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

mrs marple in space sounds fine to me! it felt like a sort of critique or subversion of traditional space opera - the third one seemed to be building up to some huge space battle finale, which was defused (and a victory achieved) with a brief conversation in an elevator. That sounds great!
I confess that I find myself attracted to private eyes and cops going down in mean streets in space, alt-history etc.---The Yiddish Policemen's Union seemed pretty good of its kind, with no noob-to-the-genre(s) groaners---but having some doubts about the possibly (I'm not that familiar with Grisham etc) genre-related speedbumps in near-future dystopian legalistic thriller, or semi-thriller, anyway truly creepy mystery-sniffing Rule of Capture: Author Christopher Brown seems to know his courtrooms, and crisply conveys what and how and why shit happens there---mostly from observant, though sometimes drugged, POV of a scruffy public defender---but why would his colleagues be so helpful to this pariah-in-the-making (who can't afford an investigator, is doing his own maiden voyage snooping), when being on the phone contact lists of his clients---one of whom has just been executed, another is being denaturalised---he's a great lawyer!---increasingly means major culpability---I mean, why does author increasingly resort to righteous tough talk beanspilling, in longass scenes-as-chapters, when he does better with relatively concise third person tracking, and relentlessly logical extrapolations of current trends---also good use of his well-chosen setting: Houston, in holy roiling Texas, is indeed built on a swamp and has no zoning, or de facto only.
Having lost a brief near-space (man-made sats, Moon as real estate) war with (so far offstage) China,, America devours its own in grinding "civil war" (vanguard Lone Star patriot suits citing Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus as crucial basis of new freedom fries). Also martial law re claiming eminent domain over ecotastrophic areas and eco-terrorists(?), with process of the former's redemptive privatization---so as happens so often in SF, he's on the right track, despite stumbles---but they aren't so terribly bad: I'll make it to the end, I'm sure, even though I'm more likely than ever to toss the stumblers (even Jeff Vandermeer's xpost Dead Astronauts---maybe too soon, but not ain't sorry).

Might should have started with Brown's Tropic of Kansas, which introduces this era, and has about five pages of blurbs in this volume (first of a trilogy, uh-oh). Seems like a fairly sturdy stand-alone

but *aint* sorry, no not about it!

*This one* seems like a fairly sturdy stand-alone.

of course, the defender's colleagues could be helpfully steering him in a direction that's not what he would prefer to have in mind (so protagonist and reader slip into more of a paranoid groove thing, no less unpleasant for being expected by reader, as much as it shoulda been and kinda was by protag, but he is on drugs pretty often)

The series of 10 minute interviews has been really quite good (it's been on for at least a month) and I listened to one of their older Lavie Tidhar interviews (mostly about holocaust fiction) was really engrossing for me.
https://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/

should i read moderan y/n?

That whole NYRB collection?? Er, see our discussion upthread.

You should definitely read SOME of it.

Οὖτις said on here that he read some of it, didn't feel the urge to continue. I didn't mind the story in The Big Book of Science Fiction, wouldn't mind more anthologized encounters. I guess I might get hooked at some point; I'm really into some other authors who are really into their own thing, like PKD, Tiptree, Cordwainer Smith.

xpost near-future legal thriller Rule of Capture developed more focus-->momentum as the main character got his shit/sense of purpose relatively together, between dark forces without, White-Out (drug) within. Driving over some semi-plausible plot points, fueled by extrapolation of existing law (also "dusty old manuals" re military occupation that the author says he found in University of Texas law school library), current national and statewide and continental (incl climate) trends, current Houston too. Will prob seek out sequel, due in August. (Some utopian claims and urges, competitions in the dystopian complications make it more interesting; some First Nation post-nationalist eco-rebel Rover declarations echo the nationalists, re taking back our country/continent, even.)

Further hopes for the state of YA fantasy fiction: been curious about Susann Cokal, one of her books is said to feature a gem covered penis as one of the main characters and there's lots of enticing negative reviews.

Re: authors (often from marginalized groups) writing the books they wanted for themselves. Was listening to a panel with authors ranting about tropes they were sick of and what type of stories they were longing for and one author said she gets this feeling from reading sometimes which is like "I didn't know how much I needed this all my life".
I wonder if I've ever had that feeling or maybe sometime in the future?

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/580444/the-big-book-of-modern-fantasy-by-edited-by-ann-and-jeff-vandermeer/
https://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/e/episode-426-ten-minutes-with-ann-vandermeer/
No table of contents yet. Didn't expect this so soon.

