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

On second thoughts nvm, I'm not a 'lady'.

I didn't know what that meant either! I kind of am a lady, probably.

(Thomp I had no idea you had a blog! I am delighted at this news.)

I think he means he is going to blow out the bathroom while reading that book

Any rec'd sites with entire sf stories posted? They don't have to be downloads, but they do gotta be free (of charge, at least).

I like Richard Kadrey's micro-stories here
http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shortshorts/kadrey1.html

Loads of stuff here:
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/index.htm

Ok so I got myself a copy of Zoo City in the end. If anyone is interested, there is a deal on at the publisher's bookstore:

1. Go to angryrobotstore.com
2. Choose 2+ titles.
3. Stick "clarke11" in as the promotion code et voila 50% off.

Only epub unfortunately, but you can use Calibre to convert it into mobi for your Kindle.

I had a bad experience with Calibre (possibly not Calibre's fault but I have no intention of reinstalling it to find out) - can anyone recommend any other epub->mobi conversion software?

Oops, I thought this was the Kindle thread. I'll ask on the Kindle thread. Sorry for off-topic.

Calibre is garbage tbh, slow and clunky with a horrible interface, but I think it is just about the only game in town at the moment.

Any rec'd sites with entire sf stories posted? They don't have to be downloads, but they do gotta be free (of charge, at least).

― dow, Sunday, May 1, 2011 6:15 PM (Yesterday)

that's the one i was trying to remember.

i also found this a few weeks ago: http://www.manybooks.net/categories/SFC . and judging by the covers on a lot of those i'm guessing there's an Astounding Science Fiction pulp archive out there somewhere.

possibly here: http://www.freesfonline.de/Magazines.html (including 22 from greg egan)

gp i am v flattered but i generally forget it exists all the time so y'know

has anyone else read the new robert v.s. ridick yet

Of course for short fiction dont' forget Strange Horizons (although it is a bit slipstreamey), http://www.strangehorizons.com/

I have finished The Book of the Long Sun, and am done with Gene Wolfe. Although there is still (barely) an itch of curiousity that wants me to read Urth of the New Sun and even the Long Sun series, I will no longer following him down his difficult road; I know his style, and his agenda, and neither are for me. Neil Gaiman says he is of the class of writer who "who see no need to point out how clever they are" - I thoroughly disagree, his text wears its mystery on its face, it fairly taunts you with the idea that it is a puzzle, and therefore there is a solution.

I'm sure it can be appreciated just on the surface level, although it's not a style that I particularly enjoy; I'm sure the puzzles could be fun to solve, if you are that way inclined; I'm sure even the ultimate solution may be a wonder to some, but it is anathema to me.

I suddenly wonder if Richard Kelly is a Gene Wolfe fan... or how many New Sun fans also love Donnie Darko.

Take that Gene Wolfe. I was just about to start The Book of the New Sun too :(

20 pages into Perdido Street Station and I can't face the remaining 800, should I?

Love New Sun, hate Donnie Darko. If you are taking a poll or anything.

Too cold a comparison, huh? Maybe it's cause I was reading a New Sun wiki. A special kind of madness there, naturally, but not one entirely in the minds of its creators, it is born in and sustained by the text.

This is not really a spoiler, but... if someone had told me Wolfe was Catholic - as CS Lewis was Anglican - I probably would never have started.

re: Perdido, I would say it starts as it means to go on.

Yeah i like Perdido but it you're not digging the ambulatory Cacti and so on at this point i'd cut your losses.

Thanks for all the links! I do enjoy the dark profusion of Wolfe's surfaces, although,after the New Sun saga, Soldier In The Mist was where I got off of his (and everybody's) fantasy series bus. Also like freestanding Wolfe, such as Peace and The Death of Doctor Island and Other Stories. If I paid more attention to his agenda, I might not like it. (Liked Donnie Darko alright too.)

That Isaac Asimov edited book of short short stories above is one of the greatest things ever.

SF Masterworks series, classic or dud? I have a few already, and I guess it's good that this stuff is being published, but I just refrained from buying Greg Bear's Eon as I don't want all my bookshelves to look the same.

Rendezvous with Rama, which i've just finished, was an SF Masterworks. was toying with posting the start of chapter 11, about breasts in space, but i will spare you as it's not 1973 anymore.

Great selection, terrible covers. The new designs are slightly better than the first time round but it's sad because they had the chance to do something classy with the design considering these are acknowledged classics.

