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

i'm not terribly choosy, but i look at asimov books and i think about all the other stuff i could read instead.

prob not an unfair judgment if you're older than 12 but i reread the 'foundation' stories a while back and they're still somehow good; helps that they get crazier and more convoluted as they go on. the one time IA wrote above his own (middling) abilities as a writer and produced something weird and immortal.

I ended up identifying with/feeling compassion from a safe distance for the Mule, when his ID was revealed (if I say how old I was, would be something of a spoiler)

I got the Trilogy when I joined the SF Book Club, whoo hoo! Never read any more of 'em though.

i still think those "fluffily inconsequential kids' books" mentioned slightly upthread are among the best things done in science fiction. i don't know much about him beyond 'starship troopers', though, i get the impression he had a bit of a dave simish life crisis

sounds about right. i read and liked all of the 'future history' stories in HS. never made it all the way through any of the long novels, even 'stranger.'

only heinlein i can recall reading is 'roads must roll'. it sucks.

egan's "dark integers": http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0805/DarkIntegers.shtml

starts really slow, like drawing-room slow, but gets very exciting by the end.

prob not an unfair judgment if you're older than 12 but i reread the 'foundation' stories a while back and they're still somehow good; helps that they get crazier and more convoluted as they go on.

When I read the Foundation trilogy in SF book club we all hated Foundation - clunky plotting, awful characterisation, annoyingly invincible heroes, etc. But it all got a lot more entertaining as the second book went on. In particular, all the mind control stuff in the second and third book is very entertaining, and the bit at the end of the third book where a succession of people advance their contradictory Big Ideas of What Is Going On (in the manner of the climactic scene in an old-school detective novel) is actually funny.

And the Mule is a great character, far more interesting than the usual kind of cackling evil spacelord.

i wasn't actually slamming asimov TOO hard in saying that i'd rather read something else. i'm relatively new to SF and there is SO MUCH i haven't read. and it just always seems like something else catches my eye. plus, his books always look kinda boring. even the robot collections. and i love robots! and basically i've got boxes and boxes of sci-fi at home and at my store that totally doesn't look boring. it looks totally cool. and lots of stuff by writers i already know and like. i mean, i might get to him someday.

oh and i liked that simak book. Ring Around The Sun. Pretty damning indictment of cold war paranoia and fear for 1953. or maybe everyone was writing damning indictments of the cold war in 1953, what do i know? the ending was too rushed and pat though. i know a sci-fi writer is good when i realize that a lesser writer could dine out on the plot of this one novel and create some epic endless 20 book series out of the ideas in it.

i might be off of this thread for awhile though cuz i picked up this book that has two novels by swinburne in it. swinburne! what sold me was the long-ass edmund wilson intro and the fact that they are high society novels filled with swinburne's obsession with flogging(!). the man lived to be whipped and flogged apparently. Eton is the culprit. Anyway, I REALLY kinda wanna know how he ties up (no pun intended) these obsessions with mid-19th century country house life pithiness. totally bizarro. wilson kinda does this BUYER BEWARE thing in his intro. he's like: man, these novels are amazing and way better than the poetry and its too bad he didn't follow the prose path, but, uh, i gotta warn you...

although swinburne's poetry inspired HP Lovecraft. so that's something.

re asimov -- The Gods Themselves is as I recall one of his more interesting and ambitious novels that veers away from his golden age tropes, at least a little.

Yeah, and I wonder if the Mule turns up in any of his later books? Never read the one in which the robots met the Foundation or whatever they met. I did like the short story where the robot got tired of watching his human friends grow up, reach their prime, then gradually get older and fade away or expire suddenly--he decides he wants to and/or needs to die, though he isn't designed or built to. That certainly didn't seem too trope-y, although not big HEY BIG EXPERIMENT in lights, either. How are the ones with his robot dectective? Scott, didn't know Swinburne wrote novels, but you might also like Venus In Furs, by Leopold van Sacher Masoch (supposedly related to Marianne Faithfull. I donno how it is, never read it. Did read some by Ronald Firbank, who didn't seem overtly kinky--though I may have missed the code--but an appealingly quirky sensibility, in his own way/world.

i'm not really into kinky. but these books are so old and they read like modern fiction kinda. plus, they are weird. i might not make it through both of them though. we'll see.

apparently - even though he didn't think he was a great writer - swinburne loooooooved de sade. would quote him or mention him in almost every letter he wrote. with like 19th century version of winkie emoticons ;) (cuz he thought de sade was hilarious and titillating)

I did like the short story where the robot got tired of watching his human friends grow up, reach their prime, then gradually get older and fade away or expire suddenly--he decides he wants to and/or needs to die, though he isn't designed or built to. That certainly didn't seem too trope-y, although not big HEY BIG EXPERIMENT in lights, either.

think this was 'the bicentennial man'? asimov always listed that among his favorites, along with 'the last question.' the early robot stories with susan calvin are good, though i hated that screenplay harlan ellison wrote (HE is maybe the most hit-and-miss SF writer ever).

