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

I was there. I liked it. And I bought the book of the exhibition too as a guide to future reading.

My single favourite bit, though, was probably the short clip from the 1950s TV version of 1984, with Peter Cushing as Winston Smith and Donald Pleasance as Syme.

i just went around writing a bunch of stuff in a notebook. based on the evidence of the two things i've been to see -- the other one was brothers grimm iirc? -- a lot of the populist exhibitions at the british library seem to exist as excuses to let their design/art staff let rip a little. that tripod could have stood to be a little more menancing, i thought.

i just went around writing a bunch of stuff in a notebook.

when I was there, there were a lot of people writing stuff in notebooks.

NERDS!

I read Blindsight, I was not too impressed I'm afraid. His treatment of The Chinese Room was worse than cursory and betrayed a typical scientist's disdain for philosophical problems. The lead character was pretty awful, a hard-boiled functioning autist devoid of charm and apt to say things like:

I brought her flowers one dusky Tuesday evening when the light was perfect. I pointed out the irony of that romantic old tradition— the severed genitalia of another species, offered as a precopulatory bribe—and then I recited my story just as we were about to fuck.

To this day, I still don't know what went wrong.

smdh, rmde.

also, vampires. wtf.

well, yes, but impressively rationalised vampires. ah well, can't win them all...

3/4ths of the way through THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. CLAW seemed to alternate between damn good and lugubrious, but the third book in the series was quite nice - I liked the ultra-clever sentence where Wolfe kinda aped Nabokov, obv. ALSO: the oblique invocation of FRANKENSTEIN and the implication that the aliens encountered in the castle are journeying backwards in time or something.

Swell.

Argh! Have been looking at the free 'beta version' of the SF encyclopedia (http://sf-encyclopedia.com/), and it's full of cool-looking books, and they have links to by ebooks of some of them, and I don't have enough money and time and argh

I was reading Neuromancer by William Gibson for SF book club. Then I stopped reading it because it is rubbish. I am amazed that such a badly written book ever found a publisher, let alone acquired a reputation as some kind of SF classic.

i'm amazed that such a badly formed opinion ever found an outlet, let alone acquired a suggest ban

Eh I thought it was pretty overrated, main character a corneliusan hangover from the nwosf, second half riven with incomprehensible situations, locations, motivations. too much punk, not enough cyber.

i liked it. and re-read it every couple of years.

Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth - Wolfbane. This book is batshit crazy, must investigate The Space Merchants next.

I'm really itching to start a collection of Penguin Science Fiction editions, thus catapulting myself into years of hurt, expense and frustration as I try to complete it. Someone talk me out of it, please.

collecting things gives life real meaning

The Space Merchants is better than Wolfsbane. Very funny, still pretty relevant. The bit where the hero is living inside a giant headless GM chicken is pretty memorable.

icky, too.

penguin SF editions = mainly terrible hippy line drawings right? then bad color-tint photo jobs? i'm not sure i see the appeal -- there were a few in orange covers in the general line, i guess - ?

i forgot i pre-ordered the richard morgan novel six months ago and now it is arriving and i just do not have time. also that colson whitehead zombie novel. bahhh

There was some really good stuff in Penguin SF: see gallery here --> http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/

http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/19/2022242/flowchart-guides-readers-through-the-100-best-sf-books

Slashdot! Who goes there anymore? Good link though. Read a lot on the SF side already, might add some Niven & Pournelle to my to-do list.

i went through the flowchart a couple of times. was fun.

also, of the list of 100 books the top 3 that i a) hadn't read and b) weren't fantasy wank were all robert heinlein, who i've read nothing by. oh, and the handmaiden's tale.

(and where do people go that's not slashdot?)

I'm just finishing up Sunshine because it was one of the few books in that flow chart that I wanted to read but hadn't yet.

I'm very fond of Sunshine. I love the author and I'd like to bro down with all the main characters.

What else do you recommend by her? Sunshine was super fun to read.

What whaaaahhhh huh? HER CANONICAL BOOKS The Hero and the Crown, which is the 1985 Newbery winner, and The Blue Sword, of course. In that order. ASAP.

