Thread of Wonder, the next 5000 posts: science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction 2021 and beyond

An interesting list! Lots I've read - some I love, some I loathe. Lots I haven't read or even heard of. At least half a dozen I might try. Of the newer ones I'd recommend In Ascension by Martin MacInnes, which is the kind of book where I have stop every now and then just to appreciate and digest what I've just read.

― ledge, Monday, 15 July 2024 09:01 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Which ones do you loathe?

Well only one I really loathe - shikasta by doris lessing. Where amis hates god, lessing - judging by that book - loathes humanity. It's something of a recasting of the bible in sf terms and I hated the angels, hated their condescension towards humans when it was their/god's fault we're in this mess.

I was disappointed by a wrinkle in time, I wasn't expecting it to be religious; and the sparrow, which I was expectingg to be religious but wasn't expecting the repeated anal rape of a priest by an alien with a huge barbed member.

hyperion was very silly on that front too - a priest crucified and repeatedly electrocuted for seven years iirc. maybe I should do a poll of violent iniquities forced upon priests in science fiction.

Reading Christopher Priest's 'Episodes' collection. He's a funny one. I've read Inverted World and The Affirmation, I liked the former better than the latter but didn't love it and this collection crystallises my previously vague uncertain feelings about him. He's definitely not a 'what if' sf writer of the old school - his set ups don't drive the plot, rather they're in service of the kind of story he wants to tell and the vibe he wants to create. This means they're often a bit sketchy or unconvincing. Objectively this is fine, I'm not insistent on pedantic world building or against coasting on vibes. But in his case the vibes don't really work for me either, this could be because his characters are all idiosyncratic at best, veering to unpleasant or downright horrible - in this collection we have murderers, self mutilators, eaters of cancerous tumours (!) - and the fact that almost all the stories are written in the first person means that, quite unfairly I'm sure, the negative feelings I have to the narrators rub off somewhat on to my feelings about the author.

Just on In Ascension - I enjoyed it, but not unequivocally. however, the whole space flight section is *incredible* imo.

incredible a bit strong. it’s very good. bit giddy from the crowdstrike outage.

I want to read it again, I remember it as being special but can't recall exactly why or even most of what happened.

It is weird the way the ship goes past all the planets in order as though they’re beads on a string, like a picture in a kids’ encyclopaedia, rather than things orbiting all over the place.

lol, i didn't really notice, but now you mention it. I think the main power of the space travel part is the mixture of claustrophobia, and the way it manages to convey the emotional and mental pressure of travel over colossal distances, and how you periodically hit different paradigms of thought and being as you cross certain lines (leaving Earth - not as big an impact as any of them expect, messages to/fromt Earth still arriving and being delivered after they've ceased to be being created - huge impact) and the imminence of the critical existential and cosmic threshold they're going to cross. I guess the planetary 'markers' helps contribute to that.

But yes, in terms of technology, not really very realistic. Initially I thought 'wait, aren't they slingshotting?' but that is 3 body problem, ofc.

happy ‘parable of the sower’ day

it's not funny 'cause it's true

Hugo short story nominees, in ascending order of preference:

"How To Raise A Kraken In Your Bathtub", P. Djèli Clark - Awkward victoriana, quite badly written. Pantomime villains go about loudly proclaiming their racism and sexism in a way that feels forced even for the era.
"The Mausoleum's Children", Aliette de Bodard - Kinda just reads like a novelization of an action scene? Some decent worldbuilding, not bad in general but not really award-worthy imo.
"Answerless Journey", Han Song - Potent enough space horror, I kept expecting a reveal and it doesn't really come, unless I didn't get it? Author is an interesting one to look up.
"The Sound Of Children Screaming", Rachael K. Jones - Adds an unnerving fantasy element to a school shooting event. Disturbing stuff, really worth a read.
"Tasting The Future Delicacy Three Times", Baoshu - Three moments, all of which come with Twilight Zone twist endings, centered around new technologies in food. Gross and funny and disturbing.
"Better Living Through Algorithms", Naomi Kritzer - Voted for this, which makes me feel a bit self-conscious because it's the entry that most feels like it could be in the New Yorker. But it's great - starts from the premise "what if an app was designed to make your life better, not worse" and doesn't go into any clichéd spaces.

