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

I'm enjoying Ancillary Justice. It's different from Banks - obviously not as whizz-bang, more about thinking than doing. Ambling towards its conclusion rather than accelerating in a heart stopping fashion. And I'm ok with that, although I am hoping for (and expecting) a decently dramatic conclusion. The ancillary idea is fine and nicely done, some of the world building is less accomplished - e.g. the gloves thing is a bit lame, so far (two thirds in) there's still only one major species/civilisation on the stage (plus one offstage serving as plot device). Outrageous! How dare anyone write space opera without a robust galactic menagerie!

And yeah some strange stylistic quirks, the characters seems to have an inexhaustible array of expressive gestures - they gesture acknowledgement, indifference, assent, agreement, agreement (perfunctory), approval, "halfway between not my problem and not relevant", helplessness, acquiescence, conciliation, "it is as it is", doubt, "lack of concern or sympathy", uncertainty, ambivalence, apology (slight, deferential), ambiguity, obviousness. (Thanks ereader search function!) I sometimes wonder they bother to speak at all.

The most recent Ancilble talked about the endless eyebrows in Ancillary Justice:

'Strigan held the icon out, raised a steel-gray eyebrow.' 'She raised an eyebrow, tilted her head slightly.' 'Strigan said nothing, only twitched one gray eyebrow.' '... she walked into the main living space, stopped, folded her arms, and cocked an eyebrow.' 'Anaander Mianaai turned to her, eyebrow raised.' 'The eyebrow rose farther.' 'Strigan raised an eyebrow ...' 'Strigan raised one skeptical eyebrow.' '... the siren elicited no more than an upward glance and a raised eyebrow.' 'The Lord of the Radch raised one graying eyebrow.' 'Anaander Mianaai [...] raised one grayed eyebrow.' 'Strigan cocked one gray eyebrow ...' 'She raised one eyebrow, and then another, disbelieving.' 'It was my turn to raise a skeptical eyebrow.' 'Lieutenant Issaaia raised an eyebrow.' 'She raised an eyebrow.' 'Moments later, at the mention of Ime, eyebrows twitched.' 'Her eyebrows twitched just slightly.' 'She lifted an eyebrow.' 'It was guaranteed to lift Radchaai eyebrows ...' 'Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat raised an eyebrow ...' 'I raised an eyebrow.' 'I raised one eyebrow and a shoulder ...' 'At Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat's raised eyebrow Seivarden added ...' 'People had stared and whispered, or just raised their eyebrows.' 'Seivarden lifted an eyebrow briefly.' 'I raised an eyebrow, incredulous.' 'I raised an eyebrow ...' 'Seivarden raised an eyebrow, sardonic.' 'I stopped and turned to look at Seivarden, raised an eyebrow.' 'This security officer did not even twitch an eyebrow.' 'The right-hand Mianaai lifted an eyebrow.' 'Mianaai lifted an eyebrow.' 'Anaander Mianaai raised an eyebrow ...' 'I didn't answer, didn't even raise an eyebrow.' 'I turned my head ... and raised an eyebrow.'

With some of the same appeal as Lafferty: leave us not forget some prev. discussion of Avram Davidson (and that Vandameer I still should check, among others here)
Having avoided Jeff Vandermeer for years (something always gave me the impression of forced whimsical surrealness of the 'I'm so ZANY!' variety), I'm enjoying his new one, Annihilation, about a group of four women exploring a sort of Roadside-Picnic-style zone of weirdness.

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 7:32 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

His publishing company being called 'Cheeky frawg' didn't help

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 7:33 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I kinda had the same impression of Avram Davidson--based on what, I dunno; prob haven't read him since middle school---revived by the opening of "The Woman Who Thought She Could Read." But it's a set-up for pathos, somewhat scarey (irony in there too,one of life's cruel joeks). It's no masterpiece, but what other Davidson should I check?

This is included in the previously mentioned Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder (yadda-yadda)

― dow, Thursday, February 13, 2014 11:51 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've heard good things about, and so bought, The Adventures Of Doctor Eszterhazy by Avram Davidson -- it sounds as though it's meant to be a Hungarian novel, which is my kind of thing anyway. Not yet read, though.

