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

man wouldn't that be a nice counterweight to all the young randians out there

i was a young randian!

i think i read atlas shrugged twice when i was a teen. i just liked the tortured genius part, i didn't care about the politics.

okay, because i as a person make no sense whatsoever i passed on the 16 dollar chiang collection and later today went to the used (and soiled) book pit where cranky oldsters "debate" our capitalist system from very VERY well-worn chairs and spent 50 bucks on oldster SF. i couldn't help myself for some reason.

Well that's it, this thread's not speaking to you anymore.

but i got cool stuff:

despatches from the frontiers of the female mind (1985 u.k. collection of sf by women)

harlan ellison - partners in wonder (never seen it. ellison collabs with bloch, van vogt, sturgeon, silverberg, etc)

harlan ellison - from the land of fear

thomas m. disch - camp concentration (i snatch up ALL disch i see. rare as hen's teeth around here! and sometimes they are in sf, horror, lit, poetry, etc. so you gotta keep your eyes peeled)

science fiction - today and tomorrow (awesome looking Penguin lit crit collection with essays by pohl, herbert, sturgeon, dickson, etc. i love this kind of thing. kinda interested in SF lit crit/history almost as much as i am in the actual fiction. cuz i'm like that)

dangerous visions (been meaning to buy this forever. and the other dangerous visions too)

dick - the divine invasion (nice hardcover edition for 7 bucks!)

dick - the man in the high castle (nice hardcover edition for 7 bucks!)

frederik pohl - the early pohl (again, nice hardcover edition)

harlan ellison - approaching oblivion

joe haldeman - infinite dreams

samuel r. delany - driftglass (another nice hardcover. all these were book club editions, but still...)

i'll get into the modern age of tomorrow someday, i promise.

In my heaviest sf-reading days there was a group of S-authors who kept me reliably busy and satisfied -- Sterling, Swanwick, Stephenson, (Lucius) Shepard. (I remember Green Eyes and Life During Wartime being very good.)

Agreed with Scott on Disch -- acquire on sight! Fundamental Disch, edited by Delany, is one of the best sf short story anthologies ever published.

http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/femalemind.jpg

I have this! It's odd. The stories are remarkable and some polished gems but it solidified for me that I don't like sf/f short stories. Too much world-building to dip into and then be thrown back out of.

Jesus Christ, sorry. It didn't look that big.

It should be that big! You done good, Scott; whatta trove. is the early Pohl like pre-50s? Never read any of that. Thanks for mentioning the Disc collection, WilliamC, hadn't heard of it at all--recent?

No, it's from 1980, and the stories were first published mid-60s to mid-70s. I should amend something -- the stories were selected by Delany and he wrote an introduction, but "edited by" is incorrect.

(i snatch up ALL disch i see. rare as hen's teeth around here! and sometimes they are in sf, horror, lit, poetry, etc. so you gotta keep your eyes peeled)

Found this this about a month ago after a solid year of checking the D's of the only decent second-hand bookshop here

http://www.bookitinc.com/pictures243/989899.jpg

I could do with some Dangerous Visions, but if I never read another Ellison story again I won't be sorry.

yeah i'm not sick of him yet. i can do without his constant commenting though. the 10,000 word intros to stories and books and forwards and afterwards and jesus dude just start the book already. he might have actually written more word-wise for book introductions than actual books. i mean he's really annoying. but i can forget that when i read his stories. he had some good ideas. and can be entertaining.

dangerous visions has TWO intros by asimov and then an intro by ellison and long ellison intros before each story.

Deathbird Stories is a p great solo collection, imho (or was when I was about thirteen - Ellison was def a guide for me into 'experimental' writing techniques.) Has he written much actual fiction in like the last 30 years?

Obv he is a great prolix tit, but otoh - as he himself points out - you can skip all that stuff if you want to. It's like DVD extras before they invented DVD extras.

