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

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

still need to read those/pvmic

I like Mendlesohn, she's on goodreads with occasional reviews. I recall some taking issue with that book because she excludes fairy tales, which has been a very popular mode for the last two decades.

i love those timescape wolfe paperbacks to death

it's funny how much the covers embody Lethem's complaint about generic ugliness of the era, they really give zero indication of the depths inside

still need to read those/pvmic

dude get on this

I think the Don Maitz Timescape cover for Shadow Of The Torturer is actually good. His others for the series less so.

I just Googled those Timescape covers - must say, much prefer the UK covers by the great Bruce Pennington:

https://i1.wp.com/www.djabbic.co.uk/BookCovers/Images/BrucePennington/TheShadowOfTheTorturer_1982.jpg

it's the best of the four, def. And they all can be said to reasonably depict events from the book but they don't really convey the tone of the narrative.

xp

Pennington definitely an improvement!

Think that one came up upthread in link to and discussion of Viriconium cover art

I am continuing to read Hugo winners, slowly. 'Nightwings' by Robert Silverberg has all his strengths - great invention and storytelling, a dash of well-handled cosmic mysticism - and some of his weaknesses - chiefly, really corny sexy stuff - definitely the v worst thing with the UK/US New Wavers in general, or those older writers keeping up w/ the times, eg 'Gonna Roll the Bones' by Fritz Leiber, which mixes the near obligatory gratuitous sexism w/ a number of gratuitous racial slurs too - dangerou vision, fuck you. This one won both the Hugo and Nebula, but seems like a just ok gambling w/ the devil story, rather floridly told. Leiber seems to have a massive rep w/ other SF writers - Moorcock, Ellison, William Gibson all massive fans - but the little of him I've read (and he seems to have been insanely prolific over many years, despite 'substance abusing' alcohol, according to Wiki) hasn't really blown me away compared to Dick, Bester, Pohl, Damon Knight! - perhaps others here can point me in the right direction!

I can't! never been able to get into Leiber. His appeal eludes me.

I have enjoyed some of his classic stories such as “A Pail of Air” and You’re All Alone aka The Sinful Ones freaked me out when I read it as a nipper, but there’s a lot of his stuff I couldn’t quite get into. It just seemed too middle of the road, neither well-written enough (because of the alcohol?) or pulpy enough or clever or weird enough despite having some Weird accoutrements- witches, cats black or otherwise, etc. Having said this, I am still about to give his sword and sorcery another try.

For a second there I thought I was reading the Elvis POLL and that you were referring to Jerry Leiber and said “wtf?” to myself.