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

"munchies", that is (jeez).

He does have a certain stylistic something. "The 57th Franz Kafka" turns out to be a creepy tale that relies on its central idea for atmospherics, the idea itself remains a germ, a skeleton, tantalisingly unexplained. It's an ok trick but one yearns for more flesh on the bones - and "Schrodinger's Cat" provides it, as it works up to a climax both hilarious and unsettling. Will work my way through the rest of the stories during idle moments.

More from The Ascent of Wonder: Tiptree's "The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things To Rats" goes beyond/far far into its head-on Animal Liberation (or at least SPCA) themes, for some even more cage-rattling cosmic/visceral savage/wit/threnody/slash/slash/slash---different than Ballard's "Cage of Sand", yet not, in some ways. Could see the latter as as hour-long Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, if they ever got this bold (maybe the 80s retoolings of either/both). The Tiptree would prob still be too upsetting, even for cable goreheads. Not that it's got much onstage gore, but.

Computer guardians, coming to yourcells!
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22898974/biological-computer-created-at-stanford

half price sale at the used book store in town.

kampus - james e. gunn

mutiny in space - avram davidson

the road to nightfall - collected stories volume 4 - robert silverberg

childhood's end - arthur c. clarke

they walked like men - clifford d. simak

through the eye of a needle - hal clement

gender genocide - edmund cooper

the wind from the sun - arthur c. clarke

three hainish novels - ursula k. le guin

starwater strains - new science fiction stories - gene wolfe

a knight of ghosts and shadows - poul anderson

chronopolis and other stories - j.g. ballard

a canticle for leibowitz - walter m. miller, jr

beyond this horizon - robert a. heinlein

the sheep look up - john brunner

the squares of the city - john brunner

the avengers of carrig - john brunner

son of man - robert silverberg

world's fair 1992 - robert silverberg

the dream master - roger zelazny

a short, sharp shock - kim stanley robinson

the way the future was - a memoir - frederik pohl

master of time and space - rudy rucker

city - clifford d. simak

deux x - norman spinrad

Terribly, terribly sad news about Iain Banks. Fucking cancer.

http://www.iain-banks.net/2013/04/03/a-personal-statement-from-iain-banks/

:(

Oh noooo goddammit!!!

God he's only 59, fuck this.

Into the home stretch w The Ascent of Wonder: Hilbert Schenck is the Walrus, or at least a walrus, big meaty through big salty waves of concepts and details--mind the wiring--in "The Morphology of The Kirkam Wreck", and everything else I've come across (though he handles the humans better here than in "Send Me A Kiss By Wire", also and unnecessarily included in this volominous volume). It's all gotta be awesome seascapes, testing the laws of probability and New England expertise. Here, we also get aliens (or somebody) observing/tweaking Earthly mutability, and kidding/celebrating Problem-Solving SF, in a more tobacco-bearded way than usual. Arrrggh, mates!

Arrghh, "Kirkham" and "voluminous", that be.

One more (maybe the last; several duds since this) from Ascent of Wonder. Gregory Benford is another big old name (late-70s-80s-90s; haven't heard about him lately) I never quite got into, and "Relativistic Effects" ends abruptly, but it's a fairly well-aimed slingshot ending, to use Science Fiction Encyclopedia Online's increasingly useful term. A runaway spaceship has been traveling for five million years in ourtime, about five generations in crewtime, with the crew doing their best to internalize, and, you know, work with both those measurements. They're on a supply ship, so plenty of educational and entertainment materials to keep the roots thing going, and they've got plenty of cool, optimistic sci-tech projects going, within what's kind of a caste system, but it's not absolute yet, cause you do need to motivate some fresh blood (easy now). A fella who wants to go above his raising is mighty suspect to some on his own level, and everybody knows it's a delicate balance, and (cue L.Cohen's "Everybody Knows"). So you get this groovy Clarkean starscape, possibly deluded, though mellow, mentally fleet elites, and def some grubby, robust beef brewing below becks.

Every time you mention that book I think you are talking about this gigantic anthology called Sense of Wonder.

I'll check that one too, thanks. We haven't had any pix for a while, so here's what I'm reading:

http://jacketupload.macmillanusa.com/jackets/high_res/jpgs/9780312855093.jpg

xp brewing below decks

that collection looks like catnip to me, sad but otoh not surprised to hear it's full of duds.