SF Masterworks: the new sort of yellowy covers are awful. The old ones weren't so bad - at least they retained the original artwork in most cases afaik. I also don't want my bookshelves looking the same, so tend to get alternatives from different publishers wherever possible. A bit lame I guess...

Shame you didn't get on with Book of the New Sun, ledge. I think it is fair to say that if you didn't enjoy that you won't like Book of the Long Sun or the Latro series which are the other fantasy series of his I have read. However, Fifth Head of Cerberus might be worth a look - SF novel, although its really 3 short linked novellas. I've read one of his short story collections as well, Endangered Species. It was pretty good as far as I remember - mix of SF, Fantasy, slipstream, regular fiction.

the gollancz sf masterworks? the core list is probably alright. in the previous cladding they'd reached no. 60- or 70-odd so it was a bit obviously just whatever they had the rights for. i doubt there aren't copies of old paperbacks of any of them available for shipping only on amazon, only, though, and do you really care enough that you have to have a mint copy of flowers for algernon?

i just ordered a tad williams novel, oy.

i did indeed order a second hand copy of Gateway today, again to avoid the masterworks cover.

Yeah I just get whatever is cheapest tbh - normally though for almost everything there are cheaper second-hand versions available from older publishers. It isn't really about getting mint copies of stuff, it is more about not having an entire bookshelf with the same slightly crappy design.

My version of Gateway is this one:

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n0/n2017.jpg

...which is almost identical to the masterworks version but without all the branding stuff.

Actually I guess the artwork is the same, but the font, title etc is different.

I kind of like the text treatment there but it does not go with that artwork at all but oh well.

I've been reading this copy of Thomas M. Disch's 334, which is about life in housing complexes in Manhattan:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5229/5608710985_013d006421.jpg

^now that is a nice cover.

Although yeah it presumably is in no way to do with the contents.

That's the edition of Gateway I have too. One of those rare Boris Vallejo paintings without well-oiled pulchritude.

Think Disch mentions that cover in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of

One of those rare Boris Vallejo paintings without well-oiled pulchritude

I just did a GIS to see what you meant by this and er, really wish I hadn't...

hahaha, sorry if it came as a shock...you're not familiar with his work/rep?

I was definitely aware of the style (probably from one too many D&D sourcebooks) just not familiar with the guy's name.

has anyone else read the new robert v.s. ridick yet

i have it on order but probably wont get it for a few weeks...

the most annoying thing to me atm is that adrian tchiachovosky's 'the sea watch' isnt getting distributed outside of britain. ive gotten p fond of that series.

Great selection, terrible covers. The new designs are slightly better than the first time round

Are you kidding? The new cover all look as though they've been dipped in urine!

free book: Science Made Stupid, which won a Hugo for non-fiction

http://www.chrispennello.com/tweller/

lamp r u still at the same address

currently reading 'emphyrio' by jack vance and absolutely loving it. what else should i read by him plz thx

lamp r u still at the same address

no i moved awhile back. did you ever get that copy of novels in three lines?

currently reading 'emphyrio' by jack vance and absolutely loving it. what else should i read by him plz thx

Tales of the Dying Earth -- collection of novels and stories - wonderful, rich, inventive, crazy stuff; set in the far, far, far future, where the dying human civilisations that are left are surrounded by all this ancient high-tech stuff that seems like, and as used as though it is, magical. The ultimate SF/fantasy hybrid novel.

not novel, book, argh

Tales of the Dying Earth

Seconded.

Has anyone read Lyonesse? Worth checking out?

I finished the first five books of the Chronicles of Amber - sadly it didn't improve after my initial impressions. The plotting just seemed very off the cuff and I never really got a grasp on the motivations of the characters.

Almost finished the first Interzone Anthology (from 1986, so predictably the subject matter in most of the stories is either nuclear war or Ronald Reagan or both) and then I think I'm going to have a go at Zoo City.

Finished Gateway. Three out of five at best. Like a lot of books of the same era, it's very much more concerned with the inside of its characters' heads than with amazing and mysterious alien technologies and the vast wonders of the universe, and that's not really what I want from hard SF. The chapters with the roboshrink were an ok device for moving the story forward, until they really did become horribly freudian. There was virtually no sense of mindbogglingly vast and inhuman distances or timescales, and the alien tech was either so ineffable as to lack any intrigue or ultimately really rather mundane - some shiny metal and some automatic shuttles, big whoop.

