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

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

Really? Inasmuch as I even know what that means I would say that doesn't apply to her. She writes about people, and societies, and how we can or should behave towards one another. That the societies aren't earth's and the people aren't always human seems almost incidental.

question:

can anyone tell me what the food service is called in harry harrison's 'stainless steel rat' books? i have vivid memories of the contraption or conveyance or whatever that produced the food in, like, diners or whatever—i thought they were just called automats in the book but a quick google search doesn't turn up anything—as being more or less human-free.

MacSwineys?

chapter 12 here: http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80093/Harrison_-_A_Stainless_Steel_Rat_Is_Born.html

huh, i remember it as less satirically anti-late-capitalism-dystopian. maybe it was just the charm, to an adolescent, of living in a mcdonalds where robots make you cheeseburgers.

Plenty of sf is still robots making you cheeseburgers, don't worry. Re Van Vogt xpost getting the Dreiser pass (" A genius who can't write," Mencken said of D.; "Often great and never good"-Xgau on Crazy Horse), most of us and certainly most sf writers must rely on talent and skills. Too many sf writers have the concept and/or the spirit, but drop the ball too often. Thomp, nevermind the essay, read those stories! In the same issue! And tell us what you think!

So I read The City And ytiC ehT, which seemed like an annoyingly complicated police procedural at first, but I guess I got schooled like visitors and citizens must, in these intersecting/interspersed/separated/conjoined city-states. The frequently mentioned crosshatching is also of thriller and science fiction, if social conditioning and urban math can provide a plausible, sufficiently s.f. answer to "How can you be in two places at once (while unseeing one of the places you're so not in)?" Plus, the emotional subtext gradually heats the skin of the social organism, at the same time as action rises to balance and carry fwd all the dialogue and plotting yadda-yadda--takes a while, though. At first I was sure it would have worked better as a novelette, novella, short novel, one of them things, but by the end, maybe not.

Checking Path Into The Unknown: The Best of Soviet Science Fiction, from the mid-60s. No ed or translator credits, though intro by Judith Merrill. She's frustrated by some of the translations, but so far so good, with no text in/ knowledge of Russian for comparison anyway (had more trouble w The City..., which maybe was supposed to seem "translated" from tough-guy East Eurosky)Translation may have added to the effect of a key passage in one of the Russian stories, Ilya Varshavsky's "The Conflict": a robot housekeeper reduces the lady of the house to tears, and hubbie requires an explanation. Cybella the robotess recounts:
"I caught a glimpse (of "two essential errors"or in the wife's thesis). It would have been stupid of me not to tell Martha about it. I simply wanted to help her. "
"And what happened?"
"She started crying and said she was a live human being, and that to have a machine lecturing her all the time was just as repulsive to her as kissing a 'fridge.' "
"You, of course, answered back?"
"Yes, I said, that if she could gratify her progenitive instinct with the help of a fridge, she would probably see nothing reprehensible in kissing it." O snap! But she just means in the most helpful fashion, "Pray wake up and smell the coffee, Mistress, you got your hard drive too/ " But if that weren't bad enough, Martha might be taking it like, "yeah you'd kiss a fridge if your p-drive was strong enough--but it's not! You're more frigid than the fridge!" This being the era, at least in neurotic Amerikan suds fiction and too much "nonfiction", when women might be labeled frigid. But this is worse than for those broads, cos I take it "progenitive" means having progeny, not just sex for sex's sake. But that's not the end of "The Conflict."

It's close to it though. Unless my edition is missing some pages. I prefer the next story, 'Robby', it's excellently droll although the actual punchline, if intended as such, is weak.

The Odessa joke loses something in the translation, perhaps.

You're right, the fridge incident is close to the end, but not the end. I'll have to look at the Odessa bit again, but reading the one about "my brother" now, in between pesky other activities.

well i finished wolfe's "the fifth head of cerberus"

it was very beautiful and provoked many deep thoughts about cloning and culture and colonization but i feel like i'm missing something

it seems pretty obvious that at least someone or someones is not what they think they are ... but who? everybody? and who is what?

i mean i know the obvious answer is "nobody is actually who he thinks he is and all culture is actually just old cultures with new cultures overlaid on top of them DO YOU SEE"

I think the answer is probably meant to be 'everybody, but they'll never be able to work it out for sure either way'

yeah i think it's almost like a reverse of those stories at the beginning of martian chronicles, except the martians end up becoming human?

the story also reminded me strongly of heinlein's "einstein intersection", in which aliens comes to a post-apocalypse earth, take human form, and are so strongly influenced by the human experience that they more-or-less forget what they used to be (without completely forgetting they're not human). for a lot of the narrative it's very easy to forget that these are not psychic / mutated post-apocalypse humans but aliens in more-or-less human form.

"einstein intersection" is Delany

Would like to see Heinlein's Einstein Intersection--he could do it, it's in him somewhere. Or was.

in which aliens comes to a post-apocalypse earth, take human form, and are so strongly influenced by the human experience that they more-or-less forget what they used to be (without completely forgetting they're not human).

