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

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)

I promised upthread to let y'all know when the subs calls came out for my new anthologies. Ready to rock with the first one, details here: http://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/airship-shape-bristol-fashion/

It's Bristol-rooted steampunk, so it's a bit niche, but if anyone wants to contribute, you don't have to live locally. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

If you *are* near Bristol, we're kicking it off with a workshop run by a local historian, Eugene Byrne, on Wednesday.

The next one will be more open and pay better but I don't have an eta for it yet.

Came to tell everybody to check out David Crosby's intro to Baby is Three: Volume VI The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon

that david crosby?

zora when is this workshop, i am going to be in bristol once or twice in the next month or so

None other. Apparently CSNY hired Sturgeon to write a film for them, but they all went to him one by one and tried to get him to tailor it to what they wanted their character to be.

Weds coming i.e. May 1st. It's at the Shakespeare Tavern on Prince St at 18:30.

ah, i'll be in oxford. have a good one tho

my mind is refusing to process the idea of theodore sturgeon and the byrds being on the same page

You should read what Phil Lesh said

'wooden ships' is, like, sci-fi

Bristol-rooted steampunk

I am not really into steampunk as a whole but I'd like it a lot more with more docks and railways and suspension bridges, so I am all for this

anyway best wishes for your new collection!

Thanks thomp, & spacecadet. I'm not big into steampunk either, but the publisher wanted it and there is a very active steampunk scene in Bristol. It should be fun. Eugene has given talks for us at BristolCon and they were A+.

halfway through babel-17 and it's brilliant

Cool! It's still my favorite Delaney book