Ian Watson's a very interesting writer. A lot of mystical stuff in his work, which usually gives me the shits, but he approaches it in original and fascinating ways. And his 'The Embedding' is very good linguistics SF.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Thursday, 8 November 2018 02:12 (five years ago) link
I only know the famous time machine one he wrote, and have been meaning to read more but haven’t gotten around to it /pvmic
― Buckaroo Can't Fail (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 8 November 2018 02:24 (five years ago) link
Actually the anthology it first appeared in is really good, Anticipations, edited by Christopher Priest.
― Buckaroo Can't Fail (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 8 November 2018 02:53 (five years ago) link
Re: The Weird, I read that whole thing and it was worth it. Remember particularly enjoying the Robert Bloch story.
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 8 November 2018 11:08 (five years ago) link
Great!
Was in Oxfam Books this afternoon and they had about twenty 1970s Philip K Dick paperbacks on a display. I had to restrain myself from buying the lot, but I got Martian Time-Slip and Three Stigmata. I've only read Ubik but loved it. And I've got copies Scanner Darkly, Flow My Tears and Electric Sheep somewhere round the house too...
― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, 8 November 2018 18:03 (five years ago) link
Anticipations I've never heard off: will check it out.
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Friday, 9 November 2018 01:59 (five years ago) link
It was a one-off
― Buckaroo Can't Fail (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 9 November 2018 02:05 (five years ago) link
they had about twenty 1970s Philip K Dick paperbacks on a display. I had to restrain myself from buying the lot I went for the whole lot, 25-50 cents apiece, in a thrift store run by a church. The girl clerk looked terrified. It's cold enough for walking that far again, finally; think I'll go back.
― dow, Friday, 9 November 2018 02:47 (five years ago) link
I would get em just for the cover art
― Οὖτις, Friday, 9 November 2018 02:48 (five years ago) link
Not that I should ever ever ever buy another book, and rarely do, but
― dow, Friday, 9 November 2018 02:50 (five years ago) link
Scifi books don't feel real to me if they don't have covers like:
https://i.imgur.com/Vyn6FkF.jpg
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 9 November 2018 10:50 (five years ago) link
that palmer eldritch is all fuckin time imobob pepper?
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Friday, 9 November 2018 15:33 (five years ago) link
Yup
― Οὖτις, Friday, 9 November 2018 15:35 (five years ago) link
This US edition of Palmer Eldritch cheekily reuses a Bruce Pennington cover from the UK paperback of Dune (where it makes a lot more sense!)
https://pictures.abebooks.com/THOTH/20035711458.jpg
https://i0.wp.com/www.danconnolly.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/dune.jpeg?resize=650%2C462
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 9 November 2018 15:44 (five years ago) link
"Part One of the Dune trilogy"
― jmm, Friday, 9 November 2018 15:51 (five years ago) link
lol
― Οὖτις, Friday, 9 November 2018 16:02 (five years ago) link
jeff vandermeer's weird anthology
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, November 7, 2018 6:24 PM
Don't forget about Ann
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 9 November 2018 19:16 (five years ago) link
yes! sorry
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 9 November 2018 21:04 (five years ago) link
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy - A Volume Of Sleep
Satyamurthy has said his stories are essays, maybe sometimes but so far I see a number of these stories as him talking to us about anything that interests him while weaving in some plot and a speculative fiction concept. Discarded objects and outdated technology, a strange afterlife in which a woman let's go of some of her human sensibilities, some explanations of Satyamurthy's musical preferences and quite depressing depictions of musical failure (whether that's the lone guitarist being ineffective or the protagonist's band playing well yet being mostly ignored).
Like the previous collection it ends with a longer piece, this one about what might be twins, doppelgangers, multiple personalities or maybe something else. Contains many amusingly crazy theories about celebrities. Probably the best story but the tale of the afterlife is a contender for its outlandish distance.
