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

from Robert's "Epilog"-inclusive City link above, fave cover (if can't see it, is noir chien, paws in pocket)s:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71tH-EvL-vL.jpg

Waiting for Maigret.

Finally got the new Ted Chiang collection EXHALATION, which is predictably great. Sadly it only has 2 new stories in it which I haven't already read. Ah well, there'll be another book in the early 2030s.

Which ones are new?

'Omphalos' and 'Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom'. All the others have been published online and in print in one place or another.

Newly discovered (and translated) Stanisław Lem story:
https://przekroj.pl/en/literature/the-hunt-stanislaw-lem

Sad!

As in bad?

As in ;_;

It's fine, bit of a mood piece, not up there with his philosophical/speculative highs.

I just received City in the mail. Simak says he has mixed feelings about including the story in the book but did so for the editor. It was written a long time after the other stories and perhaps some feel it spoils the book? But I've mostly heard that fans like it.
Perhaps Gollancz wanted the original book as it was. The Gollancz introduction does note the existence of the last story, but from what I could find out from reviews, offers no explanation for leaving it out, so perhaps it was a mistake.

Also, if you're going for Cordwainer Smith, note that Rediscovery Of Man has been used as a title for both a Best Of and a Complete Stories collection.

Cant remember if I noted above but Strugatsky Bros' Snail On The Slope is getting a Masterworks entry. I presume it's a new translation because the earlier translation was said to be a disaster and the brothers hated it.

RIP Dennis Etchison

On the subject of long delays between books. Evangeline Walton maybe holds record for biggest gap, with 36 years between two entries but I'm pretty sure she wasn't writing that whole time.
But it really isn't that unusual for some to be stuck for 10-20 years. Sometimes due to poor sales, contracts or just having difficulties writing.
Of course some begin with a clear arc in mind and some are open ended with each novel, just in case. Long comments thread about some of this.

https://www.tor.com/2019/05/29/hope-springs-eternal-five-unfinished-series-that-remain-a-joy-to-read/

I happened to buy Steerswoman's Road by Kirstein last week.

As for my favorites, I've only read the first of Somtow's Inquestor books so I don't know if the fourth book in 1985 was open ended but he started it again last year.

Another incompleteness spotted from a review. M John Harrison's Viriconium omnibus doesn't have these stories
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?78184
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?42243
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?78183

but I'm guessing he just doesn't like them enough since the first one has only been printed twice.

What do you mean by the last? It has “In Viriconium.”

In US at least.

It might be a mistake but it's listed as a separate thing from the 3rd novel.

Opinions on D.G. Compton? I am not digging “The Continuous Catherine Mortenhoe” tbh, reads like a combo of Spinrad’s dumbest ideas + some heavy-handed moralizing.

I see there are some positive readings upthread but tbh I’m finding several aspects of the basic premise irritating, like he had a polemical point to make that superseded any pretenses of logic.

Really enjoyed The Silent Multitude, but then I also enjoyed Catherine Mortenhoe, so that probably doesn't help.

Reading Ann Kavan’s “Ice”

Thoughts? I'm midway through and it's not doing much for me. It's techniques are almost identical to Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled, one of my all time favourites of all time; however the characters and setting here are too unsympathetic for my tastes.

re: Catherine Mortenhoe - I'm not ready to give up yet (only 50 pages in) because honestly the writing is so good maybe it will get me past my quibbles with the premise

re: Ana Kavan's "Ice" - I really liked it and read it in two days. The repetitive, hallucinatory vibe is very well sustained, even though it's incredibly dark the dreamlike atmosphere just carried me along. Granted I haven't read Ishiguro.

Bought Emma Bull's War For The Oaks today, taken note that Vernor Vinge and John Christopher are the two remaining in the Penguin Worlds line (did this just stop? There hasn't been any books since the initial bunch in 2016) I don't have.
Then I had a dream Vinge, Christopher and I were all at a convention and had a diarrhea attack at the same time.

We three had a diarrhea attack in the dream. I didn't have a diarrhea attack during the dream.

http://www.egaeuspress.com/Of_One_Pure_Will.html
Looking forward to this, just ordered.

I asked Hari Kunzru if there were going to be more in that series, and he said he hoped so but it was up to the accountants. I guess the accountants said no.

Maybe the covers were just too retro.

Any cyberpunk recommendations from the last couple years?

