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

Silverbob's politics are weird

My daughter went to DragonCon this weekend and got me Larry Niven's autograph -- I got perverse pleasure in getting it buried on page 186 of a ratty copy of the 1971 collection Quark/4. "The Fourth Profession" is my favorite of his stories and that was where I first read it. My daughter reports that Niven isn't tracking very well at all, not too compos mentis.

I've been working my way through the early Nebula Award Stories collections, each one edited by a different big name SF writer. Volume 4, edited by Poul Anderson, only confirms my dislike for this author. This is from his introduction (published in 1969) - his subject is the contemporary inter-relationship between modern literary fiction and science fiction:

"Most science fiction has also preserved its own traditional virtues. It still tells stories, wherein things happen. It remains more interested in the glamour and mystery of existence, the survival and triumph and tragedy of heroes and thinkers, than in the neuroses of some snivelling fagot (sic)."

So give me Delany, for all his gaucheries, over this fucking guy always.

Volume 4 is all told a bit of a dud, anyway - over 100 pages of Anne Mcaffrey's interminable dragon fantasia was the SF story I've most struggled to finish since - Poul Anderson's 'No Truce With Kings'...

never bothered to read a word of Anderson, he sounds terrible

also signed his name to that pro-Vietnam War thing iirc

Not fiction, but I just bought:

Frederik Pohl: THE WAY THE FUTURE WAS - a memoir.

Seems a really rich piece of personal cultural history about SF from c.1920s on - the formation of clubs, societies, Golden Age.

Ooh I’ll read that

I got a copy of that when it first came out from the SF Book Club when I was in high school. Got his autograph too at a convention.

Wow!

Pohl also blogged for the last ~5 years of his life, with many juicy biographical reminiscences. Probably a great supplement to that book, which I'd like to read.

Gosh!

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/avjdpa/frederick-pohl-424-v15n12

I don't understand why that article is so virulently anti-Ray Bradbury. Goodness knows there is room for both of them and more.

Yeah, that blog is full of good stuff. Seems like he was a real mensch, based on that book, that blog, seeing him speak at the convention and the 30 seconds I talked to him.
xp

btw it's the interviewer, not Pohl, who is hostile to Bradbury.

I found that link via the blog.

Yeah, that’s a bizarre angle, like Bob Dylan talking up Buck Owens and trashing Merle Haggard.

would read Pohl memoir. he always seemed like a standup guy with p good taste to me

I don't understand why that article is so virulently anti-Ray Bradbury.

because Vice hires shitty writers

that interview is absolutely bizarre

I'm enjoying the Karen Tidbeck books so far, thanks for the tip ILB.

which one are you reading? also sorry for mispelling it (it's Karin)

was surprised to find out she translates her own stuff

Oops my bad. I'm actually reading both at the same time, I'll read a story from Jagannath before bed (um, aloud to my partner) and then some of Amatka.

was surprised to find out she translates her own stuff

Wow, that's fascinating, and seems very rare even for multi-lingual authors? Like mastering your own record. I was thinking that the translation was very good.

Tidbeck said she knew that the chances of getting translated into English were very slim. You'd have to be a real phenomenon in Sweden for that to happen so she wisely translated herself and ended up writing a lot of her work in English first.

There's a lot of writers from all over the world who just go straight to the English market because it's probably your best shot at getting the biggest audience and the general community aspect is inevitably bigger too.

Moorcock is a big Poul Anderson fan (I'm sure he said Broken Sword is better than Lord Of The Rings, but he never really liked the latter) and I've heard enough stanning that I'm going to have to at least read Broken Sword, Three Hearts & Three Lions, Hrolf Kraki's Saga, War Of The Gods and Tau Zero.

I don't know why I never taken bigger advantage of Fopp's 2 for £5 deal before, because I'll never find all these books for cheaper (when you factor postage+packaging). So I bought 14 books and will probably get more.

Why do publishers allow Fopp to sell them so cheap. How do certain books get stocked so well in there? PKDick and LeGuin make sense and I can imagine the Strugatsky's somehow doing well in Fopp but there's also a pile of Bernard Taylor, Holdstock's Mythago Wood and McKillip's Forgotten Beasts Of Eld. I'm happy to see them but why are they there? Most of the SFF is Gollancz Masterworks (I really wish America had this line in all their stores because Gollancz really knows how to curate).

I got 4 LeGuins, 3 Strugatskys, some McKillip, HGWells, Christopher Priest, Wolfe's Fifth Head Of Cerebus and some I cant remember.

On Oxfam in Byres Road I passed on a 90s Orbit copy of Michael Scott Rohan's Anvil Of Ice because I wanted the Gollancz Masterworks one (would have been excited if it was in Fopp) because I figured it might be an omnibus but it's not.

