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

Should he not? Never read him, but Booktv says he also biographied Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, so(maybe Hawking next?)

what, wittgenstein -> russell -> oppenheimer seems like a natural through-line for you??

You guys should check out the cover of new Guy Davenport collection.

Who's that on his t-shirt http://www.amazon.com/Guy-Davenport-Reader/dp/161902103X/ref=sr_1_1/191-0430251-3236404?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373031337&sr=1-1#reader_161902103X
Thomp I take it he's going for some connection of eggheads going for concerns of eggheads x concerns of community (didn't W. end up offering apologies all around? And Oppenheimer's essays on science and community were searching, basically making amends)

witt, russ, opp, the 20th century supergenius line.

i dunno but i don't think it's meant to be more than an oblique/lateral relation, or if you like a structural affinity

http://www.biographile.com/behind-the-books-with-ray-monk-author-of-oppenheimer/14416/

BIOG: Until recently, your work has been primarily focused on great philosophers. What inspired the switch to science in covering the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer?

RM: I was asked to review a collection of his letters & found them absolutely fascinating -- in a way that has some parallels with my fascination for Wittgenstein. Just as, with Wittgenstein, my aim was to show his philosophy and his ethical and spiritual concerns to be twin parts of the same soul, so my aim in writing Oppenheimer’s life was to find as much unity as I could in the ‘bright, shining splinters’ (to use his friend Rabi’s phrase) of which he was composed.

w's 'apologies' ('confessions' you mean, prob) were few, specific, highly personal, and more or less inscrutable to those to whom they were made. nothing like russell's involvement w/ society and politics.

Yep. I was kidding, barely restraining myself from busting out with a round of "All Apologies." But going with the role of "public intellectuals",from Russell to the Oppensaga, ultimately toward RJO's essays on post-Hiroshima science and community, seems like a pretty reasonable move. Look forward to his next.

I have this book in hand. Having read 2 1/2 other biographies of Oppenheimer and biographies of others mentioned in it, this one looks definitive. You can skip his essays.

Skip whose essays, Oppy's?

Yes. He had a habit in later life of making eloquent general pronouncements which, when looked at closely, turned out not to mean much.

I liked it when he song the John Donne poem in Doctor Atomic, although I guess that wasn't really him.

Shakey Mo Collier posted bout thishttp://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Latinos-Anthology-Science-Classics/dp/0819566349 on ILE's Speculative Fiction Poll thread---want!

http://revistanautilus.ro/wp-content/gallery/tamas-noiembrie-2012b/cosmos-latinos_coperta.jpg

More relevant to this thread than expected: most of the best of Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories For Late At Night. Mind you, the best is not the most of these stories, though most of the failures are gratifyingly ambitious, pushing through or against early-to-middle-ish respectable magazine slickness, to something thumping you and darting away--but ultimately suffering from unity of effect, for lack of a better phrase ( dun yeah, I didn't get some of 'em). Margaret Ronan's "Finger, Finger!" did very discreetly point me toward an off-page resolution/justification of the ending, via an unobtrusive and early clue, riskily recalled (hard to do this right; even Gene Wolfe
Nevertheless, I did get Jerome Bixby's "It's A Good Life", a little different than the Twilight Zone version, but just as great. Funky country fun can also be had in William Hope Hodgson's "The Whistling Room" and M.R. James's "The Ash Tree."
George Langelaan's "The Fly" is sweet, sober, tragic and low-key audacious, minus the camp of the first screen version or the awesome thump and dart and thump some more of Cronenberg's re-make.
The one that really grabbed me: "Vintage Season," a novelette by C.L. Moore, better known for collaborations with Henry Kuttner. This is a tale of an innocent 20th Century lad encountering kinky time travelers, eventually including or followed by a composer of metamorphic works...first published in a 1946 issue of Astounding, the last place I would have guessed (can be taken as a female writer's critique of Astounding's axiomatic white male earthlings uber alles, though can also imagine Campbell and crew getting turned on by i)(I kinda was).
Also, though not really thread-revelant, the volume ends with more unsettling gender scrutiny via "The Iron Gates", a WWII-era novel by Margaret Millar, wife of Ken Millar/Ross Macdonald, where women (oh yeah, some men too) are keeping the homefires burning and the merry-go-round turning, with madness and murder finding their seats, of course. A little too b-movie talky at times, or creatively overwritten at others, but the zingers can go deep (enough to distract me from obvious clues).