Speaking of xetcpost datedness, and cutting-edge cyberetc. that now looks funny, Vernor Vinge's The Peace War is in part a workaround, an in-joke between author and reader, in that The Peace Authority, who take credit for having rescued what's left of humanity from something horrible that happened in 1997, which they blame on bioscience, and keep a lid on that and all other science and tech (and all "government," by which they don't mean La Familias etc. that they're in league with, the Bosses the PA bosses and depends on)(but they are effective against nationalism per se, or so it seems, which has its own appeal these days of ours), and proudly serve via their own justifiably, reasonably advanced tech---which ain't really so advanced, as they discover, and they even have to get less advanced in someways adapting to the upstart Tinkers, an nerdcore "cottage industry," in the PA's previously satisfied view---and indeed, a Tinker turf cop gets all excited when he finally learns to drive!
Nevertheless, there are leaps and bounds, especially via a kid under pressure, whose Tinker mentor thinks: "He was a first rate genius, and now he's something more." And when the Tinker mentor can no longer follow what he's set in motion, meaning the kid and the Peace War (with his fellow geezer and former colleague leading the PA, both of them obsessed with redemption/justification), it's okay, the kid can use AI impersonation to give orders as the mentor---AI also very useful in hacking PA comm and recon, creating fake news etc: all of this copyright 1984.)
So Vinge has his fun with low/"high" tech, but then he takes a chance on someday looking silly with the next levels, and so far it doesn't, and I don't see how it can.
Also, what could be just pile-up of individuals and factions and concepts and gear and plot twists, also potential gaming scenarios, gets enough nuance, breathing/thinking room, and low-key guidance all the way. Ending is not too on the nose or teasey, and now I'm starting the follow-up, Marooned in Realtime. Somebody has just mentioned the Singularity in passing.
Sorry for the chattery overviews, but plotting is tight enough that getting more specific risks many spoilers.

The Peace Authority has done some good things, and can be seen as "a mild tyranny," as one of its employees observes, but the good has gone as far as it can---maybe among the opposition as well; each side has to change---in a way, it's a critique of two kinds of libertarianism/anarchism, and has me thinking again of Le Guin's The Dispossessed(1974).

xp I read the four available online -kraken, mausoleums, children screaming, better living. I broadly agree with your assessments. The app in better living seems like a genuinely great idea! I'd have liked more detail on how it falls apart - obviously in the same way that the internet did, ruined by capitalism, but I'd happily have read a much more expanded version. And as I used to run an irl drawing group that really did sort of turn my life around, the ending was very relevant to my interests. I'd like to read the other two.

Interesting that it's the two Chibese stories that aren't online! As a voter I got them all sent to me, as well as the entries for novels and novellas which I obv didn't read in time.

*Chinese obv

ysi?

links for the available ones

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/how-to-raise-a-kraken-in-your-bathtub/

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-mausoleums-children/

https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-sound-of-children-screaming/

https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_05_23/ - the app one

Reading Tales of Earthsea, it's remarkable how Le Guin can seamlessly re-enter and develop the world thirty years after writing the first one. I'm enjoying her late "only include the words that matter" style - I admire the commitment to cutting it down to the bone without turning into James Elllroy or something offputting like that.

Reading a recent Stephen Baxter and I think he’s actually getting worse.

Was he ever good?

Asking for a friend.

Ha, last time he was mentioned in this thread I brought this up

"The Big Book of Cyberpunk Vol2" is cheap on kindle daily deal today (£1.99) (and kobo). Vol1 was on offer earlier in the week and i swear i sent a similar message then but i can't find it.

He (Baxter) was never great but he could do interesting ideas with fairly efficient flat style. Now his prose is flabby as fuck.

Ah

Earlier this evening I was just discussing how a certain kind of flat style can totally work in SF if the ideas are good.

As in a flat style but not actually a terrible style, although sometimes there is the danger of one lapsing into the other as you say.

Thinking of Ballard and Christopher Priest in particular, although some might disagree I think, based on recent posting, as opposed to someone like M. John Harrison who can really write, or someone like Michael Moorcock for the opposite extreme.

You're not suggesting Ballard can't "really write"?

Didn’t say that, dude.

Maybe I could have phrased it better.

More like Mike Harrison writes in more a controlled, elevated “beautiful” style, whereas Ballard is often using an easily parodied cliched style as a kind of Duchamp readymade in order to subvert it

Travers sat on the balcony resecting his bangers and mash as he stared over the balcony through the gymnosperms at the dying rays of the Etc.

lol ok

Ballard sat on the flight line in Moose Jaw, leafing through a copy of Galaxy in search of the latest Robert Sheckley as he awaited his turn etc

I’ve never been able to get through P J Farmer’s Joyce pastiche in DV, or Richard Lupoff’s similar in ADV.