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, February 13, 2014 5:03 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

TOR did an avram Davidson treasury a few years back, he's a short story/novella man so that ought to be a good rx

― grape is the flavor of my true love's hair (Jon Lewis), Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:25 PM (5 months ago)

Aaaaand I still haven't got around to The Adventures Of Doctor Eszterhazy by Avram Davidson

Also from the xpost August online issue of Ansible: recently expired writers, appealingly mentioned. Anybody read 'em? (I read and saw the worthy and imaginativeLittle Big Man long ago, but none of his with sf themes.)
• Ana María Matute (1925-2014), distinguished Spanish author whose novels often included fantasy/supernatural elements, died on 25 June aged 88. Her many awards include the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honour.[JCo]
Thomas Berger (1924-2014), US author best known for the quasi-Western Little Big Man (1964), several of whose novels explored sf themes – from cryonics in Vital Parts (1960) to androids in Adventures of the Artificial Woman (2004) – died on 13 July. He was 89. [AIP]
• Late notice: Isidore Haiblum (1935-2012), US author of The Wilk Are Among Us (1975) and other comic sf infused with Yiddish humour, died on 25 October 2012 aged 77. [WGC]
• Late notice: Louise Lawrence (Elizabeth Holden, 1943-2013), UK author of much tough-minded YA genre fiction including the 'Wyndcliffe' and 'Llandor' fantasy series plus several standalone sf novels with varied settings, died on 6 December 2013; she was 70.

Also from Aug, Ansible:

Man Booker Prize. Titles of genre interest on the 13-book longlist: Karen Joy Fowler,We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves; Howard Jacobson, J; David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks; Richard Powers, Orfeo.
World Fantasy Awards. Novel shortlist: Richard Bowes, Dust Devil on a Quiet Street; Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons; Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane; Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria; Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni; Gene Wolfe, The Land Across. More at worldfantasy.org/awards/2014.html.
Would like to check the Fowler first; enjoyed her short stories, though the only novel I've read is Sarah Canary, about somebody who may be an alien or just a space cadet (socially, anyway) in the Wild Pacific Northwest. Remember it as alternating chapters of deft wry Chaplinesque body language with chunks of historical lectures, but it was her debut. Those opening chapters of the Wolfe, excerpted on NPR, were really clunky first-person tourist in Kafkaland, 'til maybe the last few grafs; got kinda good there.

re-reading Ballard's "Hello America" (for lack of anything else available). This is a good 'un, better than I remembered it.

It'll probably be a long time before I read any of this but...

- a bunch of new Dunsany stuff has been found at his castle, mainly plays I think.

- Hanns Heinz Ewers (a Nazi who was controversial among other Nazis and made an outcast because he was openly bisexual and thought Jews were ideal supermen!) is going into a rediscovery period, lots of his work being translated for ebooks. Alraune (several films based on it) and some short stories are quite well known but most of this has never been available in English.

- there's a huge ebook of all Abraham Merritt's fantasy stories.

Can anyone point me to a story which explores the parallels between nostalgia and time travel? Like, has there ever been a story about a machine that lets you take a holiday back to the old house you used to live in in 1995, or a particular holiday you went on once or whatever?

someone must have done this but I am drawing a blank

Alain Resnais's film Je t'aime, je t'aime does this – screenplay's by french sci-fi writer Jacques Sternberg, not sure if it's based on a novel of his or not. Also of course Sans soleil . . .

Just read two bumper time travel anthologies and none that I can recall.

La Jetee is still thee OMG cinematic time trip.

Yo Robert Alan, think you might dig this strange cat:

and all over his face broods a universe of rainbows, dingy and fat, which from the fat vapours of the pitch bringing forth rainbows, not rainbows of heaven, but, so to say, fallen angels, grown gross and sluggish. But, years ere this, I think, I had seen the bulrushes: for, soon after the volcano came, in roaming over to the left shore of the cataract's sea---the whole left shore is flat and widespread, and hath no high walls like the right side---I walked upon a freshet of fresh warm water, and after following it upward, saw all around a marsh's swamp, and the bush of bulrushes. This is where the oysters be so crass, and they be pearl oysters, for all that soil be crass with nacreous matter of some sort, with barrok pearls, mother of pearl, and in most of the oysters which I opened pearls; with a lot of conch shells which have within them pink pearls, and there be also the black pearl, such as they have in Mexico and the West Indies, with the yellow and likewise the white, which last be shaped like the pear, and large, and his pallor hath a blank brightness, very priceless, and so to say, bridal.

― dow, Monday, 14 January 2013 16:34 (1 year ago) Permalink

That's from "The Dark Lot of One Saul," by M.P. Shiel. Had heard of him as a xenophobe, racist, anti-Semite though he was also "of West Indian descent," sez Wiki). Indeed, it seems that he was smitten by the Yellow Peril as much as his Elizabethan castaway *was* the yellow pearl, to say the least. Also wanted to deport the Jews to Palestine, thus "making him a Zionist of sorts"--mots juste, Great Tales of Science Fiction eds. Silverberg & Greenberg! But in less-shit-talking stories like this, he earns the crack in his pot, a la xp David Lindsay. Other goodies in here so far from Twain, Kipling, Wells; compatible though creakier Poe and Verne. Currently reading "R.U.R."; quite a contrast so far with Shiel.