One more from the Hitchthology: "Evening Primrose", by John Collier: a poet forsakes this cruel world and stumbles into a subculture of people living among posh Manhattan department store mannikins. Light touch flicks momentum, through eerie elegance, tawdriness and plain dust: the poet's a fule, but his streaky point of view is increasingly hard to dismiss, as he veers into a romance a bit more tragic than comic. This is prob the most Hitchcockian story in the whole thing.

There's a great John Collier collection put out by NYRB

yeah fancies and goodnights. it's great.

i haven't read any new sf or fantasy in a while, what's good

What have you read in the past that you liked? (just need some touchstones)

Afraid Sturgeon's Law is still in effect after all, thomp.

Just read Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and can recommend it - with caveats. It's a very well done first contact story, uses the common device of alternating before/after chapters to ratchet up the tension, finely managing the balancing act of keeping the reader intrigued by the mystery but not frustrated by the lack of answers. And when the final answer comes it's suitably, maybe even overly devastating. The main characters are an unlikely mix of types and personalities who get on so uproariously well it's almost sickening, and it's certainly implausible how uniquely qualified they all are for their mission (while at the same time being almost the last people on earth you might imagine being selected for such an honourable and dangerous undertaking).

The main problem though is the religious element, of which there are two aspects. The first is that the Jesuits are running the show, and they seem to be trying to atone for the mistakes of catholic conquests past. Instead of assuming the natives are savages fit for slavery and extermination they make the opposite mistake of coming with hearts completely open (but minds equally closed). In an interview Russell says first contact is "impossible to do right" but it's hard to imagine it being attempted more naively than here. Of course if you think that men of the church (and they are largely men here, although there are "strong female characters") are and always will be starting from flawed intellectual premisses then their failure becomes perhaps slightly more plausible, though no less ridiculous. The second aspect is that there is a strong theme of theodicy running through the book, and like all theodicies it is a nonsense. The last pages almost made me want to throw the book across the room with their acquiescence to "the mystery" - and yet I can't help but be slightly pleased to hear that there is a sequel which explores the problem further. A slight masochistic trendency, but the skiffy was strong enough to make putting up with the other stuff worthwhile.

What have you read in the past that you liked? (just need some touchstones)

if you're not interested in making an argt for the objective value of the things you think are good why would i even begin to trust your judgement??

ledge that just makes me want to read a set of spoilers so i can go 'oh ok then', also how do you feel about 'a case of conscience' by james blish

"yeah fancies and goodnights. it's great."

i have the original paperback of this. tons of fun.

if you're not interested in making an argt for the objective value of the things you think are good why would i even begin to trust your judgement??

if you're not interested in not being a dick, why should anyone bother to recommend things to you?? ffs

ledge that just makes me want to read a set of spoilers so i can go 'oh ok then', also how do you feel about 'a case of conscience' by james blish

I'm gonna stick up for The Sparrow, it's a good yarn well told and I'm looking forward to the sequel. Haven't read the Blish but it sounds *ridiculous*, I could only read it as a reductio ad absurdum - but that's how I'd treat any work with religious themes tbh. Harry Harrison's short story An Alien Agony is more my style.

Up next: China Mountain Zhang.

Craig Harrison: The Quiet Earth -- 1981 NZ novel, basis for the rather great 1980s film

http://stuffpoint.com/apocalyptic-and-post-apocalyptic-fiction/image/215013-apocalyptic-and-post-apocalyptic-fiction-the-quiet-earth-screenshot.jpg

Man wakes up, finds out everyone else on earth has vanished, due to experiment he was working on and was attempting suicide to escape the effects of

http://www.listal.com/viewimage/4015515

http://i2.listal.com/image/4015515/600full-the-quiet-earth-screenshot.jpg

Oh man, loved that film.

if you're not interested in making an argt for the objective value of the things you think are good why would i even begin to trust your judgement??