I'm reading 2312. I think I'm in love with Kim Stanley Robinson.

Mostly off-topic but SP Somtow has a youtube interview (Opera Siam) with director Paul Spurrier (who mostly works in Thailand) and it was quite fun. Mostly for Somtow talking about the composer Gesualdo (best known for murdering his wife but was apparently way ahead of his time musically) and shows a clip of himself conducting a Gesualdo piece; comparing film composers scores to their personal works. Talking about various career changes, including reading tarot cards in a nail parlor.

Finished 2312. If you enjoyed the Mars trilogy but thought the endless geological descriptions were tedious and 1500 pages a bit of a slog, this might be for you. Ostensibly a sort of whodunnit - and love story - those are really just sideshows to The Discourse on revolutionary politics and climate action, with snatches of economics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and aesthetics. And geology. Though (obviously) dealing with a fictional 24th century politics and society it's very much a reflection of the current state of things.

Anyone have any other political SF recommendations? I may have very quickly swung back from my earlier desire for lightweight spaceship fluff.

I’m a hundred pages into New York 2140 so no idea whether it’s good but it’s moderately political so far.

I loved the city and the city if you haven’t read that but it’s borderline on genre.

Way upthread I talked about KSR's Green Earth, a one-volume mixdown of his Science In The Capital trilogy--haven't read that, so don't know how this compares---though at least one subplot left in could have been mixed all the way down, seeming like filler here---some lovely passages for sure---he loves him some Earth! But overview seems to be, "Wow. climate disruption will suck for a lot of people, but could be really groovy for a few," not meaning those who cash in, or not in the usual sense---oh well, give it a look, he can pull you along. And he's gotten me back into Emerson and Thoreau and tromping around the Big Room country.
On the darker side, see what I said more recently up there about Christopher Brown's Rule of Capture.

The Wild Shore is my favorite KSR, though haven't yet checked the next two of his Three Californias.

Very fun interview and actually half an hour, some great sounding books
https://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/e/episode-436-ten-minutes-with-simon-ings/

Cool. I have been interested in his stuff, maybe I will check him out when I can read again.

Do you not have time for it, or eye problems?

overview seems to be, "Wow. climate disruption will suck for a lot of people, but could be really groovy for a few,"

this seems both accurate and unfair! i can see how speculating about a drowned manhattan becoming a fabulous and trendy new venice might seem a little off but he's definitely on the side of the victims and the overall message of 2312 is a rallying call to action.

I was referring only to Green Earth, which deals with earlier stages of ongoing disruption, as I should have mentioned---haven't read 2312, which apparently takes things further (duh---hard for me to conceive what life on Earth could possibly be like by then!) James, hope you're okay.

Def on side of victims in Green Earth too, but one of the main characters (and his squatter homeboys, all around what's left of DC) can seem like he's been smoking his parents' or grandparents' Whole Earth Catalogs. But this is implicitly for Now, man, not something that can go on forever, and he;s involved in different things.

Do you not have time for it, or eye problems?
Time, sorry

I saw a video with Simon Ings months ago and I was surprised by his manner because his work sounded dark and serious (I can't confirm) but he's so cheery. That part in the interview linked above where he says "it's so leafy!" is going to be stuck in my head forever.

Ings's THE SMOKE, his most recent, is soooo good.

Has this been mentioned yet? https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/love-story

Thanks. Haven't read most of the ones he discusses, so can't comment much, except to agree that, sheer-savory-prose-wise (also "thrilling") KSR's "landscape writing" is tha bomb. Appreciate the various starting/continuing points suggested.

Forgot to say, for all KSR's hard science credentials, he does lean very heavily on Von Neumann replicating machines as a plot device to enable all the terraforming and solar system colonisation. Though he explicitly dates their development to over 100 years from now so who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The researchers used a machine learning algorithm that was originally developed to analyze distant galaxies to probe the mysterious phenomenon occurring deep within our own planet, according to a paper published on Thursday in Science.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ep4zvw/scientists-have-discovered-vast-mysterious-structures-deep-inside-the-earth?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=curated_vice_daily_1023202

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMYNRaRhPuR/
Sums him up well

i finished new york 2140. it was kind of hectoring/didactic (i guess that's hard scifi for you?) but it won me over in the end. that was my first KSR. i've put the wild shore and red mars on my list.

a lot of the plots/characters seemed completely unnecessary and it could have been a lot shorter. you can say that about most dickens too i suppose.

