ThReads Must Roll: the new, improved rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/arthur-machen-collection-at-risk.html
If you like Arthur Machen please read this short piece and there is a super easy super quick way to protest the closure of the collection to scholars and public.
It'll barely take a few minutes.

Will do, thanks for the word. Also signed up for newsletter (I see that one of the main contributors is Tolkien expert Douglas A. Anderson, whose anthology Tales Before Tolkien was extolled by me on the previous Rolling F)

Done. Oh yeah, think I didn't quite indicate the range of Old Mars. For instance, Allen M. Steele's "Martian Blood" is introduced in a way that makes it seem like it'll be Heinlein homage--but while the narrator does rail against the tasteless rabble, he's also alienated by the results (and even worse potential) of capitalist-colonial exploitation. And his isolation doesn't make him One Man Rising against tasteless rabble, like Campbell's crew and other problem-solving writers valorized, it makes him slow-thinking and otherwise ineffectual. So it's really more like one of those xpost Damon Knight critiques of 50s capitalist-colonialist-Campbellian crapola.
Also, Howard Waldrop has one about an ancient diary of an august Martian making a pilgrimage, and along the way he experiences meiosis, then trains his Bud to help him steer the sandcraft, and notes with satisfaction how new Bud is "flourishing in a twilight world" (diary ends soon after). I found it very relatable, as the kids say (spellcheck doesn't agree, but then it doesn't like its own name either).

Oh Robert, speaking of newsletters etc, do you know Subterranean Press? Lush special editions, some lush list prices too, but they have sales, also interviews and profiles of authors and illustrators, other good stuff. Mostly science fiction, fantasy, horror, some noir. Can check 'em out and sigh up here:
http://subterraneanpress.com/

Yeah, I've been checking them out recently. I've been interested in the Caitlin R Kiernan books in particular.

Was looking for ETA Hoffmann in the shops yesterday, both the Penguin and Oxford editions had a surprisingly small group of stories. I thought everything would be collected in big complete editions but there are 7 recent-ish collections with very different contents.
There are quite a lot of stories that don't seem to have been in English since Victorian Times.

did anyone see this baffling document: http://atseajournal.com/mjh-study/

Over the next ~25,000 words we will try and figure out how to get some of that rigor in our own work. No thanks. At least he got me to look up "zeugma."

finished Knight's "Beyond the Barrier" (moving on to "Hell's Pavement", which seems more promising). Some bizarre digressions in "Beyond the Barrier"; it is not really clear what is going on for maybe 90% of the novel, the protagonist just bounces from one incomprehensible scene to another with no knowledge of his motivations or context for what is happening to him. Which gets a little tiresome, but the big reveal at the end is quite clever and bring it's underlying themes into focus. I wouldn't say it's great by any stretch but it's not bad. "Hell's Pavement" seems to have a more concentrated dark satire of mind controlled consumerism at it's heart but I'm not v far into it.

also on deck - Haldeman's "Forever War"

Robert, I've found this article on Hoffman to be useful in turning the stories of most interest (to me, at least). Only thing is, unlike SF Encyclopedia, which gets updated often, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy is a dreaming jewel, mostly undisturbed since being uploaded in 1997, so nothing about collections published since:

http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=hoffmann_e_t_a

Also there was one I was marveling at on old Rolling F: blanking on title, but think it was in Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder, edited by Hartwell & Cramer, which has a lot of stories I think you might enjoy. Ditto Douglas A. Anderson's Tales Before Tolkien, though you're prob familiar with those two.

The ETA story in that anth turns out to be mentioned by me only in passing, but it's great---here's an earlier post, and the link still works:
re xpost the early stuff, I gotta re-read ETA Hoffman. Good All Things Considered on him this afternoon--audio: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167732828/no-sugar-plums-here-the-dark-romantic-roots-of-the-nutcracker

― dow, Tuesday, December 25, 2012 4:47 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xp Shakey, the only DK fiction I can recall is in the Rule Golden collection, so can't comment on the ones you're reading. Hope "Hell's Pavement" turned out OK.