Reading creepy Polish "psychofantasist" Stefan Brabinski (1877-1936) short fiction collection The Dark Domain--lots of good stuff.

http://thirdeyecinema.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/the_dark_domain.jpg

Yeah, I haven't read Grabinski yet but he is slowly becoming an important figure.

Recent purchases I blew probably more money on than I should have and probably won't read for some time...

Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Face In The Glass
Algernon Blackwood - Wolves Of God
Francis Stevens aka Gertrude Barrows Bennett - Citadel Of Fear
Francis Stevens aka Gertrude Barrows Bennett - The Nightmare And Other Tales Of Dark Fantasy
Stephen Jones (editor) - Fearie Tales
Stephen Jones (editor) - Mammoth Best New Horror 25
James Branch Cabell - Nightmare Has Triplets (3 volumes: Smirt, Smith and Smire)
Richard Gavin - At Fear's Altar
Tanith Lee - Hunting The Shadows
Lord Dunsany - Fifty-One Tales
Lord Dunsany - In The Land Of Time And Other Fantasy Tales (Penguin Classics)
James Blish - SF Gateway Omnibus: Black Easter/The Day After Judgement/The Seedling Stars
Robert Silverberg - SF Gateway Omnibus: Nightwings/A Time of Changes/Lord Valentine's Castle
Robert Silverberg - Son Of Man
Paula Guran (editor) - Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2014
Jean Ray - Malpertuis
Ellen Datlow (editor) - Best Horror Of The Year 6
Abraham Merritt - Metal Monster
Lucy Clifford - Anyhow Stories
Charles Nodier - Smarra/Trilby

Rottensteiner - Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History

I just happened to see a new edition of Red As Blood by Tanith Lee.

Previous covers
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/70/65/598e828fd7a0075987a84110.L.jpg
http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/6/67/RDSBLDRTLS1983.jpg

New cover
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51zZ%2BGAPRKL.jpg

But the new version has an extra new tale. If only the cover wasn't so bad.

Single volume version of xpost Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy out Nov. 18, worth getting? Info and first pages here: http://fsgworkinprogress.com/southernreachtrilogy/areax.html

Just finished Ramona Ausubel's No One Is Here Except All of Us, which probably gets compared a lot to One Hundred Years of Solitude, with its central, very isolated village, but also drew me back into SF Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia of Fantasy's link-maps of keeps, pocket universes, and polders. It was settled by a far-flung, tiny remnant of the Diaspora, on a tiny bit of land barely connected to the Carpathians, in the bend of a river. The villagers are very adaptable by nature, very stubborn too, so, when they first become aware of the advance of Axis powers, they decide to block out the rest of the world, and start their own.
Yadda yadda, the narrator, who at one point is pegged by another character as always generating the next chapter, proceeds, like her friends, neighbors, and relatives (incl. two sets of parents, both living; starting your world over ain't always pretty) through a profusion of imagery and tiny, unstoppable movements with a logic that's usually pretty clear: she's got a program, a world-building one inside, wherever she goes; ditto the other survivors, each in their own ways.
Not that any of this is easy, but the urgency of the narrator never gets too hectic (even though I'm pretty much sick of first-person narration, esp. the meta-inclined). The poetry of it does get too aphoristic at times, but that's in character, as is the tendency to cute spacey earthy folky imagery, though the author manages to keep most of it in check.
The plotting does depend somewhat on the kindness of strangers, although there are some resident strangers in various parts of the book (even a resident advisor stranger), and the way the characters make themselves useful to each other and themselves can get pretty dicey at any point, in the push and pull of themes, like the worlds and counter-worlds within and without.

The narrator has to make sense of everything that's happened to her and the ones she cares about, also everything they've done; that's what keeps it from seeming too meta, at least for me.

Haven't yet figured out if this guy's reviews are useful but he sure has a lot of nice cover art: http://sciencefictionruminations.wordpress.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cwLhPR9jBs

Very interesting panel on forgotten fantasy books, with some good observations (Farah Mendlesohn was the most interesting panelist).

