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

i have a ton of star trek paperbacks in my store. they are all a dollar and nobody ever buys them and they all look terrible.

they don't even try to come up with covers either. just slap some big heads on the front and call it a day.

http://retrobookshop.com/images/products/display/103969.jpg

think this is the only sf moving picture franchise novel tie-in i have ever read, as a callow youth:

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20050501181417/starwars/images/thumb/6/6b/Lost_Legacy_Cover.jpg/250px-Lost_Legacy_Cover.jpg

i still remember the twist - the lost legacy aka treasure they are seeking turns out to be a stockpile of centuries obsolete & worthless technology.

spoilers!

that's not a bad twist, considering

I know James Blish wrote some well-regarded Trek novels, but yeah, would not read a Star Trek/Wars novel no matter who wrote it.

he wrote umpteen (well, twelve) volumes of what were mainly just prose renderings of the episodes, it's the saddest piece of paycheck work imaginable

he did write one novel in 1970 which i have never read. it was called spock must die!

spock must kiss the sky!

http://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/leonard-nimoy-and-jimi-hendrix.jpg?w=600&h=370

Cool, is that from the tour where the Experience opened for the Monkees? I don't know, but guess some of the little girls understood both. Looking for the bootleg where they all back Spock. I told yall wrong, Jeter's Bounty Hunter Triology is Star Wars as hell, def not Star Trek. The central character is hired by one of Darth Vader's colleagues, Prince Xinth or something like that, to turn members of the Bounty Hunters Guild against each other. But then he realizes he's being more of an evil tool than a cunning contractor. But it's all bad, cause the Prince is looking fwd like a kid to Christmas: to when the very qualities which have brought the B H so far so far will soon fuck him up. Read a few pages of volume I, very promising tough toy opening, covering a lot of stinky desert ground. I gather these vols got mixed reviews, esp the following, but I kinda like the cover
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TAWO1jZg5XY/TZSCgkujMoI/AAAAAAAAAA8/NGwLbRtImCE/s1600/untitled.bmp

Mainly I identify with the guy in the hood, his look. Jeter also wrote a couple of books based on Blade Runner.

is Alan Dean Foster good? Oh, saw another xpost Greg Bear library discard, Hull Zero Three, how is that one?

having said would not read a Star Trek/Wars novel no matter who wrote it.. i have to admit to having read a couple of Doctor Who spinoff novels in the past.

I liked the sound of Hull Zero Three but Christopher Priest was less than complimentary in his fulmination against the Arthur C Clarke award nominees this year: "The paragraphs are short, to suit the expected attention-span of the reader. The important words are in italics. Have we lived and fought in vain?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/29/arthur-c-clarke-award-christopher-priest

To be fair, Hull Zero Three was quite good. Not 'Blood Music' or 'Eon' good, but still good.

Good that the Priest thing incl other points of view I'll check out some of the books attacked and praised, but, however good or band this particular book is, can't see why the past can't be a legit resource for speculation, long as it's not just reflex retro:
Drew Magary's The End Specialist? "Speculative fiction is for the present, on the cutting edge, looking forward, not back.
Also, could we give "cutting edge" a vacation?

I know James Blish wrote some well-regarded Trek novels, but yeah, would not read a Star Trek/Wars novel no matter who wrote it.

he wrote umpteen (well, twelve) volumes of what were mainly just prose renderings of the episodes, it's the saddest piece of paycheck work imaginable

he did write one novel in 1970 which i have never read. it was called spock must die!

― thomp, Wednesday, May 23, 2012 9:19 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read these books over and over when I was a kid, probably knew them better than the actual episodes. I probably read Spock Must Die! too.

The Klingon Empire manages to imprison the Organians and begin another war with the Federation. Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise find themselves far behind enemy lines.
Scotty has figured out a way to use tachyons to send a duplicate of Mr. Spock to Organia via a souped-up transporter beam, without having to travel through Klingon space, but something has gone terribly wrong. As a result, there are now two Mr. Spocks. Eventually, one of them turns out to be an evil saboteur and has to be destroyed... but which one?
The novel is notable for an elementary public exposure of tachyon theory.
For a similar duplication of Captain Kirk, see the Original Series episode "The Enemy Within".

It's not ringing any bells I have to say.

Currently reading : Rite Of Passage by Alexei Panshin, shaping up pretty well for a random charity shop purchase.

i picked up the patternist series (in one volume) by octavia butler...have not had much time to read it yet but from the first few chapters i can tell that i am going to love this.

Yep, good series. Here's James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel on the Nebula Awards,with some points I hadn't thought of:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/25/nebula-awards_n_1545655.html?ref=books

I probably read Spock Must Die! too.

I know I did. Not my finest hour.

Yeah that's Damon Knight's notion, his aliens are alien

"Stranger Station"!

le guin off broadway!

http://www.untitledtheater.com/UTC61/Shows/Entries/2012/6/6_The_Lathe_of_Heaven.html

oh man now i want to start a sci-fi theatre company...so many possiblities.

Reminds me, came across "R.U.R" in an sf anthology at the library, better read it. Wonder how stageworthy it is?

xpost Man, they already adapted Cat's Cradle and Do Androids...?! Saw The Lathe Of Heaven commissioned by PBS in the 70s, wonder it's on DVD

oh yeah here
http://images.mymovies.ge/t/p/w1280/orYrry7oWb0wQTav6E6Mq2Po3ij.jpg

voila

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofwNTrlyY5I

I don't think I'm reader enough for this

this is so great:

http://entertainment.time.com/2012/05/23/genre-fiction-is-disruptive-technology/

Unjustly Neglected Works Of Science Fiction: http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/61/unjustneglect61.htm

(of course, none of you are neglecting them)

i read that han solo and the lost legacy novel too it was pretty bomb

i read that at the same age at which i became intensely engaged with the badlands of hark

http://www.j-topia.com/online_games/badlands/

re: unjustly neglected works

Roger Bozzetto

[...]