Hey, Scott, what are the two Swinburne books called?

is heinlein the most hated sf writer on ilx?

I thought it was Orson Scott Card

Don't forget that Heinlein's post-1973 decline is directly attributive to his health, or lack thereof. He had a stroke and some sort of weird stomach ailment - both of which were complicated by being a heavy-duty smoker. His writing never fully recovered from that.

As for Simak, I always liked The Visitors. Pretty good little alien invasion story in which the aliens are mysterious, featureless black boxes.

Oh man I should read more Simak. When I was young I read Highway of Eternity which was a strange, confusing, unsettling book that always stuck with me.

"Hey, Scott, what are the two Swinburne books called?"

Love's Cross Currents and Lesbia Brandon. both written in the 1860's. Love's Cross Currents came out under a pseudonym while Swinburne was alive and Lesbia Brandon didn't get published until long after he was dead.

lesbia brandon is a great name for just about anything

Try Simak's City too.

Speaking of Swinburne, I've always meant to read some fiction by William Morris, one of his Pre-Raphaelite buddies; incl The Well At The World's End, always mentioned as a big influence, esp. on Tolkien--then again, I've never managed to read Tolkien. More likely to get to The House On The Borderline and almost def. The Night Land, both by William Hope Hodgson. The usual take on WHH is that he was one of those guys who had the great ideas, but an awkward style, at least in these books (and most of his).

House on the borderland is awesome and completely nuts, swinging from gritty and wordly attacks by swine-creatures to an amazing hallucinated episode of accelerated perception and the end of the solar system, and back again, with little rhyme or reason. Theres also a bizarre and turgidly romantic episode but at only 100 pages it's an easy read. The Nightland otoh I never managed to finish, too obscure, pointless, protracted and dull.

The House on the Borderlands is a great purple prose fever dream of a novel

And that's a recommendation

Poo--looked for those Swinburnes on Proj Gutenberg, but no luck. On the other hand, there's a play by Swinburne called "Chastelard", which is a delifghtful concept.

honestly you should all go and read house on the borderland right now

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10002

a shame but maybe not surprising that the rest of his work is so hit and miss, mostly miss. some of the pirate stuff is ok but wasn't impressed with the carnacki stories.

hmm this may be a better way into The Night Land

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_X

Part of this strongly reminiscent of Alien, if you can get past all the nautical jibberish. Also has the best closing sentence I've ever read:

I speak entirely without authority, and do but tell this story as it is told in the fo'cas'le of many an old-time sailing ship — that dark, brine-tainted place where the young men learn somewhat of the mysteries of the all mysterious sea.

http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a1461.pdf

Yeeesh! And this is one of his milder offerings, judging by online commentary. It was more effective for not being supernatural, like when he cued that sound, thought it was gonna be like HMS Lovecraft, but no need. The nautical terms were no prob in context/ Thanks also for the Project Gutenberg, but I may order the book instead, trying not to get stuck in the screens errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk

That was a close one! Wondering about this incarnation, read some good reviews--don't think any graphic novels on this thread yet

http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/The-House-on-the-Borderland-Cover.jpg

http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t40/Tim_Bradstreet/the_house_on_the_borderland.jpg

Yeah I stumbled across that, could be worthwhile. Main pig dude on the cover looks a bit dopey-cuet though.

yeah this is better, not a cover, but def tagged The House On The Borderland, by Filippo Venturi

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3359/3265808963_12d9eccd3b_o.jpg

"abbandono," si!

i'm not sure how i'm meant to feel about scary alf there

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u6BzBT4LukY/T5TONOpbSkI/AAAAAAAAGlY/bT6qM624Yqs/s1600/alf.jpg

how bad is david brin?

Only read Sundiver. Can't remember anything about the prose and the wikipedia summary makes it sound ridiculous, but the uplift and client/patron thing is a good idea imo, makes for a slightly different spin on the 'humanity in galactic peril' tale, subtler and deeper than the usual attack by aggressive hegemonising swarm.

btw iirc i enjoyed it.

Is that a takeoff on that Goya painting of Saturn and his offspring a few posts up?

yeah, the composition is ... not identical, but v much there

my copy of 'blindsight' arrived today! i am quite excited about it, particularly about how it comes with this whole readymade fiona wilco cody apple chestnutt narrative to help me process how i am to feel about its aesthetic worth

Yes. please keep us posted on that (keywords: "fiona," "apple"). So, now that we've reamed out two of the Big Three, Heinlein and Asimov, what do yall think of Clarke? I'll resist spoiling the only story I can recall (one abt nova/Star of Bethlehem oops). Please incl any opinions of collabs w Stephen Baxter.

thus far it is the best book about space vampires i have ever read. there are bits of heinlein and asimov i love, i feel possibly i have not said that loud enough. clarke i can take or leave. i had no idea they were the Big Three, though, i suppose that's a Thing.

thing I used to see in zines. They were the ones who made the most money, known beyond genre-heads etc.

Clarke definitely the best of the three. His "collabs" with Baxter are pretty much entirely written by Baxter.