I just edited an sff anthology, and it's really difficult to restrain yourself from writing long-ass intros, because you kind of fall in love with the stories and you want to brute force everyone else into loving them too.

I've got Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind kicking around, and I want to read it again now, but all the books in the house are in boxes while we try to make sure something is holding the roof up (it seems to have been balancing on a cupboard for a number of years).

fyi i've read a grand total of three ellison stories, that i can recall, in my life :)

("a boy and his dog", which y'know is fine; "i have no mouth..." which is deeply upsetting and i think only exists for its horrifically disturbing final image, there is nothing else of value in it; and "the function of dream sleep" which hilariously features The Saddest Man in the World. Not that he cries all the time, he's more like a Conan the Barbarian of grief. "Not one in the memory of the human race has been so tormented..." it's such a blowhard concept and just underscored for me what a douchebag ellison must be.

lol this is def a case of diff strokes etc, cos i tried to read one of yr beloved iain banks 'culture' novs once and it reminded me of nothing so much as Raymond Chandler's SF parody:

"I checked out with K19 on Aldabaran III, and stepped out through the crummalite hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I cocked the timejector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the Brylls ran swiftly on five legs using their other two to send out crylon vibrations. The pressure was almost unbearable, but I caught the range on my wrist computer through the transparent cysicites. I pressed the trigger. The thin violet glow was icecold against the rust-colored mountains. The Brylls shrank to half an inch long and I worked fast stepping on them with the poltex. But it wasn't enough. The sudden brightness swung me around and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn't enough. He was right."

haha chandler otm! i could make a defence of that kind of thing but yeah you either like it or you don't. also, google!

read one of iain banks' non-sf books (still pretty fanciful tho) once and h8ed it

i loved the wasp factory years ago. and really liked the bridge. but haven't delved into his sf.

I just edited an sff anthology

?!? What's it called?

yeah, seriously!

also, why didn't you mention this beforehand. i got short stories to unload here.

i haven't read ellison in forever but god i loved him when i was 14. i'd literally never read anyone who used language the way he did, and i'd never read anyone who seemed so determined to unsettle his readers. 'i have no mouth and i must scream' upset me so much when i first read it that i actually remember feeling MAD at him for writing it.

no denying he's a pretty obnoxious person -- which sometimes infected even a lot of his best work -- but plenty of his stories have stuck with me forever: 'ticktockman,' the wolf man one with the long title, 'pretty maggie moneyeyes,' and of course 'the deathbird.'

yeah i reread a bunch of ellison a couple years back and the flaws were waaaay more glaring to me as a grownup (most of which seemed to be a combination of lol 60s and his own particular brand of pushy obnoxiousness), but he really was a hell of a writer in his heyday.

i must have taken that giant life's work anthology of his stuff out of the library a zillion times between ages 11 and 14.

I was also crazy into Ellison during my early 20s... his status as a outsider/insider was just right if you put off by Ayn Rand freaks on one side, the blind consumption of landfill SF-readers on the other, and the whole faux-"waah we aren't taken seriously" lament from the Sci-Fi community at large. To his credit, Ellison's image was that of a motormouth Rod Serling by way of Mad Magazine and a vat of espresso - squaring off against Frank Sinatra in that Gay Talese essay, writing (as we're reminded) The Best Episode Of Star Trek Ever, pissing on a manuscript at a writing workshop, and having a secret past of pseudonymously written pulp novels (Sex Gang is a favorite). Heady stuff, especially when the only other examples of The Writer's Life you have are guys like Philip K. Dick, Hunter S. Thompson, Bukowski, or anyone whose lives ended badly.

I've never really felt the need to go back to his stories. I'd probably be disappointed and spend too much time looking for evidence of "aha! he was a colossal asshole all along!" Same reason I never went back to read those early Cerebus stories.