The Rough Guide To Psychedelic India
Various

Rough Guide, RGNET1332DD, 26 January 2015

Indian music was hugely influential on Western psychedelia and the feeling was mutual. On this mind-expanding Rough Guide, hallucinatory sounds drift in and out of drones and ragas, ranging from the lysergic sitar of Ananda Shankar and trippy Bollywood vibes of the 1970s to more recent concoctions by Sunday Driver and The Bombay Royale.

Compiled by: DJ Ritu

he first musical whispers of India’s burgeoning influence on Western popular music were heard in 1965 when The Beatles’ George Harrison added the sounds of a sitar to the Rubber Soul album track ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’. Soon everybody from The Yardbirds and The Rolling Stones to Sergio Mendes and The Byrds was reflecting an Indian influence. During these years in India, drug culture wasn’t flooding its shores, but the country was undergoing its own transformation – the 1960s saw the advent of a DIY garage band scene.

When compiling this Rough Guide, DJ Ritu cast her psychedelic net wide into the diaspora and the modern day. This album pays homage to the swinging 1960s history whilst forging the journey onwards into psychedelia’s present-day incarnations.

Beginning the mix was easy; Ritu knew instinctively Ananda Shankar’s ‘Dancing Drums’ was first on her list, the LP was a rare find, hotly desired on the Asian Underground scene. Other vintage finds on this album include R.D Burman’s Bollywood hit ‘Dum Maro Dum’ from the film Hare Rama Hare Krishna. In the film the protagonist, sung here by the inimitable Asha Bhosle, takes deep drags on a large chillum before dancing floppy limbed amidst a throng of her beatnik friends. ‘Dance Music’ is another throwback Bollywood number by brother composer duo Kalyanji & Anandji.

Other tracks on the album root the listener firmly back in the present day and launches into the music of India’s vast diaspora. Sunday Driver set out their Indian shades of influence against a backdrop of Sgt. Pepper-ish Victoriana. The Bombay Royale are an eleven-piece Australian band inspired by old school Bollywood soundtracks.
More introspective expressions come from Ray Spiegel Ensemble with their low tempo track ‘Moksha’. Paban Das Baul performs music of the Bauls, the wandering spiritual musicians of Bengal and is heard on ‘Kaliya’.

Lose yourself in this collection of far out sounds – soaring sitars, tremulous tabla, distorted deep-set drones and unbound improvisations, all twisted through a rock and roll edge.
https://soundcloud.com/world-music-network

Track List

01 Kalyanji & Anandji: Dance Music (Instrumental)
02 Ananda Shankar: Dancing Drums
03 Sunday Driver: Satyam Shivam sund4ram
04 The Bombay Royale: Bombay Twist
05 Simon Thacker's Svara-Kanti: Rakshasa
06 Tiger Blossom: Brishtir Pani
07 Asha Bhosle: Dum Maro Dum
08 Paban Das Baul: Kaliya
09 Jazz Thali: Chamber Of Dreams
10 Jyotsna Srikanth: Thillana
11 Ray Spiegel Ensemble: Moksha
12 Debashish Bhattacharya Feat. John McLaughlin: A Mystical Morning

Total Playing Time: 67:45

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBw2Y-K1lg

Damn! Wrong thread, wrong board even!

lol

Thank you Dow. I always wondered why the Michael Powell film Tales Of Hoffmann was so light, because previously I'd heard Hoffmann referenced as dark and even grotesque.

Hope "Hell's Pavement" turned out OK

I am liking it a lot so far. the premise involves this technology that basically permits mind control - you can place an "analogue" in someone's consciousness that directs their behavior towards specific ends (ie "don't murder people" etc.) Of course this technology totally warps society, gets into the hands of corporations who use it to create compliant populations of consumers dedicated solely to their products, and after a couple hundred years human society is pretty fucked up. BUT of course there are some mutant exceptions who are apparently immune to the technology...

Don't know where else to post this because it's fantastiscal/surreal/visionary art but if you like fantasy, you can hardly get a whole lot better than Albin Brunovsky. There was almost none of his paintings online before and I scanned a few.
http://eatenbyducks.blogspot.com/2014/12/albin-brunovsky-paintings.html

Looks like Malzberg's The Men Inside is about two ILX0rs.