Tricia Sullivan got in SF Masterworks this year so that's a pretty good recommendation for a relatively recent writer.

I'm craving some no bullshit SFF criticism so I might get such books by Adam Roberts and Christopher Priest. I really appreciate Ian Sales' very difficult to please reviews on goodreads, I think his taste is completely different to mine but when he says something is amazing, I take note.

Strangely most of these guys are british. Joshi is honest but his judgement is quite iffy and he seems to be easily swayed by feuds and fannish stuff.

re critics: John Clute's collections of reviews?

I'll take note.

Which collection is that?

Ian Sales is a very interesting reviewer, but he has a weird insistence that books be morally correct that seems old-fashioned and not in keeping with the fiction he actually writes.

I noticed something like that but it was his insistence that a book was too politically ambiguous that made me cautious. But I hadn't read the books so I cant really argue.

I know in these times there's a feeling that messages need to be clearer and it's understandable but I wonder if the writing might suffer for it. I recently listened to a podcast with two SF editors saying that a lot of writers work suffers when they realize a large part of their audience doesn't understand and then make it too clear.

Trying to reach everyone is a fools errand. There's always going to be people who think a fragile pathetic macho gangster is awesome because he doesn't take shit and there's people who think American History X is an undercover pro-Nazi film.

I've been toying with making a thread about showing values through storytelling and how it has changed over time. Maybe soon.

A list of Clute books here:

http://www.johnclute.co.uk/bibliography/?p=3

I'm aware of LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE, SCORES, STROKES.

Other work could be good too. He has been heavily involved in the ENCYCLOPEDIAS which are now online and useful.

What about his significant other, Elizabeth Hand? I have enjoyed several of her books but have seen very little interest in her work on this borad.

Clute's?

I assumed that was still Judith Clute.
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/clute_judith

Perhaps I assumed wrong.

I did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clute#Personal_life

Raised in Canada, Clute lived in the United States from 1956 until 1964. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at New York University in 1962 while living with writer and artist Pamela Zoline.

Clute married artist Judith Clute in 1964.[7] He has been the partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996

(Maybe the Clutes never divorced?)

Excited to see that Elizabeth Hand wrote 4 Boba Fett novels in 2 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Hand#Star_Wars_Expanded_Universe

Heh, haven’t gotten around to those yet myself.

iirc i read her first novel (winterlong) back in the day and thought it was decent? i don't remember a single thing about it tho

Xpost
Don’t knock it, blade runner kept KW Jeter afloat for awhile there.

Elizabeth Hand used to be married to Richard Grant who wrote a few cool magic realist kind of fantasies for bantam spectra before sort of dropping out.

Thanks for the tip, Jon! I've only ever come across one Grant story, but it was a doozy---see how he stands out in this summation from the previous Rolling SF etc.:
I've already posted about most of the ones I really liked, and some of the duds; other categories: kinda-sorta, may need re-reading; Wolfe stories are things that make me go h'mmm (oh so tricky). Will try to answer any questions. Years of original publication are also listed.
The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard Sf, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, eds., 1994

