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

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.

Re the latter, just read "A Meeting With Medusa" by Arthur C. Clarke. Another from xp Great Tales of Science Fiction, and a sudden bounce back through this volume's Verne and Wells--which go with so many later inclusions, in terms of somewhat warping Earthly context of mixed motivations, outward bound in time and space---but especially here, where new improved balloons cruise Earth and then Jupiter---but he makes it seem plausible. Ditto lifeforms in precarious "terrain" of Jovian atmospheric strata. All so beautifully described, light and dark sides. Gotta read more of his, maybe especially the collab with Stephen Baxter?

You might try Butler's Kindred, more of a play of timelines, characters' resourcefulness/manipulative charm etc (African-American slips back into slave times, but then again---)

I thought her short story Bloodchild was great, dealing with a thoroughly different - alien indeed - kind of social contract. Would like to know if any of her novels tread similar ground. Lilith's Brood perhaps?

Been a long time since I've read her, but the strange social contract is def an ongoing theme, and this article might help:
http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/butler_octavia Finally finished Great Tales of Science Fiction, and while the SCIENCE GONE TOO FAR goes too far, and some nice stories suffer by context, incl proximity to others--god, there sure were a lot of: O what a great wild party, but then Debbie Downer pulls a string, and human limitations kick in or New Improved Man must at least pay sudden dark dues, like we couldn't have guessed, if we will have forgotten how the previous 10 stories did end (nultism vs. boredom, sorry)--still, some syththetic life forms slip through the walls---like Kipling's, good-humored, shrewdly andseriously uneasy "As Easy As A.B.C.", Wells' robustly mischievous "The New Accelerator"--others don't slip though, they just parade their own thing, acknowledging context or not, like xp Twain's "Sold To Satan", Cordwainer Smith's "The Burning of the Brain", Tiptree's reckless "Painwise", Sheckley's triumphantly slick, strong "Warm", Saberhagen's tough sensitive space opera "Goodlife", Le Guin's "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" (eerie reverie, like the Twain, but hers also mixes in the Le Guin ccs of sunshine, man). And of course the xp May has its aforementioned wiles, ditto one by Peter Phillips, although he seems to have given L. Ron some ideas that really were taken TOO FAR (not P.'s fault of course). Overall, worth getting from the library or for a very small price, and I'm curious about The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces, which is the unabridged version of this big-assed tome.

And of course the xp Shiel is its own parade too. I think that's why they picked such marvels, to give us breaks from (in) the grand tombahip of context--anyway, much appreciated, Silverberg & Greenberg (even though the Silverberg story is just big slick shit, though prob got him some big tit mag money; got a whirly girl too)(ok I've read worse)(but this bad stuff suffers from overall context too!)

thx for link, think i'll check out kindred, and the xenogenesis series (lilith's brood? whatchu talkin' bout wikipedia)

I've just finished reading an anthology of stories written by winners of the Octavia E. Butler scholarships to Clarion & Clarion West (they've sent one young person of colour to each workshop each year since 2007). There's some really good stuff in it, and they manage not to retread Octavia's themes too heavily.

http://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/book/bloodchildren/

In the interests of full disclosure etc etc I should say that I'm friends with the editor and the first story is by my mate Chris, but I would not stan for it on here if I didn't honestly like it.

Appealing description of this on Amazon, which shows some other related, like a Nalo Hopkinson-edited---anybody read this?
http://images.indiebound.com/831/525/9780446525831.jpg