Books discussed:
The Hoojibahs, by Esther Boumphrey, Lutterworth Press, London, 1949
Fancies and Goodnights, by John Collier, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, 1951
There and Back, by Frank Richardson, Chatto & Windus, London, 1904
The Bayswater Miracle, by Frank Richardson, Chatto & Windus, London, 1903
The Family Witch, by A(nthony) B(erkeley) Cox, Herbert Jenkins, London, 1925
The Professor On Paws, by A.B. Cox, The Dial Press, New York, 1927
Come and Go, by Francis Gaite (pseudonym of Manning Coles), Hodder & Stoughton, 1958
Happy Returns, by Francis Gaite (pseudonym of Manning Coles), Doubleday, 1955
Brief Candles, by Manning Coles, Doubleday & Co., Garden City, NY, 1954
Far Traveller, by Francis Gaite (pseudonym of Manning Coles), Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1957
The White Waterfall, by James Francis Dwyer, Doubleday Page & Co, Garden City, NY, 1912
The Outlaws of the Air, by George Chetwynd Griffiths, Tower Publishing Company Limited, London , 1895
Dreadful Sanctuary, by Eric Frank Russell, Fantasy Press, Reading PA, 1951
Sinister Barrier, by Eric Frank Russell, Fantasy Press, Reading, PA, 1948
The Incomplete Enchanter, by L Sprague de Camp, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1941
"The Murderer", a 1953 short story by Ray Bradbury, published in the collection The Golden Apples of the Sun.
Robots Have No Tails, by Lewis Padgett (pseudonym of Henry Kuttner and Catherine Lucile Moore), Gnome Press Inc., New York, 1952
Mopsa the Fairy, by Jean Ingelow, 1869
Mist and Other Stories, by Richmal Crompton, Hutchinson (London), [1928
The House, by Richmal Crompton, Hodder & Stoughton (London), [1926]
Hieroglyphic Tales, by Horace Walpole, Elkin Mathews (London), 1926
The Anyhow Stories, by Lucy Clifford, Macmillan & Company (London), 1885
My Bones And My Flute, by Edgar Mittelholzer, Secker & Warburg, London, 1955
Lucifer and the Child, by Ethel Mannin, Jarrold & Sons Ltd, London, 1945
Leg-Irons on Wings, by James Francis Dwyer, Georgian House, Melbourne, 1949
Farewell Miss Julie Logan, by J.M. Barrie, Hodder & Stoughton (London), 1932
Mary Rose, by J.M. Barrie, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1924
Still She Wished for Company, by Margaret Irwin, 1924
These Mortals, by Margaret Irwin, 1925
The Other Side, by Alfred Kubin, Crown Publishers, New York, 1967
Adventures of the Wishing Chair, by Enid Blyton, Newnes, London, 1937
The Wishing Chair Again, by Enid Blyton, Newnes, London, 1950
The Unmeasured Place, John Lamburn, John Murray, 1933

had a quick look around for the public domain things from that list, slender pickings...

There and Back - https://archive.org/details/thereandback00richgoog
The Bayswater Miracle - missing
The White Waterfall - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10862
Outlaws Of The Air - http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff9/outlaw.htm
Mopsa The Fairy - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32867
Anyhow Stories - https://archive.org/details/anyhowstoriesmor00clifiala

That is odd, I thought there would be more.

Hartwell chosen a few of the authors he published in Dark Descent. Nice that he picked two of my favourites from the book.

1924 is, i think, the cutoff at the moment, in the US.

Single volume version of xpost Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy out Nov. 18, worth getting?

worth reading in any format

Brief Candles, by Manning Coles, Doubleday & Co., Garden City, NY, 1954

any connection to the Zombies tune?

am almost done w Kuttner/Moore collection and have nothing on deck to read after that, time to order some Damon Knight I guess

and have nothing on deck to read after that

― Οὖτις, Monday, 10 November 2014 19:20

I can't ever imagine a time when I don't have a huge to-read pile, but I'd love if that happened someday. It would make buying new books more exciting.
I think it was maybe 10 years ago the last time I had a clear deck.

The uploader of that forgotten books panel (RB Russell, a writer, musician and publisher of Tartarus books) has quite a few interviews with writers featuring guided tours of their personal book collections. It's quite fun. Reggie Oliver comes from a literary family and has a lot of interesting things to say.

I don't have any money to buy books anymore so I am a) at the mercy of what's available at the library or b) at the mercy of what I can find online for like a dollar

Also interested in this, apparently big in china, unusually so for science fiction:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/books/liu-cixins-the-three-body-problem-is-published-in-us.html?_r=0
excerpts here, haven't read 'em yet:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/10/read-the-three-body-problem

Οὖτις- do you do public domain ebooks?

