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

Women of Wonder surprisingly good so far (apart from the one i read yesterday, about a fat camp)

am interleaving it with JG Ballard Short Stories which contain a lot of ideas i've never read before. halfway through Chronopolis in which time is illegal. (there's a PDF of the entire 2 volumes available via a quick google)

All Peter Watts work is free on his website: http://www.rifters.com

Someone hated Watts--Lamp, maybe?

The Rift trilogy is pretty brutal. I think I may have bogged down and not finished the third book.

i'm finally nearly finished with the patternmaster series and need to pick up something new. butler is a hell of a storyteller.

Read a small John Crowley collection. 'The Great Work of Time' is pretty good, not great. Brilliant overall theme and the more 'realistic' Cecil Rhodes stuff is excellent but the fantasy aspect, the world of lizards and the forest at the end of time, is too obviously handwavy for my liking. Probably worth a re-read to figure out some of the plot nuances though. 'The Nightingale Sings at Night' is a straight-down-the-line fable, and who writes those these days? 'In Blue' is aiming for some kind of Ballardian psychogeographical headtrip but falls short, and 'Novelty' is just idk whatever some kind of inconsequential trip into the headspace of a writer, of possible interest only to other authors imo.

Little, Big is still commonly considered his best, far as I know. Think there's a Crowley thread on this board or ILE, Only read his shorter stuff, which indeed can go from brilliant to handwavy. Occasionally solemn x tremulous, more of a prob.

"Meeting My Brother"--another from xpost Path Into The Unknown, The Best of Science Fiction, no ed listed, intro by Judith Merril, US pb '68. Russian as hell, a moment-by-moment track of several time lines, topographies, can pratically hear Borodin or Shostokovich for that matter. Good oontrast of contemplation and acerbic exchanges. As usual, Merril's somewhat frustrated by the translation, but also says this story is " a romance<" pretty sure she means in the late 19th/early 20th Century sense of "a scientific romance, " as Wells tagged his. Also, "The central emotional problem involves elements which did more to shake my own preconceptions (especially about the regimentation of private life in the U.S.S.R) than anything I have read in a long time." Well,this is from the mid-60s apparently (anybody ever read the Soviet-era SJ mag Novy Mir? Is it still around?) Stalin was considered really really dead enough by then, that many years after Khrushchev's speech, acknowledging Stalin's "mistakes."

It's a great story. The idea of the real life impact of time dilation is a simple but powerful one. What are her problems with the translation though? There's no intro in my edition.

Read Women of Wonder and More WoW. About a 50% hit rate in the first one, would happily read any of the second again but my fave is the first Le Guin: Vaster than Empires and More Slow. I haven't read The Word for World is Forest yet but Vaster... seems like an obvious forerunner. The Judith Merril story otoh is pretty bad, doing absolutely nothing to move away from the image of women as irrational creatures solely designed for childbearing.

Sorry ledge, she didn't find fault with the translation of "Meeting My Brother" (by Vladislav Krapivin, have to look up some more by him). She was was talking about the two stories I prev mentioned, "The Conflict" and "Robby", both by Ilya Varshavsky--the ones preceding "Meeting"-- and the one that comes after it, "A Day of Wrath, " by Sever Gansovsky. Haven't read that one yet, but don't see what her prob was w the Varshavsky translations. She doesn't indicate actually knowing Russian, but maybe the anonymous translator's English irritated her editorial eye. No editorial credit for anybody in my edition, but I mainly know her as an editor, the earliest I've found to mix contemporary (50s/60s)genre and non-genre,just whatever seems to work.

just finished Women Of Wonder myself. yes, 50% is about right. now reading the introductory essay and that seems like a good source of leads but i wonder how many of those things mentioned are available.

this one is 8)

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/ciu/fe/09/8d41017b42a0c95e7ecd0210.L._AA300_.jpg

Reminds me a little of Simak's A Choice Of Gods, which I just finished. Native Americans are basically the only positive force in its world.

hm. is it good? what's good about it?

Like all the Simak I've read, it is soulful and humane and somehow patient yet right-to-the-point. Setup is pretty great: at a date a couple centuries in the future, everyone on Earth suddenly disappears except for the people within one small zone of the midwest (basically one family in a country house and one small tribe on a nearby reservation). All the robots on Earth also remain. People and robots do a bunch of thinkin' and evolvin'. Then stuff happens.

Simak is a nice counterweight to some of those SF dudes of his generation who were sort of hardcore materialist/libertarian blowhards or w/e.

oooh that sounds great! is it kinda like delany w/o the genderbendery?