I...don't think this is the plot of the Einstein Intersection?

There is a Sheckley story with a similar plot but it's not post-apocalyptic and they don't take human form but various other forms. But they are strongly influenced by the Earth experience and end up not finishing their invasion.

i was gonna say, it's a long time since i read the einstein intersection but

oh man, where's my mind

it's delany of course

and that IS the plot of einstein intersection

Syfy Channel having one of its holiday Twilight Zone marathons. Saw the one w Billy Mumy checking in w his dead grandmother on his toy telephone, and thought of "It's A Good Life," even more powerful/pungent in the original. Anybody read anything else by Jerome Bixby? It's
a goood Independence Day!

Thought that was the only thing he ever wrote. Although I could be wrong, the "Cold Equations" guy apparently wrote some other stuff

According to Science Fiction Encyclopedia's site, he wrote tons of stuff, just can't remember his by-line on anything else I've read. Encyclopedia sez he tended to write hastily, ill-serving "often excellent ideas." Yeah, happpens a lot in SF; either that, or well-crafted so-what.

I've got a collection of his short fiction, with the most awful cover, and 'The Cold Equations' is definitely the best thing in it

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0743488490.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Yeah, tell me about it, don. That's why a certain kind of boosterism that was dissected upthread a month ago by thomp, I think, gets to be kind of wearying. "Mainstream readers who snub speculative fiction are missing out on all sorts of wonders- in fact, a new chamber of the Pharoah's treasure room was just discovered only last night, untouched by grave robbers or tomb raiders. And if you are worried about Sturgeon's Law- don't! It's been repealed!"

I'm talking to you, UKLG.

i just want to chime in that i read splinter of the mind's eye and han solo and lost legend - 4th grade iirc - and was blown away

came back in college and they were still fresh and quick

this week's one-night read turned out to be tedious

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/covers/mm_analienh.jpg

wonder if mongrove had anything to do with baldanders

And if you are worried about Sturgeon's Law- don't! It's been repealed!

heh

so i totally need to reread 'einstein intersection' apparently

l.g.: i remember rather liking the 'dancers at the end of time' trilogy when i was fifteen. you know what was always next level? finding someone had the entire set of those eternal champion omnibus volumes. i can't even imagine

I am more wearied by mainstream writers who think they can dabble in 'lesser' genres without noticing that the cloak of Sturgeon's Law has settled around their shoulders.

(Tho rather the writers than the critics, obviously)

i have on my shelf

elric (sextet)
cornelius (both quartets)
nomad of the time streams trilogy (oswald bastable)
dancers at end of time trilogy + legends of end of time quintet
road between worlds trilogy (wrecks of time aka rituals of infinity, winds of limbo and shores of death)

have not yet cracked erekose quartet, neither volume of corum, neither hawkwind nor count brass, nor the other five (!) trilogies in the eternal champion cycle

of what i've read, the first cornelius, nomads of time streams, elric and bits and pieces of end of time are search

the second cornelius set, most of end of time, definitely road between worlds are destroy

tbh not sure what connects the road between worlds trilogy except maybe he wrote them in the same drunken weekend binge?

On my to read list:

Moon is a harsh mistress -Heinlein
Death of Grass - Christopher Johns
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon - Pohl
Dark Universe - Galouye

Just finished Martian Time Slip by Philip K Dick - quite liked it.

I think Harsh Mistress and the first few Gateway books would make fantastic movies. Also Ringworld, but I've beat that drum before.

I need to reread it but Harsh Mistress has been one of my favorite books since forever

ring world in imax 3d, starring dwayne "the rock" johnson as louis wu, milla jovovich as teela, philip seymour hoffman as speaker to animals and jar jar binks as nessus

would pay to see nicholas cage as robinette broadhead

That cover for "The Cold Equations and Other Stories" is the funniest. The first people not to take SF writers seriously would be the publishers who commission this kind of cover art.

found a few i've always wanted to read at the used store: "cities in flight", "stand on zanzibar", "drowned world" and "martian time-slip"

should i be excited to start?

also

"rediscovery of man", "man plus", "emphyrio", "book of skulls", "demolished man" and "lord of light" ... any of these any good?

Rediscovery of Man! And The Demolished Man!

sweet

are either of those better than the ones i'm starting with?

my favorite stuff is pre-new wave late silver age stuff

i guess you could call it the interzone between hard sf and new wave?

you just found all of my favourite books at age fifteen or sixteen in one place. that is a little peculiar.

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

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4108/4983370077_010ef5c363_z.jpg

stolen from a stranger on flickr, maybe should have linkified it

these are the first ones i've bought, they're going back in a box cause they feel shitty and are going to curl i think

read demolished man

i used to own most of that. i have gradually replaced them with other editions, because i am That Sort Of Person. seeing those like that makes me wish i'd just embraced my inner whatever and kept them around, though.

halfway into pohl's "man plus" and it is like

daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn

daniel pearl movie + hellstrom's hive + gateway + armor (steakley?)

stand on zanzibar was too flashy to get

anything in the mood of "forever war" in this set?