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

Budrys stories have been anthspotted upthread a couple times or so---yeah, I def need to track down more of his; as I prev. mentioned, skipped over his fiction in magazines, cos his voice as a reviewer seemed so pissy (might should give his *judgement* another shot, though). Was really struck by the difference (quietly intense, no-b.s. layering) in the few I've come across more recently.Rogue Moon is commonly considered his masterpiece.

I didn't know it was a short story too; damn. I feel more self-deprived than ever.

It's a novella, actually, that was also later lengthened to a novel.

there are 5 budrys short stories, of varying quality, on gutenberg

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/25613

(stoker being the choice there, i think)

and an epub of "blood and burning", a 500pp short story collection, wildly available, along with "furious future" and "the unexpected dimension". everything else i've just bought for peanuts on amazon.co.uk, usually worth it for the covers. "Who?" probably my favourite although i need to reread "Rogue Moon"

oh, apparently there's an omnibus out in the new year:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Algis-Budrys-Gateway-Omnibus-Michaelmas/dp/0575108339/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1385929952&sr=8-2&keywords=algis+budrys

Thanks. Might try to track down a copy of Who? Meantime dipped back into the novella Hall of Fame to read "Earthman, Come Home" by James Blish.

Check it out: http://www.loa.org/sciencefiction/biographies/budrys_who.jsp

my copy's 159 pages...

Yeah, that's just the original short story.

Thanks, scouts! I'll check those out. Also, this seems good, esp. re tension of genre requirements of 50s editors and/or publishers vs. incitements to/of non-cliche thought: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/budrys_algis

Looks like they have the novel at that Library if America site for sale as part of a nine volume box set along with some other good stuff.

Put Michaelmas on hold at the library. Read it when I was a nipper but I remember nothing about it, except maybe that it wasn't futuristic enough- too near-future, I guess- for my teenaged tastes at the time.

"Earthman, Come Home" was fun, wonder if I should go for the whole Cities in Flight.

Man, this Volume Two B is really great, everything I've read so far is ace (if not Ace). Although I might have go through the prose airlock in order to read the Asimov.

I really like Clifford's "New Mother", somebody written a new version of it but I dont know why.

Almost finished with Volume II B of the Hall Of Fame Novellas, which I highly recommend, now dipping into Volume II A, starting with "Vintage Season" by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, of which I have a few pages left but have thoroughly enjoyed it so far, much more alive than the somewhat similarly plotted but ultimately slickly snoozeworthy Silverberg award-winner "Sailing To Byzantium." Thanks to ilxor dow for putting the idea of reading these guys into my head. Just got a library copy of The Last Mimzy which is a movie tie-in retitle of The Best of Henry Kuttner which apparently is being repackaged as part of a Kuttner omnibus in the UK at least, by SF Gateway. C. L. Moore also has two ebooks recently revived by the savethescifi people in Dumbo. Anyway feel like this team at their best is right up there with Robert Sheckley in using the devices and tropes of sf as a medium for their own witty, intelligent and sophisticated creations. Also thinking that the novella is a good length for the field, with a little more room to flesh things out but without the padding of a full-length.

I see that Kuttner was one of Sheckley's favorites which should be no surprise I guess.

I pretty much tend to like sf that is
1) funny
2) pulpy
3) written in the 40s-50s

The Three Laws of Reddbotics

I mean I like other stuff too but that is one particular sweet spot

Looks like Silverberg actually wrote if not a sequel than a "complementary story" based on "Vintage Season" called "In Another Country."

Just read The Cradle, an AC Clarke offering, not great. Lots and lots of mundane side story and back history of the characters and little, and I mean almost nothing, of a main story.

I'm enjoying the cheap kindle SF series short story collections from Amazon though.