Need to track down some of his anthology stories some day. Curious about what his contribution to Axes Of Evil will be like.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 17 November 2018 22:17 (five years ago) link
https://ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/2018/04/19/brian-w-aldiss/
Read this blurbhttps://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/l-jagi-lamplighter/maga-2020-and-beyond.htm
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 25 November 2018 02:44 (five years ago) link
Hey this David Bunch guy is p good
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 25 November 2018 03:26 (five years ago) link
Moderan?
― Gottseidank, es ist Blecch Freitag (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 25 November 2018 03:42 (five years ago) link
Yeah, got it from the library, just getting through the intro
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 25 November 2018 03:55 (five years ago) link
Not sure why he was so hated initially, would think the humor would’ve gone farther in putting over such a bleak vision.
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 25 November 2018 03:56 (five years ago) link
Remember I said these weird/ghostly/strange/surreal fiction presses were the most expensive of all the small presses? Some people I know have been speaking very highly of these but I cant ever imagine myself spending this kind of money.
https://www.ziesings.com/advSearchResults.php?action=search&orderBy=relevance&category_id=0&keywordsField=mount+abraxas
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 25 November 2018 17:59 (five years ago) link
fuuuuuck
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Sunday, 25 November 2018 23:57 (five years ago) link
Most Jack Vance fans know about the Integral Editions that was a 44 book set for rich people containing Vance's preferred versions. What has completely flew under the radar and only just came to my attention is that most or all(?) of these books are in paperback from Spatterlight over the last 2 years.
I've had the Monsters In Orbit/World Between double on my wishlist for a while because somebody said it was their favorite book ever but I've just discovered that Monsters In Orbit is a fixup of stories included in Golden Girl and that most of the remaining stories are in Moon Moth.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 23 December 2018 20:25 (five years ago) link
I seem to recall that several years after the initial VIE, there was something like a ‘reader’s edition’ that was a kind of second chance? So the paperbacks would be kind of the third go. I’d love to see what they look like.
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Monday, 24 December 2018 17:26 (five years ago) link
Around the original VIE launch was one of the last times in my life when I had disposable income :( and I was very very close to pulling the trigger. Major regret of my reading career.
― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Monday, 24 December 2018 17:27 (five years ago) link
I would have a heart attack worrying about the postage journey of 44 books.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 28 December 2018 20:21 (five years ago) link
Nice charity shop finds: Mary Gentle's Ash and Suzy McKee Charnas' Holdfast omnibus (first two books).
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 28 December 2018 20:29 (five years ago) link
NYRB's edition of David Bunch's Moderan adds eleven stories, maybe the complete cycle, something like 60 (Amazon's got the trade pb for $12.00 or so) He's sometimes described as a "cyberpunk pioneer," but I don't recall cyberpunks dealing in oceans covered by sheets of plastic as a given, or at all. In the name of Progress of course, and yeah there was plenty utopian-dystopian satire in the 50s and 60s (Bunch placed two stories in the first Dangerous Visions[published 1967, right?]), and he's kind of Lafferty-like, but more cranked up with the deadpan tragicomic irony, for lack of a better term. Jeff VanderMeer says that Bunch is more in-your-face than PKD, Tiptree, anybody, and that may be--I've only read a few stories, like the one in The Big Book of Science Fiction. Here's JV's intro to the NYRB collection:https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/09/12/david-bunchs-prophetic-dystopia
― dow, Friday, 4 January 2019 16:34 (five years ago) link
I read the whole thing about a month ago. It's good (and funny!), albeit very repetitive. Essentially a paste-up, so the stories don't always cohere into a complete narrative arc that makes any sense. Some of the stuff is so apocalyptically bleak, particularly the stories that don't have to do with Stronghold 10 and instead focus on this fractured family (a plebian father and his progeny). Generally I found the Stronghold 10 stories fairly comical, closer to maybe Lem than PKD or Tiptree, whose writing styles are very different from the approach Bunch took. The intro (not VanderMeer's preface, but an intro piece that Bunch specifically wrote to preface the collection) is probably my favorite, a variation on the classic "I have unearthed this obscure manuscript from the past" framing device that is also really funny and sharp.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 4 January 2019 16:50 (five years ago) link
