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

almost impulse-bought a collection by ted chiang just now but chickened out. big junot diaz blurbs on it. they must be pals. i like that it was put out by a local press. straight outta easthampton, ma. also ogled complete ballard stories. thing was huge. but didn't feel like shelling out for it. might go back for the chiang though. bought the new ugly things magazine instead...

the chiang collection (stories of your life and others) is very good

Yeah this thread (the one we're on right this very nanoosec) has lotta Chiang comments and links, at least one to a story, I think (and that collection is the complete works, so far)

Almost, but don't think it has "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" and "The Lifecycle of Software Objects"

delany wrote his best books after dhalgren, honest guv

i need to find somewhere to read the new yorker this week, i guess

(the Egan story, "Black Box," does imply more than I initially recalled, right after finishing it; evan before that, was thinking, "Wow") It's one of those double issues, June 4 & 11, so won't disappear into the library stacks or dumpster too quickly. Some related podcasts etc on their site too.

Oh yeah, meant to ask: what post-Dhalgren Delany should I read? Seemed to be getting pedantic with the porn and math.

Go in this order, imo: Stars in My Pocket, Tales of Neveryon, Triton

Can you briefly explain why that order?

I like the first two better than Triton, and Stars and Tales of Neveryon cover fairly different ground, though there's some overlap. All three bridge the gap pretty neatly between his early sf and the more explicit porn of later books.

its important to bridge that porn gap sometimes.

finished frederik pohl's *the man who ate the world* collection. good stuff. satire and all that. now trying to crack the van vogt code one more time. wish me luck. i don't find him easy going. some sentences honestly read like they have been translated from english into russian and russian into chinese and chinese into english.

Ha, I have same Van Vogt problem, but I eventually learned to like Nina Simone, so why not him too?

I read Charles Platt's interview with Van Vogt. He (van Vogt) had a system of using his subconscious by waking himself up at timed intervals through the night and writing down the result. He explained this in a calm, matter-of-fact way. His inner life (whatever it was) remained utterly opaque, and his only interest seemed to be in his methods, which always worked. He was a strange person.

okay, this is actually a much quicker read. from the 40's. *Masters Of Time*. and i can definitely envision a young PKD reading this and going YES! such a loop-de-loop backdoor portal thru time and space. but his descriptive powers are just so friggin' weird and vague. when someone has a thought its always a cold vibrant desolate thought-vision instead of a thought. or a shock will slice through someone like a cold steely razor-sharp flattened thing. instead of shocking them with, you know, A KNIFE!

or instead of slicing through them with a knife. see, i even become powerless to describe his concentrated...indescribable...shadow vibrations!

see, the trick is to picture an alien typing up a pulp sci-fi novel. cuz the construction and language can be quite demented. and out of this world.

which reminds me, i was gonna start a harry keeler thread, but i've never actually read any of his books. just read that neil gaiman thing in the NYT and then went to the harry keeler society website and got lost there for a an hour or more:

http://site.xavier.edu/polt/keeler/

the paragraph that gaiman quoted was enough to hook me:

“For it must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney-talking Englishman with the checkered long-beaked Sherlockholmsian cap; nor of the latter’s ‘Barr-Bag,’ which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2,163 pearl buttons; nor of — in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwümpel — or Suing Sophie!”

NYT thing here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/books/review/neil-gaiman-shares-his-reading-habits.html?pagewanted=all

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

the guy who puts out the keeler reprints has the most incredible catalog:

http://www.ramblehouse.com/alphabeticalauthor.htm

i love the disclaimer on this massive keeler:

THE MATILDA HUNTER MURDER

It all began with a mysterious black satchel stitched closed with silver wire. Mrs. Matilda Hunter, Jerry Evans’ landlady, finds the satchel and leaves it in his room—and then is heinously murdered. Before long, Jerry finds out about the contents of the satchel—a device known as the Michaux Death Ray—and he’s off on an odyssey that in the first Ramble House edition was in three volumes. An odyssey that only a died-in-the-wool Keelerite could handle. If you have what it takes to follow the webwork master’s labyrinthine plot, this is the 1.5 pound book for you. Otherwise you might want to try an easier Keeler before tackling this one.

This 589-page trade paperback contains the complete text of the novel written in 1931.

THE SKULL IN THE BOX

A man is standing on a street corner holding a crimson hatbox. An archbishop walks up to him and asks, “What’s in the box, my son?” The man replies, “Wah Lee’s skull. I cracked Vann’s pete.”

From this unlikely scenario, Harry Stephen Keeler has fashioned a four-volume courtroom saga that is unique in American literature. Originally published in the 30s as four books:

THE MAN WITH THE MAGIC EARDRUMS

THE MAN WITH THE CRIMSON BOX

THE MAN WITH THE WOODEN SPECTACLES

THE CASE OF THE LAVENDER GRIPSACK

it is now, for the first time, published in one trade pa-perback or hardback volume. Some people consider the SKULL IN THE BOX series Harry Stephen Keeler’s masterpiece.

