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

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just came across the phrase silkpunk epic fantasy series

what does it mean

https://io9.gizmodo.com/author-ken-liu-explains-silkpunk-to-us-1717812714

So, Simak - "City" really is some kind of oddball masterpiece, I can't think of anything like it. "Foundation", maybe, matches it in scope and content in terms of a future history although that is very different in tone and is way more ponderous and poorly written than the compact, lyrical style Simak has. Heinlein did the future history thing too, but Simak's weird combination of folksiness and pastoral nostalgia and tragedy is infinitely more appealing, both funnier and more somber and more human. It's also interesting that it is totally devoid of any kind of villain or good/evil conflict, the characters generally do wrestle with moral quandaries and but there's none of the conventional opposing forces fighting each other stuff, everything is in the context of these larger, uncontrollable forces at work on society (and different types of societies). The farther I go into it (I'm on the 7th story) the more I like it.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 10:59 AM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I ended up really enjoying this. Was not too sure after the first story or two, the whole mechanism behind people leaving the cities for their pastoral techno-palaces seemed a dated and unbelievable. But once you get past that and into the world of talking dogs/loner super-intelligent mutants/wild robots, it's really great. I also like how the sense of melancholy and solitude just escalates with each story, until it reaches its logical conclusion.

OTM about the lack of villains or traditional conflict, that was really refreshing.

Are any of his other novels/collections as good?

I liked Way Station, but haven’t readCity yet so can’t compare.

Also want to say I really enjoyed post-apocalyptic novel you recommended, Far North, by Marcel Theroux.

Theroux's 'Bodies' is also very good, but hard to describe without spoiling

Yeah, just got a copy of that. I know of at least one reviewer, well it was M. John Harrison, who liked Bodies a lot more than Far North.

Wait isn’t it called Strange Bodies?

Ooh, good to hear! I enjoyed Strange Bodies a ton too.

Thank you for reminding me about him, because apparently he has a brand new one called The Secret Books. But apparently it's only out in the UK?

Just noticed that. Also curious to read his book about Sherlock Holmes’ brother. My library used to have a copy.

Sorry, yes, Strange Bodies.

https://78.media.tumblr.com/15b1c91a9ffdd6d470975510a9970b01/tumblr_p10pytIeUZ1qabkwjo1_400.jpg

Wonderful Japanese cover for 900 Grandmothers, stolen from https://50watts.tumblr.com/

"Are any of his other novels/collections as good?"

yes, totally! he was so awesome. always entertaining.

C’mon skot, what kind of critical approach is that? Some of his stuff is bland and boring.

Which stuff?

Some of the stuff he wrote after Way Station. Although you called my bluff because I only started a couple of these and didn't make much headway and I can't remember which ones they were so maybe they are not bland and boring after all.

I used to say the same thing about Barrington Bayley and Bob Shaw before I saw the error of my ways.

i'm not critical i guess. i like almost everything i've read by him. i can't think of many people who wrote such cool stuff from the 30s to the 80s.

For example if somebody asked me which P.G. Wodehouse to read, I would tell them to steer clear of The Cat-Nappers aka Aunts Aren’t Gentleman. Which I actually read twice, once under each title.

i think i read that one, though as with all of the jeeves books, i don't know how i could confirm that

is it the one where the plot revolves around the theft of a cow-creamer, i once asked, to be told, well, that's actually more than one of them

"This is the one with the amusing misunderstanding."
"Oh, i've read that one then."

dow asked me to post the syllabus for the Fantasy lit course that I will be assisting with in the Winter term here, so here it is.

This isn't a genre I'm all that familiar with ('cept Harry Potter, really), so I'll likely be hanging out and posting here for the next few months.

kudos for doing lion, witch *before* magician's nephew

Just finished Pamela Sargent's first Women of Wonder anthology, after it was mentioned on this thread a little while ago. It includes an early (and pretty good) story by Marion Zimmer Bradley, 'The Wind People', which contains a strong incest theme - very uncomfortable reading in the light of subsequent revelations. Good stories too from Ursula K Le Guin, Joanna Russ and Vonda N McIntyre, while the nicely ironic/acerbic 'The Food Farm' by Kit Reed was the story I enjoyed most by an author who was new to me. I see from Wiki that Reed died earlier this year - would like to read more by her.