He is not as relentless in following up the evidence as Delany, I'd say. Simak oft content with ~it is a mystery~

hm! i will look for it.

isn't "city" by simak? how is that one, i think it's on my shortlist w/ "stand on zanzibar" and a couple of others.

City's pretty cool--the first chapter/story was a bit dodgy, but it really kicken in after that. It's the history of the world from the near to the far, far future, as told in folktales remembered by the hyperintelligent evolved pacifist vegetarian dogs that are now (along with robots) Earth's dominant species

KICKED in, I mean

simak = love

yeah i'm going to go buy both of those NOW

Really enjoyed The Golden Space. Didn't find it 'drab', nor full of 'talky belaboring' (per review upthread) - she's telling a story not dryly outlining a theory. Characters were really believable, she did a great job of getting into their heads, with a Le Guin like sensitivity and compassion.

Didn't find it 'drab', nor full of 'talky belaboring' (per review upthread)

i think this is the lamest criticism of any book. indeed, "drab" is the dumbest. "this olive green jeep is so drab". "this book about eternal life becoming limbo is so drab".

anyway yeah that's what i recalled! i got it from a free library dump in, uh, maybe 90-95? i lost it but i always think about it, esp when i read stuff like "elementary particles" etc

are you hanging onto your copy? how much did you get it for?

If I like books I hang on to them, so yeah! I got it for yer average second hand price, £5 inc postage. There's plenty on abebooks.com from US sellers.

Is elementary particles any good?

terrible cover though (of the golden space). "hmm the characters have young bodies but are really old. i will draw a young person with a really old hand."

it was the era of MJ tbf

anyway just ordered it along w/ the inevitable first of enginer summer (happy b day to me)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/02/EngineSummer.jpg

i plan to get that. i know you compared it to the book of the new sun and we er didn't react in the same way to that, but i'm still intrigued.

xp yes the sci fi chapters are good, death by anal parts not so much

kinda like the sci fi version of irreversible or something

it's the backwards of new sun and anyway i think the comparison is obvious

not to say you're not picking up on the obvious but

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7c/Wolfe_shadow_%26_claw.jpg/200px-Wolfe_shadow_%26_claw.jpg

contenderizer should read that engine summer one as should all the other "science of mind" goons

rest in peace! just read this...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/books/harry-harrison-a-prolific-writer-of-satiric-science-fiction-dies-at-87.html

really enjoying roadside picnic. anyone read that geoff dyer book about stalker etc?

harry harrison was a g, bill the galactic hero and its many sequels were major for young me.

Yeah, I remember being hooked on the DEATH WORLD books
http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327944642l/2037559.jpg http://spire.ee/shop/images/harry_harrisson___deathworld_2.jpg http://spire.ee/shop/images/harry_harrisson___deathworld_3.jpg

Really liked A TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL, HURRAH, too

how is this just not the same as xanth

i'm not defending then now, i hasten to add, but 12yo had different standards, and endless killer aliens pretty much met them

This is the only HH i can recall reading. Proper YA stuff and funny with it, still really holds up.

http://childrensbookshop.com/images/bookimages/80/80722.jpg

is this stuff funny HAW HAW like xanth and bill galactic hero or is it just snicker funny like roald dahl

a mordant wit that should appeal to teenage cynics of all ages.

hm

did he do stainless steel rat?

that sort of fatalism?

if i had read SSR maybe i could tell you. but i wouldn't call it fatalistic, the heroes are good guys and they win in the end.

just reading about xanth and ... what?

Visual access to underwear - Because underwear is so closely tied to sexuality (even more so than nudity in Xanth), men become automatically "freaked out" when they view panties. This is made a common joke, most prominently in the novel The Color of Her Panties

xanth is for retards

stainless steel rate was the bomb, i forgot how good that series was

i always confused harrison with david drake which is odd

bill the galactic hero is DIRE though

can we get an update on what epub and mobi readers people are using for ipad? bookman? anything better?

So great!

http://harryharrison.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/bgh-equinox1975-0380003953-michaelgrossb.jpg

can we get an update on what epub and mobi readers people are using for ipad? bookman? anything better?

calibre?

I'm reading (whispers) Stephen Baxter's new novel, Wheel of Ice, which is a Doctor Who novel

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kEj9hrJkWBs/TkApdG8pQyI/AAAAAAAAU2Y/aJSjkQVWN9Y/s320/Sidgwick-98125+Simak+Out+of+Their+Minds.jpg

Clifford D Simak - Out Of Their Minds.
Surprisingly pointless really, started off heading in the direction of Philip K Dick but ended up as a jocular fantastical comedy novel. I'm guessing he banged this one out pretty quickly. Maybe I'll try Way Station, if that's no good I'll give up on the guy.

Have you read City? Think that's generally considered one of his best.

nice cover tho