I think yr correct that this bears little to no resemblance to cyberpunk imo, either in writing style or in themes/ideas - the world described is more like a nightmarish bright and shiny feudal futurism rather than the hard-boiled grim-n-gritty noir updates of Gibson, Sterling et al
― Οὖτις, Friday, 4 January 2019 16:53 (five years ago) link
Well this sounds like something I need to get
― Number None, Friday, 4 January 2019 17:00 (five years ago) link
it's p good, maybe over-praised due to its obscurity. I did feel like after the 15th story or so that I had pretty much gotten everything you could get from the book
― Οὖτις, Friday, 4 January 2019 17:08 (five years ago) link
Yeah, I prob couldn't make it even to 15, judging by the few I've read. But I'd like to read some more. This glimpse of things to come incl. some very unappealing descriptions, but those more familiar w the authors may get excited, in fact one such fan passed this along to me, so I'll maintain the chain:https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/30/18127072/sci-fi-fantasy-anders-leckie-liu-hurley-coreybook-gibson-chiang-recommendations-2019
Am kind of interested in this 'un:BROKEN STARS: CONTEMPORARY CHINESE SCIENCE FICTION IN TRANSLATION EDITED BY KEN LIUChinese science fiction has long been out of reach for most English-speaking fans, but that’s begun to change in recent years. Books like Cixin Liu’s Three-Body Problem helped and efforts from publications like Clarkesworld Magazine have opened the door to new translations, and the latest anthology comes from Ken Liu, who brings together 16 stories from authors like Xia Jia, Han Song, Baoshu, Hao Jingfang, Chen Quifan, and others, as well as a trio of essays about the state of China’s science fiction. (February 19th) Also a couple of other books in here by Chinese authors, and a new Ian Macdonald, and some others I'm cautiously anticipating.
― dow, Friday, 4 January 2019 19:13 (five years ago) link
the Marlon James is getting some fairly ecstatic advance notices
― Number None, Friday, 4 January 2019 19:41 (five years ago) link
Which?
― Spirit of the Voice of the Beehive (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 4 January 2019 20:24 (five years ago) link
I read Brief History of Seven Killings and it was p good as far as those things go I suppose. is he dabbling in sf now?
― Οὖτις, Friday, 4 January 2019 20:48 (five years ago) link
"the African Game of Thrones" is the PR pitch
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/561305/black-leopard-red-wolf-by-marlon-james/9780
― Number None, Friday, 4 January 2019 21:10 (five years ago) link
Plot blurbs are almost always worthless.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 4 January 2019 21:15 (five years ago) link
Hope so, cuz that sounds awful
― Οὖτις, Friday, 4 January 2019 21:23 (five years ago) link
Christopher Ropes, writer in a pretty nasty health situation.https://www.gofundme.com/get-christophers-teeth-fixed
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 5 January 2019 00:33 (five years ago) link
Just short profiles of the people who have won the Rediscovery award. I thought some of them were too famous, but as people in the comments say, a lot of fans still don't know them (many pointing out that currently active writers who are quite successful but really fallen off the radar for most people). But are those people even interested in this award?
https://www.tor.com/2018/09/04/who-are-the-forgotten-greats-of-science-fiction/
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 5 January 2019 17:40 (five years ago) link
Guy who wrote the article also quite dedicated to reviewing forgotten womenhttps://www.tor.com/2018/12/27/100-sf-f-books-you-should-consider-reading-in-the-new-year/
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 5 January 2019 17:42 (five years ago) link
great list, should keep me going for the year. it might even prompt me to stray further into fantasy than i usually do.
― large bananas pregnant (ledge), Saturday, 5 January 2019 18:34 (five years ago) link
Interesting how the current panel is sort of bizarro version of the first one.
― Spirit of the Voice of the Beehive (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 5 January 2019 19:40 (five years ago) link
Perhaps the finest military fantasy about a Germanic centaur in a quasi-WWI setting ever.
― mookieproof, Saturday, 5 January 2019 20:18 (five years ago) link
That line sold me.
― adam the (abanana), Saturday, 5 January 2019 20:21 (five years ago) link