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

(seems like his novels are not held in as high esteem?)

It's been many years since I read it, but I really really loved The Man in the Tree.

I really enjoyed Under the Skin, haven't seen the movie yet.

Same here, Shakey: I'd always known Knight as the editor of stand-alones--A Century of Science Fiction blew my middle school mind--and the Orbit series, where he was pretty tough about requiring even the biggest of names to meet his distinctive standards. I, too, am just starting to check out his fiction. Rule Golden is a collection of novelettes or novellas. The title story comes first, somewhat misleadingly, since it begins with yet more 50s cynicism about the System, okay but no big deal---then the characters aget restless and start kicking up the slick/grubby pulp surface (oops think I talked about this book way up thread). Anyway, the main characters and their relationships develops more and differently than I expected. The other stories start better and go further, just as unexpectedly, in their own ways. I've got one of his novels, the fairly late Why Do Birds , which kind of blew reviewer Spinrad's mind in Asimov's Magazine; still gotta read that and a bunch more.

/(seems like his novels are not held in as high esteem?)/

It's been many years since I read it, but I really really loved/ The Man in the Tree/.

Malzberg holds him in particularly high esteem, which counts for a lot imo, he's a reliable judge of quality prose

Yeah, in his Galaxy Project intros he seems to say Knight never wrote a bad story.

Thanks James, but I've got way too many books to get through now. Here's a Knight mentioned upthread: Skimming through all his linked stories on wikipedia, the only one I recall reading is The Country of the Kind, which I rated as a youth but now strikes me as a bit douchey.

This one on the other hand - wow. Just wow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_the_Dust_Praise_Thee%3F

― God arrives for the apocalypse, having been traveling at the speed of (ledge), Saturday, 31 March 2012 21:54 (2 years ago) Permalink

Finally went back to and finished Damon Knight's Rule Golden and Other Stories. As prev mentioned, the title story comes first: boondocks newspaper editor, too smart for his own good, finds himself drafted to study an alien captive, his job during what may be his own prison term. The alien manipulates him into faciltating their escape, and during their time on the run across the world--could be a pre-Le Carre thriller, mainly about the stress of adaptation and paradigm shift.For the alien also:he's here to keep Earthlings to venture into Galaxy w freakishly violent drives intact--but such a rare dilemma and new solution, who knows what results will accrue. Easy enough to pick up on this, despite the genre patterns. Also in "Double Meaning," which moves a bit beyond didactic demonstration of didactism's tight-assed limations. The uptight protagonist, threatened by having to consult with an uncouth postcolonial, as they search for an alien impersonating a subject of Earth's Galactic Empire, is also plotting his own rise from the lower classes by manipulating a neurotic aristocrat into marrying him. He (hope he's)wearing down her resistence in various, plausibly projected ways (this was 50s pulp for middle school geeks??) Again, easily picked up implications (he can't go into Les Liasons D-etail), and invitations to speculate, like about what happens after the genre-typical happy-ish ending. "The Earth Quarter" is post-Imperial, postcolonial, except now the freakishly violent-tending Earthlings are in galactic ghettos, still somehow dependent on exports from supposedly ruined Earth, and trying to cope with mental and physical exile. "The Dying Man" is not dystopian, but again, slowly grokking the still-human nature of Earthopian life. I better end this, but the collection, the de facto series, gets better as it goes along, too.

― dow, Tuesday, May 15, 2012 3:23 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"from venturing into galaxy w freakishly violent drives intact," that is. "Could be a pre-Le Carre thriller, mainly (kinda something else)" not meant to imply Knight doesn't have his own knack for moving sometimes bloody-minded tacticians around the 4-D chessboard.

― dow, Tuesday, May 15, 2012 3:28 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the only one I recall reading is The Country of the Kind, which I rated as a youth but now strikes me as a bit douchey.

this is the one I just read, I thought it was great. not sure what's douchey about it

(should've used the space bar more often in re-posting). Dunno; ledge wrote it.

Wazzabout his A For Anything?

Anyway, came to say I just recently got off an airplane and can barely hear anything so I feel a bit like a Scanner, if not a Haberman.

Finally got into Sales' Apollo Quartet. Digging the writing a lot - was worried because I've been bummed out by alt.histories that get caught up in their concept.

finished Tau Zero. found the sexual aspects quite odd, like it was science fiction with added wife swapping. (local bookshop used to stock the sci-fi next to the erotica, which i thought was astute of them). also, it read a scandinavian approximation of english at times.

also bought The Forever War in a 2 for £5 deal from fopp. not sure whether to start that next.

PK Dick, 'King of the Elves' (1953)

is this a parody of Tolkien?

if I recall correctly, it's about some guy who discovers there are little elves living in his backyard and he becomes their king

There was supposed to be Disney animated feature based on this at some point. Whatever happened to that?