from Amazon:
...The earliest story in Dark Matter is acclaimed literary author Charles W. Chesnutt's "The Goophered Grapevine" (1887), in which an aging ex-slave tells a chilling tale of cursed land to a white Northerner buying a Southern plantation. In "The Comet" (1920), W.E.B. Du Bois portrays the rich white woman and the poor black man who may be the only survivors of an astronomical near-miss. In George S. Schuyler's "Black No More" (1931), an excerpt from the satirical novel of the same name, an African American scientist invents a machine that can turn blacks white. More recent reprints include science fiction master Samuel R. Delany's Nebula Award-winning "Aye, and Gomorrah..." (1967), which delineates the socio-sexual effects of asexual astronauts; Charles R. Saunders's heroic fantasy "Gimmile's Songs" (1984), in which a woman warrior encounters a singer with a frightening, compelling magic in ancient West Africa; MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Octavia E. Butler's powerful "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" (1987), in which the cure for cancer creates a terrifying new disease of compulsive self-mutilation; and Derrick Bell's angry, riveting "The Space Traders" (1992), in which aliens offer to trade their advanced technology to the U.S. in exchange for its black population. Other reprints include "Ark of Bones" (1974) by author-poet-folklorist Henry Dumas; "Future Christmas" (1982) by master satirist Ishmael Reed; "Rhythm Travel" (1996) by playwright-poet-critic Amiri Baraka (who has also written as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amiri Baraka); and "The African Origins of UFOs" (2000) by London-based West Indian author Anthony Joseph.
Most of the stories in Dark Matter are original; these range even more widely in their concerns and themes. In the generation ship of Linda Addison's "Twice, at Once, Separated," a Yanomami Indian tribe preserves its culture in coexistence with technology, while visions tear a young woman from her own wedding. Bestselling novelist Steven Barnes examines degrees of privilege and deprivation when an African American woman artist is trapped in an African concentration camp in his unflinching contribution, "The Woman in the Wall." In John W. Campbell Award winner Nalo Hopkinson's sexy, scary "Ganger (Ball Lightning)," two lovers drifting apart try to reconnect through the separation of virtual sex. A mystic power awakens in the devastated future of Ama Patterson's gorgeous and tough "Hussy Strutt." An artist's infidelity changes two generations in Leone Ross's astute, magic-realist "Tasting Songs." In Nisi Shawl's sharp, witty mythic fantasy "At the Huts of Ajala," the spirit of a modern woman must outwit a god before she is even born. Others contributing new stories are Tananarive Due, Robert Fleming, Jewelle Gomez, Akua Lezli Hope, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Kalamu ya Salaam, Kiini Ibura Salaam, Evie Shockley, and Darryl A. Smith. --Cynthia Ward

I know there's a thread for this, and I won't say too much about it here, but just watched ep 1 of Season I of Game of Thrones. How are the books? Never read much George R.R.

Game of Thrones DVDs: appreciate the character studies via action, but awaiting return of the White Walkers or some other kinda magical. Now reading Hartwell & Cramer's The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF which is appropriately choosey re Le Guin, Wolfe, Bob Shaw (his first slow glass story), Kuttner & Moore, but more striking/new to me are once genre-celebrated writers coming from the other, basically tech-oriented side---Hal Clement, Raymond Z. Gallun, Robert L. Forward, Dean Ing--whose exuberant, bold and sometimes slightly mad engineering def extends to character construction, which seems mainly self-taught. Not that it isn't always, ultimately (if it really works), but pretty sure tbeir workshop courses didn't incl. creative writing (well maybe Ing, but his syntax seems litte bumpier than the older gearheads--do dig his wry, class-wise take on leisure consumers in space; very 70s, minus expected dated details, so far)

The only duds in here so far are from vast troves of "hard SF" titans: Heinlein's snotty, superficial "It's Great to Be Back", Asimov's conventionally plotted "The Life and Times of Multivac", and Clarke's award-winning theological tearjerker, "The Star".

conveniently plotted, that is.

The Ascent of Wonder cont.: "Rappachini's Daughter" and "Vermillion Sands", wow--reminds me I gotta read some more short stories by Hawthorne and Ballard. Comparison made more striking for their not being in close proximity, although too bad that stations between incl. compartively labored exercises by Wilhelm and Benford. Donald Kingsbury brings a compellingly sympathetic, late 70s perspective on and of a whore heroine, in wicked media/techno-mogul paradise of San Francisco, and thence to the domain of an archetypal 50s SF Problem-Solving Man of Space(albeit one w his hang-ups rudely unveiled by omniscient narrator). Kingsbury, who published one story in the 50s and dropped out of SF 'til the 70s, def has the Problem-Solving thing down, and, for a guy from his generation, does pretty well with the female character development/sexual poiltics too, in a way that prob wouldn't have been genre-publishable in the 50s. Not meaning to be condescending re "for a guy from his generation", not that I'm so enlightened, but even I noticed he did kinda fumble it a couple times at least.

Nebula nominees, incl. lotta links to complete stories:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/free-samples-of-the-nebula-award-nominees_b65704

Is "Life and Times of Multivac" the Asimov story where people keep asking their computer if entropy can be reversed some day? I like that one a whole lot.