Ursula K. Le Guin "Nine Lives" 1969 good
Bob Shaw "Light of Other Days" 1966 good
Nathaniel Hawthorne "Rappaccini's Daughter" 1844 good
Arthur C. Clarke "The Star" 1955 nah
Hal Clement "Proof" 1942 good
Robert A. Heinlein "It's Great to Be Back" 1947 nah
Gene Wolfe "Procreation" 1984 Eh?
Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” 1943 good
Raymond Z. Gallun “Davy Jones' Ambassador” 1935 good
Isaac Asimov “The Life and Times of Multivac” 1975 mmm-meh
Robert L. Forward “The Singing Diamond” 1979 pretty good
Dean Ing “Down & Out on Ellfive Prime” 1979 good
Hilbert Schenck “Send Me a Kiss by Wire” 1984 kinda
Philip Latham “The Xi Effect” 1950 nah
Edgar Allan Poe “A Descent into the Maelström” 1841 kinda-sorta
Gregory Benford “Exposures” 1982 meh-ish stiffly imposing
Kate Wilhelm “The Planners” 1968 stiffly imposing/contrived (lol 60s?)
James Blish “Beep” 1954 nah
Richard Grant “Drode's Equations” 1981 good! Borgesian
Theodore L. Thomas “The Weather Man” 1962 nah
Part II
Arthur C. Clarke “Transit of Earth” 1971 nah
J.G. Ballard “Prima Belladonna” 1971 good
Donald M. Kingsbury “To Bring in the Steel” 1978 good
C.M. Kornbluth “Gomez” 1954 kinda
Isaac Asimov “Waterclap” 1970 good
Anne McCaffrey “Weyr Search” 1967 good
Rudy Rucker “Message Found in a Copy of Flatland” 1983 good-ish
Tom Godwin “The Cold Equations” 1954 good
H.G. Wells “The Land Ironclads” 1903 good
Larry Niven “The Hole Man” 1973 nah
John W. Campbell “Atomic Power” 1934 nah
John T. Sladek “Stop Evolution in Its Tracks!” shit 1988
Miles J. Breuer, M.D. “The Hungry Guinea Pig” 1930 good in an early pulp silly way
Ian Watson “The Very Slow Time Machine” 1978 good
Bruce Sterling “The Beautiful and the Sublime” 1986 good (actually doesn't suck)
Ursula K. Le Guin “The Author of the Acacia Seeds” 1974 good
John M. Ford “Heat of Fusion” 1984 nah
Gordon R. Dickson “Dolphin's Way” 1964 kinda
Gene Wolfe “All the Hues of Hell” 1987 maybe?
Theodore Sturgeon “Occam's Scalpel” 1971 h'mmm, the ending
Edward Bryant “giANTS” 1979 kinda, above average ending (very last sentence), for sure
Randall Garrett “Time Fuse” 1954 nah
Clifford D. Simak “Desertion” 1944 good
Part III
Poul Anderson "Kyrie” 1969, mostly good? some bits of ick
Raymond F. Jones “The Person from Porlock” 1947 seems like pre-Gick for a while, but nah
Frederik Pohl “Day Million” 1966 nah
J.G. Ballard “Cage of Sand” 1963 good
James Tiptree, Jr. “The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats” 1976 good
Jules Verne “In the Year 2889” (year of orig. pub not listed) good
James Blish “Surface Tension” 1952 good, although lol-ish ending
Cordwainer Smith “No, No, Not Rogov!” 1959 good (I think?)
George Turner “In a Petri Dish Upstairs” 1978 good
Rudyard Kipling “With the Night Mail” good-ish ?
Arthur C. Clarke “The Longest Science Fiction Story Ever Told” 1965 okay but could've been better?
Alfred Bester “The Pi Man” 1959 just okay-ish (compared to some of his 50s)
Gregory Benford “Relativistic Effects” 1982 good
James P. Hogan “Making Light” 1981 nah
Isaac Asimov “The Last Question” 1956 nah
Philip K. Dick “The Indefatigable Frog” 1953 okay-ish (compared to some of his 50s)
John M. Ford “Chromatic Aberration” 1994 kinda
Katherine Maclean “The Snowball Effect” 1952 nah
Hilbert Schenck “The Morphology of the Kirkham Wreck” 1978 good
Greg Bear “Tangents” 1986 kinda, but predictable
William Gibson “Johnny Mnemonic” 1981 nah
David Brin “What Continues, What Fails...” 1991 kinda (def some good science ideas and promising setting. but more like notes)
Michael F. Flynn "Mammy Morgan Played the Organ; Her Daddy Beat the Drum" 1990 good
Vernor Vinge "Bookworm, Run!" 1966 some good details, but as with Bester and Dick, although much, much more so: why *this* Vinge?

― dow, Thursday, 11 April 2013 20:55 (five years ago) Permalink

Not that I don't get into some other short Wolfe, like "The Death of Doctor Island", and will re-re-read these some more.

― dow, Thursday, 11 April 2013 20:59 (five years ago) Permalink

Raymond F. Jones “The Person from Porlock” 1947 seems like pre-Gick for a while, but nah pre-Dick!

― dow, Thursday, 11 April 2013 21:01 (five years ago) Permalink

Yes, Grant's story was the only good' un to get an exclamation mark out of me---Maybe that's unfair, but it was spontaneous. Surer about "Borgesian."
Clute's SFEncyclopedia posts are often very astute, and can be so in a complicated lucidity---I especially dig his fail-safe: hyperlinks to other entries, the worlds behind and in his repurposed words, like "ponder" as noun.

Wells and James talked about collaborating on a novel once, about Mars. It's in their correspondence.

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) September 12, 2018

(that's HG Wells and Henry James)

I knew your thread would come good in the end!

Henry James in Space

lol wtf -- i have no memory of that (or any idea even which office i'm referring to)

Re: Clute and Adam Roberts

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/john-clutes-the-darkening-garden-a-short-lexicon-of-horror/

I remember hearing about this book when it came out and I distrusted what I considered to be very narrow rules being set out. The reviewer likes the idea of the false world but again, I'm not so sure it works and I'm deeply suspicious of trying to define genres in this way.

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/lifelines-and-deadlines-selected-nonfiction-by-james-lovegrove-and-rave-and-let-die-the-sf-fantasy-of-2014-by-adam-roberts/

Rave And Let Die is the greatest title for a book of reviews.