Haven't read the Mars books, but as I said Wild Shore is my fave KSR (novel, though also enjoyed early Asimov's stories, collected with others in hisDown and Out In The Year 2000).
Science Fiction Encylopedia's take is good:
the Wild Shore lucidly examines the sentimentalized kind of American sf Pastoral typically set in a seemingly secure Keep-like enclave after an almost universal catastrophe has transformed the world into a Ruined Earth. Sheltered from the full Disaster, Orange County has become an enclave whose inhabitants nostalgically espouse a re-established American hegemony, but whose smug ignorance of the world outside is ultimately self-defeating.---but doesn't incl. the fun, expansive, Earth-loving, wild shore sweep--incl. some breeziness, though some of that is set-up for dystopian beware--got tired of that kind of set-up elsewhere, but he earns it here, I thought---been a long time since I read it---can't guarantee that TWS isn't digressive and padded w subplots like Green Earth in my experience and 2140 in yours. But worth it, probably.

It’s my favorite KSR too but I haven’t checked in since Mars

I kept on thinking of Dickens when I was reading 2312 though not entirely sure why - it wasn't stuffed with characters or side plots. Something about a romantic narrative alongside or used as a comment on a dire need for social change, though that could describe hundreds of books & writers.

Now reading The Outside by Ada Hoffman, humans meddle with forces normally forbidden by the AI gods and unleash - well, something, Lovecraft is invoked but so far we're led to believe we're dealing with science not fantasy. Not sure this is better than the 'adequate YA' critique above but it's readable - surprisingly more readable than Too Like the Lightning, I thought, then I realised that was by a different Ada (Palmer).

i read ghostwritten and cloud atlas back in the day and liked them; i even watched the first 30 minutes of the cloud atlas movie one night when i couldn't sleep. (my god what they put tom hanks through)

should i read subsequent david mitchells?

seems srsly addicted to the ~these short stories (which may or may not be symmetrical!) are linked by mystery!~ structure

Today Jeff VanderMeer tweeted images of three upcoming books: his novel A Peculiar Peril, out next week, and two later in the year: The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, with most of my fave heavy hitters on the cover, though I suspect that it will eventually go wildly uneven, like its Science Fiction predecessor; there's also something with a nice jacket, though don't see title---hope yall can see his pix here:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eb3HB52XkAc3sof?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Hope that Patricia A. McKillip and Naomi Novik are in the middle one too.

The last one is a reissue of the ambergris trilogy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50403446

Slight Vandermeer (/Strugatsky) vibe to my latest read, Beneath the World, A Sea by Chris Beckett, in that there's a zone with unusual flora & fauna that does strange things to your pysche. This one feels like adult fiction, hard to put a finger on why but making me question all my life values and goals is a good sign. It also deals with philosphy of mind in a way that's right up my street, when a couple of characters had a laugh about the fact that "you can hear supposedly smart people these days saying to one another that 'consciousness is an illusion'" I knew I was in for a good time.

> Beneath the World, A Sea by Chris Beckett

this, iirc, is one of the 1000 kindle monthly deals got this month (i went through all 86 pages of results yesterday, bought 2 things, one of which i already have a p-book of). yes:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beneath-World-Sea-bestselling-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B07FN7P4Y7/ref=sr_1_1

(Gibson - Pattern Recognition, Ovid - Metamorphoses)

The way blurbs and review synopses are written continues to confuse me. Why do we need to know character and place names? When blurbs say things like "it's a story of love, redemption, retribution, honor, sacrifice, responsibility", are some people saying "oh wow, those are exactly my favorite themes!"

I've talked about this a few times but I really want to know what people look for in a review or blurb.

Personally, I want to know the style, setting, moods, flavours and things that are going to grab certain kinds of people: horses, dolphins, spiders, food, sex, geology, dancing, martial arts, mermaids, specific cultures etc...

the blurbs are there to assure you that these other authors approve of this author/book, not to actually describe it

it's just marketing. fortunately there are now many other avenues to discover whether the book involves dolphins, sex or dancing

Do the marketer think if your eyes glaze over it or instantly forget what you just read? Are these working for other people?

I mean the main text blurb more than the supporting author blurbs. And reviews often do these things.

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/5/54/DPSGNLPHLV2019.jpg
Nice recent Kaluta cover.

There is a terrible new show on Shudder called Blood Machines, which I’d fee; irresponsible recommending to anyone, but (at the very, very least) I respect its commitment to recreating airbrush-styled cover images from 1980s RPG manuals & scifi