Fuck man, I just wanted to know what books you've liked in the past, but since you're only interested in pure mythical objectivity no one will ever be able to help you.

Or to put it another way, most of your posts on this thread have been about books you've disliked or merely tolerated. What have you liked?

i haven't read any new sf or fantasy in a while, what's good

read adrian tchaikovsky's 'shadows of the apt' series theres like 8 or 9 of them now, all in paperback. it doesnt really have any ambitions or themes or ideas, parts of it read like a teenager idling expanding on his favorite d&d campaign setting other parts like a teenager writing a pastiche of his favorite airport novels. all of it strongly reminds me of being a teenager, of being in love with the idea of another world, another place, which i value strongly. i also like the characters, theyre either generously uncomplicated or complicated in familiar, satisfying ways, he also doesnt go in for the prestige cable-drama mystery-spinning that martin and jordan do, the edges of the plots arent ever obscured, he saves all that for the world itself i think. idk, i like them a lot

yahhh i started leafing through the one i sent you but i had this v d&dish feeling of, i don't know this campaign world at all, what to make of it

they might do a decent job of scratching that itch though

sheesh you guyz i thought that was a pretty decent joke wot tomp made

china mountain zhang is so far 80 pages of whiny douche in search of a plot.

"Four billion years ago Mars was a much a safer place than Earth. Maybe we have resurrected Martian proteins. Maybe the last universal common ancestor (the first life) formed on Mars and transferred to Earth," commented Prof Sanchez-Ruiz.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23591470

Also like the bit about mutation.

Teleportation is here---and then there.
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/3495/20130816/scientists-achieve-teleportation-electronic-circuit-first-time.htm

Finally got around to reading Hamiltons Great North Road, after buying it for my kindle months ago. Very impressed thus far, based on the fact I am struggling to put it down.

Hamilton doorstops are only fit for the shredder imo. Love this amazon comment:

The characters are not up to par with other books from Hamilton, but I guess when writing a single book instead of the standard trilogy you have to cut some corners

Convincing characters in a mere 1100 pages? The very idea!

In other news, China Mountain Zhang didn't improve. A bildungsroman to nowhere of an unaffecting nonentity in a cardboard world.

finished that Cosmos Latinos anthology awhile ago and it made me bummed more of certain authors work is not in English. As anthologies go it cuts a wide swathe, and its interesting that while there are a lot of historical analogues to English-speaking (or European) scifi writers, the evolution of the genre in Latin America *completely* skips/missed out on the 30s-50s. Like, there was just nothing done in the genre - the whole Gernsback/Campbell revolution and all that came after it has no equivalent in Latin America, that stuff may have gotten read here and there but it just made zero impact. It isn't until the late 60s that Latin American writers really start getting back into the game - magazines/publishers/conventions/awards spring up etc. Unfortunately, the few pieces I was really impressed with appear to be the only works in translation by the respective authors. I guess I need to learn Spanish (and Portuguese)

aaaaanyway just ordered Olaf Stapledon's Starmaker and K.W. Jeter's Death Arms. Currently reading M. John Harrison's "Empty Space: A Haunting".

Presumably you have already read Light and Nova Swing, Shakey. Which Cosmos Latinos writers did you like?