I am against ereaders

I might have some books I can snail mail you, but media mail across country takes what, a month?

There's a pretty fair amount of free sf online, like those archived PKD stories I linked upthread. Also in new issues of some online mags, like clarkesworld.

The Locus site can lead to a lotta freebies.

i became a convert to ereading specifically because I couldn't find a copy of Lafferty's Nine Hundred Grandmothers anywhere. Found a big bundled download of several thousand classic sff PDFs and epubs which included the complete lafferty stories, needed something to comfortably read them on, got the cheapest available reader at the time and found I really really liked it.

BTW, that UK SFF Gateway series has published a 3fer omnibus of my man Blaylock which brings you the 3 finest examples of his inimitable, unparalleled take on antic suburban US magic realism (The Last Coin, The Paper Grail, and All the Bells on Earth). The victorian vein of his career is being pushed so hard now with the "godfather of steampunk" designation that this stuff, his real high watermark, is in danger of being overshadowed. And he is finally writing prolifically again these past few years but only in the victorian mode. Which I totally understand. But I'm glad this non-steam omnibus is out there.

guys thx for the concern but I will be ok really, I will find something to read don't worry!

can we start a new thread btw this one is impossible to load

Keep it in the book thread still? There was an agreement on that.

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

I'm probably going to get ripped to shreds for this but... did anyone else find The Dispossessed a bit of a slog? I've been forcing myself to finish it (it's not even a very long book) and it just feels endless. Love the premise and the overall idea, but there's something about the deployment of language that isn't working out for me. I'd have thought that by now I'd have a clearer idea of the various characters, but the majority of them feel like empty vessels fulfilling roles. Even Shevek - I mean, I get that maybe the Anarresti are supposed to be a stoic, no-nonsense bunch - but he seems to have very little personality. The only characters who I seem to have any sort of interesting faculties are secondary roles like Sabul and Vea. The distinct lack of action would be fine. I don't need space battles in my sci-fi, but the Dispossessed reads to me like a very thinly-veiled allegory and not much more.

damn, didn't realise this was an old thread. oh well

reposted in the other thread.

many years follow up to the Marion Zimmer Bradley revelations from 2015, posted way way up thread, this kind of started circulating again recently as her sister-in-law, fantasy writer Diane Paston, who lives at a house called Greyhaven in Berkeley, was attacked by a family member last week in an attempted murder. Given that I've lived in this town for over 30 years I was surprised that I'd never known about the MZB revelations (missed it in 2015) nor did I even know she'd lived here, but she lived not far from where I live now (not at this house Greyhaven, a different one). Because I'm unemployed and bored this week, I did a huge deepdive into this over the past few days.

1) the situation with her husband, Walter Breen, was well known in fan communities dating back to the early 60's and his exclusion from a fan convention was a massive point of contention in that community. Biggest revelation to me was how organized these sci fi fan communities were all the way back to 1960 or so; they had newsletters, distributed zines, etc. I'm not a fandom person at all, so I'd really thought these types of conventions started with Star Trek in the 70's.

2) reading through some of the documentation of the time (aforementioned zines) there was absolutely an attitude in the community that would be rather shocking today; that adult male / child/teen sexual activity were not necessarily cause for concern. One would think that most people's attitudes on this shifted by the 90's when this started to come to light again (when Breen was arrested for the third time for molesting a child) but it's clear from MZB's testimony, and the testimony of her secretary/lover Elisabeth Waters (who is still alive and who, based on her response to this coming up again in 2015, is a fucking monster), that 'people's sexuality was their business' and they didn't bring up or question a lot of things in the lead up to that final arrest.

3) MZB's daughter seems like a highly traumatized person (no surprise) but has also gravitated to the far right, condemning all homosexuals as child molesters and has also accused her mother of 'satanic ritual abuse' which I'm sure we all cock an eyebrow at.

4) MZB's grandchild, Paston and Greyhaven were on Last Chance U (in the season I didn't watch, obviously) and apparently this came up there.

My final takeaway: hippy SCA sword and sorcery-based alternative family groups in the 60's and 70's did not have a very firm grasp on morality and there is still likely a lot of fallout from that. One wonders what happened to the rest of Breen's victims, most of whom sounded like street kids and kids going in and out of the foster system.