It's still coming out according to wikipedia.

Yes I have read the story. What seems esp Tolkienesque is the detail with which the epic battle between elves and trolls is described.

Where does all the film adaptation money for PK Dick go? Does he have a family?

He has children, I assume it goes to them

yes, he has children from one of his ex-wives that are in charge of his estate.

Isa Dick Hackett

and her sister Laura Leslie. They have a production company.

i scanned some of the stuff i got at the half price sale at the store around the corner:

https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/10177277_10153018854347137_64502244964413607_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/983667_10153018854497137_8956365339654111920_n.jpg

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ok imma need a cover artist ID on platypus of doom. Is it Gene Colan?

you're in the right ballpark. neal adams.

I love Gene Szafran's covers.

ok i normally hate neal adams but even a fucked clock is right 2x/day

Currently reading Transfigurations by Michael Bishop. It's quite good - really want to get to the pay-off, but have a feeling there won't be one...

Platypuss of Doom looks awesome!

says on the back that the paul williams book was originally put out by elektra records and that it became a cult classic but i've never heard of it. i've heard of him, obv.

and it's not really sci-fi...i don't think. more like hippie thinking.

lol some great ones in there. my favorite era of sci-fi art.

Smashing pictures.

Yep. But that Sunburst cover lies! The kids in that book are not demon spawn, they can't help having ESP! They didn't ask to be nuked as genes! I got way involved with the heroine and her crew when I encountered them at 13, then all over again at 20.

i don't know if you guys know anything about Philip Wylie, but he was a very interesting and strange guy. i've never actually read any of his sci-fi. he's probably most famous for his punk rock manifesto from 1942 called A Generation of Vipers.

"During World War II, writing The Paradise Crater (1945) resulted in his house arrest by the federal government; in it, he described a post-WWII 1965 Nazi conspiracy to develop and use uranium-237 bombs,[2] months before the first successful atomic test at Alamagordo – the most highly classified secret of the war."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Wylie

http://www.justifiedfilms.com/shooting-for-the-butler/

This is a trailer for a Dunsany documentary that should be out very soon.

Saturday I talked to some guy who had bought every Robert Sheckley book ever. Today when I went to lunch I saw a guy leaning on a loading dock, reading an old Del Rey paperback of Clifford Simak's Way Station. Don't want to get into tribbleshuggles, but it reminded me how much I enjoy our ilx sf threads.

I saw a guy leaning on a loading dock, reading an old Del Rey paperback of Clifford Simak's Way Station.

People who seem to have figured out how to live

Ha.

Das Energi described back in the day by Ed Ward "collection of fascist epigrams...a classic in its own way", but there are those who love it; see Amazon customer reviews, for inst (he wrote several philosophical, inspirational. motivational books). Philip Wylie I remember mainly for railing against Momism: mothers coddling, weakening their sons, when it was time to fight the Commies, like in Indochina. Might've written some good fiction, though, for all I know.
Ancillary Justice just won the Clarke Award; wondering about reading it, also based on brief review: http://www.sfx.co.uk/2013/09/27/ancillary-justice-by-ann-leckie-review/

clifford simak is one of those names that's always around but damned if know anything about him, what's his deal

"Pastoral sf." Some people might find it kinda folksy and kinda boring.

i love him. one of my faves. i like the humanism/pastoralism. mid-west sci-fi. i find it comforting, but, yeah, that can definitely mean boring to a lot of people. he was a great storyteller. and lots of fun ideas! he wasn't a dullard or anything. some people criticize his lack of scientific knowledge, but i don't really care about that. everyone should at least read City. certified classic and all that.

I haven't read City yet, but I can recommend Way Station.

Clute Notes on Cliff

Unless maybe that entry was written by two ilxors.

Paul Williams. I remember picking up "Right To Pass" as a boy and flipping through it. A lot of the pages offered only one sentence each, which didn't seem like value for money. As I remember the last pages went as follows: "Get it straight. [new page] Get it straight. [new page] Get it straight." One artifact of a culture I grew up in but wasn't independent enough to rebel against, though it certainly felt inadequate.

I have "Only Apparently Real" around somewhere. Never realized it was written by the same author.

i loved this book:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/RNGRNDTHSB1953.jpg

Another country collection.. It Came From the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction.
Kurodahan and Haikasoru do quite a few Japanese anthologies and there are some older ones from the 80s.

Centipede are doing some affordable (compared to most of their books) books in a series called Library Of Weird Fiction, right now with Poe, Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood and W H Hodgson; most of these books are 900 pages. Carl Jacobi is in their less affordable Masters Of The Weird Tale series, which seems to be the basis for Library Of Weird Fiction. So Jacobi (who I know very little about), Machen, Bierce, Kuttner, FB Long might all have cheaper massive collections soon. Karl Edward Wagner already got a cheaper double volume collection last year.