― dow, Monday, 14 January 2013 16:46 (1 year ago) Permalink

This quote is is one of the tamer bits actually; hard to avoid spoilers.

― dow, Monday, 14 January 2013 16:48 (1 year ago) Permalink

That's very nice. I've wanted to read Shiel for a while but I've heard his work is extremely uneven. Penguin classics had a Shiel book, maybe Purple Cloud?
I've heard that House Of Sounds and Shapes In The Fire are among his best.

http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=7825
A really good discussion and listing of Belgian weird fiction and surrealism.

http://www.hippocampuspress.com/mythos-and-other-authors/poetry/the-book-of-jade-by-david-park-barnitz
Book Of Jade by Barnitz is getting an affordable reprint from Hippocampus.

thanks to everyone for turning me on to james tiptree jr. sheesh.

the stories come wrapped in this standard issue sci-fi tone, people saying "jeez!" a lot, lovers casually mentioning physics periodicals to each other, and then there will be something incredibly disturbing, and i wonder, "was that allowed then, to write things like that?" but before i've finished asking it the paragraphs have exploded into hot vertical shards and the universe has imprisoned the characters into frozen glyphs of unending pain and the story ends. and the next one's similar. it's addictive!

still reading Robert Sheckley, of course.

Two of my favorite posters reading two of my favorite authors :)

With Loncon3, the largest WorldCon in history disappearing into the rear-view mirror, convention guest of honour John Clute joins Gary and Jonathan on the podcast to discuss fantastika, the mission of science fiction, the SF Encyclopedia and much more.
http://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/e/episode-198-john-clute-science-fiction-and-loncon/

Just heard that one of the new Vandermeer anthologies is a big collection of feminist SF.

thanks to everyone for turning me on to james tiptree jr. sheesh.

the stories come wrapped in this standard issue sci-fi tone, people saying "jeez!" a lot, lovers casually mentioning physics periodicals to each other, and then there will be something incredibly disturbing, and i wonder, "was that allowed then, to write things like that?" but before i've finished asking it the paragraphs have exploded into hot vertical shards and the universe has imprisoned the characters into frozen glyphs of unending pain and the story ends. and the next one's similar. it's addictive!

Very well put. I'm reading the new edition of 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever' a few stories at a time between other books, as the concentrated misanthropy gets a bit much, but it's frequently amazing. I especially love the one, can't remember the title, of the man running backwards in time towards the detonation of nuclear war.

Found that one yesterday looking for online freebies, it's The Man Who Walked Home:

http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/9781625791542/9781625791542___2.htm

... two others linked here: http://www.freesfonline.de/authors/James_Tiptree,%20Jr..html

excellent!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMga-1TVZWc

yessssss

Tom Baker bit is lol

Alan Moore doppelganger at 11:46 (I suppose it could really be him?)

lol Dreamsnake

This morning before breakfast (trying to beat the heat, hit the library early), I read Tiptree's "Beam Me Up," killer opener of Hartwell's The Science Fiction Century You'll guess the basic plot from the title, and it's early, even has an old-time tacked-on ending, but the damage is already done: nobody but JTJR, leaving her calling card and a dark buzz for the rest of this glorious suburban summer day, like many in the story.

Sorry! It's actually "Beam Us Up."

http://formerpeople.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/a-literary-history-of-weird-fiction-an-interview-with-s-t-joshi/

Pretty good interview with Joshi about Lovecraft and weird fiction, pulp magazines vs modernism and avant garde movements, comparing approaches and philosophies. Also about regional differences in the respectability of fantasy.

I once saw some people say that numerous pulp authors including Richard Matheson and Fritz Leiber had a "dirty old man phase". I haven't read enough of their work to say.

