rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

i am reading new sun for the first time now. for some reason i decided i wanted to hate it before i started but it is blowing me away. i am realizing that this is the book i always wanted to write, and some asshole has already written it approx 10^28 better than i could ever have hoped to. so i do hate it, but differently than i intended.

ok, next purchase.

I've had it sitting on my shelf for a couple of months now. There is a bit of a queue though

after the first read i'd recommend the lexicon urthus. maybe not for the first read, though - big spoilers in it.

feel like last line of tedious glen cook rant I pasted in would make a good epitaph for gene wolfe

?

gene wolfe sux deal w/ it

lol lamp sux

one thing i appreciate about the book on the second reading is that it's actually very funny. i think some of what people might be mistaking for portentous mystery is the sort of humor that gets detective novels labeled "deconstructive" ... severian stumbles through a lot of the book, and makes a lot of stupid mistakes. he doesn't understand magic or technology, at all. he is really selfish and childish at points. the lectures he gets from his spiritual guides are hilarious to me in the way the master-student scenes in "kill bill" are hilarious. a perfect, loving send-up.

it's actually very funny (at times)

anyway i picked this up and re-read it on my recent trip to lake superior ... i had forgotten how charmingly sarah palin it is

never seen this cover before ... kind of weird if you ask me?

the boys are super-literal from the text, the martians and landscape are not, and willis looks hella faded

http://people.uncw.edu/smithms/Ace%20singles/s5N-series/71140.jpg

i never wouldve thought that of it as being a 'send-up' its a p tedious, faux-knowing 'deconstruction' if i read it that way tho, a self-awareness so oblique as to be pointless imo

the book's empty mysticism isnt really my problem tho its just wolfe's general sloppiness and the way he seems to cop a pose of aloof disinterest in genre conventions as a way of excusing his inability to execute

i'm confused. he seems to follow genre conventions pretty rigorously? it's not like reading "house of leaves", is it?

also "inability to execute" what? how? sloppiness? compared to?

wellll sloppy in that: i thought the book was plagued by a kind of vagueness. the characterization was so thin and protean, i cant really think of any characters that were memorable, that seemed to really live independent of the narrative. and even for a picaresque i thought there was a lot of slack in the plot, with threads that didnt seem to serve much purpose or to drive the story or develop characters or w/e.

i mean even thinking about it now in response to you i can see how what im thinking of as vagueness/sloppiness is likeable, there is a fairy tale quality to severian's journeys, the lack of context and detail makes them seem almost archetypical? but in comparison to a 'traditional' quest narrative i just found the books directionless and didnt think wolfe's world was all that interesting on its own.

um. malrubius? triskele? baldanders? dr talos? jonas?

father inire has more presence than 90% of sci fi aliens and he doesn't even appear in the book!

i... i... dont remember any of those characters

did you read the book?

is there some way to spoiler-proof a post? can i post in highlight-only text or something?

i mean, how is a book about the nature of memory not memorable when one of the main plot devices is that __________ has to _____ his ex-girlfriend's ________ in a magic ritual so that he _______ her ____________?

reading book of the new sun again theres a lot of words in it

looks like you skipped some words, son!!!

well they were boring

i have to admit, i don't know much about the psychology of the "close reading" and "figuring out" requirement. sometimes it works for me (pynchon, dune, jerry cornelius) and it doesn't work for others. other times it doesn't work for me (lord of the rings, george martin, etc)

tbf i am a sucker for any sort of intricate "puzzle" crap in media (to the point where i find schlock like "inception" engaging)

tbh that was the stuff that i liked the best about book of the new sun as well & i think he does a good job of making things familiar enough to hint at deeper meaning w/o giving the game away too easily and that, in part, a vaugeness or lack of context helps establish and maintain a genuine sense of stangeness about much of the book. certainly the incomprehensibility of the house absolute or the world (underneath?) the citadel is something i admire about the book

but oftentimes that not knowing instead of creating distance just fostered disinterest, the duel in the first book seems so inexplicable and rushed, the battle in the lake in the (third?) book as well. the entire war segement was lol dumm too imo. & honestly the female characters are just... dorcas and tesco are so thinly developed and the less said about the pneumatic actress the better imo

idk i think i can see why ppl rate it so highly, its stylish and clever in a way i can admire, & i was p impressed w/ it when i first read it but on rereading it i just kept rmde at everything

yeah the females are the weak point but hey if that's not a genre convention ...