There are 350,000 words on the 436 pages in this book. Read them and you’ll know why Bill Pronzini called Keeler “the first great alternative writer.” $25

he kinda makes gertrude stein and sam beckett look like pikers. first chapter of The Man With The Magic Eardrums:

http://www.ramblehouse.com/magiceardrumschapter.htm

man so many things i want to read from this thread! i'm still reading wild seed (but nearing the end) and i am thoroughly in love with octavia butler.

picked up three pamela sargent-edited Women Of Wonder paperback collections. excited to read them. first in the series has a long excellent intro/essay by sargent on the history of women writers of sci-fi and also women IN sci-fi through the decades. very interesting/illuminating. first collection has stories by: judith merril, katherine maclean, marion zimmer bradley, anne mccaffrey, sonya dorman, kit reed, kate wilhelm, carol ernshwiller, ursula k. le guin, chelsea quinn yarbro, joanna russ, and vonda n. mcintyre. the stories are from the 40's to the 70's. anyway, that's what i'm gonna read next.

I'm going to have to just break down and order The Female Man from Amazon or something. 35 years of going to bookstores and I've never seen any Joanna Russ in any store around here. Fucken boonies.

i want her novels too. i might just check the store around the corner from me. hey, he had some rudy rucker books, so you never know. he's got andre norton up the butt though. man oh man i have never seen so many norton paperbacks in one place. maybe a hundred.
at one of my pal's used record stores i picked up: jack vance - future tense (4 story collection) and alfred bester - the computer connection. i was tempted to get the three volume PKD story collections they had but i didn't go for it. i have so many of his books that i haven't even read yet. plus they were ten bucks apiece and i didn't feel like spending the 30 bucks. wouldn't have been any fun buying just one. they had some nice hardcover dick originals too but they were priced fancy.

I started reading a Kate Wilhelm last night -- the Clewiston Test -- and my wife got all excited at the idea that there was such a thing as feminist SF (apropos of Russ). I forget how sealed off SF is to normal people.

Finished LLaurent Binet's HHhH, which was pretty gripping. THe actual prose is nothing special (though that could be the translator, who is a bad writer of English novels), but the story and the telling of it are really amazing.

That last bit is in the wrong thread.

adding all these feminist sci-fi writers to my list!

you have to remember, the first sci-fi novel was written by a feminist woman.

Olaf Stapledon?

there is a good harlan ellison quote in the intro of women of wonder where he says that women writers (of the 60's and early 70's) are responsible for freeing sci-fi of some of the old hoary cliches and tenets (kind of no duh). that people like russ and le guin and wilhelm felt no compulsion to play by the pulp sci-fi rules and this inspired all kinds of writers - young and old - to toss the old handbooks away. that was the gist of his quote anyway. i'm paraphrasing.

although being relatively new to sf i kinda can't resist some ancient 40s and 50s cliches. i go back and forth from decade to decade becaause i am from the future. but in the 60's and 70's i can imagine it was quite liberating to read these wild new ideas. i know i'm inspired by the ideas right now!

(in the quote he also mentions *doris piserchia* and i don't think i know her at all. someone else to check out.)

no silly frankenstein.

Ha, of course. Also, forgot about this thread: frankinstien

can't stop buying paperbacks. picked up The Time Hoppers by Robert Silverberg, The Two Of Them by Joanna Russ (the only Russ they had around the corner), The Exile Waiting by Vonda McIntyre, AND to continue the theme, a feminist sci-fi collection edited by vonda mcintyre and susan janice anderson called *Aurora:beyond Equality* ("amazing tales of the ultimate sexual revolution"!) from 1976 featuring raccoona sheldon, james tiptree jr, dave skal, mildred downey broxon, ursula k. le guin, joanna russ p.j. plauger, craig strete, and marge piercy.

i actually did read a sci-fi book about a robot by marge piercy years ago. she of the famous 70's feminist poetry.

rest in peace, big man. your imagination is an inspiration to me.

http://lovecraft1890.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/raybradbury.jpg

the powers that be did not choose the correct nonagenarian to go this week, dammit

Who would have been the correct choice? I did read xpost Triton before I read Dhalgren, dug both. Scott, have you read The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination? Both commonly said to be much better than the Computer Connection, though I have'nt read it. Van Vogt might be like Mencken (and my sister) said about Dreiser: " He's a genius who can't write." A reaction to An American Tragedy, I think; haven't read that, but no prob with Sister Carrie. Some said the same of Eugene O'Neill--maybe George Lucas too? His actors hated having to wrestle with his dialogue in the orig Star Wars movies.

oh yeah i know demolished and stars are the famous/better ones i just buy everything i see by him. never seen that one.

yeah dreiser was famously america's best bad writer. culmulative effect of his books more important/powerful than his clumsy sentences and lumpy structures.

i'm bumming because i left my octavia butler book at my sister's place in boston :( i was halfway through "mind of my mind".

