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

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

https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/10168189_10153018854697137_5584358994563153524_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/10309052_10153018855072137_789236278293118601_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/10151995_10153018855117137_6113858524124950293_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/t1.0-9/10171665_10153018855182137_6806129437551760353_n.jpg

https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t1.0-9/10313854_10153018855252137_1632992304799731284_n.jpg

https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/10256562_10153018855347137_1518636701207060421_n.jpg

https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1.0-9/12372_10153018855412137_7710710762120634705_n.jpg

https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1.0-9/10297711_10153018855597137_8868701975910313973_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.

Did somebody say Kuttner?

http://www.centipedepress.com/masters/kuttnermwt.html
Yes, with any luck this will be made into a cheaper volume later on. 460 pages, so not quite as massive as the other ones.

What stories or books do you like by Robert Sheckley?

I've only read the story 'Specialist'.

Really liked Soma Blues, which I just read recently. Not really too sf, one of his Alternative Detective books, but one of his last, a good example of how he never lost his writing chops. "Zirn Left Unguarded...", which is Every Space Opera Ever Condensed To Three Pages, is sort of an official ILX classic, having been blessed by Sinkah and the Sluglords. Two other stories that are kind of canonical are "The Seventh Victim" and "The Prize of Peril." Really haven't read anything by him that didn't deliver on some level. Haven't yet read the novel that's supposed to be the best, The Journey of Joenes. Maybe you just read more of the public domain stuff or try to get that NYRB collection.

Or is it Dimension of Miracles? Haven't read that one either.

Hey looks like most of the novels became available as pretty cheap ebooks last month.

Including a left-field personal favorite, Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera.

There's an NYRB collection of Robert Sheckley?