I am not digging “The Continuous Catherine Mortenhoe” tbh, reads like a combo of Spinrad’s dumbest ideas + some heavy-handed moralizing.

so... I came around on this one, largely due to the excellence of Compton's prose and the depths of his characterizations. This is ultimately a character study wrapped around some old school Christian humanism, the sf elements largely being just background/window-dressing. Some of that is arbitrary and/or poorly defined but ultimately it doesn't matter much. He is definitely a much better writer than Spinrad. While the premise and general UK 70s malaise setting are, I guess, kind of Ballardian, Compton's overall approach and tone are nothing like Ballard's alternately cold or bemused detachment. Will read Synthajoy if I come across a copy.

Wish Spinrad was a better writer.

I like some of his stuff quite a bit but he is even more hit or miss than, um, a lot of other writers in the field, and that’s saying something.

I've only read some of his short pieces (which were fine) and Bug Jack Barron (which was awful)

Finally gave away my copy of The Iron Dream, accepting peacefully I will never actually read it

Liked it in high school, have been leery of rereading.

One I really liked of his was The Void Captain’s Tale, which delivers on its provocative premise and doesn’t flag stylistically or at least doesn’t annoy, although I couldn’t get into its sequel, Child of Fortune, which is written in the same fashion.

has anyone read ada palmer's too like the lightning, and does it become less insufferable than the first 20 pages is?

objections: a grating 18th century prose style with frequent asides to the reader; copious chandleresque unexplained in-universe words and concepts; ridiculous names (martin guildbreaker, saneer-weeksbooth); frequent references to theology and theological concepts.

also, magic.

She had donned her boots too, tall, taut Humanist boots patterned with a flowing brush-pen landscape, the kind with winding banks and misty mountains that the eye gets lost in. Any Humanist transforms, grows stronger, prouder, when they don the Hive boots which stamp each Member’s signature into the dust of history, but if others change from house cat to regal tiger, Thisbe becomes something more extreme...

kill me now

Jack Vance it ain’t.

so i'm winding my banks, goin' to misty mountain

yeah I checked out at around that point ledge

seemed like it might be a cool concept but nah

I LOVE COMMAS!
This sentence I'm working on is SO BEAUTIFUL thanks to commas, and would be utterly incomprehensible without.
now back to work. #writerslife

— Ada Palmer (@Ada_Palmer) June 18, 2019

sentence construction how do it wrok

There was a post or two by Martin S that I would read reasonably often about who could write and who couldn’t but I don’t recall her being mentioned there pro or con.

I'm reading the new Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Ruin. This time it's sentient octopuses!

Won't make any grand claims for the dude's writing, but I love 'uplift' as a concept in general and he clearly puts some work into figuring out the nuts and bolts

I’ve been meaning to read that guy for years

Read his Walking to Aldebaran novella recently, which was not bad. Some very interesting ideas/concepts, but all deflated/undercut by the irritating bluff no-nonsense man's man narrator

objections: a grating 18th century prose style with frequent asides to the reader; copious chandleresque unexplained in-universe words and concepts; ridiculous names (martin guildbreaker, saneer-weeksbooth); frequent references to theology and theological concepts.

― The Pingularity (ledge), Wednesday, 19 June 2019 13:51 (yesterday) Permalink

man from this description i was hyped for whatever this is but the sentences you quote afterwards did not live up it

She had donned her boots too, tall, taut Humanist boots patterned with a flowing brush-pen landscape, the kind with winding banks and misty mountains that the eye gets lost in. Any Humanist transforms, grows stronger, prouder, when they don the Hive boots which stamp each Member’s signature into the dust of history, but if others change from house cat to regal tiger, Thisbe becomes something more extreme...

idk if the punctuation of a definition as if it were an adverb in the first sentence is the worst thing or if the defining relative clause boner in the second is the worst thing. if you love commas set them free i guess

live up *to it. sod's law there would be a typo in that sentence

read 'record of a spaceborn few' by becky chambers, which was pleasant and positive and naive

it also had no plot to speak of, an uninteresting world/galaxy milieu, and rote one-note characters (literally all of whom are Good, but Different, and That's Okay). i don't know that it really merited publication, let alone a hugo nomination

otoh i did finish it, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. and there are no bluff no-nonsense man's man narrators or supernaturally capable protagonists or creepy-old-writer sex scenes

I didn't finish her previous one, a long way to a small angry planet. 'Pleasant and positive and naive' nails it, I gave up when the main character managed to pollyanna the brutal space pirates into taking just what they needed instead of plundering the ship and murdering everyone on board.