^^ SEE WHAT I DID THERE

well maybe it helped that i had the lexicon urthus and OED on hand ... being able to quickly place references helped me stay grounded in what i was reading.

also, my *first read* was actually my third attempt, and my second reading. i gave up halfway through once, skimmed the first two books the next time, and finally came back to it and CONQUERED IT when my summer vacation started (took about three weeks of solid evenings IIRC). it is getting better the more slowly i read but i don't know if i can keep this up when works starts again. maybe this is why i can never manage proust?

what i actually like *least* about the book are the many fairy tales he reads and the plays. i really don't like being taken out of the flow of the book for so long, especially when the style of storytelling is so different from what i signed up for! i like when frank herbert does a fake paragraph out of a fake reference book, but 10-12 pages of a fake greek fairy tale in the middle of vampire hunter d the new urth is too much.

come to think of it, the metadiegetic parts are my least favorite part of stanislaw lem.

i really like "end of time" science fiction

always had a soft spot for vampire hunter d and moorcock's "dancers at the end of time"

Here Mongrove kept his collection of bacteria; his viruses, his cancers - all magnified by screens, some of which measured an eighth of a mile across. Mongrove seemed to have an affinity with plagues.

'Some of these illnesses are more than a million years old,' he said proudly. 'Brought by time-travelers, mostly. Others come from all over the universe. We have missed a lot, you know, my friends, by not having diseases of our own.'

He paused before one of the larger screens. Here were examples of how the bacteria infected the creatures from which they had originally been taken.

A bearlike alien writhed in agony as his flesh bubbled and burst.

A reptilian space traveler sat and watched with bleary eyes as his webbed hands and feet grew small tentacles which gradually wrapped themselves around the rest of his body and strangled him.

'I sometimes wonder if we, most imaginative of creature, lack a certain kind of imagination,' murmured Lord Jagged to Jherek as they paused to look at the poor reptile.

Elsewhere a floral intelligence was attacked by a fungus which gradually ate at its beautiful blossoms and turned its stems to dry twigs.

which one is 'red planet' again, all of the scribners sort of ran together in my head

um. two boys live in a bubble dome on mars. one boy has a pet furball that has eyestalks. pet furball speaks english though everyone insists it is barely smarter than a dog. the boys get sent to a military academy.

the military academy is taken over by tyrannical headmaster from earth. he and his effete rich elite buddies threaten the boys and pooh pooh their rustic frontier existence. the boys escape on ice skates through the canals of mars and make contact with the martians. when they get home, their parents take up arms and make speeches against politicians.

it gets pretty "kooky libertarian" toward the end.

there's an omni novel out there for kids that mashes up the academy and lovable furball plot of "red planet" with the time dilation from "time enough for the stars"

i mean, how is a book about the nature of memory not memorable when one of the main plot devices is that __________ has to _____ his ex-girlfriend's ________ in a magic ritual so that he _______ her ____________?

fnarrrrr

honestly though i have no idea what yr on about here so i guess that didn't resonate with me. [checks wpedia] o i get it now. idk maybe it's just hard to emotionally connect with the book when you think the narrator is a douche and his voice is both portentous and naive, not to mention the wilful obscurity that everything is clouded in.

and even for a picaresque i thought there was a lot of slack in the plot, with threads that didnt seem to serve much purpose or to drive the story or develop characters or w/e.

^ This, and also some of the threads you are lead to believe are u+k end up going nowhere - specifically ... yeah we really could do with a spoiler tag. Gonna rot13 this: gur pynj naq gur cryrevarf, gur ynggre bs juvpu ur arire zrrgf naq gur sbezre raqf hc rkcyvpvgyl erirnyrq nf n znpthssva.