Just came across M. John Harrison story "Tourism" which seems to be an early version of the beginning of Nova Swing here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/536970/002-2458924-6179268

"When I kissed her, she tasted like Mars." These look really appealing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/books/stories-by-howard-waldrop-and-catherynne-m-valente.html

Howard Waldrop's "The Ugly Chicken" is in every other anthology. Still haven't read it yet though.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/12/kim-stanley-robinson-our-greatest-political-novelist.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_Daily%20%2879%29 Still think The Wild Shore is the place to start; wish he'd mentioned it (and the others in that trilogy).

http://newshour.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/2013/12/12/europa_blog_main_horizontal.jpg
Artwork depicting a towering geyser of water erupting from the south pole of Jupiter's moon Europa. Image by NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWR
from PBS:
The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of water vapor shooting from the southern pole of Europa, Jupiter's ice-covered moon, astronomers wrote in the Science journal.http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/12/11/science.1247051

The discovery, if confirmed, will help make the case that this particular moon has the right conditions for life, planetary scientist Kurt Retherford told reporters at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

"We've only seen this at one location right now, so to try to infer that there's a global effect as a result of this is a little difficult at this time," Retherford said.

Scientists speculate that the water vapor came from cracks in Europa's southern polar ice because of gravitational stress.

"When Europa is close to Jupiter, it gets stressed and the poles get squished and the cracks close up. Then, as it moves further away from Jupiter, it becomes un-squished, the pole moves outward and that's when the cracks open," planetary scientist Francis Nimmo told Reuters.

"And the concept of saving a severed part of the body by attaching it to another part of the body to give it a blood supply is well recognised." It is? I mean, it IS! Rah!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25405543

in muriel spark's 'loitering with intent' there's a bit of business about how one of the characters is called gray mauser, and so publishes under the name 'leander'

is there something i'm missing here or is this really a reference to fritz leiber

Maybe because the original Leander was a cool cat who got some off the church mouse Hero? He pointed out that Aphrodite might be less than impressed by the worship of a virgin (later drowned while going to see her, but cats never were good with water, as they're the first to admit). Maybe a Leiber reference too.

Third Apollo Quartet book came out last month.

Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above, featuring the Mercury 13 and some other stuff I didn't know about. By now I sort of see the pattern, as it were, but don't mind, still enjoyed it and look forward to the final one.

Yeah, it was pretty cool.

I like the way he incorporates the sort of pseudoscience (Nazi UFOs, Bermuda Triangle) that normally makes me really cross, but does it really well.

picked up "Platinum Pohl" short story collection for Xmas - it's pretty good, oddly heavier on the 80s material than I would have expected. Pohl is one of those guys whose skilled and workmanlike enough that his material is never outright bad, and occasionally he strikes gold.

Figured you would have read that one already, Shakey. No stuff with Cyril K. in that one, is there?

just one (The Meeting). I've read a lot of Pohl but primarily novels, I think prior to this I just had one collection of short fiction of his from the early 70s (In the Problem Pit, I think it was called?) Kornbluth was a good foil for him.

tbh, I kind of like Pohl better as a blogger, memoirist, reminiscer, editor and co-writer with CMK than for his own stuff.

rereading leiber's 'the big time', probably

why probably?

idk i might just leave it on the pile by my bed for a couple months and then put it away

http://www.wired.com/images/article/full/2007/10/plantoid_580x.jpg

The intelligence of plants, and how it relates to thinking about, uh, other intelligence(s). Opens with a bang---The Secret Life of Plants(book, not soundtrack)---in the 70s, appropriately enough---and doesn't get less controversial, just more plausible---or so it seems: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/23/131223fa_fact_pollan

http://zoomata.com/images/linv.jpg

The guy who made this doc is quoted quite a bit in Pollan's article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeX6ST7rexs

idk i might just leave it on the pile by my bed for a couple months and then put it away

i also basically ignore everyone else's posts. to me ilx is one big echo chamber

man is this the worst book never written about the postmodern condition or what

Which?

the leiber. i decided to read it after all

Then why "never written"

I've never been able to finish it, but this fellow seems to like it http://www.conceptualfiction.com/the_big_time.html

that guy seems p dumb though

there's a not getting it book club blog post on the guardian about it that i hope the guy didn't get paid for

and an 'appreciation' of it by neil gaiman on library of america's website (it's in their SF novels of the (50s? 60s?) set) that i hope he didn't get paid for but that seems more unlikely

"never written" in that it's not a book about the postmodern condition, really

This fellow at ter grauniad hated it, apparently : http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/apr/03/hugo-awards-fritz-leiber-wanderer

Don't remember reading it, but a lot of his short stories are fun. I've come across "X Marks The Pedwalk" in three different anthologies lately. Short stories are more my usual fare anyway. Back to the Borges.