It's a very entertaining book, too

Anybody got any opinions on peter watts

from prev. Rolling Science Fiction etc.:
just downloaded a bunch of free epub books, jumped into one already and wish I were reading it right now:

Blindsight by Peter Watts, which I'm about 2/3 through and there's quite a lot about neurology and math and topics that I don't even know enough about to know what to call them, but I feel like I'm learning shit? Also it's exciting and mysterious. I'm a sucker for plot.

Mars Girl by Jeff Garrity

My Own Kind of Freedom, Steven Brust

Star Dragon, Mike Brotherton

― it's not that print journalists don't have a sense of humour, it's just (Laurel), Monday, August 22, 2011 8:59 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wikipedia says Blindsight is about "the nature of identity and consciousness." Also it involves explanations of the Chinese Room scenario and other smarty-pants turing/AI stuff.

― it's not that print journalists don't have a sense of humour, it's just (Laurel), Monday, August 22, 2011 9:03 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That could either be right up my street, or the kind of thing I would end up throwing across the room in disgust.

― ledge, Monday, August 22, 2011 9:05 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Where did you get it from? Going on 3 week hol soon, need to gather reading material.

― ledge, Monday, August 22, 2011 9:06 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know where it's from, I use the Aldiko reader for droid phones and when I search for things it just sends me to a "store"? But I only download free books from that "store."

― it's not that print journalists don't have a sense of humour, it's just (Laurel), Monday, August 22, 2011 9:09 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.manybooks.net/titles/wattspother06Blindsight.html

― little mushroom person (abanana), Monday, August 22, 2011 9:24 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

great, thanks. think that site might be hidden in my delicious bookmarks somewhere.

― ledge, Monday, August 22, 2011 9:25 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That could either be right up my street, or the kind of thing I would end up throwing across the room in disgust.
--ledge

Planning to use the ledge as my litmus test for this kind of thing in the future
― Viriconium Island Baby (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, August 22, 2011 9:34 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if i hate it, you'll buy it? ;)

― ledge, Monday, August 22, 2011 9:35 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my ultimate reaction will probably be "meh, s'ok"

― ledge, Monday, August 22, 2011 9:36 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Um, no:)

― Viriconium Island Baby (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, August 22, 2011 9:36 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Blindsight is great, second time round was rewarding too, His Rifters trilogy also available free online is pretty astounding too. He's my favourite modern SF writer.

― AJD, Monday, August 22, 2011 4:17 PM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, BLindsight is fantastic. All his novels and almost all of his short stories are downloadable from his website: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

If you read Blindsight, the multimedia presentation he did about the vampire science is great fun: http://www.rifters.com/real/progress.htm

― not bulimic, just a cat (James Morrison), Monday, August 22, 2011 6:21 PM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"The Island" by Peter Watts (Year's Best SF 15, Hartwell & Cramer, eds.)---The narrator, a female-identifying entity, awakens once again on outward bound ship/portal, where things long since post-human pass through. A cosmic cloaca, and Damon Knight would dig this take on how a Galactic Empire would really work, esp. with centuries of suspended animation so often an unexamined given in today's s.f. She's ready to get back into her eternal feud with the Chimp, derisive name for the ship's hard drive (they need each other, she hates him/it, even more for being so detached). This time, she soon encounters her son, a perhaps mentally challenged human grown from the Chimp's secret stash of narrator's and her long-dead lover's materials. It all gets pretty harrowing, somewhat tragic, also could be titled "Angry Candy" or "Psychocandy." Gotta check some more Watts--apparently he's set all his stories adrift on the Web.

― dow, Sunday, July 29, 2012 7:32 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cosmic cloaca??

― the late great, Sunday, July 29, 2012 11:16 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

All Peter Watts work is free on his website: http://www.rifters.com

― computers are the new "cool tool" (James Morrison), Monday, July 30, 2012 7:44 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Someone hated Watts--Lamp, maybe?

― check the name, no caps, boom, i'm (Laurel), Monday, July 30, 2012 7:51 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Rift trilogy is pretty brutal. I think I may have bogged down and not finished the third book.

― check the name, no caps, boom, i'm (Laurel), Monday, July 30, 2012 7:51 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Peter Watts! Yesssssssss. I loved the stand-alone book--the trilogy ones got kind of brutal read in a row but maybe you'll approach them difftly/better.

― grossly incorrect register (in orbit), Tuesday, December 11, 2012 12:20 PM (five years ago)

got a proof of the new Peter Watts, 'Echopraxia', and am loving it so far. If you enjoyed 'Blindsight', it's set in the same world. If the presence of scientifically rationalised neanderthal vampires in that bothered you, this one also has body/brain-hacked soldier 'zombies'.

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, June 5, 2014 7:08 PM (four years ago)

At one point, he posted all his shorter (?) fiction online for free---maybe some novels too?---but later said somebody was peddling it as counterfeit ebooks.

Ah awesome thx