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

and all over his face broods a universe of rainbows, dingy and fat, which from the fat vapours of the pitch bringing forth rainbows, not rainbows of heaven, but, so to say, fallen angels, grown gross and sluggish. But, years ere this, I think, I had seen the bulrushes: for, soon after the volcano came, in roaming over to the left shore of the cataract's sea---the whole left shore is flat and widespread, and hath no high walls like the right side---I walked upon a freshet of fresh warm water, and after following it upward, saw all around a marsh's swamp, and the bush of bulrushes. This is where the oysters be so crass, and they be pearl oysters, for all that soil be crass with nacreous matter of some sort, with barrok pearls, mother of pearl, and in most of the oysters which I opened pearls; with a lot of conch shells which have within them pink pearls, and there be also the black pearl, such as they have in Mexico and the West Indies, with the yellow and likewise the white, which last be shaped like the pear, and large, and his pallor hath a blank brightness, very priceless, and so to say, bridal.

That's from "The Dark Lot of One Saul," by M.P. Shiel. Had heard of him as a xenophobe, racist, anti-Semite and indeed, it seems that he was as smitten by the Yellow Peril as much as his Elizabethan castaway was the yellow pearl, to say the least. Also wanted to deport the Jews to Palestine, thus "making him a Zionist of sorts"--mots juste, Great Tales of Science Fiction eds. Silverberg & Greenberg! But in non-shit-talking stories like this, he earns the crack in his pot, a la xp David Lindsay. Other goodies in here so far from Twain, Kipling, Wells; compatible though creakier Poe and Verne. Currently reading "R.U.R."; quite a contrast so far with Shiel.

This quote is is one of the tamer bits actually; hard to avoid spoilers.

Anybody read this? Wish it were bigger, but seems to encompass several elements of Shiel's perspective:
http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n0/n1176.jpg

I think I read it? I think [perhaps it was RIDICULOUS. Sigh. Sometimes I wonder how amazing it would be to remember things.

galactic pot-healer is really bleak!!

heh temporarily put GPH aside and only resumed reading this morning - the moment when the protaganist encounters his dead self underwater is extremely eerie, have high hopes for a rousingly desolate finale.

The Purple Cloud is fun in overwritten way. That is one ugly, ugly cover, though (sadly, it's the version I have too)

I know. I'm sorry. But there is this

http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/library/Purplecloudpage.jpg

...which turns out to be from the opening page of---the whole freaking thing??
http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/library/The_Purple_Cloud.htm

yeah, is 1901 so public domain now

that and three more here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2292

Thanks! Fairly wild profile here (with some spoilers) http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/shiel_m_p So far, He provides one of the few exceptions to the SCIENCE GONE TOO FAR theme of xp Silverberg & Greenberg's Great Tales of Science Fiction Not that most of these aren't fairly tongue-in-cheek, but I also appreciate the deviation of Mark Twain's cool reverie (no Disastrous Consequences energetically worked out): he goes to negotiate the sale of his soul, and immediately notices that Satan's lovely bod is made of radium.

"Alas, All Thinking" (eventually) proves unexpectedly involving, with the encounters of a not-yet-over-achieving scientist and a time-travelling recruiter of sorts (bring that phrase up, and she'd plop down to meditate for who knows how long...) sustaining one-to-one in the foreground makes it more effective than some of these other Great Tales. The author is Harry Bates, best known now for "Farewell to the Master" (basis of The Day The Earth Stood Still), also incl a hugely fateful, poignant one-to-one.

Shiel was the first literary King of Rodonda, the crown which has now passed down to Javier Marias

Thought that stopped when Shiel's successor passed on? According to that
xp http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/shiel_m_p But how did this new King arise?

Blaylock on steampunk http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-p-blaylock/on-steampunk_b_2494561.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

So, Blaylock is my favorite writer of fantasy of the generations after Wolfe and Dick and Lafferty. But more because of his extraordinary body of contemporary southern california suburban magic realist novels, especially the holy handful of The Digging Leviathan, The Last Coin, The Paper Grail and All the Bells on Earth. His victorian novels were really great but not the engine of his greatness to me.

He always kept his distance from the steampunk thing until the last couple of years, when as far as I can tell he finally said to himself 'fuck it, I'd be a fool not to grasp this low-hanging fruit' and embraced the whole grandfather of steampunk thing. And lo and behold, he's got multiple new books coming out and reissues of the old ones. Good on him, I say. I'd probably have done no different.

But I'm here to tell you to measure your justifiable 'ewwww steampunk' reaction because Blaylock is the most amazing prose stylist and his work is jammed with the ineffable and bursting with heart. I love him madly.

I'll check out the Cali magic realism, thanks! Which of his steampunk novels should I start with? I really didn't like The Difference Engine, but not against the subgenre overall.

For his victoriana, get the relatively recent Langdon St. Ives omnibus and start with the first one, Homunculus. In print from Subterranean or cheap on Nook/Kindle.

Powers' Anubis Gates is probably the best of that whole strain, tbh.

thx---what about John Shirley?

I haven't read any Shirley. My only exposure to him is the lyrics he wrote for two late blue oyster cult albums! If I ever see his boc inspired novel Transmaniacon I'm gonna get it though.

Wow, didn't realize he was this involved with music, as writer and performer: http://www.darkecho.com/JohnShirley/jsmusic.html

But I'm here to tell you to measure your justifiable 'ewwww steampunk' reaction because Blaylock is the most amazing prose stylist and his work is jammed with the ineffable and bursting with heart. I love him madly.

Blaylock has written some of the best descriptions of food I've read anywhere. The California books are the best... The Last Coin and The Paper Grail especially.

