretty interesting: http://www.sfintranslation.com/?p=4937

I wish ppl would stop appending "punk" to sf lit subgenres though

Chuck Tatum, why did you regret reading that novel? As it's only 192pp long, it's a curious one to regret.

― the pinefox, Monday, 30 July 2018 11:32 (eleven hours ago) Permalink

Ha, I just hated it for reasons I couldn't grasp, but I felt duty-bound to finish it as it was a friend's recommendation. Then it just took me FOREVER to slog through to the end, and the low page count kept taunting me: "Why haven't you finished me yet, I'm only 192pp, you fucking loser". Anyway eventually it ended and I was happy.

I think he's probably a good writer and I just resent my inability to read him.

Chuck, I had an experience that was very strangely analogous to yours.

I first read the book years ago, and it took me ages - and I couldn't understand why, as it was so short (the shortest Lethem novel?). Maybe it was a kind of intellectual density, ie: on a given page someone would say something riddling that would take me time to think about, and I would get stuck. But mostly it was just my own inertia and slowness as a reader.

But I have reread it twice since, and on those occasions essentially just taken a day.

I guess there must be things in it that could irritate, but on balance I really like this novel. I think it's light, yet also deep (ie: intellectually suggestive). The brevity and crispness (notwithstanding my earlier difficulties) seem the best way to handle such potentially weighty materials (as physics, the nature of Nothing, etc).

I think it must be one of the best 5 or so JL novels, along with, say: FORTRESS, BROOKLYN, GUN, GIRL.

Amnesia Moon is v good too

and This Shape We're In

Yes, I like them. AMNESIA MOON does have the sense of being a very early work - certain images like the McDonalds staff who carry on serving in a desert are very 2000AD, sort of teenage satire.

that's true, it feels like a "first novel" in a way that "Gun, With Occasional Music" does not. I still like it though.

I think it was mostly written earlier!

huh well that would explain it. news to me! Lethem's disappearance into his own navel is one of the bigger disappointments to me, as an sf genre partisan. he coulda been a contendah...

I will similarly be bummed if Charles Yu abandons the genre for shitty TV writing gigs

There was some article we talked about a few years ago where JL got po-faced about the genre’s defensiveness. Not sure how to look for it right now though.

Perhaps this links to it: Maybe this links : http://therumpus.net/2009/08/29007/

some interesting quotes there

dunno if he's correct about the jackets being the big issue, that seems like a bit of a tangent

There was a much more recent article he wrote in The New Yorker about how it was too depressing for him to Gather in the Hall of the Planetsattend sf conventions anymore because of the depressing grandiose neediness of the unloved writers. Afraid I don’t have the mad ILX0r phone search skillz to find right now

Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama, which commentator Carter Scholz rightly deemed “less a novel than a schematic diagram in prose.”

lol otm

the depressing grandiose neediness of the unloved writers

I have a hard time believing this is anything specific to sf

No, lots of genre fiction and probably non-genre too

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/this-week-in-fiction-jonathan-lethem-4

That’s close but not sure that was it either. Funny that he cites Sturgeon’s Law as “someone once said.”

Have to say that piece was p irritating in its forced drollery

But then I generally hate the NYer so

RIP New Yorker

not really