Hardly a Ballard expert, but he's really wired, and not "Damn the torpedos, but bring the torpedos, and all manner of other details, and the whole fractal family, full speed ahead!"throughout recently read xxetcpostChronopols , though he does pace himself, sometimes w effort that can be felt: "must_adjust_speed_againe"--but that's all part of the art pulp clatter ov matter-well, he does get deadpan all through (w intentionally satirical results, if you care to read it that way; nothing joeky) "The Drowned Giant" (originally published as "Souvenir" in Playboy, ca. '65; the others are all from pulp or bargain paper genre mags,mosty early 60s---was there a Playboy SF anthology from this era, or any other? Pretty sure I've read some Disch stories originally in Playboy)
He takes a lot of chances, doesn't always work, but as I said before,

the lesser stories, liberated from cold print, would make awesome basis for 60s-early 70s anthology TV (there are also several classics/killers).

Thinking that Ballard’s nonfiction style is unequivocally great, love reading any and all of it.

I seem to remember someone on this borad saying when the Complete Stories came out “Now we don’t need to read any of his novels anymore,” which is not quite true but sort of funny.

Speaking of Ballard At The Movies, it turns out these exist!

https://letterboxd.com/film/low-flying-aircraft/
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-atrocity-exhibition/

i wrote elsewhere on the peculiar feeling of reading Ballard:

My admiration for or, better, the kick I get out of Ballard comes from the way he defamiliarises human behaviour so that it becomes alien. His works do not rely on common sense (eg for believability, character, motive, social interactions). Common sense denies the presence of its intrinsic unspoken component ideologies and habituated mannerisms. Ballard removes the glue of common sense and replaces it with a simplified psychosocial schema, which surfaces the artificiality of those ideologies and habituated mannerisms.

There is no history in Ballard (Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women excepted). There will sometimes be a singular event precipitating the conditions of the story. Modern(ish) psychoanalytical and anthropological theory are the predominant forces. This isn’t just a theoretical or conceptual switching out; it makes his societies think, speak and behave in slightly but noticeably odd and frictionless ways, which gives much of the unique feeling of his books. The reader feels an uneasy sense of alienation.

and a bit later how that authorial flatness is representative of a sort of unresisting annihilation in the cast. the thing you get in the novels, with their extended voyage from more or less normal to complete transformations at a limbic level is I think a reader complicity, created by the flat, authorial prose, and easy, partly willed, slipping of the anchor from what we might consider normal or the firmness of our day to day life and its moral framework.

i think we'd all probably agree the flatness has a purpose, but i think it has a distinct aesthetic feeling as well, distinct from just... instruction manual or journalistic pabulum for instance, absolutely characteristic of a voice. i like it.

there’s a great interview in the Paris Review where he says

I would say that I quite consciously rely on my obsessions in all my work, that I deliberately set up an obsessional frame of mind. In a paradoxical way, this leaves one free of the subject of the obsession. It’s like picking up an ashtray and staring so hard at it that one becomes obsessed by its contours, angles, texture, et cetera, and forgets that it is an ashtray—a glass dish for stubbing out cigarettes.

isn't there a short story by him where the main character gets obsessed with sitting on his porch and staring at the world until it becomes a blur of lines and colours that he gets lost in? been a while since I read it but I still think about that story every time I sit on a porch.

Booming post, Fizzles!

The part about Michael Redgrave in that interview was great.

Do other people have the Selected Nonfiction?

i wrote elsewhere on the peculiar feeling of reading Ballard:

_My admiration for or, better, the kick I get out of Ballard comes from the way he defamiliarises human behaviour so that it becomes alien. His works do not rely on common sense (eg for believability, character, motive, social interactions). Common sense denies the presence of its intrinsic unspoken component ideologies and habituated mannerisms. Ballard removes the glue of common sense and replaces it with a simplified psychosocial schema, which surfaces the artificiality of those ideologies and habituated mannerisms.

There is no history in Ballard (Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women excepted). There will sometimes be a singular event precipitating the conditions of the story. Modern(ish) psychoanalytical and anthropological theory are the predominant forces. This isn’t just a theoretical or conceptual switching out; it makes his societies think, speak and behave in slightly but noticeably odd and frictionless ways, which gives much of the unique feeling of his books. The reader feels an uneasy sense of alienation. _

and a bit later how that authorial flatness is representative of a sort of unresisting annihilation in the cast. the thing you get in the novels, with their extended voyage from more or less normal to complete transformations at a limbic level is I think a reader complicity, created by the flat, authorial prose, and easy, partly willed, slipping of the anchor from what we might consider normal or the firmness of our day to day life and its moral framework.

i think we'd all probably agree the flatness has a purpose, but i think it has a distinct aesthetic feeling as well, distinct from just... instruction manual or journalistic pabulum for instance, absolutely characteristic of a voice. i like it.

There is a tribute anthology out idk if it’s been discussed upthread. Funny idea to give him the lovecraft mythos treatment (& maybe not inapt) but can it be any good