No, but hopefully that Multivac story will be among the Asimov stories coming up---another somewhat unusual aspect of this offbeat "hard sf" anthology is how some authors reappear, every couple hundred pages or so. I've always avoided fantasy for the most part, but just read my first Pern, "Weyr Search", from 1967. Anthologists' alibi for inclusion: "Intentionally or not, McCafferty has bridged a connection between world-building af and world-building fantasy"--yeah, she wrote these early stories "under the tutelage of John W. Campbell", and this novelette fits in pretty well between Ursula K. and George R.R., though the Villain is really Villainy. But good shifts between points of view, and the anthology's currently emerging gallery of idiosyncratic heroines/protagonists here benefits from having an actual woman as author. World-building, yeah: think I might re-read Dune, for the first since high school (fantasy, ya got me; what next, westerns? H'mmm...)

please post yr thoughts if you read any of the nebula shorts/novelettes/novellas

i'm still reading Red Mars...

haha! but in fairness to myself, i keep putting it down for weeks at a time. almost done though! and then heaven help me i'm gonna read the other two. it gets really good in the last section. he's really not very good at character development though. i should know these people really well and aside from a couple of main characters i really don't. almost no backstory for anyone. lots of broad strokes. he saves all his energy for the science and tech.

ya there's a plot point that one character is married to another major character and i didn't even remember it when it came up at the end

i mean maybe i'm old-fashioned but if i travel with people for decades i should know them better. mostly everyone is just angry a lot so its hard to keep them straight. the structure of the book is kinda strange. but the overall plot is interesting enough. brainy writers can sometimes have trouble with the whole humanity thing. they want to describe martian canyons forever.

I always felt like the political systems were what ksr finds the most interesting in those books.

i thought it was his love for underground water supplies that kept him going.

did really like how he snuck in the whole *oh hey we all live forever now!* thing in the middle of the book.

loving Green Mars so far! kinda exactly what i wanted Red Mars to be like in a way. captivating. i realize now that Red Mars did have to set up all the tortured history/backstory but it took its time doing it. sooooooo glad to finally be done with that icky old waterstained discarded library copy of Red Mars. i threw it in the trash. felt cleansed. but KSR so smart to start the 2nd book where he does. you REALLY want to know what the hell happened after the revolution. and little by little he lets you know. a page-turner! plus, i love coyote and the kid.

dammit seward don't you DARE make me wanna reread the trilogy!!!

caek requested comments on these:
Nebula nominees, incl. lotta links to complete stories
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/free-samples-of-the-nebula-award-nominees_b65704

―

So here's what's at that linked page (tempted to try the KSR, but gotta at least finish the equally massive Ascent of Wonder first)

The nominees for this year’s Nebula Awards have been revealed, and we’ve collected free samples of all the nominees below–the best science fiction books of 2012.

Many of these stories are available to read for free online. These are marked “COMPLETE” among the links. Here’s more about the awards:

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. Founded as the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1965 by Damon Knight, the organization began with a charter membership of 78 writers; it now has over 1,500 members, among them many of the leading writers of science fiction and fantasy.

Nebula Award Nominees for 2012 (to be awarded in 2013)

Novel

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (DAW; Gollancz ’13)
Ironskin by Tina Connolly (Tor)
The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan (Roc)
Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Novella

On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress (Tachyon)
“The Stars Do Not Lie” by Jay Lake (Asimov’s 10-11/12)
“All the Flavors” by Ken Liu (GigaNotoSaurus 2/1/12) COMPLETE
“Katabasis” by Robert Reed (F&SF 11-12/12)
“Barry’s Tale” by Lawrence M. Schoen (Buffalito Buffet) COMPLETE

Novelette

“The Pyre of New Day” by Catherine Asaro (The Mammoth Books of SF Wars)
“Close Encounters” by Andy Duncan (The Pottawatomie Giant & Other Stories)
“The Waves” by Ken Liu (Asimov’s 12/12)
“The Finite Canvas” by Brit Mandelo (Tor.com 12/5/12) COMPLETE
“Swift, Brutal Retaliation” by Meghan McCarron (Tor.com 1/4/12) COMPLETE
“Portrait of Lisane da Patagnia” by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 8/22/12) COMPLETE
“Fade to White” by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld 8/12) COMPLETE

Short Story

“Robot” by Helena Bell (Clarkesworld 9/12) COMPLETE
“Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld 6/12) COMPLETE
“Fragmentation, or Ten Thousand Goodbyes” by Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld 4/12) COMPLETE
“Nanny’s Day” by Leah Cypess (Asimov’s 3/12) COMPLETE
“Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream” by Maria Dahvana Headley (Lightspeed 7/12) COMPLETE
“The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu (Lightspeed 8/12) COMPLETE
“Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain” by Cat Rambo (Near + Far) COMPLETE

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

Iron Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill (Little, Brown)
Black Heart by Holly Black (S&S/McElderry; Gollancz)
Above by Leah Bobet (Levine)
The Diviners by Libba Bray (Little, Brown; Atom)
Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst (S&S/McElderry)
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Random House; Doubleday UK)
Enchanted by Alethea Kontis (Harcourt)
Every Day by David Levithan (Alice A. Knopf Books for Young Readers)
Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Tu Books)
Railsea by China Mieville (Del Rey; Macmillan)
Fair Coin by E.C. Myers (Pyr)
Above World by Jenn Reese (Candlewick)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