It's not full of duds, sorry if I've made it seem that way. Almost all are at least worthy of discussion. I'll come up with some kind of rating thing when I get to the event horizon--almost there!

I finished, and here they are, cutnpasted from wiki (which also quotes mixed reviews). I've already posted about most of the ones I really liked, and some of the duds; other categories: kinda-sorta, may need re-reading; Wolfe stories are things that make me go h'mmm (oh so tricky). Will try to answer any questions. Years of original publication are also listed.
The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard Sf, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, eds., 1994

Ursula K. Le Guin "Nine Lives" 1969 good
Bob Shaw "Light of Other Days" 1966 good
Nathaniel Hawthorne "Rappaccini's Daughter" 1844 good
Arthur C. Clarke "The Star" 1955 nah
Hal Clement "Proof" 1942 good
Robert A. Heinlein "It's Great to Be Back" 1947 nah
Gene Wolfe "Procreation" 1984 Eh?
Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” 1943 good
Raymond Z. Gallun “Davy Jones' Ambassador” 1935 good
Isaac Asimov “The Life and Times of Multivac” 1975 mmm-meh
Robert L. Forward “The Singing Diamond” 1979 pretty good
Dean Ing “Down & Out on Ellfive Prime” 1979 good
Hilbert Schenck “Send Me a Kiss by Wire” 1984 kinda
Philip Latham “The Xi Effect” 1950 nah
Edgar Allan Poe “A Descent into the Maelström” 1841 kinda-sorta
Gregory Benford “Exposures” 1982 meh-ish stiffly imposing
Kate Wilhelm “The Planners” 1968 stiffly imposing/contrived (lol 60s?)
James Blish “Beep” 1954 nah
Richard Grant “Drode's Equations” 1981 good! Borgesian
Theodore L. Thomas “The Weather Man” 1962 nah
Part II
Arthur C. Clarke “Transit of Earth” 1971 nah
J.G. Ballard “Prima Belladonna” 1971 good
Donald M. Kingsbury “To Bring in the Steel” 1978 good
C.M. Kornbluth “Gomez” 1954 kinda
Isaac Asimov “Waterclap” 1970 good
Anne McCaffrey “Weyr Search” 1967 good
Rudy Rucker “Message Found in a Copy of Flatland” 1983 good-ish
Tom Godwin “The Cold Equations” 1954 good
H.G. Wells “The Land Ironclads” 1903 good
Larry Niven “The Hole Man” 1973 nah
John W. Campbell “Atomic Power” 1934 nah
John T. Sladek “Stop Evolution in Its Tracks!” shit 1988
Miles J. Breuer, M.D. “The Hungry Guinea Pig” 1930 good in an early pulp silly way
Ian Watson “The Very Slow Time Machine” 1978 good
Bruce Sterling “The Beautiful and the Sublime” 1986 good (actually doesn't suck)
Ursula K. Le Guin “The Author of the Acacia Seeds” 1974 good
John M. Ford “Heat of Fusion” 1984 nah
Gordon R. Dickson “Dolphin's Way” 1964 kinda
Gene Wolfe “All the Hues of Hell” 1987 maybe?
Theodore Sturgeon “Occam's Scalpel” 1971 h'mmm, the ending
Edward Bryant “giANTS” 1979 kinda, above average ending (very last sentence), for sure
Randall Garrett “Time Fuse” 1954 nah
Clifford D. Simak “Desertion” 1944 good
Part III
Poul Anderson "Kyrie” 1969, mostly good? some bits of ick
Raymond F. Jones “The Person from Porlock” 1947 seems like pre-Gick for a while, but nah
Frederik Pohl “Day Million” 1966 nah
J.G. Ballard “Cage of Sand” 1963 good
James Tiptree, Jr. “The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats” 1976 good
Jules Verne “In the Year 2889” (year of orig. pub not listed) good
James Blish “Surface Tension” 1952 good, although lol-ish ending
Cordwainer Smith “No, No, Not Rogov!” 1959 good (I think?)
George Turner “In a Petri Dish Upstairs” 1978 good
Rudyard Kipling “With the Night Mail” good-ish ?
Arthur C. Clarke “The Longest Science Fiction Story Ever Told” 1965 okay but could've been better?
Alfred Bester “The Pi Man” 1959 just okay-ish (compared to some of his 50s)
Gregory Benford “Relativistic Effects” 1982 good
James P. Hogan “Making Light” 1981 nah
Isaac Asimov “The Last Question” 1956 nah
Philip K. Dick “The Indefatigable Frog” 1953 okay-ish (compared to some of his 50s)
John M. Ford “Chromatic Aberration” 1994 kinda
Katherine Maclean “The Snowball Effect” 1952 nah
Hilbert Schenck “The Morphology of the Kirkham Wreck” 1978 good
Greg Bear “Tangents” 1986 kinda, but predictable
William Gibson “Johnny Mnemonic” 1981 nah
David Brin “What Continues, What Fails...” 1991 kinda (def some good science ideas and promising setting. but more like notes)
Michael F. Flynn "Mammy Morgan Played the Organ; Her Daddy Beat the Drum" 1990 good
Vernor Vinge "Bookworm, Run!" 1966 some good details, but as with Bester and Dick, although much, much more so: why *this* Vinge?