The second volume of Silverberg's Collected Short Stories seems to be the one to get.

Holy Moly, those Brunovsky images are amazing. Think I like the ones in yr linked 2009 post even more. Did he ever illustrate fantasy, sf etc.?

He illustrated some classic literature and a lot of old fairy tales but I don't know if he ever did any contemporary fantasy.

Was Fritz Leiber's birthday Christmas Eve. Check out this guy's photostream of Leiber book covers- front, back and inside- along with some other stuff, including a few Robert Bloch: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cthulhuwho1/with/5054182811

I discovered recently that Leiber has a son who wrote science fiction a few decades ago.

Son's main gig is that he is a philosophy professor who studies the nature of consciousness, which is kind of fitting given the premise of "You're All Alone."

xpost Wow, that Leiber-Bloch dude's blog: gateways within gateways http://cthulhuwho1.com/

i bought like a hundred of these today...

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10698484_10153582953242137_8922190107959297129_n.jpg?oh=40595014060e61a7243d1bc56fcb969a&oe=552B3E18&__gda__=1428663143_6beecf1a6a3c90db4646feacaa906ad1

https://scontent-a-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/11606_10153582950632137_1867966490689516516_n.jpg?oh=90f6700729ebb1500f96998bace24521&oe=552A2CFC

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/10849871_10153582950377137_5687703609412094790_n.jpg?oh=913855e8a4139324b102114eb35f53d3&oe=54FF019D&__gda__=1429927465_7da94698ea0a276b0f031700e4b4d58f

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10885065_10153582949997137_269310761726854527_n.jpg?oh=3ba2edb6f3a4b2aec327d9efd692fa07&oe=5539808E&__gda__=1430303927_f05af73955b3eaf90f6438d8c6322ff1

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/1798822_10153582949617137_6184979953075229391_n.jpg?oh=ffdcd5ca5ce1173d30c8803358d2f708&oe=54FA7E02&__gda__=1428839093_e9eb154e8f387c1d970220c4154e1ec7

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10891871_10153582949272137_2901018892931385716_n.jpg?oh=70fd34ec7681a190e03d0dabc85b92ec&oe=5541BED2&__gda__=1429352388_8ad480a811fec1083c46e3284df28f99

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/1779954_10153582948912137_5323193485398680586_n.jpg?oh=30e3fbaeb60898bdcc16f7e5c2a918af&oe=55388A42&__gda__=1430285352_1d4c8ebe95aed90a661c598c6141e130

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10647048_10153582948852137_1363957967480087765_n.jpg?oh=1e9e296f02290d6ea7ff685818ffce66&oe=54FE51BE&__gda__=1430423464_6e83043a54b63b4e64d2a1bd1874b4af

https://scontent-b-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10897864_10153582948207137_7110955268728397172_n.jpg?oh=b5639106ae313fc4c03f357171caaba5&oe=5546A775

Damn, good get. Gotta road trip to your store sometime.

Was there some special offer or something? Did you pay a big chunk for it?

Sweet gahan Wilson cover!!!

like all those covers. and speaking of that era of pulps, can anyone identify a story/author i remember reading in one years ago? sort of a last man scenario with a guy floating around in space deejaying into the void... definitely remember he was spinning the velvet underground and maybe the grateful dead, so would have been late sixties/early seventies...

lol at Poul Anderson cover.

Cats! A fat guy! Poul!

Read Absolution Gap, and then wrote too much about it:

I think I'm over Alistair Reynolds. I initially got swept along with AG's usual space opera stylings: the behemoth space ships, vast ditances, technology like magic; the switching between three or four different points of view, offering tantalising glimpses of what's to come. But I soon started to tire of the constant pov switching and drip feeding of info, and the planet bound plot which loses the interstellar excitement. But mostly I tired of his truly awful characters and societies. I think you could describe 80% of his characters - not just the ones in this book - as bitter. They hold lifelong, often murderous grudges. At one point in AG someone comes right out and says that forgiving and forgetting is bullshit, and that's one of the nicer characters. It's a philosophy so common in the books that I can't help but think it must be Reynolds' own.