The most WTF Ellison appearance ever...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS1VEjr3hZo

okay, started reading Red Mars, first book in KSR's Mars Trilogy. needed to bust out of my 50's and 70's burrow. so far so good. there are indeed a lot of russians and a lot of science but i'm digging it. feels suitably cinematic. or at least good t.v. mini-series material.

i like writers who can very quickly set a scene and put you in a place. you are there kinda thing. i was there by page two. (i'm kinda dumb and there are definitely SF novels that have me disoriented for pages and pages before i figure out where the hell i am or where i'm going. which can have its charms too. guess it depends. and then there is van vogt.)

can't forget the sartorial splendor either:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3467/3387022808_5f1050cf8c.jpg

i have an idea, i think it would be cool. people recommend one book that everyone else who stumbles this way should read. it can be a well-known classic - we shouldn't assume everyone who looks at the thread will have read all of those - or it could be something obscure, as long as it is a bonafide must-read and not just obscure for the sake of it. this isn't necessarily your #1 favourite book, and no one is going to use it to measure how many inches long your nerd cred is. the only rule is, if someone gets to your book first, you have to name something else. no dupes.

what do you think? i would love to be able to refer back to this thread when i am at a loose end and get an instant reading list. to make the recommendations easy to find in the future how about people post them with the prefix 'mypick:' for easy ctrl+f and maybe put the title in bold tags.

we did a poll a couple of years ago: THE ILX ALL-TIME SPECULATIVE FICTION POLL RESULTS THREAD & DISCUSSION thats probably got a bunch of ideas for anyone casting about for something to read

mypick: Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

I know this looks like an attempt to establish nerdcred inches straight out of the gate, but it's such a fucking awesome book

I'll ponder, but meanwhile, has anybody read Ellison's rock novel, Spider Kiss? Think orig title may have been Rockabilly. It's in a big ol' stack; I can see it but can't dislodge to read without getting crushed, Collier Bros-style!

/I just edited an sff anthology/

?!? What's it called?

Been offline some. It's called 'Colinthology' (don't blame me), more about it here: http://www.firefew.com/?p=222

I'll be putting out a subs call for another antho after Christmas; I'll give you guys a heads-up.

My pick...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51f4GwM%2BxFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Orbit 10. Published in 1972. Hell, there's probably a copy of it already sitting in the graveyard of forgotten anthologies in your local used bookstore already. Damon Knight edited 20+ volumes of Orbit, but the run from volumes 7 to 12 is what you should look for.

Orbit 10 was the first one I read and it was a huge impact. I was in junior high (1977) and I was complaining about there not being a paperback version of Children Of Dune yet to the righteous hippie (seriously, he could have been in the Moody Blues) who minded Buccaneer Books in downtown Laguna. He suggested Orbit 10 to me... The first story was Gene Wolfe's "The Fifth Head of Cerebus," about as mind-bending rough road as you can get if all you've been reading is Heinlein juveniles. Great list of stories…

"The Fifth Head of Cerberus", Gene Wolfe
"Jody after the War", Edward Bryant
"Al", Carol Emshwiller
"Now I'm Watching Roger", Alexei Panshin
"Whirl Cage", Jack M. Dann
"A Kingdom by the Sea", Gardner R. Dozois
"Christlings", Albert Teichner
"Live, from Berchtesgaden", Geo. Alec Effinger
"Dorg", R.A. Lafferty
"Gantlet", Richard E. Peck
"The Fusion Bomb", Kate Wilhelm

R.A. Lafferty's story is another all-time fave (feels like Vonnegut writing a non-verse Dr. Seuss story), but all of them (and the Orbits in general) are solid stories that actually deserve the "speculative fiction" marketing tag that fans were getting up in arms about. Too bad Star Wars wiped them all out...

those orbit books are great. they'll get you hooked.

Thanks! Some of us were carrying on about Knight quite a bit upthread. I think I may have this volume in one of those skyscraper stacks.