Not that I don't get into some other short Wolfe, like "The Death of Doctor Island", and will re-re-read these some more.

Raymond F. Jones “The Person from Porlock” 1947 seems like pre-Gick for a while, but nah pre-Dick!

Ready to waste some time in nostalgia? Seems that hundreds of issues of Starlog and Omni are now available for free at archive.org as epub or pdf downloads, or to read online...

http://archive.org/details/starlogmagazine

http://archive.org/details/omni-magazine

Isaac Asimov “The Last Question” 1956 nah

this one's a classic, by far his best idea for a story imo

If only don could do this kind of consumer guide for the entire corpus of sf. He would save us a lot of time and trouble.

Would get The Ascent... if I could find it in ebook form but don't want any more massive skiffy anthologies cluttering up my shelves.

In that case Sense of Wonder is your only man.

How much? Ok ok it is genuinely massive. Maybe too massive.

Maybe. And you probably have some of the stuff in there already under separate cover and some other stuff is in public domain. Still it is massive.

it's only 990 pages. a c clarke has a short stories collection that big himself. j g ballard has two volumes, both that order of magnitude.

990 large format pages in tiny type with virtually no margins, allegedly.

Anther site called this the death song of stars: very cool, but the following account has more meat; dig the Christmas burst too.
http://www.universetoday.com/101486/new-kind-of-gamma-ray-burst-is-ultra-long-lasting/

hey, don, this is for you. rufus and i came up with a sci-fi cowboy jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPCQ9Wnd3hI

Holy Moly, thanks Skot & Rufus! Sail on, Starchild and Sonship.

Ready to waste some time in nostalgia? Seems that hundreds of issues of Starlog and Omni are now available for free at archive.org as epub or pdf downloads, or to read online...

http://archive.org/details/starlogmagazine

http://archive.org/details/omni-magazine

― brad palsy (Jon Lewis), Thursday, April 11, 2013 5:52 PM (1 week ago)

wow thx, had an omni sub in the early 80s, some great art + design in that mag

Some good science fact & fiction too; I've got a collection of the latter somewhere. But then they went all UFO anal probes (and maybe cattle mutilations, Meninblack etc) all the time.

Speaking of interstellar cowboys, here's the Horsehead Nebula (quite an array of sightings out there, but looking for one without too restrictive a copyright--source of this 'un is NOAO/Aura:
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/images/d4/horsehead.jpg

sorry
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/images/d4/horsehead.jpg

But the first link does open up huge

dow re: copyright of nasa images, see http://blog.bookcoverarchive.com/2009/04/713/

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls8no4cNgd1qdgcd4o1_500.jpg

Luna?

it's kelis

and a dog

Right-click detection links it to "Bloodchild", but not seeing how, although she's surely a Bloodchylde o' my-ee-eye-iinnne.

She's apparently reading some Octavia E.? Maybe with training for the doggie, although that's usually more vice versa, in my experience.

that is what that book is, i have read it, omg kelis and i have read the same book, i wonder if she likes me??!

So logic would dictate.

i KNEW being logical would pay off!!

http://www.aljazeera.com/video/americas/2013/04/201342371648245168.html

one way ticket to mars!

wasn't there already a 'reality' tv show that spoofed a mission to somewhere spacey?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadets_%28TV_series%29

(oddly, that wasn't the one i was thinking of)