2. E.A. van Vogt: The Weapon Shop of Isher and The Weapon Makers

fuck off libertarians

strange misunderstanding of "neglected" in some of those lists. oh yeah tarkovsky's stalker, that long-forgotten relic.

william burroughs!

other obscure, little-known classics: 'dune,' robert a. heinlein, murakami.

admittedly it's a) unjustly neglected by SF critics and scholars; and ii) in 1992 before the great panoptical democratising rubbish-heap trawling machine that is the interwebs.

Ha, exactly

i think its fair to say that the values of the original 'dune' stood some chance of being lost to sight in 1992, when the most recent dune-based memory was the fourth sequel herbert had rushed to completion before his death

this is an interesting set of reading lists imo

i mean, thx james

now i am going to go and to play 'the badlands of hark' all morning

that other article lost me here btw:

Look at George R.R. Martin: no literary novelist now writing could orchestrate a plot the way he does

regardless of politics, van vogt strikes me as an interesting figure and one def worthy of further critical study - prob pkd's fave sf author, one of the first dianetic/scientology converts, the source for 'Alien' and more, etc etc

i noticed this too late on craigslist. they wanted 90 dollars. :(((((((((((((((((((((((

Huge collection of science fiction paperback books......unread. They go from the early 1950s maybe earlier this is just what I have seen so far in sorting them, to the late 1980s. They are unread. In excellent to good condition as some of them have the brown age marks on the inside flap and a few of the pages. To list just a few there is Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper, Avon Books, 1962.....Star Giant by Dorothy Skinkle, BT Books, 1969.....I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, Signet Books, 1956.....Space Station by James Gunn Bantam Books, 1958.....City on the Moon by Murray Leinster, 1958.....Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith, 1970.....Dark Piper by Andre Norton, 1968. This is a very small sample there are more than 1000. This must be sold as one unit. Great resale value.Thank you.

gonna haunt me for weeks...

"that other article lost me here btw"

that's too bad. one of the best things i've read in months. years even. its basically what i always want to see written in a mainstream place that is never written.

Yeah, a lot of those writers on the depau lists were generally neglected and way out of print in the early 90s, and a fair number prob still are. So many still neglected by me, for sure. Anybody read J-H.Rosny the elder, Capek, Austin Tappan Wright (Islandia, sitting on my shelf for nigh on twenty years)? Lists of neglected ideas, themes, trends, syndromes (reminds me, the mention of how narrative messes up reports on medical research??) intriguing. Was thinking of Margaret St. Clair the other day, didn't know til read this that she was Idris Seabright! Don't know how neglected he truly is, but David Lindsay's whack classic, though anti-female, is still quite the pulpadelic autodidactica
http://www.violetapple.org.uk/images/covers/vta/ballantine_1972.jpg

That's a hell of a cover for Voyage to Arcturus. I don't know whether it's neglected - always imagine it has a respectable following just because it's got a few different sets of advocates - proto-f/sf fans, scottish literature sorts, harold bloom - but actually I never hear that much about it. I do love it - it's really another level beyond most things in a similar vein from the c19th, has that genuine something-to-say force about it - desperate to get its vision of evil universe across.

(it is both much more interesting and much more boring than that cover makes out)

Oh god, I tried to read Islandia when I was like 12 and didn't get very far. Do not remember. A cross between Gulliver's Travels and that novel about the old man on the island who manipulates/takes control of our hero/narrator and some really hot art student who obviously all the men have sex w at some point?

I'll have to check that out! This was also used for the cover of A Voyage To Arcturus: "Satan's Treasures" or "The Treasures of Satan," by Jean Delville. Hexenhaus, Morbid Angel, and I think some others used it for album covers--don't remember A Voyage being this openly molten, but still
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ivgSIhLmFsc/TIzv-6oHjnI/AAAAAAAAJWk/ZfJcqe-02fw/s1600/05Delville005.jpg

Oh, The Magus, that's the other book I mentally conflate Islandia with. Which may be totally unfair.

I've only heard part of it, but entertaining MP3 interview with Samuel Delaney here: http://www.edrants.com/the-bat-segundo-show-samuel-r-delany/

Guess I better check that, kinda got off the bus after Dhalgren, although I dug that and most everything before (did enjoy some of the later nonfiction, like Heavenly Breakfast). Starting the New Yorker's Science Fiction Issue: lovely memoir/meditation from Ray Bradbury, Lethem h'mm, good comments from Anthony Burgess '73 on A Clockwork Orange, which I should maybe give another chance (his thing goes on off into related ruminations), good buzzworthy info from China Mieville, whose bit about "writers aren't in control of their subjects" also applies to Margaret Atwood's snooty but trippy bit (she's hooked on SF and she knows it); some hilarious moments in Le Guin's mental snapshots of early Science Fiction Writers Of American Olympiads

Went back to library, read some more of the NYr's SF issue: Egan's store def poetic re poignant compression of clarity, though what you seefeel is what you get, no deep implications; sure is fresh though. Also available in New Yorker's Twitterfeed. Junot Diaz's story starts great, ends disappointingly, at least for me.