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

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

lots of interesting ideas. love all the stuff with language (there's a great bit where rydra's explaining how the cibarians (?) were able to build a highly sophisticated power plant from a nine word sentence). the poetry's awful tho imo

has the feel of a young man's book but he's clearly a very smart young man

speaking of steampunk, dig sources too: H.G. Wells has lots of rude risky stoptime fun in "The Accelerator", which might be where Nicholson Baker got the idea for The Fermata, but that one goes on too long (brevity is the sole of stoptime wit)

Babel-17 hits some kind of sweet spot where the ideas are really interesting and the ambition doesn't seem to overtake the writing chops.

i read two books by bob shaw. i think i have now read five books by bob shaw. i can't decide if he's genuinely interesting or just mediocre in a quirky way.

I think he's genuinely interesting, though not always good enough a writer to fully carry out his ideas in a satisfying way. amd a bit unpleasantly misogynistic at times (I read his Two-Timers recently, which was pretty vile about women)

Have been meaning to read wooden spaceships thingy.

maria read ready player one on the kindle and loved it and now she's reading ender's game! yay!! two sci-fi fans in the house are better than one! rufus is reading and loving ready player one now too. I might have to read it next since they like it so much. guess its a hot property. they are already making a movie out of it.

two timers i think is 'sort of interesting' about women in a horrible way. 'orbitville' is just horrible.

scott i'm sorry to break it to you but 'ready player one' is the worst thing ever written.

it's definitely up there

oops, I won't break it to those guys. i'd never heard of it. hey, its a start, right?

Grinning, he produced an item from his inventory and held it up. It was an old Atari 2600 game, still in the box … “Know what this is, hotshot?” I-r0k said, challenging me. “I’ll even give you a clue … It’s an Atari game, released as part of a contest. It contained several puzzles, and if you solved them, you could win a prize. Sound familiar?”

(…)

“You’re joking, right?” I said. “You just now discovered the Swordquest series?”

I-r0k deflated.

“You’re holding Swordquest: Earthworld,” I continued. “The first game in the Swordquest series. Released in 1982.” I smiled wide. “Can you name the next three games in the series?”

(This continues for two pages.)

“Whatever,” (I-r0k) said over his shoulder. “If I didn’t spend so much time offline, getting laid, I’d probably know just as much worthless shit as you two do.”

Wazabout NYRB new edition of Kingsley Amis's The Alteration?

so much prettier than my version

http://www.nybooks.com/media/images/productimage-picture-the-alteration-289.png
vs
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41lEd7nGNML.jpg

my version = my COPY

Perhaps you can stock both in your tiny bookstore

"Sell it to the world's tiniest bookstore!"

scott i'm sorry to break it to you but 'ready player one' is the worst thing ever written.

i read this recently on a friend's strong recommendation (!), it's terrible and my eyes hurt from the constant rolling, but it does have a convincing near-future (energy crisis, everything is shitty, you have to live near a city but no one can afford to live in the city, but we have amazing technology to distract/isolate ourselves).

that's kind of the convincing near-future at this point though right? i would much rather read, say, a dystopian future where society exists solely as convoys of gaz-guzzling eighteen-wheelers. who have no internet access.

ha, fair point

when galaxies collide

http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/research/current_research/hl2005-2b/fig1_l.jpg
It's from this article,
"Colliding galaxies light up dormant black holes"
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/research/current_research/hl2005-2b/hl2005-2b-en.html

jack vance RIP

JACK VANCE, IN MEMORIAM: 1916 - 2013

Jack Vance passed away at home on the evening of Sunday May 26, 2013, ending a long, rich and productive life. Recognized most widely as an author, family and friends also knew a generous, large-hearted, rugged, congenial, hard-working, optimistic and unpretentious individual whose curiosity, sense of wonder and sheer love of life were an inspiration in themselves. Author, friend, father and grandfather – there will never be another like Jack Vance.

Oh nooooo oh noooooooooooopp

My buddy

I was in a goddamn meeting when this got posted... Obv I have been prepared for this news given JV's age but he is my favorite author and he was still loving life. Vale, vale. Forever and ever.

love jack vance and am glad he lived a long and very productive life

Yeah he did exactly what he wanted to do for a long, long time. It must have been sad for him to be without Norma the last several years of his life but other than that he pretty much fucking lived it.

Which Vance books are the essentials?

Have been asked several times in the last day. Workin on it.

Start with the collected Dying Earth stuff, which is lovely

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1857989945.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Is Mazirian the Magician that book or just a subset of it?

it has 4 books -- The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous

Mazirian the Magician is part of book 1

If I were forced to declare absolute favorites--

Stories: The Moon Moth, Green Magic, The Miracle Workers

Novellas: The Last Castle, The Dragon Masters

Novels: Showboat World, The Languages of Pao, Space Opera

Series: The Dying Earth, The Demon Princes, Lyonesse

But there is very little bad Vance. He has a number of immature short stories but almost no immature novels. And his work has a fantastic cumulative effect.

Happily, all his books are now available as cheap ebook editions, taken from the definitive Vance Integral Edition texts, from his own site at www.jackvance.com and thanks to this, I'm finally going to get to read his mysteries which are hopelessly rare in print form.

I've got The Complete Dying Earth, SF Book Club Edition, which I haven't cracked yet, and an ancient, intermittently visited paperback collection, Dust of Far Suns. So far it's more like novelettes than short stories, and not immature (not yet). Considering how many writers lose their way beyond the short story, funny the ones the ones who do better with more room to fill; Gene Wolfe's another. Thanks for the list! Didn't know about the mysteries--dang the digits are gonna get me again, just like when they showed up riding CDs.

What was the PKD Similacrum's purpose? To live on catfood and speed once again, writing more novels? Or just be a funky gnostic oracle? Or does artificial life have to have a purpose?

http://www.ziesings.com/pages/books/48441/david-f-dufty/how-to-build-an-android-the-true-story-of-philip-k-dicks-robotic-resurrection

"That's how we control the flow of the light. We're pushing it forward and backwards in time, so it avoids events that would otherwise disturb it," Prof Weiner explained.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22780651

oi thomp

http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/post/52877022704/how-much-of-sf-is-fiction-susan-napier-tells-us

that sounds like an academic book that i would like to read!!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/24/195317782/author-richard-matheson-i-am-legend-writer-dies-at-87

Hadn't seen that, thanks! The comments are good too; he wrote Duel?! Seems to fit: the well-paced focus on detail X dynamics of dread x choices. Which is why The Shrinking Man seems like the perfect place to begin, or anyway that's my first Matheson, except for all those Twilight Zones, though I didn't retain his name initially, with my childhood all shook up (thanks, RM). This All Things story is a bit different from/than/of (what are we supposed to say now) your blog link (I Am Legion is a really good novel too; don't remember much of the first screen version they mention; never saw The Omega Man or Legion)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=195599347 Good discussion of RM upthread, and Ward Fowler links a scary scarry story.

up this thread, that is.

today it irked me that i couldn't remember who wrote the story about the astronauts who are to go on a simulated six month mission they realise after something goes wrong isn't actually simulated. can anyone help me with that.

harry harrison?

idk and I wanna know, that is a helluva premiss.

i've read that recently. or something like it.

ah, it was JG Ballard's Thirteen to Centaurus, which is close. only that's a multi-generational ship, not 6 months. and a different twist.

http://www.ballardian.com/thirteen-to-centaurus