Get her to mail it, you gotta finish that! Kim Stanley Robinson's latest, the HuffPo commentator/interviewer may not quite get it
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-cope/2312-an-extraordinary-vision_b_1550548.html
reminds me of JM Keynes reply to "But in the long run--": "We'll all be dead."

My favourite of Delaneys, based on only reading a few, is Babel-17. Fizzing with cool ideas, really vibrant, exciting, clever use of sexual "perversity", and not 900 pages long.

Finally read A Visit From The Goon Squad, past present and future days like xpost The Four Gated City in that regard (there's some jumping back and firth, but also mostly going forward). It pulled me along much more quickly than most, and I need to re-read, a few bits a bit off, but mostly very fine, kind like early DeLillo, but without the tendency to turn into a set of monologues. Chapters which could stand on thier own as short stories, and at least in some cases have, but not too loose, also she leads us toward implications and fecund gaps (one of the characters, a "slightly autistic" child, is a connoisseur of pauses in songs, "Foxey Lady," etc)Several characters look fwd in part in oroder to look back, bending light to gain perspective, but def not always thinking "This will all seem funny." Lot of humor though, quite a spectrum of viewpoints, insights. emotions evoked.

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2012/06/18/le-guin-s-hypothesis/

well, yes, but also no

"If critics and teachers gave up insisting that one kind of literature is the only one worth reading, it would free up a lot of time for them to think about the different things novels do and how they do it, and above all, to consider why certain individual books in every genre are, have been for centuries, and will continue to be more worth reading than most of the others."

I'm not really certain that (at any level but the most middlebrow) (though 'middlebrow' is kind of strawmannish and I feel like I should avoid it) anyone is insisting that; in my experience 'critics' as a body are either i. decidedly catholic in their taste ii. persnickety in ways that don't map onto high-lit-vs-lowbrow-lit or iii. of the belief that the only things really worth reading are early modern religious narratives or the best bits of ezra pound or whatever

i feel like 'it's all literature' is just a reduction too far. -- that we need a genuine awareness of what the codes of the particular kind of lit. we're reading happen to be. (delany more helpful than le guin on this.) ('paraliterature'.)

Because there is the real mystery. Why is one book entertaining, another disappointing, another a revelation and a lasting joy? What is quality? What makes a good book good and a bad book bad?

Not its subject. Not its genre. What, then? That’s what good book-talk has always been about.

well, yes but also no -- we're not going to get very far trying to read books without some kind of idea of the contextual factors. knowing what the 'genre' and 'subject' of hogg vs babel-17 vs in the valley of the next of spiders are is a pretty important first step in being able to come to a fair judgement of them. -- tbf i don't think le guin is really as un-nuanced as all that, but i think when she has to respond to not-very-interesting articles like the new yorker one she doesn't really bring her a game to it. but much of her work seems to rely pretty heavily on the reader approaching them as a reader of a genre and using that awareness to understand what she's doing.

& i think the bit i quote there pretty much directly contradicts the previous bit, which i mostly agree with, bar one line:

Literature consists of many genres, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, naturalism, realism, magical realism, graphic, erotic, experimental, psychological, social, political, historical, bildungsroman, romance, western, army life, young adult, thriller, etc., etc…. and the proliferating cross-species and subgenres such as erotic Regency, noir police procedural, or historical thriller with zombies.

Some of these categories are descriptive, some are maintained largely as marketing devices. Some are old, some new, some ephemeral.

Genres exist, forms and types and kinds of fiction exist and need to be understood: but no genre is inherently, categorically superior or inferior.

This makes the Puritan snobbery of “higher” and “lower” pleasures irrelevant, and very hard to defend.

Of course every reader will prefer certain genres and be bored or repelled by others. But anybody who claims that one genre is categorically superior to all others must be ready and able to defend their prejudice. And that involves knowing what the “inferior” genres actually consist of, their nature and their forms of excellence. It involves reading them.

I'm not really certain that (at any level but the most middlebrow) (though 'middlebrow' is kind of strawmannish and I feel like I should avoid it) anyone is insisting

you can call it 'middlebrow' or call it '1-1' but ime (yes yes) this is the level that most critics and 'teachers' are @.

i think the real problem w/that newyorker article is that the dude writing it has wrong ideas about books and books-as-art that make it impossible for him to think well about genre and has him intelligent designing around his prejudices...