I asked you about that on What Did You Read In 2017, should have come here first as I usually do. Thanks for the syllabus, cryptosicko---the only one I've read (all in one volume, as originally intended, and apparently with a lot of typos corrected) is the Rings trilogy, and that is great, or really really good (the Villain is too murky up "close," but by his works ye shall know him, incl. his corrupted stooges).

This is the one with the amusing misunderstanding."
"Oh, i've read that one then."

― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Monday, December 18, 2017 3:56 AM (five days ago)

Adding a friend in Street Fighter V

Frightfully lazy of me, but does anyone have any reccs for best new stuff read in 2017? Been kind of out of the loop this year

We certainly don't tend to hop on flavor-of-the-nanosecond around here, but in 2017 I read and raved about Kelly Link's fuckin'-finally second collection, Get In Trouble (2015), Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 (guest edited by Karen Joy Fowler), and maybe that was when I grokked Naomi Novik's grabber Uprooted. Too lazy to c and p, but my takes are upthread.

Apr. 8-10: Eliezer Yudkowsky (Less Wrong), Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (Chapters 1-10)

Ha, that's an interesting assigned reading.

(from cryptosicko's syllabus)

I haven't read it myself but I remember my Potter fan siblings talking about that story. Didn't know it was the Roko's Basilisk guy.

wtf this was the wrong thread xxxxp

reading The Martian - some chat about it upthread (2015, me seeing it in tescos, wondering). i realise it has turned into a big deal in the meantime. it's quite compelling. written as a journal, lots of problem solving. reminds me of a.c.clarke - rama or moondust or something, the science leading the story.

just finished The Affirmation, which is one of those SF Masterworks but reads more like iain (no-M) banks - writer writes a fictionalised account of his life. or does he?

any good? sounds intriguing but "the inverted world" wasn't quite good enough to make me rush out for more.

Not really.

If you not like inverted world, not sure i can cope

thought that might raise some hackles. i didn't think it was *bad*, it just didn't ever rise above its own high concept.

finished The Martian. all through the book he's been throwing worst case scenarios at the poor guy so i settled down this morning to read the last 25 pages fearing the worst. but 16 of those pages were 'read an excerpt from author's new book' (i do hate that) so it all got wrapped up pretty quickly in comparison. was fun in an xkcd / 'if a man needs 1400 calories a day and so much space to grow potatoes, how long until he starves?' maths problem kind of way.

next up, Ready player One.

(Cyrus' favourite book, i see.

the ebook has a generic cover with just the name on the front. does nobody check these things?)

Dear god, koogs, Andy Weir has given you Stockholm syndrome, don't go on with the Cline!

Ha! Was wondering when someone was going to make a comment along those lines and how they would word it. Full marks

40 pages in and i see what you mean. i'm hoping when the plot gets going the writing won't bother me as much as it currently does.

'Rebecca Serle of The Huffington Post described the book as "the grown-up's Harry Potter"'

maybe i'll wait for the film...

Ready Player One is a deeply satisfying hateread.

It's the 80s reference that get me, the clumsy way they are name-dropped in, often 5 at a time. And the little, unnecessary, explanatory comments after each one. Reminds me of Moby Dick in a way, half novel, half Wikipedia.

Don't know about "grown up's Harry Potter", is more like Neuromancer but, y'know, for kids.

"grown up's Harry Potter" = "i have read 5 genre novels"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ2d00D7Gzg

Temple To Ancient Roman Cult Resurrected Beneath London

groovy pictures too:

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/12/europe/london-temple-of-mithras/index.html

iirc there was some mithraism in mary stewart's arthur/merlin series

Fredric Jameson on Aldiss's Non-Stop, https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/2/jameson2art.htm,
in which he compares it to Heinlein's Orphan's of the Sky and Aldiss's own Hothouse.