A Knot in the Grain has lovely short stories but of her full-length more recent books I think I pick Deerskin. It has some major trigger situations though so ymmv. But it's mystical in exactly the open-ended liminal way that I like.

okay, re: penguin sf then -- the full list of 'penguin science fiction' covers is here: http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/app.html --

i'd thought they only started keeping a seperate 'science fiction' list when they switched to these covers in 1966

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/images/2452_FREDERIK_POHL_Alternating_Currents_1966.jpg

which quickly turned to these covers, in 1967

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/images/2620_ALFRED_BESTER_Tiger_Tiger_1967.jpg

which are the ones i meant earlier. and the 70s are full of similarly terrible stuff, like the series whence comes the reissue of the aldiss omnibus pictured at the top of the thread

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/images/3416_JAMES_BLISH_Black_Easter_or_Faust_Aleph_Null_1972.jpg

i'd forgotten that '63-'66 they had a bunch of covers in the then-current variations on the Marber grid with a 'Penguin Science Fiction' tag added. which is kind of lax, considering i own like a third of them.

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/images/1875_OLAF_STAPLEDON_Last_and_First_Men_1963.jpg

apparently this was a separate line edited by Brian Aldiss. I don't know, though; the numbering is consistent with the main Penguin series -- it seems a fairly quixotic thing to collect, given that they never really set up a consistent (visual or otherwise) identity for their SF

I like the '58-'60 versions - don't know how they fit into the normal penguin scheme of things:

http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/images/1449_NIGEL_KNEALE_Quatermass_and_the_Pit_1960.jpg

my versions of the aldiss anthology are somewhat inconsistent - vol 1 from '65, but 2 and 3 from '63 and '64.

I own a copy of that edition of Last And First Men.

so do i. here's another one to file under 'really 70s sf book covers'

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4047/4348523304_40da3e448c.jpg

which is the same design as this james blish, which is probably my favourite good bad cover design on anything i own, maybe

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XsVALQtGIZM/SCnqfHdKvRI/AAAAAAAAEv0/36YUWU77yTU/s320/Blish+Case+of+Conscience.jpg

Wow, that Blish cover

what's great about it is that you think it's cod-surrealism on the model of solaris but, no, every one of those elements is present in the book

That's true! And it's weirdly like the original version of the current Gollancz cover, which I can't find online but I have in a book, which had dog-collared priest (in space suit), weird plants and reptile man in roughly the same spots

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1857989244.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
It was like this, but it had a reptilian alien on the left hand side

new jg ballard reissues(?) look nice. someone care to recommend me one? short stories vol 1?

Link? I've got the complete short stories - the 4 page high concept pre new-wave pieces are all excellent. The long form headfuck ones are opaque but haunting. The Vermillion Sands ones are uniformly awful.

amazon.co.uk. it says 2006 so 'new' may not be correct (that said, they are done by the same people who did my Martin Beck series and they were done pretty recently and are similarly nice).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/J.-G.-Ballard/e/B000APOY8E/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

it's saying that short stories is 2 volumes of 780 pages each...

Great value! Would go for vol 1, given the choice, there's definitely plenty of gems in there. Track 12 probably my favourite short story of all time.

ahah, i really don't like those designs. or that story! i'm a hater

the ballard complete stories in hardback was a pretty nice artifact. amazon has a dreadful scan of it, though.

What don't you like about Track 12? It's only a little revenge fantasy, but (*spoiler*) imo it's lifted above the ordinary by the synchronicity between the setting and the method of death, which is *perfectly* executed, just a lovely piece of writing.

spoilers (is this the one you compared to that reynolds story?)

hmmmmmmm i do not recall that comparison.

you were probably drunk.

finished the latest shadows of the apt novel, thought it was really enjoyable. hes been writing (or at least releasing) these a p good clip and the one previous (book 6) was p weak/bizarre but i thought this one really played to his strengths.

aha there was another one already?

the new richard morgan is kind of a disappointment, so far.

hmmm ive been putting off the morgan cuz i have 1q84 and christ stopped at eboli to get through. i spotted a forgotten realms trilogy @ goodwill a few weeks ago (all in hardcover!) but they were gone when i went to get them a few days later and have subsequently been craving the most videogameish fantasy books and also rpg video games p badly so this really 'hit the spot'

A Reynolds is writing a Doctor Who novel for the 50th anniversary

http://approachingpavonis.blogspot.com/2011/07/harvest-of-time.html

Seems like a cunning scheme to get me to buy a Dr Who novel but I ain't falling for it.

Seems like a cunning scheme to get me to read an Al Reynolds novel, but etc.