So many wtf moments too - the whole section with the two-headed guy.

ok so regarding your rot13

arire zrrgf gur cryrevarf? jung nobhg plevnpn naq gur cryrevar grag ng gur nezl pnzc?

nobhg gur pynj, gur zntvp srngure cneg va "qhzob" jbexf sbe zr fgvyy. nyfb gur pynj vf abg ragveryl n erq ureevat, vg unf fbzrguvat gb qb jvgu gvzr geniry naq frirevna'f qrfgval nf pbapvyvngbe gung v'z fgvyy jbexvat ba.

i get what you guys are saying. it's a lot of fucking effort to keep up on. this is the first time in a while that i dragged out the reference books (OED first and lexicon urthus later) to help me figure out the plot of a book. but i should also say that it's the first time in a while that intense reading and re-reading has been paid off so much.

naive = but it's a bildungsroman! of course he's naive!

portentous = well, the whole thing is his autobiography of "how my destiny was to save the throne", so of course it's portentous! it's literally about the nature of *signs* and *portents*. he spends the first chapter talking about how a coin he received as a boy symbolizes his entire life!

no, no, i'm sorry, i should shut up, i realize it's not your cup of tea

Bx V sbetrg gur qrgnvyf. Qbrf ur bssre bar bs gur cryrevarf va gur pnzc pynj naq gurl fnl 'jungrire, yby'? Rvgure jnl vg whfg frrzf gb crgre bhg. Rira vs n dhrfg qbrfa'g ghea bhg yvxr gur ureb cynaarq gung fubhyq or na vzcbegnag guvat, n erfbyhgvba, va vgfrys, vafgrnq vg srryf yvxr Jbysr vf onfvpnyyl fnlvat gb gur ernqre 'gung guernq lbh'ir orra sbyybjvat sbe gur jubyr obbx? lrnu vg qvqa'g znggre'. V fnl vg srryf gung jnl, V xabj gur pbapvyvngbe fgvyy nyyrtrqyl unf znwbe vzcbeg vs lbh qryir vagb gur uvqqra gurzrf bs gur obbx - ohg nf sbe gubfr, lrrrrrrnu v ernyyl qba'g tvir n fuvg nobhg nal bs gung. N znwbe cneg bs guvf vf PUEVFGVNA NTRAQN, abguvat vf yvxryl gb ghea zr bss n obbx zber. Juvpu, fher, vf zl ceboyrz, ohg vg frrzf gb zr guvf obbx pna'g or rawblrq ba gur fhesnpr yriry nybar, gurer ner fvzcyl gbb znal dhrfgvbaf naq chmmyrf naq bofphevgvrf.

lol, i feel like i'm in my own crappy sf/f novel, speaking like this.

yeah basically we're just expecting and getting different things out of this; it's not for me but i can see what you could get out of it.

has anyone else been to the British Library exhibition on SF?

No! Maybe i'll try and fit it in tomorrow.

o damn, i made plans to that fell through and forgot to do anything about it. i am annoyed that i missed george clinton and nona hendryx talking there, too.

Hey, has anyone else read Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series? To my surprise, it is as engaging as his Harry Dresden novels (if a little heavy-handed at times)

Are the Harry Dresden novels worth it if I have a low tolerance for sexism? I know nothing about them other than they are popular and a friend whose opinion I semi-distrust (due to his high tolerance for sexism) keeps telling me I should read them.

I don't think they're sexist, or perhaps more accurately I don't think they're problematically sexist.

There are a lot of gender archetype things going on that definitely can scan as sexist, but one thing Butcher does with a good chunk of his cast is to flesh them out and have characters grow across books. It is actually very rare for a book to end without some major change impacting the lives of the main characters.

Really, his biggest weakness is the near-infallibility of Harry and his crew; after about six or seven books it starts to strain credibility a little bit that Harry and his crew can consistently own whatever mystical threat rolls through Chicago. However, Butcher is very smart about he deals with that in how he both adds allies to bolster the "good guys" (note: not all the good guys are actually good guys, which is another interesting thing) and in how the cost paid for each victory escalates. In fact, the most recent books up the scale significantly and really puts the entire cast through the wringer, only to set the stage for a wholly new, semi-terrifying status quo rife with story potential.

Harry as a character is chivalrous to a fault but he also tends to surround himself with awesome, extremely competent allies, both male and female. I think if you go in knowing that some noir stylings are going to occur, you'll be fine.

Awesome. That is a really helpful response. Thank you!

has anyone else been to the British Library exhibition on SF?

I went! I didn't have enough time to really get into it. Exhibitions of books aren't very skimmable.

I had to go to it three times to get it all.

oh ffs i was up near the euston rd on sat, heading for regents park when it started raining, and i was thinking "what can i do nearby that's indoors?"

I 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

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.

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