I've read all of Shirley's odd transreal/cyberpunk hybrid books and they're all great. Perhaps start with the Eclipse trilogy first and then City Come A-Walkin'. He's mostly writing straight-up horror these days and I haven't kept up.

Apparently Marias is the DISPUTED king since 1997: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Redonda

can somebody talk to me about luis mcmaster bujold?

i am enjoying the hell out of the young miles sequence, but i'm not sure if i should dig deeper into the universe w/ other sagas.

Quite a diligent, even passionate entry about her work in http://sf-encyclopedia.com Have to check her out, thanks. Also liked this:
You expected the dunes to change, they were like a person, though only one who had known the heights and swamps of them can explain the curious sleeping vitality of the sands under the forest. Things with a smaller life than the dunes would flutter and creep and stalk boldly though them until you might think of them as dead and tame. But Dr. Thorne had seen the traveling dunes shifting restlessly before the winds and felt a kinship with the great never-lasting hills.
That's from "Dune Roller", female writer Julian May's 1951 science fiction debut, published in Astounding. Not the best time or place for feminism, but her damsel in distress floats some speculative zingers effectively enough, and her male scientist target's "female" conception of the dune roller turns out to be a typically male simplification, we learn at the very end. Pretty sly times encounters with passages like the above, qualling subterranean drive of the suthor as well as the dune roller. Considering the promise of this story, can see how her later Galactic Milieu octology might lead to SF Encyclopedia to comparisons with Lessing (as it does). Oh yeah, this is the first counter to (often anxious) tonnage of testosterone in the aforementioned Great Tales of Science Fiction Le Guin'll be along later (can't come too soon).

God, sorry! I meant:
Such slyness also encounters passages like the above, equaling subterranean drive of the suthor as well as the dune roller

eh I meant we get slyness, plot/character twists, as well as the bit about shifting of the dunes--"they were like a person"--incl a person like the author, with her drive and ambition as subterranean as it had to be, in an Astounding Mag pulp "hard" s.f. exercise ca. 1951 (when she was 21, even)

http://io9.com/5976281/why-alien-invasion-is-the-perfect-metaphor-for-growing-up-black-in-america

i'm still reading Red Mars...how sad is that? i think i'll be reading it forever. that's how it feels. i'll never finish. it just keeps going into infinity. i can't give up though part of me wants to. i've been cheating on Red Mars too and reading other books at work. don't tell it that. it's a secret. it's engaging when i'm reading it but sometimes its so hard to pick up. plus, the copy i have is horrible. beat up fat oversized-paperback that's even water-stained inside. it was probably in someone's bathroom. i can't stop thinking that it was in someone's bathroom...it's so unloveable. nobody ever would have bought it in a million years if i hadn't bought it. it's my cross to bear.

Scott I thought you might want to know that I had to read that post out loud to my wife last night when she was wondering why I was laughing so hard. I have known so many of those disturbingly swollen bathroom paperbacks in my life.

"paperbacks" eh?

there was a particular copy of Fowles' The Magus, beloved of my wife, which I had to surreptitiously put outta its misery

Why!?

It had become viscerally disgusting to hold. I swapped it out for a new (used) one.

Oh yeah---which reminds me of a friend who took a paperback (the basic drugstore kind, not the fancy trade pbs, which might have better paper) to the rain forest--when she got settled into her campsite, finally pulled it out of her bag--and lo, the pages of William Styron's Darkness Visible had become huge! Also her tampons.

lol. That's helpful to know

yeah, watch it in the rain forest (another girl had something sufficiently different to share w her)

a Robertson Davies novel?

Didion (very dry)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51g8q-L7sWL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Frederik Pohl - Slave Ship

SF war novel, about the attempts to train animals to aid human warfare. The idea of America vs an extreme religious group rather than a country has aged well, but overall it's pretty incoherent. Could've done with some of C.M. Kornbluth's craziness! My copy is ex-library and was disintegrating as I read it, probably worth the £1 I paid for it just about.

awesome cover though

Yeah! Not the typical Pohl cover, is it? That was a real thing, like the pioneering researcher Dr. John Lily got involved in what turned out to be a plan to train dolphins as commandos. Movie Day of the Dolphins based on this situation, but I never saw it. I do know Lily got way into LSD research, not using it on dolphins though (or soldiers, as in the project described in Dec. 17 New Yorker---there were others like that too). Also use of suicide commando critters in Vietnam: dogs mostly, I think.

can i resubmit my humble req. for info abt. luis mcmaster bujold?

it's 'lois', for one thing

goddamn, did that twice. i like my franco-latin scots version quite a bit, to be honest.

I finished all of the Young Miles cycle, and I'm debating reading the Miles in Love compendium. While I enjoy the books by and large, at points they're feeling a bit too Douglas Adamsy. I've got the sensation that I'm reading Act I before Act I before Act I. When does the story really start, if ever? The Vorkosigan stories are pleasant enough as fluffy romps, but IDK that they've got enough brain-fodder to sustain my attention/interest for 1400 more pages, unless something HAPPENS besides hijinks and Miles' perpetual awesomeness.

soda, I responded above; didn't know about her, but found appealing article:
Quite a diligent, even passionate entry about her work in http://sf-encyclopedia.com Have to check her out, thanks.

Here's the New Yorker article I mentioned, about experimenting on soldiers: "Operation Delirium" (the film stills are from the researcher's footage) http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/12/17/121217fa_fact_khatchadourian

Octavia Butler's Patternmaster, v disappointing. Honestly I'm just bored of that strain of SF where everyone is still embroiled in a Hobbesian war of all against all, without any authorial reflection or judgement on this state of affairs. To my mind this problem is particularly prevalent in golden age SF and up to the 70s, but maybe I'm just distracted by the enormous spaceships and speculative physics of my preferred brand of modern-day hard SF.