Even though all the main characters are awful the poor plebs in their care suffer from collective Stockholm Syndrome. Happy to be under a dictatorship for 20 years they panic when the dictator looks like abdicating, casting about desperately for an alternative - "someone strong, someone prepared to think the unthinkable". For all his writing about collective consciousness and neural implants enabling direct democracy, Reynolds seems in thrall to the Great Man theory of history.

Then there's the religion at the centre of AG. Utterly, preposterously mediaeval. Ok it's all the work of a neurological virus and maybe this is Reynolds' gag at the expense of religion, but it doesn't matter, it's not plausible and it's not pleasant to read about. And that's the overall problem with this book, and his others. His worlds seem utterly devoid of the best human emotions and characteristics - joy, generosity, compassion, sympathy, forgiveness, thoughtfulness. And love. The only loving relationships he writes about, aside from a few enduring manly friendships born in the heat of battle, have long ago come to a tragic end (usually at the hands of another character, begetting one of those lifelong murderous grudges).

you're welcome! 8)

it struck me as a slight detour from the first two books and i liked the religion as a virus thing and the whole caravan thing. yes, grotesque, but that's ok. didn't think you'd like the suit of armour. mediaeval sci-fi religion is a trope though, isn't it? banks, stephenson spring to mind.

can't really remember much about the other thread, the women's part, other than the, yes, long grudgeful exile.

i also seem to remember him throwing 3 or 4 new races of aliens into the last chapter which made it all a bit messy. (or maybe that was the second book)

this, btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap

Century Rain, is, i think, probably different enough from the rest of his books to may be worth reading - more like a hard boiled 50s detective thing, at least to start with. bit grim though in places.

the rev space universe seems to have been left behind though and he's now 2 books into his 11 books eon spanning series. early days yet, i think (the first seemed to have a near contemporary setting iirc, the second ends up in generational ships)

i also seem to remember him throwing 3 or 4 new races of aliens into the last chapter which made it all a bit messy. (or maybe that was the second book)

Oh yes I forgot to whinge about the end, all pulled punches and a last minute bait and switch rendering the central macguffin entirely pointless. ok ok a macguffin is pointless by definition... well even more pointless than that.

i think i need to step away from whizz bang sf, for a while at least, and spend more time down the thoughtful end. still plenty of le guin to investigate.

Always wondered what you saw in that guy anyway, ledge.

Ginnungagap
This is a story by what's-his-name, Michael Swanwick, no?

xpost drool (scott's mags). Would very much like to know Samuel Delany and Ed Emshwiller's takes on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Have you read that, Scott??
Only read a couple A. Reynolds in annual anthologies; seemed okay, but ledge's delving reminds me of the TV Game of Thrones. It does have some sensitive interludes, but hard to see where these come from, other than the need for contrast. Don't see a source in the "culture" of Westeros, as depicted here. How are the books?

Oh, I shouldn't put culture in quotes: it's a culture of power plays, reveling (with whores, swords & grog, also in yer one-ups-manship), also--well, that's about it, unless you among the teeming troops or civilians, incl. a few fugitives: then you get to slog, run and die (maybe kill first).

xp Scott scores! Great covers.

Thought for a second dow was referring to Culture in the Iain Banks sense.

No thread roll for the new year, but a new screenname at least.

Not quite right

xpost speaking of Moorcock, profile in new New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/anti-tolkien

he has essentially written the other style guide for modern fantasy

Moorcock and his peers had become tired of the dominant science-fiction landscape: vast fields of time travel, machismo, and spaceships, as well as the beefcake heroes of the fantasy subgenre “Sword and Sorcery.” The Golden Age of Science Fiction, held aloft by authors like Frederik Phol, John W. Campbell, and Robert Heinlein had, by the nineteen-sixties, sputtered out into a recycling of the same ideas.

Was looking at Malzberg's bibliography and seen that he's written erotica under several different names (why so many names?), including a book called "My Stepmother, My Desire".