Also came to say I really enjoyed this thing called Adrift on the Sea of Rains: Apollo Quartet 1 by a guy name Ian Sales, who is some kind of blogger/gadfly. It is mostly really hard sf with a super-pulpy plot device thrown in, based on the premise that the Apollo missions kept going for a while longer and the US established a permanent presence on the moon, but the astronauts end up getting there stranded because something bad is happening on earth. The technical detail is amazing and adds to the story instead of being boring- he assumes they are using the same hardware as the real-life Apollo missions or upgrades thereof - and it is perfectly complemented by the atmospheric stuff about Cold War paranoia and What It Is Like To Be The Moon.

yep I've read the other two. Harrison is not a writer I have a good grasp of - I have a bunch of his shorter New Worlds stuff and then these three more recent sci-fi novels, but it seems like he did next to nothing of interest in the years in between, except for this Virconium stuff (which I am not interested in, lol)

Best stuff from Cosmos Latinos:
Braulio Tavares - “Stuntmind” (Brazil 1989). This story is amazing. It's very short, comprised of nothing but brief, diary-like passages which appear to chronicle (at first) the diary of one of the fantastically idle rich. contextual clues eventually lead to the conclusion that humans have made contact with aliens, who do a kind of "mind-swap" with certain human subjects (the titular "stuntminds"). the aliens see this as a great, one-sided deal - they get to experience all the sensory variety of humans/earth, while all humanity gets is some scientific knowledge. this shitty description is not really doing the story justice, its a marvel of economical construction and clever inversions of classic sf tropes.
Pepe Rojo - “Gray Noise” (Mexico, 1996). Verrrry cyberpunk and sort of depressingly prescient story about a guy who's a "living camera", uploading whatever he sees of interest (which is invariably murders/suicides/terrorist bombings etc) to a newsfeed.
Hugo Correa - “When Pilate Said No” (Chile, 1971). First contact story crossed with "what if aliens had their own jesus" with the human captain of the expedition in the role of Pilate. things don't go well.
Michel Encinosa - “Like the Roses Had to Die” (Cuba, 2001). This was the one story that featured some conventional sci-fi "action" (ie characters undertaking violent mission to rescue somebody, shooting guns etc.) with a lot of China Mieville-sort of window-dressing (human-animal hybrids! unpronounceable drug names! mysterious and shadowy organizations!) except I hate Mieville and this was much more enjoyable.

Harrison is not a writer I have a good grasp of
How sharper than a Shakey's tooth.

Really like yr. descriptions, James and Shakey, but okay by me if no equiv./influence of 30s-50s Hugo/John W. Jr tradition is represented (maybe they did have it, but the editor didn't care for it? Maybe they did, but it sucked? Maybe it didn't, but not enough enough room/$ ? An anthologist on BookTV.org was describing a lot of attempted shakedowns/cockblocking by publishers--and this was a poetry anthology! The smaller the loot, the bigger the fight, as at least one observer of academic infighting observed)
But also, wondering if 30s/50s etc. were necessary stages of development, necessary for stuff I liked better later? Like, if Campbell hadn't come along and helped Heinlein, maybe (the commercial/critical success of) Heinlein's more excitable stuff wouldn't have led me and other everbudding geeks to Bester and then New Wave etc.?

the way it was addressed in the (dry, academic) introduction, the editors made it sound like there was literally little to no sci-fi produced in Latin American countries during the period. For all kinds of reasons (political, sociological, academic, economic etc). And it's not that I'm a huge fan of that period in English language sci-fi (far from it), just that from a historical perspective on the genre, that period was REALLY formative, it laid the groundwork for so much that came after. The familiar tropes and cliches of the genre that later generations had such fun overturning and screwing with were largely set in place during that period. But in Latin America, it seems like they went straight from H.G. Wells and Jules Verne in the late 19th century (and this book claims the first time machine story is actually some Spanish thing I'd never heard of just fyi) to the New Wave in the late 60s. It just seems strange from a developmental point of view, like a child that ages 40 years in a day.

A ... star ... child?

I'm reading "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon" by Pohl. Keep wanting to skip the Robinette Broadhead sections. Apart from that it's good.

Also read "Make Room, Make Room" by Harry Harrison, it was pretty poor. Much prefer his funnier stuff.

Started Apollo Quartet 2: The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself, which takes place in a different Apollo-based timeline. So far so good. Think the third one will have some of the Mercury 13 going up