I think I'll make his A Century of Science Fiction my entry in the called-for series of fortunate (or unfortunate, Mom might say) events and crucially close encounters of the geeek love kind.

Will definitely look out for those Orbits. Going for wilful obscurity for mypick, but there are so many rubbish anthologies out there I think the good ones should be celebrated, and I would love for this one not to be utterly forgotten. Have repped for it before but maybe not at length:

In Dreams edited by Paul J. McAuley and Kim Newman (Gollancz, 1992)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0575052015/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

That's right, a celebration of the 7-inch single in original SF and horror fiction! Sounds like a weird and desperate ploy for some kind of SF/ILM type nerd crossover cred but honestly it works, it's one of the more solid collections I've read. Covers music from Glen Miller to rave and beyond, with contributions from modern day luminaries like Greg Egan and Alistair Reynolds. Highlight for me is 'Snodgrass' by Ian R Macleod, a convincing and genuinely touching alternate world story where John Lennon is the one who left The Beatles before they made it big; and 'The Elvis National Theater of Okinawa', a completely off-the-wall piece co-written by Jonathan Lethem about far future Japan's repackaging of the long-forgotten Elvis myth.

bah

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Nc9RTJaJL._SL500_.jpg

That reminds me of that Lewis Shiner novel about the great unfinished albums, any of you read that? Protagonist goes back in time and makes sure Smile is completed, etc. Utterly daft. Kind of wanna reread it now that I think about it...

hmm the lewis shiner story in 'in dreams' is pretty weak imo. for one thing it seems entirely straight, no sf/horror/fantasy of any kind.

i've read 'spider kiss' and it's pretty awesome as i recall. really superheated, ridiculously OTT prose, but that adds to the charm.

'riddley walker' has been on my to-read list for a while now, but hoban's one of those mean-to-read authors who never manages to stay in my head when i go to the bookstore.

Almost finished Wolfsbane by Kornbluth and Pohl - it's getting a bit mired in describing chemical processes and whatnot...you can totally tell that Kornbluth did love his encyclopedia!

Going to read "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers" by Harry Harrison next...

Have you read Kornbluth/Pohl's 'The Space Merchants'--still amazed at how well the satire in that one stands up

The water beneath the surface was not very cold and yet I felt chilled. I had been sitting at the bottom of the lake for more than an hour, carefully turning my head from side to side and peering into the green-coloured shadows. One had to sit very still because septopods are sensitive and mistrustful animals that can easily be frightened away by the slightest sound or abrupt movement, and then they would disappear and come back only at night---when it was best not to have anything to do with them.
An eel wriggled under my feet, and a pompous striped perch swum to and fro. Each time it passed, it stopped to stare at me with its round vacant eyes. When it left, a shoal of small silvery fish found a feeding-ground above my head.
The septopod was rather a large specimen...It swam slowly, as they usually do in the daytime, as if it were in a trance...
I raised my marking gun slowly and aimed at the septopod's inflated back. The little silvery fish rushed aside and disappeared. It seemed to me that the eyelid covering the animal's eye moved. I pulled the trigger and immediately pushed off the ground to escape the caustic sepia. When I looked again, the septopod was nowhere to be seen, while a dense bluish-black fluid was dissolving in the water at the bottom of th lake. I surfaced and swam to the shore.
It was a hot fine day. A thin white mist hung over the lake and the sky was clear and blue. A few grey clouds were building up behind the woods.
A stranger was sitting in the grass in front of our hut. He wore brightly-coloured bathing trunks and a band around his forehead. He was sun-tanned and gave the impression of a very strong man, as if there were not muscles but strong ropes beneath his skin. Standing in front of him, in a blue bathing suit, was my daughter. My long-legged Masha, with her hair hanging down over her thin shoulders.

That's from the beginning of Arkady Strugatsky's "Wanderers and Travellers", another one in xp Path Into The Unknown--The Best of Soviet Science Fiction, first English edition 1966