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

(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.

(the first part of his Poisedon's Children decology is out in jan called Blue Remembered Earth)(hope it's better than the last one...)

Well it seems like he's back in his comfort zone kinda, so i expect it to be decent

a few chapters into Sanderson's new Mistborn book, which basically reads just as you would expect; breezy, engaging, fun, with expected unexpected dark twists here and there

Maureen McHugh's short-story collection, 'After the Apocalypse', is really good. Skip story 1 if you're over zombies, though.

I love China Mountain Zhang, I think of that book all the time!!!! I don't think I've read anything else of hers, though you could hook me into the short stories without trying too hard.

Al Reynolds
> (the first part of his Poisedon's Children decology is out in jan called Blue Remembered Earth)

12th or 19th or something. i have pre-ordered it

I just finished Carol Berg's Lighthouse Duet - Flesh And Spirit and Breath And Bone. I hadn't read any of her work before but these won't be the last. Well written, with several twists and turns I didn't see coming and a few you can't miss for the foreshadowing.

It started out a bit bog-standard medieval fantasy, but didn't stay there too long. And I must say that her version of a Faerie world is one of the best I've ever come across.

gone back to 'blood of elves', which i wasn't enjoying enough to bother bringing with me while i went and visited ppl for christmas new year etc. it seems to have gotten a lot better in the interim. i wondered if he'd read 'the tombs of atuan'.

short alrel review here, sounds like it'll have more of his exciting petty politics and ultra long standing family grudges :/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/06/fantasy-science-fiction-roundup-reviews

blood of elves is racing towards its thrilling conclusion rn

that book was weird

the stories in 'the last wish' are so entirely centric on geralt being a bad-ass that i thought that was going to be the point of the novels, too, but he's hardly in the first one; only the focal character for around fifty pages, and only briefly allowed to do any action type things, and the book ends with him bleeding out. it's way less men being manly and having sex with ladies than i expected; this is largely a good thing

ends v undramatically, with fifty pages on the adolescent girl who is more often than not the focus doing fifty pages of wizard training stuff that feels more like pages fifty to one hundred of some other novel. as far as writing adolescent girls go it's not carson mccullers but not embarrassing either, i guess

the politics/economics i am abstaining from remarking on for now

i think i liked or half liked or at least read and enjoyed and then quickly forgot those books, the way he coated the traditional medieval d&d campaign setting in this thin layer of grime and despair and mood of postsoviet decline was the best thing abt it. well that and the way it was like a video game i guess

ha i think i'd have liked them more if there were more post-sovietness about them

i thought there were more of them translated, i was actually briefly disappointed that i wasn't going to be able to go straight to the next one. otoh having looked at summaries of them all on the witcher wiki ( /: ) it doesn't look like they really continue to accentuate the elements that are interesting all that much

maybe i should just play the videogame

I have just started Hyperion by Dan Simmons for SF Book Club. I am liking it so far.

Am reading Joe Haldeman's lastest trilogy, Marsbound/Starbound/Earthbound (halfway through book 2)--not bad. As long as it doesn't have the awful, AWFUL copout-style ending of Forever Peace, I'll be happy.

Could someone remind me what that legit paid-for ebook site for classic SF was? Thanks!

(sorry, my search-fu is weak tonight)

This one? http://sfgateway.com/

That one looks like I remember, yes! Thanks very much. And within 2 minutes of me asking, too.

25% of way thru AlReynolds book and it feels more like gibson than his usual space opera stuff. this is probably due to language, setting and the big macguffin.

enjoyed a reynolds novella I just read, 'Troika', about cosmonauts investigating Big Dumb Object