I would have thought that maybe they always wanted to have lots of sex in their writing but couldn't previously get away with it in the earlier days.

library finally came through with one of my book requests: reading "The Collected Short Fiction of Robert Silverberg Volume 3: Something Wild Is Loose (1969-1972)"

wow @ Silverberg's "The Reality Trip", feel like this may be his best short piece (at least of what I've read so far). Funny, dark, disconcerting, good use of the diary-as-narration device

I'm finding some writers better known to me for science fiction in A Centurty of Noir, edited by Mickey Spillaine and Max Allen Collins.
First up is Leigh Brackett's novelette "I Feel Bad Killing You." Despite the jokey title, it's serious lead overcoat weather for seedy-ass WWII-era Surfside Cali (12 years before the slick dicks on TV's "Surfside 6," which would fit right in with "Royal Pains" and "Suits" right now, if so lucky). The opening description of the low-rent outdoors seems a bit overwritten, but then it quickly turns out to be how the main character involuntarily takes everything in; he's a traumatized tough guy, close to a ghost, it seems. But then he goes indoors and you see he really is a tough guy--scarred but maybe smarter, though hellbound to avenge his dead cop brother, in any case---ready to haunt the Big Sleep/Big Heat-type action. Like if Hawks or Lang ever worked with Robert Ryan. So not SF or fantasy, but pretty spooky in its way.
Next up is Fredric Brown, Spillane's favorite short story writer. We'll see.

Just read Le Fanu's "Green Tea", pretty good ideas but nothing especially struck me in it. I really liked two of his other stories, "Schalken The Painter" and "Lord Justice Harbottle". I hope it wasn't a mistake buying his 8 volume (500 pages each) collection years ago.

Oh! It's his 200th birthday today. Happy birthday to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

Would read 2000 pages of Le Fanu, but maybe not 4000 ... I have a crumbling cheap 1867 edition of A Lost Name checked out of the library, but it's too beat for reading ... The short stories are best but I also liked Uncle Silas and Wylder's Hand

HB

gutenberg, y'all.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/272

Seem to recall Peter O'Toole awesome in Uncle Silas (movie)

I saw the Jean Simmons version of Uncle Silas. The scary French woman was great and the fight at the end was pretty brutal for an old film like that.

Oh my God, not just OMG: figured the xpost Century of Noir's Fredric Brown offering, "Don't Look Behind You," would be gargoyle-cute, considering the couple other trenchcoat things of his I've read, and it does start like that---but this goes mondo beyondo anything else in here so far, incl. beyond even the Brackett walking scar tissue's righteous quest for pulp justice. Covers a lot of ground in fewer pages than Brackett and others, while putting the gore in phantasmagoria, with tightening logic, no arbitrary pulp seasoning. Must read The Screaming Mimi and others mentioned by editors.

Year's Best Weird Fiction edited by Laird Barron was just launched. I hope the series doesn't feel too much like a club of friends, as anthologies sometimes do. "What do you know! All the best stuff from this year was made by my buddies!"
But I think Barron was recently saying that his praise of another writer's book was nothing to do with back patting, so I'm fairly convinced he'll do the job fine. I wonder how long this anthology will go on for? Editors who are also fiction writers tend not to do this sort of thing very long.

"They left silently, wrapped in dignity like stained cloaks." That's the only time he permits himself such a turn (around two characters who have just acted like shit), but John D. MacDonald surely does draw out the nuanced truth, even more than his insurance investigator---who's very experienced, but a little too smoothly good at his job to be quite plausible, unless he reads a lot of stories like this.Were there all that many in 1952, when Detective Tales magazine first published "Murder For Money"? Gotta read some more of MacD.'s SF. The only one so far was in the Aldiss anth Galactic Empires, Vol. 2, I think (the one w Lafferty and Cordwainer, if so). "Escape From Chaos" or "Escape To Chaos," either title would fit his POV: crisis, philosophical discussion, asskicking under and among the stars. I'm told the philosophical part got out of hand in the later Travis McGee books. Only remaining SF-versatile pulpster I've spotted in A Century of Noir is John Jakes: kind of a hack, right? Hope not.

http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TCM/Images/Dynamic/i47/markershort_ff_188x141_081420061133.jpg

The aforementioned La Jetee will be on Turner Classic Movies thie evening, 7:15 PM EST. A little under 30 minutes, but quite enough; what a time trip. See it.

thx

Love how the people of the future look like The Young Marble GIants.

The xpost John Jakes story turned out okay: no trenchcoats, but early Atom Age bloody irony---a la Tales From The Crypt and others busted by the newly created Comics Code Authority---transposed to and still appropriate enough in the eco-gothic 70s. Also one by Ed Gorman, whom I otherwise know as a horror guy, but the violence here is recalled and accounted for, at a reunion of one of those bedroom community high schools where the poor and richer kids are all up in each other (horror enough, at times).

i'm still reading the cities in flight novels. taking me a while. but i'm enjoying. corny mixed with cool.

Thanks for the reminder; I'll have to check those out (from the library, yalll). But you know you're going to run into his religious thing, right? If you haven't already: A Case of Conscience, Black Easter...I used to picture him typing madly, in a monastic cell---little projection there, but not too much.