The Avengers, Joss Whedon (director) and Joss Whedon and Zak Penn (writers), (Marvel/Disney)
Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin (director), Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Abilar (writers), (Journeyman/Cinereach/Court 13/Fox Searchlight )
The Cabin in the Woods, Drew Goddard (director), Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard (writers) (Mutant Enemy/Lionsgate)
The Hunger Games, Gary Ross (director), Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins, and Billy Ray writers), (Lionsgate)
John Carter, Andrew Stanton (director), Michael Chabon, Mark Andrews, and Andrew Stanton (writers), (Disney)
Looper, Rian Johnson (director), Rian Johnson (writer), (FilmDistrict/TriStar)

The novellas took some getting used to: they're the only linked stories aimed at the Young Adult market, and they're novellas, so lots of room for American frontier kids getting together with American frontier Chinamen (in "All The Flavors") and Earth kids (readers) getting together with frontier planet kids and adults, incl other species, for frontier planet buffalo barbecue (in "Barry's Tale"), But "All The Flavors" does develop into tempo shifts, especially when the Little House stuff gets interspersed with chapters about a Chinese boy who becomes the God of War (oops, spoiler). But that's not the end anyway.
Speaking of ends, we get several shading into various implications, w varying degrees of effectiveness. Also a few which faintly remind me of the era(s) when every science fiction story had to at least end on a note of hope, if not a huge turnaround into last second happiness. But here (thinking of one strong example at least) the note gets squeezed out, not with the strain of obligation, but something fought for and earned, by the character, writer and reader dammit. Also, the symbolism is never cryptic or ponderous--well, the alt-history framing in "Fade To White" is tiresome, but even there, pretty good character development, considering. Faves are "The Finite Canvas", where a hitwoman on the lam meets a female doctor exiled to Earth; "Swift, Brutal Retaliation" (a new ghost is the least and most of this family's problems, at the moment); and "Robot" (instructions given by an astronaut with and of dementia, also of residual rocket juice and hairline sharpness). But several others are almost as good, maybe *as* good, except for a few stumbles right at the end, which I usually allow for, but this is a contest after all (not that I can vote of course). Also they're poated on sites worth checking out otherwise, for readers and writers (yo Strongo, with some stories you mentioned you're looking to place)

They're all worth reading!

outside of the YA and the movie nominations, only one person i've heard of. oy

lol at The Mammoth Books of SF Wars

Starting in on Dhalgren, see you guys in a while.

i don't need to read this book by david weber do i? BY SCHISM RENT ASUNDER! about futuristic space christians. okay just typing that makes me not want to read it. i'll put it out in the store. from the bestselling author of the HONOR HARRINGTON series!

still loving Green Mars!

Back to xp The Ascent of Wonder Rucky Rucker's "Message Found In A Copy of Flatland" is a good stoner comic strip mezzanine, oddly preceding Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations", once controversial for its ending, first of all among genre formalists, and I heard about about it as techonerd male chauvinism, but it repeatedly spells out tragic necessity (trying so hard not to spoil it), and is actually some kind of principled tearjerker--a softhearted, downscale "Billy Budd", kind of--sniffle. Garsh, kinda startling/ Aye, but then we're with our correspondent in the field, contemplating and watching out for "The Land Ironclads", courtesy H.G. Wells (damn, what a voice he has, in sev short stories I've come across lately). A bunch of dated doo-doo, then "The Very Slow Time Machine", which goes for baroque far more successfully than several in here, and might be best summarized by Swamp Dogg: "Pucker up while I back up." What other Watson should I read?

Ian, that is.

Another from The Ascent of Wonder: Bruce Sterling's "The Beautiful and Sublime", narrated by a crafty romantic set designer Kevin Spacey was born to play, with ambitions of the heart further stressing out the crazy tech heads whose inventions made possible the Golden Age of Foo Foo, in which manly Golden Age SF Problem Solvers are increasingly marginalized/quaint. Wicked satire, but got me caring about the characters, to a degree totally unexpected. Which makes two Sterling stories I've ever gotten into, counting the one I was bugging on upthread, "Black Swan." Not "Dori Bangs," def not The Difference Engine. but maybe I'll re-read the relatively recent one involving 3-D printing's effect on society etc. Others?

There was a Sterling short in an old volume of Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (iirc) (maybe around 90 or 91?) which blew me away at the time. It was a really fractured, interesting take on fantasy though the details have become verdigris in my mind at this point... always meant to follow up on his short work but never did.

Mozart in Mirrorshades, obv.