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

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

So Charles Yu is good? Heard mixed things but could really use some good lit-genre reads rn.

He's ooooookay.

Link to full 1998 article:
https://hipsterbookclub.livejournal.com/1147850.html

Outis, I think you have a point about JL's development -- he was mostly at his best when he stayed closest to the resources of SF, and in for instance DISSIDENT GARDENS he leaves those completely, and the effect may not be satisfactory.

Never seen that 2012 interview - kind of interesting in its forced drollery / fictionality or whatever. And 'My Internet' might be worth reading.

I think the piece you have in mind might be 'What I Learned at the SF Convention', which is reprinted in THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE (2011).

Ballard reviewed it and dedicated the review to a riposte to Amis! That's in his book of essays

Thanks Pinefox, I read this yesterday - Ballard's response is fairly genial, although in some way he caricatures Amis in much the same way that Amis caricatures the New Wave.

thx for the link pinefox

lol @ Crying of Lot 49 post header

that's a good piece, not much to argue with apart from minor quibbles due to personal taste

although it did occur to me that he neatly elides the fact that the New Wave stuff just didn't sell well. Silverberg's comments in his collected short story volumes make it abundantly clear that while *he* loved writing that stuff, his sales tanked. And I doubt "Beyond Apollo" or "Barefoot in the Head" really flew off the shelves.

Ya think?

it just seems kinda convenient to ignore the fact that one of the reasons this stuff didn't break through into the mainstream was that it didn't even really have the commercial support of the genre audience itself. From a publishing point of view, it's like the New Wave guys wanted to ditch the sf audience entirely and go straight for the NYT Book Review audience, who couldn't have cared less (for reasons Lethem outlines fairly well)

I’ve never quite decided which side to take in this Don’t Git Above Your Raisin’ debate

heh that's a funny way to put it. I think for my part I don't entirely share Lethem's stated desire of genre boundaries being totally dissolved, nor do I really sympathize with some quest for respectability or approval from the wider (or "higher") culture. At the same time, (if it isn't obvious already) I really enjoy genre works in general, but especially those that push against or wrestle with genre conventions. Having these ready-made tools and tropes and reference points and boundaries to play with is often a good thing, whether it's metal or noir films or science fiction. That tension that comes from trying to use genre elements to make them do *something else* than what they normally do, I love that. And I suppose I'm supportive of fostering whatever conditions are necessary to produce more of that work. I don't particularly care if they are popular or highly acclaimed so much as I care that they get made at all.

Yup

I'm sure Lethem's list is incredibly good but it seems like there's not much room for FUN

The follow up to The Martian is 99p on Kindle daily deal today in the UK. Artemis.

There's a Tchaikovsky book called the Ironclads in the monthly deal as well. I thought I'd recognised the name from here but that was an HG Wells story, not this. (I haven't read my copy of children of time yet so I'm not sure he's any good, but...)

Outis -- I think you're exactly right. This is something that Lethem's past pronouncements on the issue surprisingly fail to see.

I think that JL himself has been best when using a clear sense of genre to push against and to shape the work, so the point applies as much to his own fiction too.

latest reading for me: Farah Mendlesohn, RHETORICS OF FANTASY (2008).

Really broad-based taxonomy of different kinds of fantasy narrative: portal / quest; immersive; intrusive; liminal. Great to have this kind of clarity even if she can then explore the divergences across it. Readings of Tolkien, Lewis, Terry Pratchett, Diana Wynne Jones, China Miéville et al. Disarmingly open style in which she says things like 'I now find that I agree with the reader's report for this book'.

Sounds interesting - Todorov for Tolkienistas!

came across a complete set of OG 80s paperbacks of Wolfe's Book of the New Sun novels the other day and dipped back in, man these books are great