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

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.

Am reading Frank Herbert's 'Hellstrom;s Hive', which is mad and quite fun but also full of horrible attitudes to women

i just got something called hellstrom's hive from netflix, is that the same thing?

Would think so, weren't there other Hellstrom books/movies? Hellstrom Chronicles at least. Also, hellstromism, a form of "mindreading" via "musclereading," I guess means body language (or "body language"), practiced by stage/club magicians, named for one of them, dunno if Herbert lifted anything beyond the name, if that much. Don't remember reading Herbert, even Dune, though I did--def remember David Lynch's loon Dune, with magnificently punping sandworms--maybe the first surround-sound movies I experienced. So quirky it's kind of an anti-blockbuster in some ways (Ebert loved how the characters went all though this extravagant set, into a tiny plain room for a key cnnference). But also feasting on the big resources.

oh wait hellstrom's hive is the one where the dudes show up to investigate a creepy commune, right? i've totally read that.

The book (Hive) is a sort of spin-off of the movie (Chronicles)--the movie was freaky semi-documentary about insects, the book is about how the fake host of the movie (Nils Hellstrom) is actually part of an evolving human hive based on insect life

has anyone read peter watt's other books

yes. but not me.

thanks for that, v helpful

just trying to keep thread alive until one of them arrives

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.

― Touché Gödel (ledge), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 8:17 AM (2 days ago)

Brin's Uplift stories were always what I wanted Star Trek's Prime Directive-centered stories to be - messy and with the altruism executing at a tactical-level rather than strategic. The Wikipedia article mentions Tikkun Olam as a thematic influence, and I wouldn't disagree with that. Kiln People is a great golem story.

Come to think of it, I like Brin's non-Uplift books far more.

what do yall think of Clarke?

There's a thread: Arthur C Clarke RIP

I also wrote this and still stand by it: http://www.quartzcity.net/2008/03/20/the-enigma-of-arthur-c-clarke/

Since Clarke and Brin have been invoked, are there any other Kim Stanley Robinson fans out there?

I'm a big fan of the Mars Trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt. I bought the climate change trilogy, managed about 100 pages and gave up. Haven't read anything by him since.

Years Of Rice and Salt is amazing. Read Mars Trilogy, the first climate change one (not bad, nothing special though) and his Galileo book which was good, not great.

Still an author I look forward to, and I need to go back to the climate change novels and give them another go.

Oh, and the Orange County trilogy is fucking amazing! I think I'd recommend those above all his other books.

so i was at the hepcat record store a little while back to see some hep music and i bought a couple of old copies of Forced Exposure - appropriately enough old man coley was manning the cash register - and in one issue there was this loooooong interview - conducted by old man coley - with writer Rudy Rucker. who i had never heard of. apparently he's also a genius science writer as well as a beatnik sci-fi writer. really made me want to find some of his books. most of which are probably out of print? he cranked out a bunch of ace paperbacks. Rucker liked to call his stuff "transrealism" or "slipstream" as opposed to cyberpunk, though i guess the cyberpunk guys considered him one of them.

other authors i've never read mentioned in the Rucker interview:

Lewis Shiner
Lucius Shepard
Michael Blumlein
Marc Laidlaw
Richard Kadrey
Norman Spinrad
Robert Sheckley
Ian Watson

I have to go back to those OC books. Don't think I've even seen them in a store or library.

xpost

although now i think i must have read spinrad and sheckley in short story collections. their names look really familiar...

Meant to post this the other day: I just read Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man for the first time. I'm sure I read some Bester as a teen, but I was incredibly unimpressed with this one. Maybe it's aged poorly but I have no idea why this is such a classic.